Paul Theroux - My Secret History

I sat by the window, looking out onto the Common, drinking Chinese tea. Clouds filled the sky and sank. I felt motionless and complacent — a sense of homely peace that was akin to inertia, as though in being at this house I was tethered to a slowly dragging sea-anchor, not at rest but steadied and safe. I had had this identical feeling in my other house. This was a lovely view and this was a comfortable chair; but I had treetops there, too, and a similar chair. I had a wide desk here and a wide desk there, a razor here and a razor there; books here and books there — two atlases of the world, two sets of Dickens, two Boswells, two Shakespeares, two Obras Completas of Borges. A bicycle here and one there; two canoes; two pairs of binoculars; two shortwave radios, two toothbrushes, two sets of clothes — a suit here, a suit there, and everything else, down to the bottle of Tabasco Sauce in each cupboard, in each house, in each country. This house was a different shape but its contents were an exact counterpart of my American house: two of everything.

Except —and with that hesitating word I saw children on the Common and remembered Jack.

The clouds now filled the sky, and a light rain was falling. I dressed for bad weather — a felt hat with the brim tugged down, a leather jacket and thick trousers. I wheeled my bike out of the garden shed and rode it downhill to the river, and along Chelsea Embankment to Pimlico, thinking how much better this bike was than my American one. The river was full and flowing backward with a spring tide, and a cormorant disappeared into it as I turned into Bessborough Gardens. I was shocked to see workmen tearing the houses apart, the ones that faced the square, because in one of them Joseph Conrad had written his first words as a novelist. And now that house was a stack of broken bricks. One of the greatest things that writers did, I thought, was to isolate an event, and light it with the imagination, to make people understand and remember; and not just events, but people and their passions. Forgetting was much worse than failure: it was an act of violence. For all writing aimed at defeating time. No one could become a writer — no one would even care about it — until he or she experienced the impartial cruelty of time passing.

I cycled past the rubble of Conrad’s house, crossed Vauxhall Bridge Road and cut behind the Tate Gallery and took back streets to Smith Square and Great College Street. There I locked my bike against the railings of one of the school buildings, and I lurked.

I was always reminded, waiting for Jack, of how I had helplessly waited for my girlfriend Tina Spector, when I was fifteen, near her house on Brookview Road. Lurking, I felt an obscure sense of guilt, as though I was about to be found out and accused. And with Jack I felt awkward and vulnerable, because I had been away so long.

He seemed not to recognize me when he appeared from the doorway to the schoolyard, walking quickly to his house. He wore the school uniform — a black suit, a black tie, black shoes. His shoes were scuffed, his suit too tight — he was growing. His hair was spiky, he was pale. He looked tired and rumpled. He carried a briefcase. He looked like a serious little overworked Englishman.

He made quickly for me but did not greet me — did not look at me. He stood near me, and he turned his head away, staring across the grass that was enclosed by the old school buildings.

“Take that hat off, Dad. Take it off. Please take it off.”

“It’s raining, Jack.”

He had started to walk away. I was losing him. He said something more in that same desperate and insistent voice, but I could not catch it.

I took off the hat, stuffed it into my jacket, and followed him.

“And the bicycle clips,” he said.

I had forgotten those. I removed them.

“ ‘Hatless, I take off my cycle-clips in awkward reverence,’ ” I said.

“We’re doing him,” Jack said. “We’re doing that poem.”

“Who else are you doing?”

Now I had caught up with him. He was walking quickly, heaving his briefcase, and taking a roundabout back way towards Victoria Street.

“Everybody — Chaucer, Jane Austen, Conrad. Two Shakespeare plays.” He spoke in a weary and almost defeated way. “Don’t ask me — I have so much work to do. I’ll never get A’s on these exams.”

“It doesn’t matter if you don’t get A’s.”

“It does, or else what’s the point of taking them?” He was disgusted at being forced to be logical because I was frivolous. “Besides, no university will look at me if I don’t get A’s.”

“What Conrad are you doing?”

“Heart of Darkness . Where did you get that stupid hat?”

“Don’t forget to read ‘An Outpost of Progress’—that was the original of the story. And my favorite, ‘The Secret Sharer.’ When I was riding through Bessborough Gardens, I was thinking—”

“Dad, why—?”

“Listen to me. I was thinking — the first thing to understand is that time passes.”

He had hesitated to listen. His face was pale, a smudge of ink on his cheek, raindrops clung whole to his hair. I could see in his eyes that he would remember what I had said.

“Dad, why did you have to come on a bike?”

“It’s quicker. I can never find a parking space around here for the car. Why — does it embarrass you, like my hat?”

He said nothing, he continued walking, and then more softly he asked, “How was India?”

“Interesting,” I said, but I could tell from the angle of his head that he wasn’t listening, didn’t care, was only changing the subject.

“I might be going back with Mum.”

He hadn’t heard.

He said, “I’ve got history and Russian to prepare for, too.”

We had turned into Victoria Street.

I said, “Is there anything you need — anything we can buy?”

“Batteries for my Walkman.”

“That’s all?”

He shrugged, but it was not a large considered gesture — it was his body wincing towards his head, briefly burying his neck.

I was annoyed and frustrated, because I wanted him to want something that I alone could give him. By not wanting anything, or perhaps refusing to tell me, he was making himself powerful.

He was fifteen, and yet he seemed very old. His leather briefcase was battered and cracked, and seeing it and his loose fallen-down socks and his white ankles, I became sad. He was not a big boy but rather a small man, and he looked weary and harassed in his shabby black suit. Walking along I felt younger than him, in my blue jeans and leather jacket.

I said, “Is there anything wrong, Jack?”

He shook his head, meaning no, but too quickly, telling me yes.

We went into a small cafe run by an irascible Italian just off Victoria Street. Condensation sweated upon the front windows, the tea urns gasped, and the smell of frying hung in the air with a clinging odor of boiled vegetables. Jack waited for me at the table, and I bought two cups of tea and two cakes. Once he began eating, Jack revealed both his hunger and his mood. Eden sometimes ate that way — the slow, sour, and disgusted way that people ate when they were depressed.

“It’s your exams, isn’t it?” I said.

His silence meant yes, just as his no had meant yes, and I thought then how if he had said yes I would not have known what he meant. “Maybe I can help. Please let me.”

Only then did he raise his eyes. I saw cold resentment in them.

He said, “Do you speak Russian, have you read Pushkin in Russian, do you know standard deviation in advanced maths?”

I smiled fatuously at him, and seeing me draw back he became more insistent.

“What about the Avignon Papacy? What did Charles the Fifth contribute to the recovery of the Valois cause in the Hundred Years War?”