Paul Theroux - My Secret History

We said nothing.

“I am know everything.”

“That’s good, Unmesh.”

“This man is my employee,” Unmesh said, of the man at the wheel. The man resembled Unmesh: whiskers, red teeth, torn shirt, damp eyes. “This is my driver.”

“Isn’t this a taxi?” Eden said.

“This is vehicle of tour company,” Unmesh said. “Vanita Tourist Agency.” He smiled and wagged his head with pleasure. “Vanita is my daughter.”

The picture of the little girl was suddenly in his skinny hand: an astonished tot in a frilly dress.

“I call this automobile Vanita, too.”

The seats were broken and lumpy — I was sitting on the bulge of a spring. The driver swerved without slowing down as we passed clopping tongas. The rising dust was like dense fog as it shrouded the lanterns of the roadside fruitstalls.

“I am managing director of Vanita Tourist Agency,” Unmesh said. “I tell you, I am know everything.”

We entered a long driveway lined by hedges. Eden looked out — hers was the open window. We came to a portico, a marble doorway, a bright foyer, and an Indian in a turban, looking like a maharajah, opened the door of the car. He wore white gloves. From behind the hedge came the wail of a peacock.

“This is more like it,” Eden said, and got out.

Unmesh lifted his chin from the seatback and said, “You want to see Taj Mahal? I take you. I show you. I am know everything.”

“Be here tomorrow at nine o’clock,” I said.

Unmesh looked very surprised, almost shocked; and then he recovered and said, “Thank you, sah. Thank you. Oh, thank you,” and pressed his hands together before his nose.

Eden had a bath and a drink and was happy. And after we ate she was relaxed and amorous.

“I love you,” she said. “I love being here with you. I’m sorry I was so cranky on the train.”

“Were you cranky?”

“I think I was,” she said. “But I’m not cranky anymore. I’m going to be a good little girl from now on.”

“Prove it.”

“Put me to bed and you’ll see,” she said, and she breathed, “I want you to make love to me. Wait here — give me five minutes.”

She was wearing a sari when I entered the bedroom. She turned slowly and let me unwrap her, but not completely. We made love in a tangle of silk.

She laughed the next day; she said “Where did you dig him up?” when she saw Unmesh. But she was friendly to him. We sat in the broken back seat and were driven to the Taj Mahal, as Unmesh told us about the Emperor Shah Jahan and his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal. They were so passionate they were joined as one flesh, Unmesh said.

Eden held my perspiring hand.

“Are you married?” she asked, interrupting Unmesh.

“I am married and I am having one daughter, Vanita,” Unmesh said, and out came the snapshot again.

Eden smiled sadly. She hugged me, she looked out of the window and I knew she was thinking of children.

“How many kids, sah?”

“We don’t have any children,” I said carefully. “Not yet.”

Eden squeezed my hand and looked sorrowful; yet I knew she was happy.

“I am show you Taj Mahal,” Unmesh said. “I am tell you all about it. I am know everything.”

But we dismissed him. We walked hand in hand through the gateway and looked past the narrow reflecting pool at the small exquisite building. In the early morning light it was pink and princely and so delicate it was like a seashell, with the slenderest minarets and the most precise windows and marble screens. It had a fresh and almost tremulous beauty, as though it had just been made, just finished that morning — like a newly blossomed flower with dewdrops on it.

I started to speak, but Eden squeezed my hand in a cautioning way that stopped me.

She was crying — tears running from beneath her sunglasses and her lips curled.

She turned to me to say something, but the effort to speak convulsed her and made her choke. And then her face seemed to swell and she began to sob. She kept her face turned to the Taj Mahal and she sobbed in a sad hiccupping way.

I took hold of her. I had never loved her more than at that moment. I hugged her and said, “I love you.”

“Oh, Andy, I love you so much.”

There was a sort of passionate relief, like a long sigh, as she said it, and she stopped crying.

She pressed her face against mine, and said “Please—” but went no further, for at that moment Unmesh appeared.

He grinned and showed us the gap in his stained teeth.

“I am not having ticket,” he said, gesturing at the ticket window inside the main gate. “That ticket seller is my friend. He is knowing me.”

I stared at Unmesh as Eden turned away and wiped her face.

Unmesh straightened and frowned and said in a reciting voice, “This is Taj Mahal built by twenty thousand men ordered by Shah Jahan, emperor, son of Jahangir, father of Au-rangzeb. This Shah Jahan was a great collector of precious gems and jewels as we can see in world-famous Peacock Throne and even inlaid walls of Taj itself — go closer and you will see multitude of gems and jewels and semiprecious stones of every variety, and even so fascinated with jewels was Shah Jahan that on one occasion when nautch girls were dancing for him, almost naked and showing immodest and shameless posturing, Shah Jahan said nothing and coolly continued to examine some gems and jewels and semiprecious stones that had just been presented to him, taking no further notice of dancing girls. Shah Jahan—”

“Please, Unmesh,” I said. “We just want to look around.”

“I am show you,” Unmesh said. “I am know everything.”

But we left him behind and strolled on to explore the Taj itself.

“He’s so sweet,” Eden said. “Poor guy.”

She had become tolerant. Amorousness made her forgiving, and I loved her for her kindness. The magical place had transformed us and made us better people.

I was going to tell her what Aldous Huxley had said about the Taj Mahal when he had come this way in 1926—that the Taj exhibited “poverty of imagination” and that the minarets were “among the ugliest structures ever created by human hands.” Aldous Huxley, who of course knew about beauty because he lived in Los Angeles. He died the day Kennedy was shot, and so he was never mourned.

But Eden groaned softly and began to weep again, and I knew I couldn’t tell her any of this.

We spent an hour or more looking inside at the various chambers, and she photographed the semiprecious stones inlaid in the marble — small carved gem chips arranged in flower patterns. The Taj looked immaculate at a distance but up close it glittered with borders of flowers and leaves.

We walked in the gardens, up the side of one triangle and down another, under the trees and the twittering birds.

“Please don’t go away again,” Eden said, holding my hand tightly. “I’m so miserable without you. I try to be brave, I do my work, but I think of you every second. I don’t think about anything else.”

I kissed her to calm her, but she resisted and said, “Missing you that much isn’t healthy — it makes me crazy. Andy, we have to be together or else—”

She sniffed and breathed hard as though she was going to cry again. She was silent for a while, seeming to hesitate, as we walked past the fountains and more green boughs that hid screeching birds.

“It’s a kind of death without you,” she said. “I’m dead inside.” She turned back to look at the Taj Mahal and pushed a damp strand of hair off of her forehead. “It’s both love and loss. It’s that”—and nodded at the lovely mausoleum in the sunlight. “I understand that.”

As soon as we left the enclosure her mood changed, and on the way back to town she laughed and joked with Unmesh. He brought us to a marble carver, where I assumed he was paid a commission to include this on the tourists’ itinerary. The work was extremely good. We bought an inlaid marble slab that could be used as a tabletop.