The boy in the yellow dress taunted both the masked figures. He was not masked, though he was luridly painted, his features exaggerated with the greasy makeup.
The sight triggered a memory. In his first year in the Lower River, just after the school at Malabo had been finished, Hock had gone back to school late after lunch. He’d been disturbed by a letter from home, a clingy letter that had made him furious. As he’d approached the classroom, he heard an unfamiliar voice, and laughter. He paused before entering, sidling up to the door, and saw one of the boys pacing at his desk and muttering in an imitation of him. A cruelly accurate imitation, approximating his stammering um-um-um in an explanation, his nodding head, his way of pacing, turned-in toes, knees lifted. And he’d been abashed. So as not to embarrass himself further, he made an announcing noise, waited for the scuffling to diminish, and entered the classroom to see that some students were solemn, some tittering. When he tried to resume the lesson, he found he did not have the heart to continue. Instead, he assigned them an essay topic and gave them the hour to complete it. Afterward he fled to his house and the letter from his father.
That was how he felt now, at the sight of a man in a mask that was meant to represent his face, a snake that he took to be an adversary, and a boy in a ragged dress, which baffled him.
Never mind what it meant to them. It horrified him in a way that was more alarming for being meaningless. His face reflected in a mirror had always disturbed him. As the subject of a Nyau dance he believed he was being ridiculed, and he remembered Gala’s warning. As for the boy he’d found mimicking him in the classroom, he’d never trusted him after that.
The drumming became a thunderous pounding of hand slaps. He backed away from the baobab stump, into the shadows, and withdrew to his hut.
15
HARDLY SEVEN, AND the morning sun slanting through the twiggy trees had filled the clearing at Malabo with stifling humidity, like an invisible smothering presence that bulked against his face, leaving his neck clammy and his body weak. The earth itself was baked dry and crisscrossed with paths pounded smooth by bare feet. The foliage of the mopane trees faded to yellow, the thorn acacias coated with dust.
Squinting into the distance, because a dog had begun an irritable bark, Hock saw a shimmering spectral blob in the heat, coming closer, resolving itself into two figures, large and small, Manyenga and a skinny burdened girl hurrying behind him.
“Morning, chief,” Hock said.
“But, eh, you are being a big man as well, father,” Manyenga said.
And he smiled seeing Hock sitting as usual at his table on the narrow veranda, Zizi squatting on her heels near him, the dwarf crouching a little distance away by a low bush, gnawing his fingers.
The way Manyenga stared put Hock on his guard. The anxiety, the calculation, something approaching fear, that he’d noticed in the young man on his arrival was gone. Now Manyenga gazed directly at him, looked him up and down, narrowing his eyes, without any hesitation. He was at ease, friendlier, more familiar, and less reliable.
Hock saw himself with Manyenga’s eyes, an old mzungu, attended by a skinny girl and a dwarf, a portrait of inaction, like a ruined chief on a rickety throne. He’d stopped shaving, his clothes were stained. The tableau somehow illustrated his life at Malabo — not at all what he had imagined, but tolerable because nothing was expected of him beyond greeting the villagers, and not complaining, and giving them money now and then. There was no point. He had to leave, to get away, if only to Blantyre, to collect his thoughts and decide his next move.
“You were seeing us at the dance,” Manyenga said, gesturing to the girl to set down the plate of porridge and the mug of milky tea.
“How do you know?”
It was a breach of etiquette for an outsider to observe the Nyau dance. In spite of himself, Hock could not be indignant at being questioned. He was abashed, as though he’d seen someone naked in the village; he’d had no right.
But Manyenga was nodding with a slyly satisfied face — a smile that was not a smile. “We were celebrating you,” he said. “We were thanking you, father. And you were there.”
Hock said in Sena, “A ghost doesn’t miss a funeral”—a proverb he’d learned long ago, one he’d often quoted in Medford.
“You are knowing so much, father.”
“But I have to leave today,” Hock said, and took another breath, because his chest was tight — the heat, the scrutiny of the strong younger man. “To go to Blantyre.”
All night he had been pondering this possibility, even practicing the form of words. Nothing had gone right. He knew he had been cheated out of the money for the roofing, he was being overcharged for room and board, the school would stay a ruin. The boys had abandoned him — but they were orphans, there was little hope for them. No, perhaps they were counting on him, but if so, it was all hopeless. His waiting to be fed, breathless in the morning heat, drawing shallow breaths, his face glowing with sweat so early in the morning, had shown him the futility of it all.
“I’ll need a lift to the boma.” His idea was to find the departure times of the buses to Blantyre, perhaps catch one that day, just to be away.
“As you are wishing, father,” Manyenga said, with another nod and that ambiguous half-smile. “But you were watching our dance without permission. That is a trespassing. According to custom you must pay a fine.”
“I understand.”
“A heavy fine. Sorry, father.”
“In that case, I need to get some money from the bank. I’m almost out of cash.”
Instead of looking greedy and grateful, Manyenga frowned, seeming bewildered, but he lifted his hands in an accommodating gesture, as if to say, Anything for you. Then he clicked his tongue at the serving girl.
“Bon appétit,” he said.
And again Hock remembered that the man had been a driver for a foreign agency.
“The boma is far. We must leave soon,” Manyenga said.
Hock was encouraged when the man kept his word. They left on the motorbike later in the morning, Manyenga driving. Hock, sitting behind him, had his passport and all his important papers. Revving the engine with twists of his hand, Manyenga told him to hold on, and he skidded away. But not fifty yards into the journey, even before they reached the road, Manyenga swerved and screamed, “Njoka!”
Hock twisted around, looking for the snake, and lost his balance and fell, bruising his side. Winded, he lay in the dust, wondering if he had broken any ribs.
“We cannot go,” Manyenga said, righting the motorbike, helping Hock up from the ground.
Manyenga’s brow was heavy, his face dark with fear. Hock knew of the prohibition against traveling onward after a snake has crossed your path. Manyenga’s mood had changed from agreeable to anxious. He seemed tense, nearly angry.
“I didn’t see a snake,” Hock said.
“It was so big! A green mamba — they match the leaves,” Manyenga said. “We must obey.”
Hock was too bruised to argue, yet annoyed that the man was describing a snake to him that he had not seen. He limped back in the sun to his hut, and there he sat, wondering how to overcome this man. He suspected it was a ruse. Yet he was hurt. And realizing that he’d been forced to lie to Manyenga to get to the boma made him uneasy. The lie indicated that he was afraid to tell the truth — that he simply wanted to go to Blantyre and plot his next move, to go home.
He went to his duffel bag and felt for his pouch of money. He found the fat envelopes and saw that some money was missing, and he laughed, mocking his own stupidity. That was why Manyenga had reacted that way. He knew that Hock was not going to the bank for money. Manyenga knew he had money, that he was lying.