Paul Theroux - My Secret History

“Why did you advertise?” I said.

“We need a lifeguard.”

“I need a job,” I said.

“But we need more than a lifeguard,” Mattanza said.

“It takes a lot of humility to be a lifeguard,” Kaloostian said. “Humility and perception and strength of character. Do you know what I mean by those words?”

I don’t want this job, I thought. I’ll work in a bakery. I’ll sell papers. I’ll get a job with the state at an MDC pool. I’ll cut grass. I’ll steal cars.

“He means you keep your eyes open. No reading. No blabbing. No backtalk. No college stuff.” Mattanza was getting so angry I decided that I wanted the job, just to spite him. “We don’t want a candy-ass.”

“I’ve got references,” I said.

“A very good one from Mike Bagdikian.”

I almost said He’s an old friend of my father’s . He had told me to apply. Good hours, good money, a nice class of people. Had he met Mattanza?

“You’re nineteen?” Mattanza said.

“That’s right.”

“Sheesh,” he said, exasperated. “We’re looking for someone who can take responsibility.”

I said, “I pulled three people out of Wright’s, like I said. One I had to give artificial respiration. They would have died if I hadn’t fished them out. It was in the Medford Mercury . But I don’t know — maybe you don’t call a matter of life and death responsible.”

“We’ll be in touch,” Kaloostian said.

Instead of going straight home I took the bus to Cambridge to kill time. I walked to Mount Auburn Cemetery and looked for the grave of Mary Baker Eddy. I had heard that she had a telephone in her tomb, so that if she woke from the dead at some point she could call the Mother Church at Mass Ave. and say, “Listen, it’s Mrs. Eddy — I’m back from the dead. Dig me up.” But I couldn’t find the tomb.

I stretched out on a grassy knoll and read Baudelaire, a poem about a dead sheep with its legs upraised “like a lustful woman.” And I saw a couple kissing near a tree and the girl’s legs were like the sheep’s in the poem. I watched them, pretending to read, and felt like Baudelaire myself, wicked and watchful.

After that I walked to Harvard Square. There was a restaurant on the street corner beside the Coop. The menu was taped to the window, Special Today — Whale Steak $1.29 . Never mind the coleslaw, french fries, dessert and coffee. I imagined a whale being harpooned, and a vast thrashing tail, and blood on the waves. In Moby Dick , one of the characters — Stubb or Daggoo — made a big deal out of eating whale steaks. And there was a whole chapter about eating whales. I made a mental note to look it up. But what I wanted at that moment was a whale steak. I hadn’t had any lunch and I didn’t have any money. So this hunger and inspiration just insulted me. I thought: This moment will never come again. Who should I blame for denying it to me?

I looked in the bookstores, and then wandered around the Harvard Coop and, passing through the men’s department I stole a beret. I put it on outside and took the bus back to Medford.

“What if you don’t get the job?” my mother said. “What are you going to do?”

I didn’t have the slightest idea, but I was thinking that this house did not feel like home anymore.

“I’ve got lots of irons in the fire,” I said.

“Just don’t ask me for any money.”

“I’ve got enough.”

All I had was my bus fare back to the Maldwyn Country Club. But that was handy, because the next day Kaloostian called and said, “You’ve got the job. We’d like you to start tomorrow.”

They could have told me that before. By making me wait they were trying to intimidate me: that’s what you did with employees — you made them wait. You did not realize they were reading Baudelaire and writing poems that began Snake-eyes, you dago dwarf with dog-like teeth …

“It’s a new pool,” Mattanza said. Just as I had predicted, he wore a tiny bathing suit. He was short and broadshouldered and had a bunch of bulging balls and a hairy back. “Every morning it’s your job to seat the filters. You know how to seat a filter?”

“I think I can learn.”

“Sure you can,” Mattanza said. “You’re a wise guy. I hate wise guys. Ever been in the army?”

I said no.

“You’re lucky, because if you was in the army they’d break your balls for being a wise guy.”

“What do we do with this filter?”

“I don’t like the way you talk,” Mattanza said. “If you don’t get into line I’m going to have to let you go.”

He was trembling as he said this, and he was avoiding my eyes. He seemed very strange — nervous and angry; so I decided to calm him.

“Okay, Vic, you’re the boss.”

“Yeah, don’t you forget it.”

He showed me how to pour the white chlorine powder into the spool-like filters, and how to screw them into the holes beside the pool. He showed me vacuuming and brushing and how to scoop leaves. That was all, and I could tell from the way he did it that he wasn’t very good at it himself. He was too self-conscious and neurotic to be mechanical-minded. He made a mess of the filters and shook the head off the vacuum. I could tell that it annoyed him to see me calmly pushing the contraptions to and fro, but there was nothing he could do.

The swimmers were mostly women and children. There were no boys my age and only a few girls. It was a new pool. The main characteristic of a new pool was that people actually swam in it, and jumped and splashed. I was sure that next year these people would be sunning themselves near it, and that probably no one would be in the water.

“Hello there,” a woman said. I noticed that she had been drinking all morning. “I’m Mrs. Toomajian. You know my husband, Kevork?”

I said I didn’t know him.

“The Chrysler dealership on Commonwealth Ave.? With the big sign in front? Everybody knows Kevork. He gives deals on new cars.”

I said, “Is that your daughter on the diving board?”

I had seen the girl — who was about sixteen, and pretty — talking to this woman earlier. Guessing right made her cross.

“Never mind her,” Mrs. Toomajian said. She swallowed some more whiskey. “She’s got a friend coming up from New Haven in a couple of weeks. Maybe you’d like to meet her. You could come over.”

“And meet your daughter?”

“Her friend,” she said, correcting me. “Also she does a little house-work for us.”

I said, “I’ll think about it.”

I did, and it occurred to me that this woman had an objection to my being friendly with her daughter, but was trying to pair me up with this friend, who was their part-time servant. It was a crude kind of Armenian snobbery and when I saw the woman near the pool after lunch I had an urge to push her in.

Mattanza said, “You’re talking. You’re not supposed to talk. These people are members. You’re not a member. Eyes front.”

He walked away before I could reply.

We had lunch together in the kitchen — Mattanza; the security guard; several waiters; the assistant golf pro, Miss Berberian; and me. The cook’s name was Reuben. He hated serving us, but there was no one else to do it.

Mattanza said, “Hey, how about more pot roast? I hate vegetables. I’ve got to have meat. See that?” He poked his plate with his knife. “Pure protein. Meat.”

The only time I saw him smile was when he said meat .

After lunch I worked until five, when children were not allowed into the pool. The mothers went home with their kids and the men — their husbands — came back from work and took a dip. They were hairy overworked men, very agitated from the day’s business — talkative and irritable. They had no pleasures, they looked stupid, they laughed like bullies, they never read. I was glad to leave.