Paul Theroux - My Secret History

“Rubbish,” she said. “But he was blind, you know. I mean, literally — legally. He went limping and bumping all over the place. He couldn’t see. What do you expect?”

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

I thought, Oh God, and traipsed after them as he went yakketing up the marble steps. His explanations were long and muddled. Jenny said, “Is that English? Are you speaking English?” and asked him to repeat himself. Each time I caught up with them and started to speak, Unmesh interrupted, eagerly pointing, as Jenny cued him.

“Where is this ‘marble trellis-work of exquisite design’?”

Inside, under the dome, Unmesh shushed us and told us to be very still. And then without warning he howled in a strangled doglike way: How-ooooohhh—

When he finished he said it was a forty-second echo, and that we could time it if we wished. I left as he howled again. In the poor light Jenny raised her wristwatch to her eyes to count the seconds.

We were walking in the gardens towards the rear of the Taj for a view of the rust-colored river when Unmesh approached, breathlessly conveying information.

Jenny said, “That’s enough, Hamish. We’re just going for a walk.”

“His name isn’t Hamish.”

“Whatever. Hamish is a perfectly good Scottish name, and I think it suits him.” She was fumbling in her purse. She pulled out a pink ten-rupee note.

“Don’t give him that.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s our guide — our driver. I’m paying him for that,” I said. “He told us that he was coming into the Taj as a favor. I didn’t even want him to come. Anyway, let’s take him at his word and not tip him.”

“I want to tip him,” Jenny said.

Unmesh was listening, his face darkening with anxiety.

“You heard him,” I said, and this time I turned to him. “ ‘No charge. No money.’ ”

Unmesh twitched and smiled in eagerness for Jenny to reply.

“I didn’t hear him say that.”

“He said it. You said it, Unmesh, didn’t you? He won’t look at me!”

“I don’t care what he said. If I want to tip him, I’ll tip him—”

Unmesh’s shirt was dirty. It was the same one he had worn when I first met him, the only shirt I had ever seen him wear. It was torn at the shoulders, there were stabbings of a ballpoint pen at the pocket, the tails flapped. It had aroused my pity once; but now I wanted to hit him for wearing it and not washing it.

“—and it’s no business of yours what I do,” Jenny was saying.

“He said he didn’t want the fucking money!”

“It doesn’t matter whether he asked for it or not. I know he wants it. You have no right to tell me what to do!”

We had silenced the birds in the trees above us, a few children wandered over to listen, and still Unmesh lingered, staring hard at Jenny, his fingers at the level of her money.

“This is ridiculous,” I said, becoming self-conscious as I saw the Taj Mahal glaring behind Unmesh’s wild hair.

“Take it,” Jenny said, pushing the ten rupees into Unmesh’s eager hand and adding five more to it.

Unmesh became courtly. The money relaxed him. He closed his eyes and touched the money to his forehead, bowing slightly as he did so.

“You said you didn’t want any money,” I said, nagging him. But Unmesh wouldn’t look up. He was averting his gaze, his head twisted towards Jenny, who was walking away.

“That’s you all over,” she said, tramping up the path to the riverside. “Bossy. Mean. Trying to get the better of that pathetic little man. Trying to push me around.” She turned and said, “Don’t you ever tell me who I can tip. If I want to give him fifty quid I’ll do it, and you have no right to stop me. It’s nothing to do with you. Now get away from me. You make me sick.”

With that she pulled her hat brim down and walked on, in the strict geometry of pathways that led back to the beautiful Taj Mahal. It was becoming mottled now in the cloudy light of midmorning.

Unmesh was lurking behind me.

“I thought we were friends,” I said.

He looked down and seemed to shrink in a posture of apology. Was he doing this deliberately to make me feel ashamed?

“Oh, forget it,” I said, and when I laughed he seemed reassured.

After the Fort and the Palace and lunch we went to the marble carving workshop. By then Jenny was calmer. She did not allude to our argument at the Taj until I mentioned it, saying that Unmesh probably got a tip here for bringing us, and wasn’t he lucky he met gullible tourists?

“He’s not lucky at all,” Jenny said, glancing back at him. “And you were completely in the wrong. You just refuse to admit it. But I don’t want to hear anything more about it.”

We were taken through the workshop and shown the boys preparing the marble slabs, smoothing and polishing them, and the skilled men carving scrollwork into the stone or setting bits of semiprecious stones in the surface. They were making paperweights and tabletops and chessboards, in the same patterns of inlaid flowers that occurred on the walls of the Taj.

“Shall we get one?” I said. I pointed to a slab that would serve as the top of a coffee table.

Jenny said mockingly, “A little piece of India to take home with you. Must you?”

“It would make a lovely table.”

“Don’t be silly, darling,” Jenny said, in a gentler way — perhaps self-conscious because of the watching marble carvers. “It’s lovely but it’s useless. We’d just get tired of it and put it in the attic, like all those other useless treasures you’ve bought. Andy — be honest — haven’t we got enough already?”

Jenny said, “I think we’ve absolutely done Agra — let’s look at something else,” and we went to Sikandra, five miles up the Muttra Road, to look at the mausoleum of the Emperor Akbar. It was a vast and glorious mosquelike building with a big dome, in red sandstone, and when Jenny said, “where are the boldly pierced grilles,” and laughed, Unmesh dashed ahead and pointed to the flanking walls. And he claimed there was a wonderful echo under the dome — not quite as long as that in the Taj but long nevertheless, particularly when it was a human howl. Unmesh obliged, Jenny timed it — thirty-four seconds — and she handed him ten rupees, which he touched to the red juicemark on his forehead before he closed his skinny hand over the crumpled bills.

“I don’t want to hear a word out of you,” Jenny said, taking my arm. In a sweeter voice she added, “Let’s not quarrel. This is such a lovely place — and there’s no one else here. I know I was a little sharp with you yesterday, but don’t you see that you were totally in the wrong?”

We passed a small white pillar. Jenny, who still held the guidebook, said that the Koh-i-nur diamond had once been set into it, before becoming part of the Peacock Throne.

Listening to her read from the guidebook I felt very tender towards her and asked, “Do you love me?”

She smiled. “Yes,” she said. “Very much. And I love traveling with you. I want to go on doing it.”

When she said that I had the clearest vision of Eden looking alarmed and saying When you turn that corner I’m going to cry .

We went to Fatehpur-Sikri. Jenny in her floppy hat went with Unmesh from street to empty street identifying the buildings. I exhausted myself climbing to the top of the five-story Panch Mahal, and after that stayed in the shadows of the doorways, breathing hard and watching for snakes. I did not want to know the exact temperature — I was sure it was well over a hundred, and could have been a hundred and twenty. It was a withering parching heat. Even the crows had dry pleading caws. When the crows were gone nothing moved in the blinding sunshine and the only sound was that of locusts, a high-tech whine that pierced the heat like the point of a blade.