“I was just passing through.”
“I must inform you that one German mzungu on the river was captured by them and after some few weeks in captivity they sold him for money. They absconded with his money and food. I know these children. They make trouble on the river. That is why…”
Instead of saying more he sighed — whinnied — shook a cigarette from a pack, and lit it. He pursed his lips and directed a plume of smoke into the air. He looked around and laughed, as though at the strangeness of his being there, under the tree with Hock. He had Hock’s full attention now.
“That is why, my friend, the paddle boys and Simon left you at Megaza frontier station. They knew that if you were with them, the bad children would try to overturn their canoe and catch you.”
“How do you know that?”
“The paddlers dropped Simon at Caya on the Zambezi. They came back yesterday. And I was told.”
“So you went looking for me.”
“Not at all! I was with my friends, following the ndege. When it flies, we chase it — for goods! But God sent me to you. I knew you must be with the children, or maybe dead.”
“You know everything,” Hock said, testing him.
Manyenga squirted smoke through the gaps in his teeth, hissing, and said, “You should thank me, father.”
“Thank you,” Hock said.
“Because I saved your life, isn’t it?”
Hock wondered if this was so, and suspected it might be, but he wanted to deny the gloating Manyenga the satisfaction of it. He said, “They were afraid of me.”
Manyenga laughed, wagging his tongue, and then, his laughter faltering and growing harsh, he began to cough and, coughing, fighting for breath, stamped on the ground, raising dust.
In a choked voice he said, “They are afraid of nothing, my friend,” and to emphasize this he flicked his hand sharply, whipping his fingers together, making them snap. “That mzungu they sold, that German, was tough. But where is he now? Those children are devils. Maybe they took your things, too.”
Hock said nothing. Manyenga was studying him, the cigarette in his mouth giving him a look of insolence.
“What things?” Hock said at last.
“Maybe money.”
“Let’s go,” Hock said. “Where’s the road?”
Whenever he saw that he could contradict Hock, Manyenga put on a smug expression and became theatrical, hamming the moment, pausing before he delivered his putdown. Hock was not annoyed; it gave him hope when he saw that Manyenga was predictable.
“This is the country of no roads. No vehicles. Nothing. Only” —he indicated the wheel tracks, flourishing his cigarette—“paths for footing only. Or for motorbikes.”
“How far is the village — Malabo?”
“Too far.” Manyenga tossed the cigarette butt away. He mounted the bike and leaned and kicked the start lever. The engine gagged, gargled in complaint, then began rapping.
“Where are we going?”
Manyenga said, “You will see,” and when Hock hesitated, Manyenga’s face lost all its teasing mirth and became a mask sweating with impatience. “Do you want me to leave you here?”
Hock allowed himself to be scolded. He sulked as he got on the bike, moving slowly out of pride, like a child who’d been reprimanded. He thought: That’s how it is — I’ve been reduced to that, or less than a child, because even the children in the village were stronger than me. And now Manyenga had taken charge of him and was telling him what to do. He had no choice but to obey. He was lost here, disoriented by the river trip and the spell in the village and the hike to the open field. The appearance of the helicopter had been like a hideous dream of mockery. And now the motorcycle ride and the hostile You will see.
He did not know whether this trackless bush was in Malawi or Mozambique, only that if he were abandoned by Manyenga, he’d never find his way out or he’d be caught by the children again. And reflecting on Manyenga’s sudden showing up in the field, he had to admit he was glad. The children had frightened him for being hungry and ruthless and fickle and unreasonable — for being children. They resented Hock, but Manyenga needed him, and that need could work to Hock’s advantage. The children lived sparely, like animals, and they were especially dangerous because they had nothing to lose.
Hunched over the front of the motorbike like a workman digging a street, the bike itself resembling a jackhammer in the pounding of its front fork, and jumping in the ruts, Manyenga sped through the bush, Hock clinging to his doggy shirt. They came to a dry streambed, a bouldery trench lined with sand and stones, just a rough sluice that showed the disfigurement of rushing water and exposed rocks.
Hock got off and helped guide the bike over the big rocks.
“Is this Malawi or Mozambique?” Hock asked.
“It is having shrines there — sacred groves — and fugitives, and fruit trees. There used to be a mission on the Matundu Hills side, but they ran away. Maybe you can say it is Zambesia. But this is no country at all.”
“No man’s land.”
“No man’s land! Ah-hah!” Manyenga roared. “No man’s land!”
Hock remembered that he’d always seemed like a witty genius to his students in Malabo when they heard him utter a cliché for the first time.
After the streambed they entered higher ground, where the mopane trees were fuller of leaves — greener and taller, and their shade gave the impression of coolness. Sausage trees, too, stood with their bulbous fruit suspended. The birds were bigger and more numerous here, keeping to the upper branches of the trees. Hock knew the starling from its purple feathers, and the gray lourie from its cry: go-away, go-away. In one thicket of yellow-striped bamboo he saw the hanging nests of weaver birds. The leaf mulch crackled under the wheels of the bike; the earth was denser and kept moist by the shade. No dust cloud followed them now, only the blue fumes of the engine.
A small impala bounded away from them, and soon after, at the base of a tamarind tree, a troop of baboons backed away and fled on all fours like dogs, faces forward, using their knuckles for propulsion. Some of his anxiety left him, and Hock was reassured by this more orderly and fertile green Africa of shadows and animals.
Deeper in the bush a dampness softened the air, the whiff of stagnation that was a suggestion of life. A dark green moss like a scouring pad coated some of the big boulders in the shade, and in places boulders blocked the path. They pushed the bike awhile, Manyenga panting, and Hock wondered if this higher ground was part of the Matundu Hills that Manyenga had mentioned.
“So what—?” Hock began.
“The answer is no,” Manyenga said. He laughed, his usual cackle. “What’s the question?”
Who taught him that rude reply? What bullying foreigner said that to him, to sour him and show him how to be mean?
In this higher ground of ridges and sheltering trees, with a film of dampness clinging to the dark overhangs of the empty creekbed, Hock felt he was in another country — at least nowhere near the Lower River; far from Malabo, another zone altogether. He could breathe the air without snorting a hum of dust in his nostrils, and none of the trees looked as if they’d been interfered with — no paths either, not even the tracks of motorcycles. It was odd to see a sunny slope of sand without footprints on it, though in one corner he caught a glimpse of a fat furtive monitor lizard. The land was too stony and steep for a garden, too far from the river or any well to support a village. The heat and mud and scrubby bush and accessible water of the Lower River made it habitable, but these slopes of thick trees and toppled rocks and shade kept people away.