Paul Theroux - My Secret History

“That’s horrible,” I said. I thought she had finished. I didn’t know what to do, but I wanted to go. It was far worse than I had imagined. I turned away. On the television above the bar a man was kneeling next to a small child who was hugging a cloth doll, and he was saying Has anyone told you that you’re a very brave little girl?

In her dull determined voice, Lucy said, “As I was driving home I got a pain, like a knife in my side. I almost crashed the car, but I kept driving until the pain was unbearable. I pulled into a Jenney station and the man pumping gas pointed out back. I went into the ladies’ room and had it in the toilet. I thought I was going to bleed to death. I couldn’t move for about an hour. The man wanted to call the police, but I wouldn’t let him. When I got home my mother said, ‘You look pale — are you all right?’ And I said, ‘I’m fine. I—’ ”

It was only then that she started to sob, and she did so in a subdued and suffering way that made me want to die for having caused it. Then she saw me watching her, and she sneered.

“That’s your three hundred dollars.”

I wanted the bus to crash and for me to be burned alive — or else to keep going, past Amherst and Pittsfield and out of the state. Was it enough to leave home?

I was still reading Baudelaire, the opposite pages this time, in French. Anywhere out of this world , and a poem about his lover — naked except for her jewels, wearing makeup. Gleaming buttocks. Moorish slave. Like a captive tiger. In front of a fire with its flamboyant sigh. She was black, and she yearned for him.

Keep going, I thought. Anywhere out of this world. I didn’t want anyone to know me. I didn’t deserve to be missed. But home was too big and too hard to get away from. Every state would tell me I was a failure. How could I leave? Home was the whole country.

The barefoot student was being led towards my office from the clump of blue gums, where he had been hiding. But why was he smiling like that? When he came closer I could see his wild eyes did not match his crooked mouth. It was a ganja-smoker’s smile — Willy Msemba, at the hemp again. Rain was beaded on his black face.

Like an executioner, Deputy Mambo jerked the boy along. Mambo’s mud-smeared shoes flapped beside Msemba’s bare feet.

“Headmaster.” Mambo always sounded sarcastic when he said that word. He knocked and pushed open my office door in one motion.

I told them to come in, but they were already in — water and footprints and clods of mud. Whole raindrops were caught and trembled unbroken in the springs of their hair. Not many of the students had hair, not even the girls. It was a head-shaving country, because of the lice.

Willy smiled at his toes. His feet had shed what looked like smashed cake. He was shivering in his wet shirt, and still smiling.

“I found this boy smoking.”

Smoking always meant smoking ganja.

The wind shook the blue gums — shreds of stringy bark and pale fluttery leaves. It was gray cold April in Nyasaland, one of the months of blowing fog. The fog drizzled down and was so dense the country seemed tiny. It reddened the earth and made the roofs rattle.

Just then, Miss Natwick dived out of her room across the schoolyard. She was one of those small, stiff-legged women who when they hurry look as if they are going to tip over. She was a part-timer, and one of her subjects was needlework, but, even so, she could not understand why she had not been put in charge of the school after Mr. Likoni left. Another reason was that she was a white Rhodesian.

No sooner had she entered my office than Mr. Nyirongo passed by the window on the veranda. Instead of entering, or continuing on his way, he paused and began gaping at us, his tongue swelling between his lips. He was clearly interested in the sight: Willy Msemba dripping on my office floor, and on either side of him Deputy Mambo and Miss Natwick.

I was pacing behind my desk. I had only been headmaster a short time and I was still self-conscious. I hated being observed handing out punishment. I knew I was an inept disciplinarian but I hoped that the students would see me as a fair and just headmaster and not take advantage of me. It was simple logic: if they liked me they’d behave. That was the American way. My predecessor, Mr. Likoni, used the British method. He bent wrongdoers over a chair and flogged them.

“This boy is doing it every lunch break,” Deputy Mambo said. “Just sitting in the trees and smoking his ganja. I think some very severe punishment is called for.”

In Deputy Mambo’s lapel was a gleaming button with a big black face on it — Doctor Hastings Kamuzu Banda. This scowling Banda would be head of the government after independence in July, when Nyasaland became Malawi. It was not a happy face, not even a sane one, and I sometimes felt that Africans in the country wore the button to frighten non-party members or foreigners like me.

Perhaps Mambo saw me glance at the button. He said, “Doctor Banda wants firm discipline in Malawi.”

“This is still Nyasaland,” I said.

But we both knew that it was nothing. Nearly all the white settlers had left, and only the British governor general still hung on — he had been delegated to hand the place over to Banda.

“I’d like to hear Willy’s side of the story,” I said, because I felt that Mambo was pressuring me.

“They all smoke,” Miss Natwick said. “Heavens, where do they get the money from? They’re supposed to be so poor!”

To her, smoking meant just that. She did not know what ganja was. It would have thrown her if she had.

“I think he steals it,” Deputy Mambo said. “I hope the headmaster does not approve of stealing.”

All this time Willy Msemba was smiling his crooked smile.

“What have you got to say for yourself?”

He looked at me and, though he knew me, in his drugged condition it was as though he was seeing me after a very long time. He seemed surprised: What was his old friend doing here! His eyes were loose and sort of drowned-looking.

“Allo, Mister Andy!” he said in a gurgly voice.

Miss Natwick went pah hearing him use my first name — and not even Andre but Andy.

“Mr. Parent,” she said, in a correcting way, talking to him. “At Salisbury Academy we always said, ‘Headmaster, Sir!’ ”

“I see him Farraday night,” Msemba said to Miss Natwick, and gave her the same strange grin.

“What’s this about smoking under the trees?”

But he ignored me. He was deaf and still smiling, his eyes rolling and his head wobbling. Now he turned to Miss Natwick.

“He go jig-jig.”

“Listen to me,” I said.

“Mister Andy!”

“I regard this as a serious infraction of the rules.”

“Oh, yes, this guy like to dance too much!” the student said to the room at large.

“I won’t tolerate smoking at this school.”

“What is this imbecile talking about?”

“Ask him how he came by the money,” Deputy Mambo said.

Msemba said, “He twist and shout!” He stamped mud off his feet. He cried, “Beetriss!”

“I don’t understand a bloody word of this.”

He was saying Beatles but I decided not to translate.

Mr. Nyirongo frowned through the window and turned his swollen tongue on me and stared with sad eyes, Miss Natwick was squinting. Deputy Mambo had loosened his grip on Msemba.

For the fact was, I was now at the center of attention, not Msemba. I was twenty-three. I had been headmaster only two months, since Likoni left, and these people had wanted my job — still wanted it. They claimed I was not doing well, was not mature, dressed sloppily — was an American. And yet they could not deny that the school ran as smoothly as ever, and was certainly cleaner than it had ever been under Likoni. And I had plans.