The Lower River Read online

  After years of roaming in the wider world, of travel, of marriage, of fatherhood, Roy had returned to Jerome Street, where he lived with his sister. He was a teacher, a drug counselor, an adviser in agencies that dealt with at-risk youths—Roy’s description of the restless boys—and right up to the end he had stopped into the store, sometimes to buy a shirt or a sweater, but more often to while away the time, talking with Hock about high school, the countries he’d been to, whatever was on his mind. Roy could see that business was terrible, and it seemed to Hock that Roy was taking pity on him. Roy knew about failure—he could see that Hock was facing the end. But Roy had grace, and an easy, forgiving manner, and always a smile, and he’d never hid his admiration for Hock in having been a teacher in Africa, something Roy wished he’d done.

  In the final weeks of the store, Roy Junkins was one of the more frequent visitors, though in that period, which was also the period of Teya and the snake, Hock never mentioned the python. The snake was his secret satisfaction. But casting his mind over people in Medford who might be interested in his going to Africa, Hock realized that Roy was perfect. Roy would listen to his plans, Roy would take an interest, Roy might even miss him a little—or, at least, Roy would welcome him back. Hock was able to picture that evening in the future, the dinner on his return from Africa, how Roy would sit and smile, hearing the stories.

  Hock and Roy had no other friends in common, so each would give the other his full attention. In the chance encounters with Jerry Frezza, all Jerry wanted to talk about was Teya, speculating on her wild life: Witch Camp, the Mud Ritual, massages. Hock did not have the heart to tell Jerry that she was a rather sad, lonely person, with an angry daughter, struggling to make ends meet.

  “Royal is watching the football game in the front room,” said the woman who answered—his sister Mae, Hock guessed. “I’ll bring him the phone.”

  Then Hock heard rustling and Roy’s “Yuh?” and Hock greeted him. Roy said, “Hey, man, how you doing?” speaking very slowly and giving weight to each word with a breath of enthusiasm.

  Hock was moved by the response. Here was a friendly voice, glad to hear his.

  “I need to talk to you.” As soon as he spoke, Hock regretted his urgent tone.

  “Go ahead, my brother. I’m listening.”

  “It’s better if I see you.”

  “That’s cool,” Roy said in his easygoing way, as though used to hearing desperate requests. His history of drug use, and his subsequent sobriety and study after that, had qualified him to become a drug counselor. And Hock had the feeling now that Roy, with his heightened sense, had him pegged as a person with a problem.

  “Roy, I want to share some good news with you.”

  “Man, that is just great.”

  They agreed to meet the next day at the Chinese restaurant in West Medford. It had replaced the shoe repair shop that had stood on the corner since Hock and Roy had been in school. Roy remarked on this when they met, how he’d gotten his shoes resoled here.

  “Suede shoes—very cool,” Roy said.

  “Wingtips,” Hock said.

  “You got it,” Roy said, agreeable as ever.

  “Thanks for meeting me at short notice,” Hock said after they’d ordered their food—noodles for Hock, fried rice for Roy, some spring rolls to share.

  “Ellis, I couldn’t wait. I want to hear this good news.”

  Roy was smiling—the weary smile of someone who’d been through hard times, determined not to be brought low, a resolute smile that said, No matter what you say, you cannot bring me down. It was also a smile of encouragement and gratitude, and it had the effect of lighting Roy’s face with something like love—friendship, anyway, which seemed purer for being more passive.

  “I’m going back to Africa.”

  Roy turned his hand and tapped his knuckles on the table. “That’s great, Ellis.”

  “I wanted to you to know.”

  “I been there,” Roy said. “It was fine.”

  “That’s why I knew you’d be interested.”

  “I am beyond interested. I am down with it.” And Roy smiled again. “Ghana. I had some contacts there. I just went on an impulse—well, you know. I told you all about it. It was the 1970s. And I just”—Roy straightened, threw his head back, exaggerating a posture of confidence—“I walked tall. I had my head up. Looked people in the eye. It was so great. I had never done that here.”

  “I always tell people, ‘Africa was my Eden,’” Hock said. “I was really happy there—young, in a country that was just becoming independent. I ran a school. Really good students. I had a girlfriend.”

  Roy had begun to laugh. “Now you’re talking. Those women were so fine.”

  The food was served and the two men continued to reminisce, Hock about Malawi, Roy about Ghana—though, as Roy said, he’d been there only three weeks. Yet those three weeks stood out in his mind as brighter and happier, more memorable and with more meaning, than years he’d spent elsewhere, years that had yielded no memories at all.

  “I know what you’re saying. Ellis, my man.”

  And Hock was relieved, because Roy’s smile spared him from going into further detail. This was the right man to share his secret with, someone who understood.

  “You’re lucky,” Roy said, and continued to eat, but holding his head, cocking it slightly, in a manner that indicated he had something more to say. “Wish I could do it, but I’ve got—” He laughed, and his laugh indicated a weight of problems so enormous they could only be laughed at.

  Hock said, “Someday you’ll go back.”

  “That’s right. Some fine day,” Roy said assertively. “But you’re the man to go now. Hey, give me your cell-phone number. We can talk.”

  “I don’t have a cell phone anymore. I’m not taking one.”

  “That’s cool.” And perhaps suspecting there was a story behind it that Ellis was not telling, Roy praised him. “You done your work. You ran that store—for how long? Years, man. You put in the time when the rest of us was goofing off. You think I didn’t notice? But I did. You deserve it, Ellis. You showed up every day, and now you don’t have to show up no more. You can just—”

  And Roy raised his hand and flicked it, a casual gesture that was like the wing flap of a bird in flight.

  “Tell you something, though,” Roy said, hitching forward in the booth. “I’m going to miss you, man.”

  It was exactly what Hock wanted to hear, what he’d hoped for, what he needed: someone to miss him. And when Roy said it, Hock felt liberated and ready to go.

  “This is for you,” Hock said, outside the restaurant. He took off his cashmere scarf and flipped it over Roy’s head and tugged it. “I’m not going to need it where I’m going.”

  The two men embraced, Roy with gusto, Hock feeling tearful.

  5

  ELLIS HOCK CRAVED that simpler, older world he’d known as a young teacher, which was also a place in which hope still existed, because it was a work in progress. In the years he’d been away he’d often dreamed of going back to the Lower River district of swamp and savanna, yet without any confidence that he could achieve it. The dream was important to him, though: it had quieted him through the enormous digression of marriage and business. And he had just about abandoned any thought that he would return.

  But that was before the present of his new phone, and the avenging weeks of Deena’s anger, and the end of his business. Everything was changed, and the timing was perfect. The course of a life seems random, but all lives are shaken into a pattern that makes sense only in retrospect. Hock was a new man, or rather, the man he once was, on his way back to Malawi. Now the country was advertised as a place for holidays, with resort hotels at the lake, in the north, even some game parks. It seemed like many other travel destinations in the world, where many people starved and the tourists ate well and were fussed over.

  Already, before his plane touched down, he knew his decision had been right. He relaxed, smiling out the window
at the low treeless hills, the creases of green in the landscape that marked the foliage along rivers and creeks, the villages that were made visible by the smoke rising from cooking fires. From the air, the place looked just as he had left it almost forty years before. Where else could you go on earth and say that?

  The immigration officer asked him his reason for being in the country.

  Hock spoke the sentence he had rehearsed: “Ndi kupita ku Nsanje.”

  The man said, “Eh! Eh! What am I hearing?” and reached across his desk to shake Hock’s hand. “And myself I have never been there, father.”

  A domestic flight was leaving later in the day for Blantyre. Hock took it and stayed the night at the Mount Soche Hotel, marveling at the crowded dirty city. Loud music boomed from the cars of boys cruising, pulsing against the metal. It seemed to indicate a kind of thuggery. He saw men talking on cell phones and hoped that there were no cell phones on the Lower River.

  Assuming he would be staying a few weeks, he visited Barclays Bank and used his credit card to make a cash withdrawal. The clerk, a young man in a shirt and tie, asked him if he was sure he meant to withdraw that much money, and when Hock said yes, he counted the notes twice and squared ten tall piles, tapping them, snapped a rubber band around each of them, then ducked into his cubicle, looking for a bag large enough to hold the money.

  “Be careful, sir,” the clerk said, squeezing ten fat envelopes under the heavy glass window.

  “I’ll be careful,” Hock said. “I used to live here. I was here at independence. The Lower River.”

  “Oh, so long ago. But we have a branch at Nsanje. I think it was different then.”

  “Maybe not.”

  The clerk spoke again, but was barely audible behind the glass.

  “Did you say they’re angry?”

  “Hungry, sir,” the clerk said, motioning his fingers to his widened mouth.

  In the evening, walking down the street that was still Victoria Avenue, Hock saw an American flag hanging from a steeply angled pole, and a plaque identifying the newish building as the United States Consulate. He made a note of it, and on his way back to his hotel he passed a nightclub, the Starlight. He smiled at the well-dressed men gathered at the entrance, the women in bright dresses and high heels, some of the men getting out of expensive-looking private cars, one a Mercedes, another a white Land Rover. In his time, the men would have worn plimsolls, as they called them, and the women would have been barefoot. And no African would have owned a car, much less a Mercedes.

  In his hotel room that night, the music from the nightclub and the city lights disturbed his sleep. He comforted himself with the thought that he was traveling to the darkness and silence of the Lower River.

  “I’d like to see the consul,” Hock said to the receptionist at the U.S. consulate the next morning.

  “Is he expecting you?

  “No,” Hock said. “But I’m an American on tour here, and I think I should see him.”

  Hock was conscious of a roomful of people behind him, mostly men, probably applying for visas, and listening, perhaps resenting the access this mzungu had. He felt the pressure of their gaze against his back.

  As he was speaking, a white man in shirtsleeves passed by the desk and picked up a file folder from a tray.

  Hock said, “Are you the consul?”

  The man squinted, annoyed, interrupted in his errand. He said, “I’m the PAO. Public affairs officer.”

  “Can I see you a minute?”

  The man sighed in a way that was unambiguous—overdid the sigh, blinked in exasperation, and hesitated.

  “Never mind,” Hock said, hating the rebuff.

  The man said, “I’m just going to lunch. And I’m busy this afternoon.”

  “Have lunch with me at my hotel,” Hock said. “And by the way, I’m not looking for a visa. I just want a little information.”

  The man said, “Okay, I’ll see you here in a little while.”

  “Ndikubwera posachedwa,” Hock said.

  The man smiled, a wan smile, uncomprehending.

  “‘I’m coming soon,’” Hock said. “I was here in the Peace Corps.”

  “You people,” the man said, and smiled again, this time with warmth.

  The public affairs officer’s name was Kent Gilroy, he had been in the country six months, and it was clear that he didn’t like the place. But with two years to go, as he said, it was too demoralizing for him to admit it. He was impatient with the waiter, repeating his order, a club sandwich. Hock ordered fish and chips, and remarked on how busy the café was.

  “Tourists?”

  “All aid people. NGOs,” Gilroy said. “A better class of tourist. They’d probably be more helpful to you than I could. I’m just finding my way.”

  “I’m going to the Lower River,” Hock said. “Nsanje.”

  “No one ever goes there,” Gilroy said. “It’s not a population center.”

  “It never was.”

  “And the Sena people,” Gilroy said, swallowing, instead of finishing his sentence.

  “‘Backward.’”

  “Not popular.”

  “Off the map, the British say,” Hock said. “To me, that was always its virtue. Even in my day we didn’t have many visitors.”

  “When was your day?”

  “Almost forty years ago.”

  Gilroy said, “God, I wasn’t even born then. I’m sorry. I don’t want to make you feel old.”

  “I don’t feel old,” Hock said. “As soon as I arrived the other day, I felt rejuvenated, as I had when I first came here. It’s strange the power a white person feels in Africa. It should be the opposite, feeling like the odd man out. But no, a kind of strength is attributed to us.”

  “Because you’re rich and successful and healthy,” Gilroy said. “You can grant favors. They give you the illusion of power. I’m the PAO, so I just deal with the media and schools, but even so, I’m associated with the consulate, and that means visas and work permits. Everyone wants a ticket out.”

  “Years ago, no one wanted to leave. It was unthinkable.”

  “You should see the lines we have to deal with—around the block, three deep. How long are you staying in Nsanje?”

  “Beyond Nsanje—a village. A week or ten days. But I want every minute to count. I’d like to buy some books and teaching materials for the school there. If I had a few boxes sent to the consulate, could you have them shipped down?”

  “Like I said, no one goes there,” Gilroy said. “I could put them on the night bus. Or bring them myself—maybe an excuse to visit.”

  “There was a guy who worked at the consulate here, way back, who made trips to my school—Malabo, near Magwero. His name was Norman Fogwill.”

  Gilroy, chewing, said, “English guy. Lives somewhere outside town.”

  “Fogwill—still around?”

  “Yeah, old guy. Turns up at the consulate when there’s a guest speaker or a movie. He introduced himself to me. I knew a guy just like him in my last post—Addis.”

  “You were in Ethiopia?”

  “For a year. They needed me here to run the program,” Gilroy said, his expression giving nothing away, and so what he said was all the more like satire.

  “How was this guy like Fogwill?”

  “One of those people that stays behind after everyone else has gone home.”

  “I wonder if he’d remember me?”

  In the way that he did not want to leave Medford until he’d found someone to say goodbye to—Roy Junkins—someone to miss him, he realized that he’d be happier here if he met someone who’d known him, who would see him on his way to the Lower River.

  “I see him playing chess at Mario’s now and then,” Gilroy said. “The coffee shop. Next to Kandodo Supermarket.”

  “On the far end of Victoria Street.”

  Gilroy said, “I can’t get over the fact that these streets actually have names.”

  Hock said, “Haile Selassie Road. I saw Haile S
elassie coming down that road in 1964—a tiny man in a brown uniform with lots of medals. The whole country was given a holiday. I came up on the train from Nsanje to see him. People watching him said, ‘He’s not an African. He looks like a colored’—mixed race.”

  “Ethiopians would agree. They’re down on Africans,” Gilroy said, and smirked. “The Lion of Judah in Blantyre. It’s hard to believe that anything ever happened here.”

  “That’s why I like it,” Hock said. “I’m glad to be back.”

  Gilroy sized him up, eyeing him, as if assessing the remark. “Great,” he said, and gave him a gold-embossed name card: Kent Gilroy, Consulate of the United States of America. “You can use this address.” He scribbled a street and number on the back of the card. “It’s a funny thing,” he said, writing. “Lots of Americans who come here buy schoolbooks and paper and pens and stuff like that. You’d be amazed at how many. I send the boxes out and that’s the last I hear of them.”

  “What are you saying—that I’m wasting my time?”

  “No. You’re doing a good thing. But it’s a bottomless pit. Money, medicine, books, pens, even computers. Where does it all end up?”

  “Come down to Malabo. I’ll show you.” With that he wrote the name of the village on one of his own name cards.

  “Will I find it?”

  “Ask at the boma. Nsanje, it’s beyond Marka and Magwero. Near the river. Near the border.”

  “The end of the line,” Gilroy said, and glanced at the card again. “Cell-phone number?”

  “I don’t have one,” Hock said. “I don’t want one. I never had one down there.”

  Hock walked him back to the consulate so he could sign the visitors’ book, and approaching the building, Gilroy said, “See what I mean?”

  The line of people, men and women, some old, some like students, nearly all Africans, a few Indians.