Paul Theroux - Mr. Bones - Twenty Stories

Passing a pizza parlor, I saw my reflection in the window and was surprised to see myself as normal: no one would have guessed I’d been hit in the face. But I looked so young, so pale, with spiky hair and a rumpled shirt.

That was how I looked. Inside I was sick, and the wound in my mouth, the taste of blood, made me afraid. I ran, feeling skinny and breathless, to North Station, pushed my token into the slot, and hurried onto the train.

It was at Sullivan Square, as the train drew in, that I remembered the shoes. I’d left them at Paige’s apartment when I’d run, after Vic hit me. And I’d been so afraid I hadn’t thought of them until now. On the electric car I tried to think of an excuse. The truth was awful, impossible, unrepeatable.

As soon as my father saw me entering the store, he said, “Shoes?” in his economical way, not wasting words on me. But it struck me that he was his other self, the one the woman had described, the good guy. He seemed, as I thought this, that he was summing me up too.

“I lost them. I was on the train and looked down and they weren’t there.”

“What else?”—meaning, And what other things happened to you?

“Nothing.”

He lifted my chin. The wound in my mouth hurt from his tugging my head. He leaned over and, sniffing my hair, he knew everything.

“Sure.”

I was born in Berlin in 1937. My mother was eighteen. She hid me from everyone for a year and a half. My father must have been someone who was hated, a Jew or a Gypsy: I never knew who he was. My mother got permission to emigrate in 1943 under “refugee status” and married a man named Wolfie. We sailed to Australia. None of us spoke English. We were put in a rural refugee camp, living in dormitories. After a year, we were sent to a suburb of Melbourne, where we were happy, but six months later my mother and Wolfie crashed their car. Mother was killed, Wolfie was so badly injured he could not care for me.

When the authorities came to put me in the orphanage, the next-door neighbor, Mrs. Dugger, said, “We could easily take him. He’s one of the family. Fritz is no bludger.” My name was Fred, but, being German, I was Fritz to everyone in Australia.

Mrs. Dugger didn’t insist. She watched me get into the car. Then she reached through the window and patted me on the head. She said in a strange tone, “Bye, Fritz. Mind how you go.”

I was put into the Fraser Boys’ Home. I was happy there, oddly enough. The bigger boys protected me. And I was terrified when, after three years, Wolfie showed up, limping from his injuries, to take me away. He arranged for us to go back to Germany. We went by ship. He was abusive for the whole voyage. I had no idea why he wanted me to go with him; I still don’t know. He abandoned me soon after we got to Hamburg. I was taken in by an old woman, and for the first time in my life I was held in the arms of someone who loved me. We both sobbed — the tears were endless. I was still young, but Germany was rebuilding, and I got a job in a restaurant. When I had saved some money, I went to hotel school. I worked in hotels, I became a manager, and eventually I became head of the company, a large hotel chain.

Long story short, our company was negotiating to buy a hotel in Melbourne. Forty years after I left that city, I returned. On my day off I went to the old neighborhood. I found Mrs. Dugger. She was blind, sitting on her porch.

“I used to live here,” I said. “Long ago.”

The moment she heard my voice, she began to cry and said, “Fritz is back!”

She died soon after that. Her son told me that she talked about me constantly, and it was only when I came back and she knew I was all right that she was able to let go. All those years of remorse for letting me be taken away by the authorities.

I have had an unusual life so far, difficult in many ways, but not so difficult as that of my father, who is sixty-something. He was my tormentor for almost the whole of my childhood.

I had a bad case of measles at the age of four. I had developed normally before then, but after the measles I became disobedient and willful. I didn’t listen. I didn’t pay attention. I defied my father, who was a stern disciplinarian — Marine Corps, two tours in Vietnam. “Listen to me!” But I didn’t. He spanked me, sometimes so hard I could still feel it days later. He smacked my hands, twisted my ears, pushed me into a corner, and forced me to stand. He made me call him “Sir.” As I grew older, the punishments became more severe. The worst one was having to kneel on a broomstick. I did this for hours at a time. I was seven or eight years old, and it went on for years. I was rude, I was defiant, you name it — so my dad said. I was a wreck, but I couldn’t cure myself of being an obstinate child. I was also terrible at school, where the punishments weren’t as bad as my father’s, but when he saw my report card he went ballistic.

When I was about thirteen, I was given an eye test at school. Everyone got one. I failed. The eye doctor gave me a prescription for glasses and also suggested that I get a hearing test. This hearing test was given to me many times over a lot of weeks. Some of the tests were administered by groups of doctors or with medical students watching. Sometimes they asked, “How’d you get all those bruises?” I said, “Fell down.”

The results showed that I was extremely deaf, as a result of the measles. I was fitted with two hearing aids. My whole life changed, though I was still pretty rebellious. The other kids laughed at my “earphones.” I improved at school, but my home life deteriorated.

My father became desolate and filled with guilt. Some days when I stop by, I think he is on the verge of suicide, and it takes all the energy I have to reassure him and coax him into better humor, which is a pretty big burden for both of us. He still apologizes. I say, “How were you to know?”

I was a Catholic in the 1950s, a student at an all-boys Catholic school, priests for teachers. I never heard of any of us boys being messed around with by a priest. I knew that I was afraid of them and probably would have done anything a priest asked me to.

But there was something else about them that impressed me and changed my life. In the ninth grade, we made weekly visits to the YMCA pool, where all the swimming was done in the nude. I was embarrassed, but I was the only one. We were all naked. And I recall how the priests would come into the changing room and find a locker. They wore long black cassocks, birettas, and black socks. They would undress with us, carefully folding their clothes and tucking them into the lockers.

Stark naked, they led us into the swimming pool, which stank of chlorine. They dived, they gave us swimming lessons. They taught us to pick up objects from the bottom of the pool—“surface dive.” They showed us lifesaving maneuvers. “Never let a drowning man grab you. He’ll take you with him.”

What I remember of the priests were their naked bodies, big and pale without robes or cassocks. They were men, just white skin and hairy legs. After a while I did not believe they had any power at all, and certainly not spiritual power. As time passed, I liked them less and less — for their bodies — and as an adult, reflecting on the YMCA visits, I began to hate them for pretending to be powerful. I easily lost my faith.

Like many boys of my generation, I was sent away to school. My father was an officer in the Indian Army, based in Bareilly, and he had the choice of sending me to a hill-station school — say, one in Simla — or to an English boarding school. He opted for England. There I went at the age of seven, accompanied by my mother, who left me at the underschool, returning every two years to check up on me. I know this seems extraordinary, but it was quite usual then. The period I am speaking of is the 1930s, for I was born in 1928, and my prep school days ended with the outbreak of war in Europe.