An excerpt from "The Last Train to Zona Verde"

7/30/2019 An excerpt from "The Last Train to Zona Verde"

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Houghton Miin Harcourt Page November , : PM

Paul erouxTHE LAST TRAIN TO ZONA VERDE st pp

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I soening of late aernoon light,

against the squealy repeated note of one small insects cheep,

under the bird-haunted acacia tree towering over the bare

trampled compound, and near Camillos derelict-looking cardirt

footprints on its doors: Camillo had been kicking it barefoot in fury

for its refusal to startan old women approached through the sun-

lit risen dust.

She held a chipped enamel bucket in one hand and a long pairof metal tongs in the other. Her hair was wrapped like a bowl in a

yellow cloth, this turban making her an unusual presence, giving

her height and dignity and a look of quiet anticipation. She wore a

limp blue dress that fell to her ankles ending in a tattered hem, and

an apron that had once been white. She was barefoot, but her feet

her only indelicate featurewere as big and battered as shoes.

No one paid any attention to her or to what she was carrying. In

fact, Camillo stood aside, gripping a Cuca beer bottle as though he

were about to throw it. His eyes were empty, and he looked less than

futile. His body seemed uninhabited.

Three Pieces of Chicken


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We had come north, crossing from Kunene province into Hula

province, but what did it matter? We were stuck for the night at least,

and maybe longer. Light was leaking sideways from the sky frommembranes of cloud, leaving purpled tissue just above the horizon.

The old woman made directly for me. Old was probably inac-

curate: she was undoubtedly much younger than me, sixty or less,

but had the aged face of a kindly crone. I was standing apart from

the others, who were drinking, and perhaps drunk. I looked for a

log to rest on, but saw nowhere to sit, and the car seemed cursed.

Holding the bucket up so I could examine its contents, the

woman smiled at me and worked the jaws of her rusty tongs.

Boa tarde, she said, but it seemed more like evening to me.

At the bottom of the bucket were three pieces of chicken

legsattached to thighs. They were skinless, shiny-sinewed, and dark as

kippers, as if theyd been smoked. Each one was covered by busy

black ies, and ies darted around the hollow of the bucket. It was

more a bucket of ies than a bucket of chicken.

Squeezing her rusty tongs again, the woman asked, Qual?

Which one?

Though I was hungry, I waved her away, retching at the thought

of eating any of those chicken legs. Yet I had not eaten all day, and

it had been a long and tiring journey, of harassment, of the border

crossing, of the sight of misery and naked children playing in dust,ies crawling on their eyes and in the sores on their bodies. The o-

road detours had been especially exhausting from the bucking and

bumping of the vehicle. And the checkpoints, the shakedowns, the

roadblock dictators.

The woman was smiling because I was smiling. The absurdity of

Which one? had just struck me three identical pieces of chicken

in the dirty bucket, each of them specked by skittering ies; an ex-

istential question to the stranger in a strange land.

No, I said. Obrigado.

Something in my smile encouraged her and kept her there, rock-

ree Pieces of Chicken r


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ing a little, exing her bruised toes, running her tongue against her

lips to show patience. She was gaunt, and she herself looked hungry.

But I said no again and, shoulders slackening in resignation, sheturned away, making for the others, who were standing in a group

still drinking bottles of Cuca beer.

A muscle twisted sharply in my stomach and yanked at my

throat: the whip of hunger.

Ol! I said, and she turned to me, looking hopeful.

That one, I said, pointing at the one with the fewest ies on it.

Frango, she said in a gummy voice, as though naming a deli-

cacy, and she wet her lips with her tongue and swallowed, as peo-

ple oen do when handling food. Then the word spoken all over

Angola for cool or okay, Fixe

feesh.She folded my dollar and tucked it into her apron.

I borrowed Camillos cigarette lighter and made a small re of

dead grass at the corner of the compound, and I passed the piece of

chicken through the re, believing like a Boy Scout that I was kill-

ing the y-borne germs. Then I found the log Id been looking for,

and sat, and slowly ate the chicken. It was like chewing leather. The

straps and thongs of sinew wouldnt break down, and its toughness

made it almost indigestible, my chewing turning the meat into a

rubber ball. Queasy over a meal he called a mess ofbouillabaisse,

Henry James said that it was a formidable dish, demanding Frenchdigestion. Maybe I needed that. I was defeated by the food, and

disgusted with myself for being in this position, and I mocked my-

self with a pompous phrase Id heard a foodie use on a TV show: I

regret to say this dish is not fully achieved. But it was something in

my stomach, and that was a victory in this hungry province.

Then I replayed my rst glimpse of the bucket the chicken, the

ies, and the old woman asking Which one? It was the sort of

choice you were faced with in Africa, but I had never seen it so

stark, in the extravagant splashes of a orid sunset.

From the moment we arrived, this nameless place had seemed no

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An excerpt from "The Last Train to Zona Verde"