Paul Theroux - Mr. Bones - Twenty Stories

And as she spoke, he could see it, greeny-gold in the sunshine, the graceful huts on stilts, in the thickness of banana trees, under the feathery umbrellas of palms. The rice fields, banked in big squares, filled with water, mirrored the blue sky. Her mother stood over the smoking cookstove under the house, stirring the noodles in the wok. The most durable sort of human happiness. Song mentioned the children playing, her brother on his bicycle, and Osier could tell that it meant everything to her.

“Go on,” he said when she hesitated.

He easily fitted himself into that landscape. And when he fell asleep in Song’s arms he dreamed of the village, and a detail she had not given him, a fierce dog barking at him.

He woke in the darkness. He was still dressed. Song had gotten into the bed. She’d had a shower. Her dress was folded on a chair.

“I’m going to the States,” he said.

He could tell even in the darkness, by the way she breathed, that she disapproved. She held his arm as if restraining him, though he hadn’t moved.

“If I don’t go, they make trouble for me.”

Song became thoughtful, then said, “What trouble?”

“Telling stories about me,” he said, and because he was ashamed of speaking this way, he whispered, “They no like me.”

He could tell he had her full attention, as when he had said, “I have money,” and her lips had moved as though in prayer.

She said, “They make you go home?”

He didn’t answer, but his silence was like a statement, and Song’s eyes were on him.

“Who say?”

“My boss.” He had to keep it simple — language was always a problem. But when he uttered the formula, she held on tighter, and he felt the desperation in her fingers.

“Boss,” she said disgustedly.

He regretted the word, his lame excuse, but the truth — Joyce, his pension, his early retirement, all of it — was too complicated to explain. He longed for the time when no more explanations would be necessary.

“Don’t worry.”

“I coming back, honey.” She sang it, as a kind of jeer, and that stung him. Her English had improved and was lethal in its accuracy when she was mocking.

Song said nothing more. The air conditioner restarted, filling the room with clatter. Instead of breaking the spell, the noise made any more talk impossible, and the mutter, with the blast of cool air, roused them. They made love joyously, but with defiance, too. Afterward he thought, How many more years of work? One or two. How many of life? Twenty or more. He was not old — Song had shown him that he was just beginning. He wanted more of life, more of Song. He craved that simple golden world of greenery that she took for granted, that he’d once imagined to be unattainable.

Even in Bangkok she was an oddity, and together they were a greater oddity, but they were alike.

In the morning he called Song a taxi, and he rode the shuttle with Fred and Larry. He was aware of their scrutiny. Had Fred said anything?

Fred said, “We’re thinking of hitting a few clubs tonight. Want to join us?”

This from the churchgoer who had a special relationship with Jesus. All that Osier could think of was his plan to go back to the States, to announce his intentions. He had no words for what he felt, no name for the state he was in, no way of saying what it was that had happened in the night — none that made any sense to him. If this was love, it was something he had never known before. He sorrowed for Joyce, for himself — not for Song. He knew that when the period of grieving was over she would have everything she wanted.

“I can’t go,” he said. This was the same man who’d gotten him to go to church. But this was different.

“We figured,” Larry said.

Osier looked at them both and said, “I know what you’re thinking. But there’s nothing wrong with me.”

Where had that come from? He was sorry he’d blurted it out. That they had no reply was like a challenge to him.

He spent the day finishing the quarterly accounts and making arrangements for flights back to the States. He called Haines and asked for discretionary leave, a week. He called Joyce, saying that he would be coming. And that night he slept well, knowing that he’d made his decision.

His phone rang in the darkness. He guessed it was Joyce, perhaps fretting, a confusion in the time difference. But it was Song. She had never called at this hour, and whenever she called she was circumspect. But she sounded certain — odd for this predawn hour.

“Boy?”

He blinked at the name. “Yes?”

“No more trouble.”

“It’s four o’clock in the morning,” he said. “Where are you?”

“No more trouble.”

Her self-assurance gave him hope. Even if she was not love, she was life, and she had allowed him to discover something about himself. He was someone else, not the man he had been. Away from home, in the hot night of this city, he had become transformed. It was a glimpse of difference he would never have found in the States. It made him wonder, and that wonderment was his strength. Hearing Song’s voice, he yearned for her.

“I want to see you.”

“I want see you,” she said.

“See you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow.”

Then he slept deeply, consoled by her confident voice.

Neither Fred nor Larry was in the lobby when the company shuttle drew up. The doorman said he hadn’t seen them. Normally they were waiting for Osier, holding cups of coffee from the urn in the lobby.

He called Fred’s cell phone number but got a recorded message. He tried Larry.

“It’s me,” Osier said when Larry answered. “Shuttle’s here.”

Larry sighed, a kind of whistling, and gasped a little, sounding like a weak child. “I’m at the hospital,” he said. “I’ll be all right. But I don’t know about Fred. He’s in tough shape.”

“What happened?”

“Couple of guys jumped us last night. They went after Fred. If I hadn’t intervened they would have killed him.”

“What, a robbery?”

“No robbery. Just”—Larry’s voice was weary, wounded— “mayhem. Screaming mayhem. The guys came at us with knives. They cut Fred real bad. You gotta call Haines. And Fred’s wife. Maybe the embassy, too.”

Osier stood in the courtyard of the hotel, the great hot city roaring around his head. The driver signaled from the van, querying with his hands, a gesture that asked, “Shall we go?”

Osier went up to his room but could not summon the nerve to break the news to Haines. To comfort himself, he called Song. “Big trouble,” he said, and he was going to say more but he didn’t trust his unsteady voice.

“No trouble,” Song said.

He had hardly started speaking when she cut him off with uncharacteristic efficiency. She knew everything — the bar, the injuries, even the name of the hospital where the men had been taken. And after this explanation, “I want see you.”

He had once thought, I can choose. People were happy who believed that. He was miserable, because he was no longer ignorant, because he knew he had no choice, and such misery seemed like a guarantee that life went on and on.

“Why did you do this?”

She hadn’t understood. She said, “Wiv my knife. Wiv my friend.”

He said, “I don’t know,” and the panic in his tremulous voice chastened him. Osier dropped his arm. He didn’t want to know how things would turn out. That was an unfair abbreviation, like knowing in advance the day of your death. He tried to be calm. He lifted the phone to his face and said it again.

“But I know,” Song said, with a steady voice of utter assurance, of insistence, taking possession of the whole matter. “Never mind. I love you.”

The manly fury in her voice was dark, even the word “love” was bloody and hellish. He was terrified by her certainty.