Paul Theroux - My Secret History

In the stillness I went out to the car.

“Why didn’t you tell me when you were arriving?” Eden asked as we embraced in the driveway. “I would have met you at Logan.”

“I didn’t know what flight I was on until just yesterday.”

I wondered in a little shudder why I had told her this lie. Was it because I wanted to arrive at the Cape alone and savor the moments of anticipation?

“You never plan ahead,” she said gently. “You never have any idea what you’re going to do from one minute to the next.”

I clutched her and said, “I know what I’m going to do with you.”

She said, “Anything,” and kissed me long and hard, and began to cry — I could feel the sobs through her body. “I missed you,” she said.

“I missed you, too.”

Everything I said I examined for its truth. I told myself that this was true, as we went into the house, holding hands.

“Why did you stay away so long?”

“I had so much to do,” I said, thinking: That was not it at all.

“Don’t go away again, please.”

“No,” I said. “Never.”

I was restless and somewhat self-conscious in the house with Eden, and time seemed to snag against us. I sensed us faltering. I kept asking myself: What would I be doing if I were alone? What would I eat — where would I go?

Eden said, “I want to cook you something.”

“There’s no food.”

“We can get some — let’s go shopping. Aren’t you hungry?”

I did not know. If I were alone I would know, I thought.

“I ate on the plane,” I said. “Let’s have a drink.”

“Then you’ll conk out on me,” Eden said. “You always do when you have jet lag.”

It was still dark in the house. I had not bothered to put the lights on. I poured the wine in the dark and we drank at the window by starlight, watching the single streetlamp down on the road and listening to the foghorn from the canal.

“We have to talk about India,” I said.

“Do you still want me to go with you?”

“Of course I do.”

When I said that she came to me and crawled into my lap and nuzzled me. Her skin was soft and had the odor of flower petals, and I could feel her warmth against my eyes. She touched me and my mind went dead, my tongue became thick and stupid, and something deep within me came alive — a circuit that began to throb — whipping up my heart and my blood.

She said, “I was asking someone about India and they said this was the best time to go.”

She spoke in a casual way but there was something in her tone that was anything but casual. It was vibrant enthusiasm and relief that the matter seemed settled. She was planning on this, she had been counting on me. When I was away I often forgot her intensity, and I had to be this near her to be reminded of how her life was connected to mine. But which of my lives was she depending on, and who had she told about India?

“Wait till you see it — the temples, the ruins, the rice fields, and the black trains chugging for days under huge hot skies.”

Eden sniffed and said almost tearfully, “I’m so happy — you’ve made me so happy.”

I kissed her and smiled in the dark, and I watched the tipsy stars, their streaks of light as they sprawled trying to move.

“I have something to show you,” Eden said. She got up quickly and left the room.

She returned saying, “Can you see me?”

A match flared in her hand and she lit the candle and brought it nearer.

She was wearing a short black slip that reached to the top of her long white legs. Her lips looked black — she had put on lipstick, and in the starlight and the leaping candleflame her skin shimmered. She was like a night bloom, and when she knelt to put the candlestick onto the floor her pale white buttocks protruded as her slip tightened. Then she stood up and the candlelight shone through the silk showing her slender naked body. She approached me and stroked my outstretched leg and locked my knee between her thighs.

“Am I a bad girl?”

She squatted like a child playing horsey, chafing herself on my knee.

“Yes,” I said eagerly.

She sighed and crept forward and sat on my lap, holding me and crushing her breasts against me. Her thick hair was in my mouth, her saliva on my lips, and my hands full of the black silk that had been warmed by her skin.

“If I’m bad you’ll have to put me to bed,” she said.

We went upstairs, clumsily holding each other. We made love blindly at first, and then we grew very sure of each other, and with that confidence in each other’s flesh it was like seeing in the dark.

I came awake in the dark and the glowing clock showed that it was just after five. Eden lay asleep beside me, sleeping compactly, her body drawn up against mine, and her shoulders seeming to enclose her head. I slid out of bed and went downstairs in the woolly darkness and dialed London on the phone in the library.

“Jenny — is that you?”

“Darling,” she said — she was surprised and pleased. “I didn’t think I’d hear from you so soon. What time is it there? It must be the crack of dawn.”

“Five-fifteen. I couldn’t sleep.”

“Is anything the matter?”

“No. Just jet lag.”

“Your voice sounds so strange.”

“I’m tired, I guess.”

“You poor thing — get some rest. You’ll be all right in a few days. You must be very excited about India.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve got so many other things to think about.”

“Anything I can help you with?”

“Not really — no,” I said quickly and then, “I have the guidebook I used ten years ago. I’m taking the same route.”

“Wouldn’t it be amazing if it were just the same?”

“It won’t be,” I said. “It can’t be.”

“Jack misses you, too. He’s nagging me skinny about buying him a computer.”

“Buy him one,” I said.

It seemed so innocent to want something that could be bought with money. I was going to tell Jenny that when she spoke up.

“I wish I were going to India with you,” she said. “But I’d just get in your way. And I know you have your heart set on going alone.”

All this time the dawn was breaking, like a tide turning, and as it ebbed rinsing the darkness out of the sky. I put the phone down in the whitened room and heard Eden call my name.

* * *

Three weeks later I rolled up the carpets, disconnected the battery, put the statues away, shut off the water, took down the pictures, and all the rest of it. I locked the house, and we left.

Eden was tall and slender, with thick black hair that hung straight down, and pale skin that gave her a gaunt indoor look. And yet she was athletic. She had been a dancer — and she still practiced her steps for exercise and still stuck to her dancer’s diet. It was only late at night, when she was hungry or amorous that she pouted and became a little girl. The rest of the time she was an elegant and intimidating woman with jangling bracelets and gray-green eyes like a fox.

I told her she was perfect. I described her carefully, praising her hair and eyes, to show her I noticed everything.

“I dye my hair. It’s a color called ‘Night-shine.’ I use makeup, I use lip gloss. My contact lenses are tinted.” She smiled. Was she taunting me? “I saved the first money I made to have my teeth capped. I have huge feet — haven’t you noticed?”

This unexpected honesty only made her more appealing to me.

“I’m impossible,” she said. “I’d drive you crazy.”

Only women used those expressions, and I had always felt that when they did they must be believed — that they knew best.

But Eden made herself comic by exaggerating her faults, and she was happy to let me disprove her self-criticism. I loved her vitality, the way she always said yes, her willingness, her energy — she could spend a whole day swimming or hiking and the rest of the night making love. She took pleasure in cooking — clipped recipes out of gourmet magazines and we made the dishes. We shopped at the big supermarket in Hyannis and bought fresh fish and vegetables and went back to my house and prepared it. I associated her with fresh air and good food and rowdy sex, and I never felt healthier than when I was with her.