Paul Theroux - My Secret History

She never swam. She wore a big billowy gown with poppies on it, and a white sunhat and sunglasses. Her straw shoes had fake fruit stitched to them. She drank gin and read The Henry Miller Reader , She looked clownish but I knew that while she was sober she was intelligent. She never spoke to anyone else.

After a few drinks she stopped talking about books. Then it was just that business about lunch.

“What we should do is simply meet and have a bite of something. It doesn’t matter what.”

I found It doesn’t matter what very strange.

“Do you like Chinese food?”

“It gives me pimples but I like it.”

“Or we could meet anywhere and talk about books. And maybe this place where we meet could be out of town, or somewhere special. You like talking about books, right?”

“Yes. At the moment I’m trying to get Ovid’s Metamorphoses .”

“That sounds heavy going.”

“I need it for something I’m planning to write.”

“About ancient Rome?”

“No. It’s a play set on the Notions Counter of a big department store like Filene’s. You know Filene’s Basement?”

She nodded. “And when I say this place could be somewhere special I have lots of ideas.”

“The thing is I don’t have a car.”

“You can use mine anytime you like.”

“Thanks very much,” I said. “I wish I had a motorcycle.”

“You want a motorcycle? I’ll give you a motorcycle.”

Just her saying that made me stop wanting it.

“God, am I bored,” she said. “Aren’t you bored?”

“I’m working,” I said. “So it doesn’t matter.”

“These women are always looking at you.”

“Mattanza’s had complaints.”

“I feel like complaining about him,” Mrs. Mamalujian said. She was drunk but at least she was on my side.

I looked up and saw his big Indian nose and tiny eyes peering at me through the shrubbery.

Every night after work I took the bus to Medford and walked home. I changed. I went for an ice cream at Brigham’s and ate it outside in the cool night air. Or I sat in the public library across from Saint Joe’s, and read. Or I watched television, the progress of the presidential campaign. I went to bed after the Tonight Show . One night Jack Paar said he was going to introduce a living saint, and a little Irishman with glistening eyes stepped onstage — Dr. Tom Dooley.

Dooley talked awhile about his hospital and his wonderful work, and then he stood up and put his hands together in a praying gesture and said, “God bless you all. As long as I have strength in my body I will go back among my people and work. But I need your help. Give, for God’s sake — give.”

The way his voice broke gave me the creeps. I thought he was crazy, too, and the fact that everyone applauded like mad also gave me the creeps.

“He has cancer,” my mother said the next day. “He does God’s work — it’s a miracle. You used to talk about being a missionary.”

Once I had seen a missionary wearing an Arab headdress and talking about the desert, and I thought: That’s for me — but it wasn’t the preaching part, it was the travel. I’ll get out that way, even if it means being a missionary, was my idea.

“I’d still like to go to Africa or Turkey, or somewhere.”

“And do God’s work?”

“No, just do my work,” I said. That was my new idea.

But it annoyed her to hear me say so. What a summer. It was almost July. I still had no girlfriend, no money, no motorcycle. I was trying to save for the fall, so I avoided everything that cost money. I hated the bus. I hated my job. I delved deeper under the black lid of the big cauldron where imperceptible and vast Humanity was boiling. Baudelaire.

“Want to borrow it?” Mrs. Mamalujian said to me. This was the end of my second week at the Maldwyn Country Club. She handed over The Henry Miller Reader . Miller’s roguish face leered from the cover. It was hardback, brand-new, smelling of Mrs. Mamalujian’s perfume.

“I’ll take good care of it.”

“I think he’s basically a comedian,” she said. “He’s funny, he uses funny words, the sex is a farce. That’s the whole point.”

At lunch, in the kitchen, when Reuben served us coffee, I took it out and began to read it.

Mattanza said, “Hey, what’s that supposed to be?” and snatched it.

“Give that book back,” I said and stood up to intimidate him.

“ ‘I pulled my cap over my eyes and muttered, “Fuck you, Jack.” And that’s the way it was that summer, a bloody fucking nightmare in which—’ Hey, that’s nice. That’s very nice. What would your mother say if she knew you were reading this shit?”

“It’s not shit.”

“It’s gatz . I wouldn’t have that in my house. Hey, where did you get this fucking thing.”

I tried to grab it from him, but before I could he flipped it open and saw scribbled on the flyleaf Leila Mamalujian .

“Hey, you stole this book!”

“She loaned it to me.”

“You’re not supposed to talk to the members. Hey, you got something going with her? Hey, you know what I think of this book?” He held it over a pot of stew that was bubbling on the stove.

Reuben said, “Get out of my kitchen” and took the book from Mattanza and handed it to me.

I read some of it that night. It was wild, it was funny, it thrilled me. I had never read anyone so foulmouthed who was at the same time so bright. It was energetic and coarse. I went to sleep smiling, thinking of o glabrous, o glab and glairy , and I was still reading it on the bus the next day.

Mattanza was waiting for me when I arrived at the club.

He said, “Don’t bother to change.”

He stood in a break in the hedge, blocking my way.

“I’m letting you go.”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t work here anymore. So take a walk.”

I wanted to hit him, but if I did he would have had an excuse.

I said, “I’m going to talk to Kaloostian.”

Miss Berberian, seeing me, handed me an envelope. I opened it, thinking it was a letter. It was a check for thirty-one seventy-six.

“Where’s Mr. Kaloostian?”

“He’s not in today.” She was very intent on her typing.

“I’ve just been fired. Doesn’t Kaloostian know that?”

“Yes. See, he signed the check. I’m really sorry, Andre.”

“Mattanza’s crazy, you know. He’s really nuts.”

She didn’t say anything.

I lurked for a while. I went to the kitchen and asked Reuben for a coffee. He gave it to me and said, “I hear that little wop canned you. Don’t worry. There’s plenty of work around. Know what I think? Get an education and then you’ll never have to work.” I drank the coffee and when Reuben left the kitchen I heaved a bag of potatoes onto my shoulder and headed for the parking lot.

Every car, except for Mrs. Mamalujian’s, received a potato in its exhaust pipe. I jammed them as far as I could, so that they wouldn’t show and would be hard to remove. And I laughed to think of them all stranded here, when they wanted to go home.

Instead of going straight home, where my mother would ask questions about my losing my job — why else was I home so early? — I went to Medford Square for lunch — a submarine sandwich, at Salem Street Subs.

A new man was making them today. He looked slightly drunk, his paper hat crookedly fitting his head. He was Italian, which was odd, because Italians seldom got drunk in the Boston area.

“What can I do for you?”

“A large meatball sub.”

“What do you want on it?”

“Everything.”

He measured off a foot of Italian bread from a long loaf and cut it and then slashed it lengthwise. He began ladling meatballs into it.