Paul Theroux - Sir Vidia's Shadow - A Friendship Across Five Continents

My voice was shrill, and I think that surprised him. I was hurt and angry. Probably he thought he was softening the blow, because Londoners are such eager lunchers, but it seemed callous to turn lunch into an occasion for such a rejection. And why was I being rejected? The novel was good, surely?

“I let William Trevor look at it. He agreed with me.”

Trevor was one of his authors, a talented one, I thought.

I said, “My last novel got great reviews. You paid me two hundred and fifty pounds. I assumed you’d give me the same for this. You’d be getting it for a pittance.”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” he said. He had lit a cigar and, feeling defensive, he had stopped eating. “I don’t believe in the book. I can’t publish something I don’t believe in.”

“You publish lots of crappy books,” I said.

I guessed he saw the truth of this, because he hesitated, at least looked uncertain.

I said, “If you turn this down you’ll lose me as an author. I’ll go to another publisher. I’ll never let you publish another book of mine. And all it’s costing you is two hundred and fifty quid. This lunch is costing you thirty!”

Michie was bald but he had a hank of hair that grew from the side of his head that he arranged over his pate to give the semblance of hair. This damp, fussed-with strand had slipped down and hung by the side of his ear like a strange Hassidic sidecurl. It made him look desperate.

“If you twist my arm, I’ll publish it,” he said.

“That’s it, then. That’s all. Forget it — I want my manuscript back.”

Feeling ill, I finished my meal and walked back to his office, wishing the whole way I could push him in the path of a car. He gave me the typescript and still seemed surprised and somewhat embarrassed by my anger.

I found another publisher, but in the meantime seriously wondered how I would ever make a living as a writer. I told Vidia. He invited me to tea at the Charing Cross Hotel.

“You should have shown the book to me. Why didn’t you?” he said.

“I didn’t want to bother you with my problems.”

“That’s what friends are for,” Vidia said.

He could not have said anything truer or kinder. After eight years he was still on my side, still a well-wisher.

“He gave it to William Trevor to read. Apparently Trevor didn’t like it either.”

“Who is William Trevor?”

That was what I needed, the old corrosive contempt.

“He is no one,” Vidia said coldly. “Something similar happened to me when I was starting out. Deutsch told me to put the book aside. It was Miguel Street . He didn’t know what to do with it. And one still gets the odd foolish remark about one’s work.”

“Why do they do it?”

“They do it because they are common, lying, low class, and foolish. That is why they do it.”

He was so angry he could not continue the conversation. He sipped his tea, looking around at the other tables. He saw a heavily pregnant woman moving slowly across the shabby room, bracing herself by resting on chairs and with one hand pressed for balance on the small of her back.

“To me, one of the ugliest sights on earth is a pregnant woman.”

This astonished me. I did not know what to say. He turned away from the woman.

“I have an idea for a book,” I said.

“Tell me.”

“A long railway trip.”

I explained how, in Virginia, I had read Mark Twain’s Following the Equator , an obscure and out-of-print travel book, but lovable for its geographical non sequiturs and incidental mishaps. I liked the spirited jokes and the long journey. It was about nothing but his trip. A lot of it was dialogue. Twain did not pretend to be knowledgeable about the countries he passed through — Australia, India, and South Africa, among many others.

“I checked the maps,” I said. “I can leave Victoria Station and go to Paris, to Istanbul — to the border of Afghanistan. Then there’s the Khyber Pass, and trains all through India. Burma has railways, so does Thailand. Even Vietnam has trains. I would travel around Japan and come home on the Trans-Siberian, and then write about it.”

“That’s a lovely idea,” Vidia said. He was seriously concentrating on it, looking for a flaw or something suspect. But it was too simple an idea to have a flaw. Taking trains from London to Japan and back: it was surprising that no one had done it before.

“I’m thinking of leaving in September,” I said. “I would be in India in October. What’s the weather like then?”

“Delicious.”

He seemed distracted; he was still thinking about my book, my trip. He saw something I did not see — I could tell from his reaction. He knew it was a good idea, but he saw something more. He saw a hugely successful book.

“Who do you think I should visit in India?”

He thought a moment. He frowned. “You’ll find your way.”

For the first time in the years I had known him, I sensed a reluctance on his part to help me. Only a few minutes before he had said, “That’s what friends are for.”

“Isn’t there anyone you could introduce me to?”

He had been to India six or seven times recently and had lived there for a year. He had written about it many times. It was his obsessive subject. He knew India intimately.

“I don’t know. You might see Mrs. Jhabvala when you’re in Delhi.”

As he was speaking, giving me the name with such reluctance, I vowed that I would not visit Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.

“You’ll be all right,” he said. But this time the statement was tinged with self-pity, almost resentment, a feeling I had never detected in him before. It was as though I were abandoning him. And why? This train-riding idea I had conceived out of sheer desperation, in the urgency to have a book to write and money from a publisher.

The bill was brought. I paid it, I left the tip. Vidia had not seen it. He did not see bills even when they were brought on the most expensive china and folded like origami and presented to him. It was one of his survival skills that a bill could come and go without ever being visible. Still, he looked disgusted.

“This hotel used to be quite grand,” he said in his pained voice. Perhaps the pain was due to the idea I had just divulged. “Having tea here was once something special. One was glamoured by it.” He made a face. “No longer.”

I took the trip. I left London on September 19, 1973, on the train to Paris. I changed trains and went to Istanbul, changed again for Ankara, for Tehran, and for the holy city of fanatics, Meshed. And onward, through Afghanistan (by bus, no trains) and down the Khyber, up to Simla, down to Madras and to Sri Lanka, on the train and on the ferry. To Burma and Thailand and Singapore, along the coast of Vietnam (heavily bombed and still smoking), up and down Japan, a boat to Nakhodka, and the Trans-Siberian home. My heart was in my mouth the whole time. Out of fear I wrote everything down; in my misery I mocked myself, and a febrile humor crept into the narrative. In January of the following year I returned to London, still feeling miserable. I had missed Christmas. Everyone howled at me, “Where have you been?” I propped up my notebooks and wrote the book, made a single narrative out of all those train trips. The title came from a road in Kanpur: the Railway Bazaar.

Sometimes miracles happen to a writer, Vidia had said. The Great Railway Bazaar was a small miracle. I was not prepared for it. While I was working on it, The Black House was published — the reviews were respectful — and I started The Family Arsenal after I finished the travel book. Even before publication, The Great Railway Bazaar was reprinted three times, to accommodate bookstore demand. It was an immediate bestseller. It was my tenth book. I had known Vidia for ten years. In that time I had published about a million words.