Paul Theroux - My Secret History

And then we were out of it: we surfaced in the warmth and silence of another river bend.

“I’m cold,” Eden said. “I’m exhausted.”

One of the Indians squawked in Hindi, and the other replied.

Indoo said, “They see something.”

There was a sandbank ahead with a loose pile of dark driftwood on it.

We paddled towards it, the men talking in their own language.

“What are they saying?” Eden asked.

“It is a body,” Indoo said, as the raft swept onto the sand, a few feet from the jumble of bones.

His way of saying it, a bhodhee , made it seem especially like a carcass. The thing was leathery and ill-assorted, like a smashed valise, which in a sense it was. Only the skull gave it away: its teeth and its yellowed dome were the human touch.

“Let’s move out,” Eden said. “I don’t want to look.” Her helmet was off, her hands over her face. “Just leave it.”

The two Indian boatmen were talking solemnly.

Indoo said, “They are saying we must bury it.”

“How far do we have to go down the river?” I said.

“A mile,” he said.

“Are there any more rapids?” Eden asked.

“It is rapids, rapids, rapids, from here to the camp.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Eden said.

Indoo looked soulfully at me and said, “An unburied body is a terrible thing.”

But Eden was looking downriver in a desperate way and saying, “If we don’t go now—”

“It is not a matter for discussion,” Indoo said. “We have no choice. And remember this is Mother Ganga.”

Indoo saw Eden glancing back at the boatmen, who were standing over the scattered bones and chanting.

“They are doing puja ,” he said, and smiled to reassure her.

“And you’re just standing there,” Eden said to me. She sounded disgusted and victimized, but what had I done to her?

As we were talking we had stepped ashore and tethered the raft. Eden turned her back on us and walked quickly along the sandbank. When she had gone some distance and we no longer felt self-conscious from her disapproval we lifted the bones onto our paddles. The four of us moved slowly along the sand to the highwater mark, balancing the bones on the broad paddle blades. We used the paddles to dig a hole and we eased the skeleton in — the Indians murmuring Ram! Ram! Ram! in their puja —and we covered it all with the largest boulders we could find.

None of us said another word. It was as though we had known that dead person, and from the way we had found it we sensed that the person — woman or man — had died violently and alone. No rites had been observed, the corpse had not been burned, and until we had seen it on the sandbank it was just part of the trash on the river. It could have been Ong Khan; it could have been me.

It had been upsetting, but the exertion of carrying and digging calmed me, and the reverence of the others impressed me. They had gone to some inconvenience to bury the human remains and keep them safe from dogs and fish and carrion crows. In a world of ambiguity and cross-purposes this was indisputably a good deed. I liked it best for having been carried out in such a solemn and dutiful way in the full knowledge that there were no witnesses and that it would never have been recognized or acknowledged. We might have simply paddled past the carcass, but of course we couldn’t. I did not want to die as Ong Khan had.

I remembered how as an altar boy at St. Ray’s serving at three funerals earned us a wedding. There was no relation between that empty ritual and what we had done this morning, which had been like taking the first awkward steps towards inventing a religion. It was the first sign I had ever had that I might find my way back to believing.

As we began to launch the raft I felt elated, recalling how we had carefully packed the pathetic bones and skull into the hole. It was like being in the presence of grace, the old confessional thrill of truthfulness and hope that I had felt as a child. It was a sweet Easter feeling.

“We dug the hole with our paddles,” I started to say.

“Don’t tell me,” Eden said — and she kicked the raft. “I don’t want to hear about it. I just want to get out of here. I’m freezing.”

Indoo understood. He said, “We are a bit short of time. We will take the quick way back. No rapids.”

“Thank God for that,” Eden said.

The day ended abruptly and not as we had planned. We stopped in Hardwar for puris , and on the way made stops for Indian sweets and ice cream.

Indoo said, “When I go on these trips I do all the things I never do at home. I eat snacks. I drink colas. I take ice cream. I am happy.”

“I know how you feel,” Eden said.

“Maybe.”

“I hope you don’t think I overreacted to that dead body,” she said.

Indoo wagged his head, saying yes and no. He liked being enigmatic and I knew he was enjoying himself when he said to Eden, “We Indians say the world is maya —illusion. It does not exist. Truly. The secret lies in letting go of things.”

“That’s lovely,” Eden said.

“Some other day we will come back to the Ganga.”

A day or so later in Delhi I was in the hotel bar looking through Murray’s Guide and I saw Eden enter the lobby. I had mixed feelings about men staring at her. I was proud of her beauty, but I hated the stupid greedy way that men stared, doing it not in appreciation but with a kind of possessiveness. I particularly resented Indians doing it, because it was forbidden for anyone to stare at their women, and because I knew that they regarded most western women as brainless whores and bitches. I saw that hunger and contempt on their faces and hated them for it.

“Those men were eyeing you,” I said, when she came into the bar.

“They probably don’t have anything better to do,” she said. She wasn’t insulted; I wondered whether she had actually been flattered.

“Where have you been all afternoon?”

“Out,” she said, pursing her lips in a small girl’s mischief-mouth.

I had to admire her resourcefulness. True, this was only Delhi, and it was easy to get a taxi and go anywhere in the city. But she had never been to India before: this was all alien and some of it threatening.

“Have a drink,” I said.

“I’d love some lassi ,” she said.

Liquid yogurt, served cold in a glass: where had she learned about that? I decided not to ask her.

The salted lassi was brought. Eden took a sip and then set the glass down. She was perspiring slightly, her hair was damp, her skin glowed, her blouse clung to her breasts. She smiled at me and touched her throat, a graceful gesture, smoothing her nails against the pale skin of her neck. Watching her fingers I saw that she was wearing a new necklace.

“What’s that?” I said.

She drew sharply away and smiled at me.

But I had seen — I’d had a glimpse of a bone necklace of tiny carved objects.

“Is it skulls — one of those crazy Tibetan things?”

The carved beads were yellow against her skin.

“I’m not going to tell you,” she said, and her hand moved from her neck to her breasts, lightly encircling them. “If you want to find out you’ll have to come upstairs.”

And she finished her lassi , licking the flecks of foam from her lips. She got up and left the bar, moving slowly with a lovely swing that made her hips seem thoughtful, and not noticing anyone as she passed through the lobby.

I was still seated. I called for the bill, and followed her; but she was already upstairs.

To be playful, I knocked on the door. She did not answer. I waited a moment and then knocked again. A small voice said, “Come in.”