Paul Theroux - My Secret History

“Do you know how on labels it says, ‘Keep in a cool dry place’? All sorts of bottles say it — alcohol, shoe polish, you name it, thousands of them. But what is a cool dry place? Most people don’t really have one. So that’s going to be one of my main items.”

This was insane, and his friendliness only made it worse. What was he talking about? I decided not to alarm him by asking, but simply said it was a tremendous idea.

“Think so? I do too! I figure it’ll be a kind of really neat box. Sort of lid, lined inside, little chambers”—he was shaping and hacking with his hands—“and on the outside it’ll say The Cool Dry Placer .”

“Sounds terrific,” I said, and wondered whether he would guess what I really thought if I excused myself and went to bed. I said mail order had great possibilities.

“But Ward Rockwell’s going to have thousands of stock items. Ever notice how bottles of polish and stuff like that has directions saying, ‘Wipe with a clean soft cloth’? And you can never find one when you need it?”

“You’re going to sell them.”

“Right. In a little see-through pouch. I’m going to call it The Clean Soft Cloth.” He looked very pleased with himself. He said, “In the same line I’m going to have that other essential product. Guess what?”

“Can’t guess,” I said. I could have but I knew it would be a mistake.

“The Damp Rag . Ever see the label that advises you to apply whatever it is with a damp rag? I’m going to sell them. In hermetically sealed envelopes, pre-dampened rags. See, the thing about rags”—his voice was cracking—“rags are filthy. But my rags—”

I wanted him to stop. He went on. He told me of his elaborate system of shelves for directions that said “Keep out of the reach of children” and his specially engineered coin for “Pry up with a coin.”

At last I went to bed. I assumed that his nutty ideas were a result of fatigue and isolation. He was tiring himself in the building of the chimbuzi . I decided to break a vow I had made and introduce him to the Beautiful Bamboo. He was a slow steady drinker, and beer made him even more monotonous. When he was drunk he was solemn. He sat in the noise and music, ignoring the girls. He drank and sweated and sulked. And then he went home, putting one foot ahead of the other.

“Guess what I hate about that place.”

“Tell me.”

“You can’t talk there,” he said. It was very dark on the road. “The thing is, Andy, I feel I can really talk to you.”

That alarmed me. I said, “You know, those girls are friendly. All you have to do is say the word and they’d go home with you.”

He made an exasperated noise and then said, “The word is germs.”

I had arranged for Gladys to meet me at the house, because I wanted to keep my secret safe from Rockwell. But his attitude affected me. It was more than disapproval — it was horror. I could not perform. It was his fault. Gladys just laughed and squeezed the useless thing. It seemed to me the worst fate on earth to be impotent.

The next night was a Monday. Rockwell had worked all day on the latrine — I could tell by his glazed eyes. I hoped that he would go to his room and calm himself by polishing something, but instead he joined me in front of the fire. I had wanted to sit there and brood about my impotence.

“Words,” he said. “Words like ‘bored housewife.’ That turns me on.”

He had been thinking.

“Words are real funny. Words can be neat. ‘Semi-naked bored housewife.’ ”

What was he doing in Central Africa? He should never have gone so far from home. This country was having a bad effect on him — the distance, the isolation. He was probably a very ordinary person, but being here was turning him into someone else. Yet I did not pity him. I resented him. I thought: What if I stay impotent?

He took the poker and hit the fire and grinned.

“People say ‘I’ve got to drive out to the airport’ or ‘He misses his kids’ or ‘It needs a new cartridge.’ It’s all words. People never said those things before. Someday we won’t say ‘It has to heat up before it’ll work.’ It’ll just start. I mean, ‘heat up’ is very physical.”

He was talking to the fire in a slow droning way.

“We’ll be moving into advanced electronics. ‘Heat up’ is like sex. We’ll stop having machines like that. They’ll be cool and clean instead. And very small.”

Saying that, he made his eyes small. Then I tried not to look at him. I wanted him to talk about hygiene. Why didn’t he?

“Words like ‘bottle.’ Bottle’s really strange. The more you say it.”

I thought: Bottle is not strange. You are.

“ ‘He’s not ready for that kind of commitment.’ A few years ago you’d never hear anyone say that.”

Out of the corner of my eye I could see that he was smiling at the fire.

“Or ‘My eyes are my best feature.’ People never used to say that. They do now.”

I said, “I don’t think men say it.”

“I mean women,” he said. “See, I figured it out. I was putting in some pipe today and thinking — there’s man words and there’s woman words.”

“What are woman words?”

“ ‘I’m going to cry my eyes out.’ ”

He said it quickly and looked very pleased with himself. And then he spoke again.

“ ‘I haven’t got a thing to wear.’ ”

He was droning but I knew he was animated, and I had never seen him so absorbed, even on the subject of his bowels. I wanted to stop him. I wanted to say: Ward, Africa is outside the window. Look at it .

“Hey,” and he poked the fire a little too roughly, “a few years ago you’d never have heard anyone say, ‘Her semi-nude body was found in a shallow grave.’ ”

That smile. And he did not need me to encourage him.

“You wouldn’t have read, ‘Clad in only her torn underwear she was floating facedown in a ditch.’ ”

“No,” I said.

“There was evidence of sexual assault,” he said. “Her bruised and partly clothed body was found by a jogger.”

He was still smiling.

That same week I moved into a tiny two-room house in Kanjedza. They called it a township. It was one step up from a slum, literally so, because it was on a hillside, and lower down at the foot of the hill was a slum of mud huts called Chiggamoola. Kanjedza was a settlement of about a hundred concrete sheds — tin roofs, no running water, outside chimbuzis , no trees. Paths eroded by rain to gullies. Smoky fires. Mad scabby dogs. I always carried a stick because of the dogs. In the African locations the dogs barked only at whites.

I had a neighbor, Harry Gombo. I complained that the houses were damp.

“At least they are not mud houses,” Harry said.

He was embarrassed by crumbly mud walls and thatched roofs. “He is mudding his house,” he said of a poor man he disliked. He often used the word “primitive.” He never saw that the virtue of a mud house was that it was disposable. It was abandoned after two or three years. Yet these cement huts in Kanjedza would go on rotting and stinking forever.

But I was happy there. I saw my move as brave and stylish. I was the only mzungu in the area. It was a bit like being an explorer. Look at this white kid in the middle of an African township. The other thing was that these townships were regarded as very dangerous — but I knew better. My rent was five pounds a month. Captain had one room, I had the other. He said he had lived in worse places, but I gave him more money nonetheless: Hardship Allowance. I had simply moved out and left Ward Rockwell my house at Chamba Hill. I wanted to live in an African way.