A Bend in the River: Chapter 5  Summary & Analysis

Africans from the surrounding villages, who would previously visit town primarily for markets and trade, begin staying. The town begins to feel crowded and lively, and all of a sudden rumors of war begin anew. To Salim, this conflict hardly seems new, but rather an extension of the unrest and tribal conflict that had begun at independence and continued cyclically since, spurred on by “accumulated anger from the colonial period” and “every kind of reawakened tribal fear.” In the people of the region, Salim sees an inscrutable rage that causes them to destroy their own villages, like a forest fire that continues to burn underground. The new president, “The Big Man,” sends a standing army to town and though their presence is heavy, they also make for good trade.

Salim feels trapped between the African rebels and the governmental forces—frightened by both, and sympathetic to both sides. Metty feeds Salim local rumors of mystical powers of the bush on the rebels’ side, and Salim notices he is talking and behaving more and more like the locals. Classes are suspended at the lycée and Ferdinand comes to stay with Salim and Metty until things calm down—Salim and Metty find comfort in comforting someone else. At lunch with Shoba and Mahesh, Mahesh assures him the only thing to do is to “carry on.” Salim does his best to do so, but feels only more unprotected and vulnerable. It doesn’t help that Shoba complains that their lives have amounted to nothing. Shoba also explains that when she married Mahesh, her family disowned her, and her brothers threatened to throw acid on her face if she ever returned home.

Salim finds the president has sent an army of White mercenaries to bolster the town, who are now staying at the van der Weyden hotel. Salim returns to the shop, and right around closing time Metty comes back and tells him the president had ordered his mercenaries to go meet with the rebel leaders in town, and at each meeting they had unceremoniously shot the rebels. The president’s actions bring terror to the whole region. The fighting continues but comes no closer, and Salim finds comfort knowing that the gunshots he hears at night are the sounds of order, brought on by the president’s White men. Not long after, the town is buzzed overhead by a fighter jet dropping missiles throughout the bush. This smothers the violence almost immediately. The rebels are enraged but have no option except to resume regular life in town, dependent on the place they sought to destroy.

In the early days of tentative peace, Father Huismans takes one of his trips out into the bush and is killed, his body placed in a dugout by his killers to drift down the river with the hyacinths. His death makes Salim feel like life is a waste, and he mourns all of the knowledge lost with the priest. However, nobody else in town seems to care. In fact, public opinion of him quickly sours, many of the boys in the lycée are embarrassed to have been associated with him, and Ferdinand speaks out against his colonial-European practice of museum-making, seeing it as profane and violating of the “god of Africans.” This comes along with another change in Ferdinand’s character: no longer trying the identities of various different Africans, he is now “simply an African” himself. He grows distant from Salim and the shop, but then sends Salim a simple letter thanking him for his generosity, which moves Salim.

In the newfound peace, more foreigners begin to trickle back into town. Visitors were occasionally shown Father Huismans’s collection in the gun room, but in the dingy, airless space, the masks had begun to rot and deteriorate, emanating an unpleasant smell. Salim also feels, without Father Huisman’s understanding and appreciation of the objects, they have begun to lose their religious power, now hardly more than semi-valuable relics. One American visitor shows particular interest in the relics. He leaves suddenly by steamer and they find the room completely looted, its contents no doubt being shipped back to the United States.