Paul Theroux - My Secret History

Mr. Nunka returned and we washed more patients; bandaged some burns and emptied Goodall’s bottles. It was cold in the men’s ward, which dulled the smell somewhat but caused the men to bury themselves in their ragged blankets. A light rain spattered the windows.

At the end of the day, Mr. Nunka said, “It was very good of you to help us here. I hope we will not see you again.”

He meant I think —they often confused the English words when there was only one word in Chinyanja.

“Why not?”

“We don’t have money to pay you.”

That did it. I said, “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

The next day I worked alone, washing the old men again. I realized that I would have to wash them a few more times before they were completely clean. But I was making a visible difference. They were so dirty that one or two baths were not enough to get the grime off.

Goodall said, “Be careful, father. Don’t hurt me.”

I kept at it and when I finished the old chief was clean, perhaps for the first time in years. His skin was shining. He smiled. But the bath had tired him; he lay back on his raised pillows and went to sleep.

The men were so silent and inert and uncomplaining it really was like washing furniture. There were stitched-up legs and snakebites and thick plaster casts and wounds being drained. I took care to wash around the obstructions. I had spent the day alone here, and when the rain started at five, and I switched on the feeble orange lights — three bulbs in the ceiling — I slopped an old African’s skinny arm in my basin. A big fly was buzzing and bonking against a window, trying to get out. It stank of sickness here, and now the daylight was gone. It was damp and cold. I was happy.

During the week at Chamba Hill Secondary School, I was fully alert and got more done than I ever had. I had never felt so rested. I had had nothing to drink, I hadn’t brought any girls home over the weekend; I had spoken only to Captain. He told me he believed there were monsters in the Shire River. One he described resembled a whale-sized snake that could wrap itself around the ferry and sink it. Instead of setting him straight, I encouraged him, and he described more monsters. I listened and felt virtuous, which was also a sense of physical well-being. I was cured of the clap and living one life. Still, I thought of Gloria, taking her penicillin.

The following Saturday after lunch I went back to the hospital.

Mr. Nunka said, “You are on your own again today, father. The other orderly has returned to his village for the weekend.”

I didn’t mind. I filled the basin and put on my green smock and went to the men’s ward. It was harder and slower alone, because I had to prop them on pillows before I could scrub them. But I managed.

When I came to Goodall’s bed I saw that he was not in it. Instead, there was a sullen man who had been on the floor. He was very ugly, which had the effect of making him look strong.

“Where is the old man?”

“They took him away.”

He did not sound sorry: he was glad now to have a bed. But he saw I did not understand.

He said very plainly, “He died yesterday.”

I stood holding the dripping rag.

“Wash me,” the African said, and sat up.

“Wash yourself.”

“I am sick,” he said in a harsh complaining voice.

“Sorry, father.” I was ashamed of myself for ever having felt virtuous. I handed the man my wet rag.

I did not go home immediately. I stayed and washed the patients, but I did it badly — I could not see the point of doing it well or being thorough. They didn’t notice, nor did Mr. Nunka. I had wet the men, that was all. And then I saw in my reaction to Goodall’s death that I had been doing this for myself, not for them. And a bath didn’t save anyone from death.

That night I went to the Beautiful Bamboo. I drank beer and waited, watching Gloria dance.

“Come home with me,” I said at midnight.

She did not say anything about having had the clap. Mr. Nunka had told me to use a rubber. “African girls,” he had said. But a rubber was superfluous. I was certain that we were both cured.

Gloria said, “I love you,” in English.

It did not mean anything. They were just the words to a song. Yet I felt very tender towards her, and held her closely, feeling like a survivor, still too terrified by the close call to feel relieved about being alive.

Out of superstition, and because I had been ill and disappointed, I only saw Gloria now.

She said, “I can be your wife.”

It didn’t mean much: your wife, your woman. It was the same word, like month and moon, or man and husband, and even the words for marry and copulate were close— kwata and kwatana —because both meant joining.

“Kapena ,” I said. Maybe.

Like the other girls she lived behind the Beautiful Bamboo; all the disgraced girls, the rebels and runaways, in one hut. She sometimes stopped by my house in Kanjedza, but not before sending a small child ahead.

“The woman in the red dress wants to visit you.”

I always said yes, though during the week this was inconvenient. I had my teaching to do, my copybooks to mark, and lessons to prepare. I had my headmaster’s paperwork — junior staff salaries, supplies and allowances, letters to parents, memos to teachers. I had files to read and the attendance book to keep. One day, when the country had a government and an Education Ministry a school inspector might visit Chamba Hill.

Miss Natwick saw me dealing with the papers. She said, “Bumf!”

I had never heard the word before. She saw I was bewildered.

“Bum fodder,” she explained, in her Rhodesian snarl.

She took delight in seeing how I had to stay late at the school. I was always in my office, even after sundown, working through the files by the light of the sizzling Tilly lamp.

I was not the only person there, however. Rockwell was often straddling the chimbuzi and laboring, as I cycled back to Kanjedza. These days he would not let anyone near it, not even to use it. We reopened the trench near the blue gums. He had taken over the entire construction of the chim .

“Do it yourself,” he said. “That’s the only way to get something done right.”

“I thought you were almost done.”

“I had seepage in my urinals,” he said. “I’ve got to lick these urinals.”

Late one afternoon, when the whole school had emptied, I found him climbing the scaffold to resume the work his teaching had interrupted.

I walked over to watch him. He ignored me at first, and then he accused me of trying to undermine him by giving him an extra math class.

“It was Form Four — full of wise guys. I thought they’d be helping you make bricks.”

“Hah! Your big mistake! Thought you could punish them by forcing them to make bricks. You thought you’d get a good latrine.”

He smiled at me, and I thought how seldom it was in life that a smile was a sign of pleasure. Rockwell’s was always something else.

“But because it was punishment they made bad bricks. Anyone could have told you that. What did I do with them?”

He was now sitting on the half-made roof. At his most obnoxious he always asked questions, and waited until I was exasperated, and then answered them.

“I threw every single darn one of them away.”

Even his laugh was not a laugh.

I said, “Where did all these bricks come from then?”

“Punishment’s no good,” he said, taking his time. “You’ve got to motivate people properly and do things right. Then they take a pride in their work.”

“How are you motivating people, Rockwell?”

“There’s only one motivation—”