Paul Theroux - My Secret History

“This is for our house,” Eden said, her face shining with pleasure.

We walked to the car in silence.

Our house , she had said, and I saw it vividly — a hot morning in California, in a dry landscape of cactuses and high white skies, in a place where neither of us had been before, our fresh start. I saw our life under the thick palm trees. Eden was sitting by a swimming pool, painting her toenails, taking her time, and she was framed by a carved door which left me in shadow. Our house was low and lovely — Eden had done most of the furnishing, found the antiques, the mission furniture, the paintings. She had done the curtains, made the candles, potted the plants, woven the rugs. There were no children or animals, but there was a sizable live tree in the lounge, standing near the marble slab from Agra. The kitchen was enormous, and although we seldom entertained, Eden often cooked gourmet food. I was fully alive in this heat and light, all my senses alert — a new place, a new life. I felt younger, I exercised, and we made love all the time. I had turned my back on the past. That was painful: the ache, the emptiness, the sense of failure. But I was writing about new things, about that ache, about the derangement of life. Eden and I always talked, we touched, we went to restaurants. Eden became terribly upset when my gaze wandered from her, when I seemed to be staring at another woman. We studied Spanish; she had been pestering me to take up tap-dancing — it seemed absurd but I was tempted.

“What are you thinking?” Eden asked, looking into my eyes.

It was always, to me, a devastating question, because my answer was always Everything .

“About you,” I said. “About us.”

And then she took my hand.

“This place is magic,” Eden said, stretching naked by the window the next morning. Her obvious happiness had made her seem physically different — stronger, bright-eyed, more relaxed and sexier. I had not realized how fretful and nervy she had been in the States until I saw her happy in Agra. But it was not only the Taj Mahal that put her in a good mood; she also loved the hotel, its pool, its fruit juice and its food, its bedrooms and its hot showers. And she was with me every minute. I wondered whether I should tell her that I felt slightly oppressed by our constantly being together. Wouldn’t she understand? After all, she also knew a thing or two about solitary pleasures.

Unmesh drove us to Sikandra to see Akbar’s Mausoleum, a big red crumbly palacelike place with an echoing chamber under the dome. Unmesh howled inside and we timed the echo. He took us to Fatehpur Sikri, the magnificent ghost-town in the desert. We ate stale cheese sandwiches and drank milky tea. Eden said she didn’t mind at all. She had no complaints.

“I like roughing it,” she said.

“This isn’t roughing it.”

She looked at me suspiciously, perhaps wondering whether I was mocking her. Didn’t she know that having a picnic in the splendor of an abandoned Moghul city, among the mynah birds on a sunny day, was luxury?

Unmesh’s car was stuffy and dusty. On the way back it jolted us into every pothole. It was prone to misfire and gasp, and then to chug and hip-hop on the road. Unmesh had a temporary remedy for his car’s convulsions. He pulled over and blew into the fuel line. “Rubbish,” he said, gasoline shining on his lips. About ten miles outside Agra the car began to jog — a flat tire.

“Sorry,” Unmesh said, and swore at the driver in Hindi. The driver replied by kicking the tire.

“Don’t be sorry,” I said, and I meant it.

“The imperturbable Andre Parent,” Eden said.

“That’s me.”

We were standing by the side of a hot dusty road. The road was made of broken slabs of soft tar.

“We could camp here,” Eden said.

A cyclist went past and cleared his throat and spat a squirt of red betel juice at us, just missing Eden’s dress. Eden did not see it as hostility. The man was just a bumpkin on a bike.

“It’s so quiet,” she said.

It was the sorrowful dead-quiet of the plains in summer that always reminded me of stinking shade and stagnant water and cholera.

“There is a willage that side,” Unmesh said. “I am know this place.”

“You see?” Eden said. “We’d be all right. We could live here in a little hut.”

The driver knelt and struggled with the rusty nuts as Unmesh hectored him.

“I want him to hurry,” Eden whispered to me. “I want to go back to that wonderful hotel and make love to you. I want you to use me — just use my body. Do anything you want. Give me commands, make me your slave, tell me what to do.”

I turned to Unmesh and said, “Couldn’t he change that tire a bit faster?”

The following day, when I told Eden we were moving south to Madras, she said, “Do we have to?” in the small-girl’s voice that she affected to win me over.

But I had woken in a state of agitation, worrying that I had made so few notes. I said, “This isn’t a vacation, you know. I have to write an article. I haven’t done a thing so far.”

“Have I kept you from working?” Eden said, looking hurt.

I said nothing. I shrugged. It was my own fault for not insisting on being allowed time to myself.

She said, “You have plenty of time for working when I’m not with you. How long have we been together this time? Two or three weeks on the Cape and ten days here in India. And you’re surprised that I want to be with you?”

“Take it easy,” I said, because I knew what was coming.

“Your wife has you all the rest of the time. Months, years! And I have nothing!”

This was another subject that stifled me and made me silent.

“And you have the nerve to accuse me of keeping you from your work,” Eden said, in a poisonous voice.

She was backing towards the door.

“Okay,” she said. “You want to work? Go ahead and work!”

She snatched her handbag and went out banging the door so hard the wall shook. And another door banged shut in my head.

I sat down at the table by the window and stared at my blank notebook with my head in my hands. I doodled awhile, sketching in the margin, and then I tore out a page and wrote a letter that began Darling Jenny …

The Madras Express arrived just after midnight at Agra Station. Unmesh stayed with us on the platform. He looked mournful, more ragged than ever. He brought out his snapshot of his daughter Vanita, and a tiny picture of his wife, just her face, like a mug shot. He produced two bottles of Campa Cola, and two straws.

The driver stood behind Unmesh, urging us to drink. It was too late to ask him his name.

Eden said, “These guys are starting to get on my nerves.”

When the train began to pull out we lingered in the doorway next to the conductor, crowding the vestibule. Unmesh stood to attention. The driver did the same. They wagged their heads sadly at us.

“You come back, sah. I am taking you. I am showing you. I am know everything. I have good business then.” Unmesh looked at me imploringly and repeated, “Please . You come.”

We found our two-berth compartment and were rocked to sleep by the motion of the train.

In the morning I rolled over and saw Eden sitting gingerly at the edge of my berth, near my feet. I suspected that she had been sitting there for quite a while, waiting for me to wake.

“Good morning, darling.” And she kissed me.

I could not help but think that those words and that kiss were for lovers alone. Did married people say Good morning, darling , and kiss each other at the crack of dawn? I didn’t, and when I tried to picture it the effect was absurd and precious. Most people woke up and muttered Aw shit .