Paul Theroux - My Secret History

“I really don’t, you know.”

“It’s only bad when people overhear you,” I said. “It sounds awful. You sound terrible sometimes.”

“Poor Andy,” she said.

“I love you,” I said.

“Do we have to tell each other that?” she said, and then added, “Sorry. I reckon we do.”

We held hands after that, but hers grew damp and drifted away from mine.

At nightfall, with the darkness a mood descended on us. I imagined that we were all old in that railway carriage. The lights didn’t work. There was no water. There were no empty seats. We sat in the dark, very tired; and it was too noisy from the rackety wheels for anyone to hold a conversation. It was a spooky ride, all of us silent people riding into the dark, as though we had turned into spirits on this ghost train.

So deeply had the mood taken hold and possessed me that when we arrived at Agra Station I had the strong sense that I had never been there before. Unmesh was nowhere in sight, though I had counted on seeing him — missing him was also a part of my feeling of alienation.

We took a taxi to the hotel — the same hotel — and Jenny said, “It looks posh.”

We had a room with two single beds. I lay in mine considering her provocative question on the train, Why don’t you? I wondered why I didn’t choose.

Unmesh was at the hotel the next morning. That name perfectly suited this faltering, ramshackle man. I was expecting him. I had sent a message through the bell captain, a vast and murderous-looking Sikh whose yellow gloves matched his turban, and before I finished breakfast I was sent word (a note delivered on a silver plate) that Unmesh was waiting for me in front, At your service .

He greeted me like an old friend, pumping my hand and smiling wildly, perhaps terrified that he might be going too far in this familiarity. It was a sort of sideways reunion, and his expression was that of a man who at any moment thinks he might be rebuffed. Yet he was chattering the whole time. He brought greetings from his wife. He had told his daughter Vanita all about me. She wanted to go to America. She wanted to see me. She was at school. The driver — Unmesh never used the poor man’s name — remembered me, Unmesh waved at him, and he stepped forward, jerking his head, and trying to show me that he was pleased to see me.

Jenny appeared on the hotel steps in a white dress, the sun blazing in her blonde hair. Visitors to hot countries — women especially — seemed either much older or much younger than they were — something about the light, or the way they responded to the heat; some wilted, others bloomed. Jenny seemed even younger than the thirty-eight that she was.

I said very distinctly, “Unmesh, this is my wife, Mrs. Parent.”

“Thank you, missus,” Unmesh said and looked truly fearful as he clasped his hands in a namaste in front of his nose.

“He knows everything,” I said.

Unmesh’s eyes were close together and when they grew small and serious, as they did now, they seemed even closer.

“I am know everything,” Unmesh said.

“We want to see the Fort and the Palace this morning,” Jenny said. “This afternoon we will visit the Taj. Will you take us?”

Unmesh began uncertainly to hiss yess, yess , and said that he would show us. Then in his telegraphic way he said, “Taj. Morning. Better.”

“All right then, you know best.”

“I am know everything, missus.”

This now sounded to me like a declaration of utter ignorance.

“Let’s go,” I said.

“Not yet,” Jenny said, and turned to Unmesh. “I have one or two things to do. I want to buy some stamps, and then listen to the Financial Report on the BBC World Service. Depending on what I hear I might have a telex to send. And then we can meet and go to the Taj Mahal. I’ve heard it is very romantic. I will be ready at nine-fifteen. Perhaps you could explain this to your driver? Thanks so much.”

All this she said as though to an old trusted colleague. Unmesh listened with white flicking eyes, perhaps amazed that he understood it all.

We left at the time Jenny had specified. Unmesh was anxious, not knowing whether Jenny or I were in charge — he always glanced frantically at me when Jenny spoke to him. But he started his spiel about Shah Jahan and his beloved wife and his love for gems and jewels as soon as the car drew into the parking lot. He was still at it — about Shah Jahan’s incest with his daughter, his making the Peacock Throne, his death in prison: maybe Unmesh really did know everything — still yakking, as we walked to the ticket window in the mighty archway. He kept on, reciting dates, describing stonework, while I bought our tickets.

I said, “We’ll see you later, Unmesh.”

“I come. No charge. I show you this and that. Hither and thither. No charge. No money.”

“Don’t bother.”

But Jenny said, “Yes, I think that’s a good idea.”

“We don’t need him,” I said.

“I want him to come along,” Jenny said and I knew from her tone — though no one else would have known — that she was insisting and on the verge of losing her temper if she was thwarted. “I want him to tell me about it.” She turned to Unmesh. “Come along, then. Tell me about this pool and these trees. Do you know about those?”

“I am know everything, missus,” he said, and he gestured. “Cypresses, missus.” The sibilance made him gasp like a beach toy losing air.

I walked ahead. I had wanted Jenny to be alone with me and to stand still for her first look at the Taj. But she was glancing between the guidebook and the Taj, comparing the description on the page with the building in the hazy sunlight; and she was listening to Unmesh tell her that Taj was a corruption of Mumtaz, the name of the beloved wife. I had not known that simple thing, and so I walked alone, and my annoyance dissipated.

I was distracted and overwhelmed by the experience of looking up at the Taj Mahal and seeing a different structure from the one I had seen before. It was not just different in form — it was bigger, for example, its minarets were thicker and taller; it was also a different color, as though it had been made from a different sort of marble, or a different stone altogether — harder and shell-like. It was rosier, not so white, and it glowed a golden color where the sun struck it. But its shadows were blacker than before. I saw its sturdiness now and wondered where its frailty had gone. New revelations, new secrets: it was very disturbing to me. It was a hotter day than before, and a different hour, but how could the same building be so changed in six weeks? It did not look so fresh as it had. It was mellower, and with its look of perfection — so strange in this country of ruins — was a look of everlastingness. And something else — an unmistakable vitality, something alive and breathing there.

“What do you think?” I said, because Jenny had not said anything.

“It’s fantastic,” Jenny said behind me, and I knew she was not thinking about what she was saying. She was gabbling, because her attention was fully engaged. “I’ve honestly never seen anything like it.”

She peered at it, her expression growing more serious with her scrutiny. She nodded and said no more for a long while, lost in reflecting on it and no longer looking at the guidebook.

“Incredible,” she said, muttering to herself.

“It taking twenty-two years to build, missus.”

“I’m not surprised,” Jenny said, though she was hardly listening. She smiled at me. “It’s just what it’s cracked up to be. To tell the truth I was expecting something of a letdown. But I like this.”

I told Jenny what Aldous Huxley had said about the Taj (“poverty of imagination … minarets among the ugliest structures ever created”), and she shrugged.