Taller, much bigger than any of these skinny kids, Hock felt a sense of safety, the instinctive confidence of the tall man, a giant among dwarfs, reassured by his size and the fact that he’d escaped from Malabo, and gotten away from the border post, and was now six or seven miles downstream, probably in Mozambique but on the west bank of the Lower River. There had to be a path that would lead to a wider road and a truck route and a town.
It was just after four. He’d eaten the last of his crackers and beans in the morning, waiting on the riverbank, and nothing since. His hunger sharpened with the odor of cassava roasting on a grill over a fire, tended by a small girl on her knees. She turned the dark, roughly carved root slices with a forked stick. After watching her for a while, Hock got up and walked over to the fire. The girl shrank from him, though stayed kneeling, fanning smoke from her eyes, rearranging the slices, moving them to the side of the grill farthest from Hock.
Instinctively, as he reached, Hock looked for an adult, anyone his size, who might object, and seeing only children, he picked up one of the pieces of cooked cassava. It was hot, he bobbled it in his palm, then blew on it and took a bite. He had not realized how hungry he was until he ate the thing, stringy, dense, tasting of wood smoke. He wolfed it down and wanted another.
The girl tending the fire (her T-shirt was lettered Colby Chess Club) had turned toward him but with averted eyes, gazing past him. Hock looked around and saw, on a log in front of a hut, three big boys staring at him. He was surprised and disconcerted to see that they were wearing sunglasses, three bug-eyed boys in T-shirts and trousers. Something in their posture gave them an air of authority, even hauteur, and the sunglasses seemed, if not menacing, then unfriendly, intentionally ambiguous. Their clothes were clean, and that unusual fact made them seem stronger and put Hock on his guard. One of them wore a black baseball cap with the words Dynamo Dresden stitched in yellow on the front.
He’d been dazed and dulled by the effort of getting away from Malabo, and the canoe trip to the frontier had tired him. He hadn’t expected to be abandoned by Simon — after giving him money and sermonizing about his future, the ungrateful rat — hadn’t expected this, a village of children.
Hock was still hungry but, sensing disapproval from the watching boys, instead of taking any more food from the fire, he walked up the slight incline of sloping earth and dead grass to where the boys sat in the afternoon sun.
“Hello, how are you?” he asked in Sena, certain they would understand; the language was spoken all over the Lower River.
They simply stared, or seemed to, in the stylish unrevealing goggles, as though they hadn’t heard or didn’t know the words.
“Where is your chief?” Hock used all the words for “big man” he knew, not only mfumu and nduna, but also nkhoswe, the elder who traditionally looked after all the smaller siblings — nephews and dependents.
“No chief,” the boy in the middle said in English. He was a skinny sharp-faced boy with wet insolent lips and he sounded triumphant. “No nkhoswe.”
“No bwana?”
“You are the only bwana.”
Hock felt a thrill at the idea of a village in the bush with no one in charge.
“What is the name of this village?” he asked.
The boy wearing the black cap lettered Dynamo Dresden said, “It is Mtayira.”
“I don’t know that word.”
“It is The Place of the Thrown-Aways.”
So precise, the sad name.
“Where is the road?” Hock asked. He spoke in Sena, to be sure, for the word njira meant any road, big or small, even a footpath.
“No road,” the sharp-faced boy said, crowing in English.
“You speak English. Did you learn it at school?”
“Not at school, never.”
The truculent and unwilling tone and the sulky nayvah in the boy’s response annoyed Hock, who said, “I haven’t eaten anything all day. I need some food.”
“We have no food for you.”
The three pairs of sunglasses were pitiless. And none of the boys had risen, in itself an act of defiance, for on the Lower River, even in the disgrace that was Malabo, the children stood up in the presence of adults. Hock turned toward the cooking fire and saw that the girl had gathered all the cassava and was carrying it away in a tin bowl, moving quickly on short legs across the clearing with the head-bobbing walk of a child.
“I’m hungry,” Hock said in a mildly protesting way.
“We are more hungry,” the same boy said.
“If you help me, I’ll give you money,” Hock said, and was at once uncomfortably aware of the pleading note in his voice.
“We want dollars,” one of the other boys said, a new voice that was a growl.
Hock laughed at the idea that he was negotiating with a boy in a baseball cap who was no more than fourteen or fifteen years old, in a bush village on the river, a sullen boy in sunglasses.
“Twenty dollars,” the boy said.
Hock felt pressure on his legs, a rubbing and pushing, and saw that a crowd of children had gathered around him. Instead of standing at a distance, as children always did by tradition, out of respect, these children stood close to him, chafing him, hemming him in, preventing him from moving. It was as though he was standing in thick bush grass up to his waist. He could sway, but he could not lift his legs. He’d put his bag between his feet and could feel it against his calves but was unable to reach it.
“What do I get for twenty dollars?”
“Some food to eat.”
“Is that all?”
“Some tea to drink.”
“I need a place to sleep,” Hock said.
The children jostling at his legs made him totter and almost lose his balance. He lifted his arms and waved them to steady himself, feeling foolish.
“Maybe we have a space.”
“I want to be your friend,” Hock said.
“We do not know you at all.” It was the growly voiced boy.
“Please tell these children to move away.”
The boy spoke to them sharply, but they responded by chattering, laughing, gesturing.
“They say that you must go, not them,” the boy said, and the children laughed again, as if guessing what was being said. And when they laughed, jeering, careless, Hock became worried.
He reached through the tangle of small bodies and found the strap of his bag and lifted it, hugging it, protecting it with his arm. Everything he owned was in it — not much now, he’d left most of his clothes in Malabo, and Simon had stolen his radio. But he had the essentials — medicine and money and a change of clothes.
The worst thing you could do in these circumstances, he knew, was to pull out an envelope and show money to such a crowd of rude catcalling children. He said only, “See? I have it.”
The middle boy gestured, and the boys on either side of him snarled what sounded like an order, or abuse. But the crowd of children did not disperse at once. They chattered some more, they made insolent noises, they poked and pinched at Hock’s legs and tugged at his bag to taunt him. And only then did they move away, at first slowly, then running, chasing each other, leaving Hock short of breath, his heart beating fast.