Paul Theroux - My Secret History

“I was hoping we could go there in July.”

“Where will we get the money?”

“This book. As soon as I deliver the manuscript I’ll get two and a half thousand — the last payment. It’s more than enough.”

She said what I felt: “It’s something to look forward to.”

The taxi set us down at the Inner Circle. We walked into the park and found a patch of grass near the rose garden.

“There’s some significance about the rose garden in the Four Quartets, but I forget what it is. Anyway,” I said, as I took the sandwiches out of my bag, “this is not the time for T. S. Eliot. Have a sandwich.”

They were cheese sandwiches — dry and droopy in the heat. There were also hard-boiled eggs, and some tangerines and chocolate cookies. When I set out everything on the grass it looked mismatched, rather frugal and childish.

“What a pathetic picnic,” I said.

“It looks delicious,” Jenny said, and began to cry.

I started to explain that it hadn’t been any trouble, and that I had more time now that I had finished my work; but she was sobbing — the odd gratitude of tears that is impossible to interrupt.

There was a formality and dignity in her tears, too, and she said, “Thank you for coming back to us.”

I was too moved to speak, and afraid that if I did I might cry.

We ate in silence. The sun on the grass warmed us with its buttery light. The air stirred slightly and brought us the fragrance from the rose garden.

“I was very unfair to you,” Jenny said, at last. “I hope you’ll forgive me.”

I had already made up my mind that I would, and though the wound still remained it was better to live with it than to pretend that it didn’t exist. And anyway the wound she inflicted on me proved that we were both human.

“I’m afraid you’re going to leave me,” she said.

I was strong enough to be on my own now; but I was saner, as well, and I was rational enough to know how much I loved her and needed her love. When I had left Siberia I’d had no choice but to press on and finish the thing by finishing the book. I had done it in cold winds and black night, and alone. Now that I was done I had a choice. But I was back again, and crudely stated, getting back again seemed to me the object of all writing. It had been a long journey from Siberia.

“I want to be happy, the way we were before.”

“I haven’t made you happy,” she said. “But if you give me a chance I think I could.”

She kissed me and brushed my eyes with her tears.

“I missed you,” she said. There were tears smearing her lips. “Oh, God, I missed you.”

I cried too and felt happy as I sobbed, and even happier afterwards. Then we simply lay side by side on the grass, listening to people in the rose garden saying “Isn’t it lovely and warm,” and “It’s absolutely smashing,” and “I want an ice-lolly.”

I was happy because I had her as a friend once again, and I was happy because my work was done. I saw that the only thing that mattered was that the book had been written in my way. The long trip had been described comically while I had remained trapped in a mood of great grief. And fear had been one of the components of that comedy. A person who is doomed writes best about life — appreciates it, anyway. The whole object had been to write the book. That was satisfactory, and it did not matter at all what came after — publication, reviews, sales, and promotion could only be an anticlimax. Writing the book had been a way of living with dignity.

I could not tell her any of this. There were things I could write, but I was incapable of saying them. My being inarticulate was probably the reason I had become a writer, and why I had developed such habits of secrecy.

“We’d better go,” I said. “You’ll be late.”

“I’d like to spend the rest of the day here.”

“There’ll be plenty of other days.”

She looked at me, smiling with her tearstained face, and she said, “Why are you being nice to me?”

I hadn’t realized that I was being especially nice to her, but being happy was part of not noticing. I told her that I was happy, and she smiled. It was a gift to be happy and to know it at the time. Life could be so simple, and was happiest at its simplest. Secrecy had made me miserable, my own and hers.

When I leaned over to kiss her, I glanced beyond her and saw in the distance one of those low green hills in the park where in my dreams I took off and flew, my arms out like gull wings — not flapping but soaring over people’s heads, just above the ground. I had felt the wind buffet my chest and create a kind of pressure that held me up, and then weakened and dropped me.

During the next month I was excited at the thought that we were going to the States. That for me meant going the rest of the way home. And I had an idea for more work: the novel which began with a man at the window, watching the father being humiliated in the road blow, and the son looking on — the novel would be the consequences of that little scene. It was all I wanted, time and ideas; that was all I needed to be happy. Everything was possible with her love. Through an effort of will I had written my book without being conscious of her love, which was why the book was strange and necessary. I was almost certain it would be incomprehensible to everyone except those people who somewhat resembled me. How many of them could there be?

I delivered my book and collected my money and bought tickets to the States for the three of us. Just before we left London the telephone rang. It was one of those late-evening calls when it was sure to be very important or very irritating. It was America, the sound draining out of the wire, and then peep , and then my editor’s voice.

“I hope you’re sitting down,” she said.

I laughed, and said I had just had two pints of beer.

“It should be champagne,” she said, “because I have some wonderful news for you.”

I could not imagine what it could be, which was why I was so attentive. I wanted to tell her that I already had everything.

Then I discovered that the best happiness was unimaginable and couldn’t be forced. It was like a different altitude bringing on a physical change: breathing was easier, time was altered. And years passed — mostly sunshine. Good news, good news.

The plane cut lumberingly through the winter-bright afternoon, and down below I could see the geography of my childhood — the neck of Nahant, the stripe of Revere Beach, the lumpy islands of Boston Harbor, and beneath our approach the rest of it, Wright’s Pond, St. Ray’s, Elm Street, the Sandpits where I had kissed Tina Spector. Our altitude miniaturized it and made it look like a map of the past, the way it was in my memory.

We banked, Massachusetts was tipped on its side, we came in low over East Boston and Orient Heights, and it seemed — as it always does to people landing at Logan — that we were landing in the harbor chop. There was only blue water beneath us. Just before we touched down in the sea the runway appeared like a breakwater, and I was happy — my heart lifted. Every landing I made in America was a homecoming, something to celebrate.

I was first in line at customs, which looked like a supermarket checkout.

“Bags?” the customs officer said, as I handed him my declaration.

“I don’t have any.”

He looked up. He had the Boston face — an Irish face, with meaty cheeks and a small mouth, thin lips, a close policeman’s haircut, narrow shoulders, and a big solid belly pushing his belt buckle down.