Hock looked up and saw the dwarf staring at him with red-rimmed eyes, a wet finger in his mouth.
Aching after the fall from the bike, he rested. The following night the Nyau was danced again. Hock’s head throbbed. The very sound of the drums echoed in his skull, pained him physically, pounded inside him. He had a fever — he knew malaria, the flu-like symptoms, the headache. He found his bottle of chloroquine and, unable to locate his water jug, chewed three tablets and lay in his string bed, the drums beating against his eyes and ears, his sore body, his sore head. The mosquito net killed any movement of air and trapped the heat.
Then days and nights were one. He did not know how long he lay shivering with chills, gasping in the heat, his heart fluttering, his head like an echo chamber. He heard a wild commotion, screeching, insistent drumming, the ululating of frenzied women. His eyes seemed scorched, and his skin felt raw against the sheets. The slightest brush of the mosquito net caused him discomfort. It was not like skin at all, but like tissue that was easily torn.
He suffered most when sunlight shot through the windows of the hut and caught him on the face. In the night his teeth chattered. Though he was wrapped in a thickness of sheets — there were no blankets — he could not get warm. He continued dosing himself with chloroquine.
“Quilt,” he said to Manyenga when one day the man’s face appeared in the wrinkles of the net, but the word meant nothing to him.
He felt sorry for himself, became tearful. No one cared, but he was comforted by the sight of Zizi and the dwarf on his veranda, standing vigil, it seemed. He heard Manyenga’s voice, an assured murmur, and he envied the man his strength. But it was only a voice — he did not see him.
When, before dawn one day, the fever eased, he could think more clearly, though he was still lightheaded and weak. The sickness made his situation plain, stripped it of sentiment. He saw the foolishness of his decision. He had come expecting to be welcomed; he’d wanted to contribute something to the village or the district. But no one was interested. Why should they care? They had managed very well without any amenities. They were much worse off than he’d seen them long ago, more cynical and somehow shrewder as a result. Cynicism had strengthened them.
As a young man, he’d compared malaria to the flu, and in four or five days he’d ridded himself of it. Older, he found the ailment to be like a fatal disease. He lay in bed, too weak to stand, straining even to roll over, and his lack of appetite weakened him more. He understood how frail he was, and the danger of being sick in this remote village. His dreams were fractured and irrational, ugly beaked birds figured in them, crowds of noisy people, great heat. In one dream he imagined that he was visited. He heard inquiring voices, American ones; he heard a car, the thumping of a large vehicle in the compound, the straining of gears as it drove away. The nightmarish part of the whole episode was that he had been ignored.
In his sickbed, he felt a clarity of mind and a sense of resolve. He’d made a mistake. As soon as he was feeling better he’d find a way of escaping from Malabo.
Zizi brought him the tea and bananas he asked for, but it was an effort for him to eat. He kept on with his medicine. It consoled him to see her and the dwarf right outside, their heads silhouetted at the window.
At last he was able to stand, to eat a little porridge.
“I’m going,” he said, and was not sure whether he was speaking in Sena or English. He called to Zizi: “Get the chief.”
Manyenga was soon striding across the brightness of the clearing, mopping his head, seeming relieved that Hock had recovered. Hock was standing in the shade of the veranda, swaying slightly, still unsteady on his feet. Behind Manyenga, her short legs working fast, a girl carried a pail of small greenish oranges and some dried fish wrapped in the torn pages of a South African illustrated magazine.
“Eat, father,” Manyenga said.
“I need to drink more. Bring me a kettle of hot water for tea.”
Manyenga, suddenly fierce-faced, ordered the small girl to fetch the kettle. And then he relaxed and stood closer and inclined his head toward Zizi and said, “She likes you, father.”
“Really?”
“Too much.”
“Zizi should be in school.”
“But the school fees,” Manyenga said. “That is the badness.”
Hock was too faint to reply and had to sit on the straight-backed chair on the veranda, where he slumped, breathing hard.
“You must rest, father.”
Then Hock remembered. In a croaky voice, he said, “I heard noise when I was sick. What was the noise?”
“Kufafaniza imfa. A man died. His goods were taken. His house destroyed.”
“You erased his death.”
“You are so clever, father. You are knowing so much about our customs, eh-eh.”
Hock said, “I have to leave. I’m going home.”
“This is your home, father,” Manyenga said.
Hock shivered as he had in the worst of his fever. He hugged his body, to warm himself, and moved to get his blood up, and that was when he saw the plastic crates. He recognized them as the containers of school supplies he’d asked the American consulate to send.
“When did that come?”
“The Americans fetched it here in their vehicle.”
“Did you tell them I was here?”
“You were so sick. We did not want to trouble you.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Ujeni,” Manyenga said — whatsit. “This and that.”
Hock guessed that he had said nothing of his presence, nothing of Hock’s lying in the hut with a high fever.
He went cold again, and he could not tell whether it was the recurrence of his fever or the faint brush of terror at feeling abandoned. Nothing that Manyenga had said was menacing, yet Hock was so weak, so feeble in response, he felt he was no match for Manyenga.
“I have a very big question to ask you.”
“Go ahead,” Hock said, “ask me.”
“Not now. At the proper time. We will have a ten-drum ngoma tomorrow. Then—” He smiled and gestured with his hands, spreading his arms, meaning, it seemed, that all would become clear.
After he had gone, Zizi peeled some of the oranges and put them in a tin bowl and served him. He gave some to the dwarf, who ate messily, chewing as he always did with his mouth open and grunting, his face and fingers smeared with the juice.
Zizi ate with dainty grace, separating the orange segments, chewing, her eyes cast down.
Refreshed by the fruit, having eased his stomach pain, Hock was suffused with a feeling of well-being, sitting in the shade, the sun whitening the earth, heating the motionless dusty leaves of the bushes next to the hut, curling the dead leaves on the ground. A strange conceit occurred to Hock as he straightened himself on his chair — that he was a chief, as they said, with his retainers, the serving girl and his fool, at his feet.
“It’s time for me to go,” he said in English. “I have no business here.”
The dwarf grunted. Perhaps he was muttering “Fee-dee-dom.” Pincering with the broken nails of two skinny fingers, Zizi covertly picked her nose, and Hock sat, finding a scrap of contentment in the absurdity.
Remembering that his stash of money had been raided, he went back to the school the next day — the hot interior, the heaps of dead leaves — and poked around for another snake. He had let the twig snake go. He found a small puff adder and brought it back to his hut. He eased it into a basket and put his envelopes of money inside with it, saying “Mphiri,” making sure that Zizi and the dwarf saw what he was doing.