Paul Theroux - My Secret History

This compassion in her, this logic and intelligence I relied on and needed. She had English good sense and English modesty, and was without the English envy. I was deficient in all her strongest qualities, and I knew it. Because of that she had become a part of me. Was there anything in me that she valued? I think she was fascinated by my various weaknesses and my self-assurance. She had told me that she wondered: How could someone like Andre, so incomplete, be so bold? She had once thought it was because I was an American. But no, it was because I was a writer. That conundrum had made me a writer.

She knew me well and could be very quiet beside me, or else could read my mind. We had been married nearly sixteen years. She hated the word “wife.”

In the Transit Lounge of Terminal Three at Heathrow I said, “The plane’s not boarding yet. Let’s look at the Duty-Free Shop. I want you to buy something for yourself. Will you do that?”

“Of course, if you insist. I think I’ll buy a diamond wristwatch.”

I stood by with my credit card but all she bought was a liter bottle of whiskey.

She said, “Someone in the office had one of those fake Rolex watches. She bought it in Singapore for about twenty quid. It was actually quite nice — so nice, in fact, that it put me off the idea of ever buying a real one.” She clasped the bottle. “This is all I need. I’ve heard you can’t get the stuff in India.”

She held my hand as the plane taxied to the runway, and she squeezed it tightly until the plane took off. But just as we passed over Windsor Castle she let go. When I put my arm around her she said, “Please don’t, Andy. I’m so hot. Oh, God, are you offended?”

Night came on quickly because we were flying east. We ate, we slept, we were woken for breakfast; and we landed in hot early morning, in blinding light. It was much steamier than on my previous visit, and because I was mentally comparing it I found it harder to bear than Jenny. I had not expected it, but she had been ready for anything.

The heat made me bad-tempered. When the taxi driver told us that his meter was broken I laughed sarcastically. I said, “Anyway, I know the fare is a hundred and twenty rupees.”

“One fifty, sah,” he said. He was unshaven and thin, and another grubby man sat with him in the front seat of the jalopy.

I tried to insist.

“Don’t make a fuss,” Jenny said. “You’re always trying to get a bargain. You should be ashamed of yourself, haggling with this poor man.”

After we checked into the hotel and were shown to our room, Jenny stood at the window and said softly, “It’s a moral dilemma, isn’t it — the luxury hotel in the poor hungry country?” She turned to me and laughed in a helpless and self-mocking way. “It’s wickedness.”

“So what should we do about it?”

“I don’t know about you, but I’m going for a swim,” she said, and she pulled off her T-shirt.

I said it was too hot to swim and that it seemed almost perverse for people to sunbathe in a tropical country.

“You used to criticize me for swimming in Uganda.”

“Yes, at the swimming pool, with all the Africans hanging on the fence.”

“Don’t be absurd,” she said. She changed into her bathing suit quickly and efficiently, hardly conscious of her nakedness, as though she were alone. She was healthy and had a good figure — in fact, she was beautiful, with a youthful bloom still on her clear skin. But she was frowning at herself in the mirror. She said, “I’ve just been through a beastly English winter and some sun is just what I need. You can sit here and sulk and feel virtuous.”

While she was swimming I called Indoo at his agency. He said that we must meet — that he had some plans for me.

“I’m here with my wife,” I said. “That woman you met — Eden — was not my wife. You understand?”

“Don’t worry, old boy,” Indoo said.

Later that day I took Jenny to the Red Fort. I showed her the Moti Mahal, the Throne Room; we walked on the battlements. I said, “That’s the Hathi Pol —the elephant gate.”

“This is fun,” Jenny said. She wore a straw hat she had bought at a stall, and a blue dress and sandals. “I can’t believe I’m really in India. If it weren’t for the smells and all these ragged people I would find it hard to believe. It’s splendor and misery together, isn’t it?”

An Indian man was following us. He had a stack of postcards which he showed us and then held in Jenny’s face, obstructing her.

“I don’t want any postcards, thank you,” she said.

But the mere fact that she had spoken to him was taken by the man to be a sign of encouragement and he began grunting and whining and shuffling the cards.

Jenny ignored him and tried to walk on.

“Muddhoom, muddhoom—”

“No,” Jenny said, and smiled stiffly at him. But he made the mistake of trying to put a postcard into her hand, insisting that she buy it, and she snapped, “Pack it in!”

This made some children playing nearby turn to us and laugh. Jenny’s expression softened.

She said, “Do you remember when Jack was that age?”

She became serene with reflection, and she seemed impervious to the heat. The temperature was in the nineties and the afternoon sun was cruelly slanted, striking from just above the rooftops into our eyes.

“So sweet,” she said as the children continued to laugh in a hiccupping way. “We’re not too old to have another child, you know.” She was still smiling. “And they can be such a damned nuisance, too.”

We moved on, to the alleys of the fort that had been converted into a bazaar. I kept stopping at the stalls and looking at the brassware, the antique jewelry, the carvings, the leather goods and woven bags.

“You and your knickknacks,” Jenny said, laughing impatiently. “You can buy that stuff in London, you know.” She went ahead. “I’m going to look at the marble screens.”

“Aren’t you tired of sightseeing?”

“Not yet. I want to finish looking at this place. I don’t want to have to come back here tomorrow. That’s for somewhere else — the mosque, I think.”

Another postcard seller approached her and began gabbling.

Jenny stared at him and in a level voice she said, “Bugger off.”

The next day we met Indoo at the bar of the hotel. He looked rather stunned, and I wondered whether he was drunk, but then I realized he was just being respectful, because of Jenny. He did not remark on her beauty — it was regarded as unseemly to speak that way of a man’s wife. I wasn’t flattered — I was annoyed that he had taken a liberty in gushing about Eden on my last trip.

“Perhaps you would enjoy meeting my wife,” Indoo said. He spoke to Jenny in the solicitous tone that he might have used for an invalid.

“I’d love to,” Jenny said. “Only we don’t have a lot of time.”

“She would show you all the shops in Delhi,” he said. “The best-quality ones. You could indulge yourselves in shopping sprees.”

“I’m afraid that’s not my line,” Jenny said, smiling pleasantly.

Indoo — his idea rejected — became even more formal. He said, “I understand perfectly” in a way that suggested he did not understand at all.

To lighten the mood I said, “Indoo doesn’t really approve of material things. He probably agrees that shopping is a sinful waste of time.”

This made him smile. “True,” he said. “But India needs hard currency. So I make an exception.”

“Tell Jenny about maya ,” I said.

He lifted one finger, the way bores do when they lecture you, and he said, “We Hindus believe the whole material world is maya —illusion. The secret lies in letting go of things.”