Paul Theroux: My Secret History

“Maybe I should come along with you more often,” she said. “Aren’t you glad I found you a nice place to stay?”

We rested that day — had a nap, made love, and then swam in the hotel pool. The water was uncomfortably warm and after the swim I felt limp and exhausted as though I had been stewed.

Our room overlooked a mosque, and in the early evening there was a call to prayers. We watched the muezzin climbing into the minaret. Jenny had been reading her spy novel. She put it down and crept to the window, when she heard the muezzin clearing his throat in the loudspeaker.

Below us the faithful were gathering. I watched Jenny’s intense concentration and admired her reverence. She picked up her camera quickly and fingered it and focused. But she did not shoot a picture — out of respect, I felt. She said nothing, only watched, and I kept looking at her, the way she scrutinized the scene at the mosque. I thought how travel was composed of moments like this: discoveries and reverences separated by great inconvenience. These encounters, taken together, added up to one’s experiences of a place — the inconvenience had to be forgotten and displaced by the epiphany — like this call to prayer.

I had never seen Jenny so patient, and I felt the same love for her that had welled in me when I had seen Eden in front of the Taj Mahal sobbing for the beauty of it.

I joined Jenny. I took her hand. She held mine a moment and then dropped it.

In the courtyard of the mosque, as the muezzin howled, a solitary muslim was bent double, worshiping Allah.

“He’s praying,” I said.

“I know that.”

“They do it five times a day.”

“I know that, too.”

We stared at the praying man.

“I just remembered something,” Jenny said. “Isn’t it awful when someone says a striking thing that you know is unfair? The way it sticks in your mind, as though it’s true?” Her eyes were still on the muslim crouched in prayer. “I admire that man’s piety. My vulgar Uncle Monty fought in Mesopotamia. He was a war hero, so we could never contradict him. When they pray, he used to say, they look like a dog fucking a football.”

Mahadeva was watching us from his little wooden porch. We had taken a rattly train from Madras to Tambaram. Mahadeva had suggested the train when I came the day before by taxi to explain that I would be returning with my wife — and I gave emphasis to the word.

He called out and clapped his hands when we approached his house, and three of his children rushed up to us, the smallest and dirtiest plucking at Jenny’s bag.

Mrs. Mahadeva was apologetic and shouted for the older girl to take the child away.

“Please don’t worry,” Jenny said. “All children are the same. Mine used to be like that. It’s good — it means they’re not afraid of strangers.”

“You are having?” Mrs. Mahadeva said.

“Just one. A little boy,” Jenny said. “Not so little!”

Mahadeva listened to this exchange and smiled. He said, “Let us leave these ladies to entertain themselves.”

Jenny was marveling at the older daughter’s gleaming hair.

“We are applying coconut oil to it, sometimes on a daily basis.”

Mrs. Mahadeva spoke English!

When I saw Mahadeva relaxed I realized how fearful he had been when I had brought Eden here. His fear had made him seem poor and beaten. This time he was expansive. He had little experience of a single woman; but a wife and mother he understood.

As we ate — and this time we ate together, the four adults sitting around the table — the older girl served and spooned seconds onto our palm leaf plates. And she sometimes missed the leaf: she had been staring at Jenny, and she kept glancing back at her.

It was clear that she had made Jenny self-conscious, because Jenny began to speak with her. The girl was sweet and inattentive, and she went on serving in her clumsy way until her mother muttered at her.

“What is your name?” Jenny asked.

“My name is Annapurna.”

She was very thin, with bony hands and bony feet, and large sunken eyes, and she was wrapped in a faded sari. But the name was that of the mightiest mountain ridge in the world.

“This food is really delicious, Annapurna,” Jenny said, squelching the rice into a little ball and wiping it through the puddle of smashed lentils and conveying the sticky mass to her mouth.

Jenny’s dexterity with the food was remarked on by Mahadeva — and still his daughter Annapurna stared. Why did this make me so uneasy? The rest of them were talkative, complimenting Jenny on her pretty dress, her sensible hat, her sturdy shoes, her lovely hair; and they said how lucky I was to have her with me.

“I hope, before we leave Madras, that you’ll come to our hotel and join us for a meal,” Jenny said.

Mahadeva was pleased and flattered to be asked, and it was obviously a novelty for him to be negotiating this with Jenny and not me. Out of deference to Jenny he consulted his wife, and out of deference to us they discussed the matter in English.

“But there is impending arrival of Subramaniam,” Mahadeva said.

“We have ample of time before then to make preparations,” Mrs. Mahadeva said.

“I think he will be left cooling his heels,” Mahadeva replied.

This went on for a while, and at last, with profuse apologies they said they were forced to decline — and they used those words.

“What about next time?” Mrs. Mahadeva said, and she went on to say that she looked forward to seeing our son.

Still Jenny ate and still Annapurna stared.

Mahadeva said, “We will go to Mahabalipuram. We will bring a picnic hamper.”

It did not matter that this was fantasy and probably would never happen. It brought consolation to them. Or perhaps it seemed to them that I was making regular visits to Madras — I had been to their little house twice in six weeks.

Sensing Annapurna’s eyes on her, Jenny said, “My husband hasn’t finished his rice. I hope he did better than that the last time he was here.”

“Oh, yes,” the girl said slowly, folding her skinny arms together. “But the other auntie did not eat the food as you do.”

A silence swelled in the room and solidified like lead, and stifled every noise. And then the Mahadevas, husband and wife, spoke at once.

“Annapurna, hurry and get the container of pickle!”

“Our children will play together in the sea,” Mahadeva said. “In Mahabalipuram.”

Jenny had only momentarily lost her smile.

“I look forward to that,” Jenny said. “To coming back and seeing you.”

“And I hope you will bring your hubby,” Mrs. Mahadeva said.

Jenny was rising from the table. She gathered her palm leaf and mine, and some of the tin bowls and cups and she made for the kitchen.

“That’s up to him,” she said, just as she disappeared behind the door.

I rose to follow her, but Mahadeva waved me back.

“Never mind. We will talk.”

But all we did was sit, and I tried to hear the whispers from the kitchen. Jenny stayed there a long time with Mrs. Mahadeva and Annapurna. Nothing said was audible, though once I heard Jenny laugh — and the others did the same in a nervous respectful way.

“You see? It is all right,” Mahadeva said.

When they emerged, Mrs. Mahadeva said, “Your lady wife was adamant about helping me.”

When it was time for us to go, I was moved by the tenderness of Mrs. Mahadeva’s farewell to Jenny. She seemed genuinely sorry to see Jenny leave, and I wondered perhaps whether they shared a secret. Again, we were made to promise to return soon.

“Both of you together,” Mrs. Mahadeva said, stepping in front of Annapurna. And she repeated it, “Both of you together!”