Paul Theroux - My Secret History

He started to smile, but he abandoned it when I shouted.

“You’re paying them!”

“It’s not much,” he said, enjoying my anger. “But look at the result.” He patted the top of the Alamo wall. “Now, see, there’s a good-quality brick.”

I was against paying anything to anybody. One of the satisfactions I took in the country was that money did not matter. The African girls never asked for it. Mr. Nunka had cured me for nothing. There were no school fees. And what was I earning? Fifty dollars a month.

“No more paying.”

“You’re so arrogant.” He pronounced it eeragant and it didn’t sound so bad.

“I’m the headmaster here, Ward. I can get you transferred. I’ll call Ed Wently. You’ll be back in Sierra Leone, watching people go to the bathroom in the street.”

He was silent: the prospect clearly worried him.

“Doing wee-wee and poo-poo on the sidewalk.”

“Cut it out, Parent!”

“Anyway, where are you getting the money?”

“It’s charity. My church sent it.” He had nails in his mouth. As he talked he removed a nail and pounded it into a roof shingle. “The Tenth Street Tabernacle in Rosemead.”

It was the first time he had mentioned his church; but I should have known.

“They’ve got a Faith Fund — Pageant for People Overseas. They collect money from a variety night — Show for Souls. They dole it out, so that we can spread the word of the Lord Jesus, and”—and drew out a nail and slammed it into a shingle—“have Bible study in distant lands.”

“This isn’t Bible study.”

He stared down at me.

“It’s a latrine,” I said.

“Still, it’s in a distant land,” he said, and blinked furiously.

“What if your church knew you were hiring Africans to build a shithouse?”

“All the Africans are doing is making the bricks,” he said, and then in a lordly way. “I’m building the structure itself.”

“Playing God with your chimbuzi . You should tell them.”

“I think they’d be glad the money was going to a good cause.”

“Shall I tell them?”

He saw that I was angry. He said he wouldn’t pay out any more money from the Faith Fund. But I knew he was nearly done with the thing and probably didn’t need any more bricks.

“I’m done for the day,” he said.

He made his way down the ladder, and I saw that his chin had an odd pinkness, as of a burn — it looked bald and scalded.

“Did you hurt yourself? Your chin looks red.”

“Nah. Just an experiment.” He put his hand on his chin. “Leave me alone. I’m sick. I’ve got mucus in my stool.”

I worked late every day and then bicycled two miles downhill through the dripping pine forest, to Kanjedza. The little boy was usually there.

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

She had immense patience. It was African patience. It had something to do with having plenty of time. It was not indifference, but it was close — the mood of someone who lived in a country where not much ever happened. It was also a kind of watchfulness, like the poise of a bird on a branch. She could sit in a roosting way all day, waiting, doing nothing. Miss Natwick said they behaved that way because Africans were bloody lazy. The Peace Corps told us that Africans had parasites and as a result were very sleepy — the germs, worms, ticks, and amoebas all slowed them down.

But in Gloria’s case it might have been something else. She said she was in love with me.

One night she said, “I am visiting my father. He is sick.”

“Where is your village?”

“Will you let me show you?”

I could not say no. In that way she got me to agree to go with her.

We took the bus from Zimba to Blantyre and left from there on an old black steam train. It was slow-moving and it stopped at every station. On some hills the engine gasped and went silent, and the whole train rolled backwards, unable to make it to the top. Then the fireman shoveled and stoked until he had built up enough steam for the train to go up and over.

At noon we arrived at the hot flat town of Balaka. There were baobab trees, fat and gray, like misshapen elephants. There was no shade. The rest of the country was cold and drizzly, but this low-lying town was stricken with sun. The main street was a narrow track of pale dust.

“Where are you going, Mister Undie?”

She had started calling me that.

“Back to the station for a timetable.”

It was an old habit. I never arrived in a place without thinking that very soon, perhaps sooner than I thought, I would want to leave. I always needed an escape route, no matter how contented I was. The timetable was chalked on the station wall. I copied it into my notebook.

We found a bar and sat in its shadows eating chicken and rice out of tin bowls. People stared at us — the white man, the African girl. I wore my rumpled suit, and Gloria her red dress and high heels.

Her village was nearby — walking distance. She took off her shoes for the hike.

When we were alone on the road I realized I had nothing to say to her. But she did not notice. Silence was another aspect of her patience.

Suddenly she stopped, knelt down and put her shoes on. I soon saw why. There were mud huts ahead, the grass roofs showing through the stunted trees. The entrance to the village was through a pair of fat baobabs — a sort of gateway. The huts were rounded and brown, like a certain kind of bread, and cracked in the same way, walls like crusts. There were about a dozen chubby huts. Naked dirty boys followed us. She knew them: Winston, Snowdon, Blair, Baldwin, and her small brothers Redson and Walton.

Some women yodeled when they saw us. It was the usual gleeful greeting in Nyasaland. Then they began chattering with Gloria in a language I did not understand.

I was pushed onto a stool and served a meal — porridge and stew. It made no difference that I had already eaten. Food was friendship here. Gloria seemed absorbed by the women, and then she brought me a bottle of beer, and some dry cookies, and at last a basin of water. I washed my hands.

“They want you to rest.” She was speaking for the women behind her. “I must go and see my father.”

They were so eager for me to rest, I agreed, to please them. They brought me to an empty hut, and I lay on the string bed. The walls were dry mud and the floor smooth earth and the air heavy with dust. Dirt flakes sifted down from the thatch. Just lying there made my breathing difficult and I began to wheeze.

I sneaked out and saw why they had wanted me to have a nap: the whole village was asleep — no one stirred. It was the hottest hour of the day, two o’clock.

The sun was a force. It pressed on my eyes, it lay upon me, and I had to struggle against it in order to walk. I left the sleeping village and followed a path. Yet when I had gone too far I saw that it was not a path, but a furrow in a field. The furrow grew shallower, and then was gone, and I was lost. I came to another path, another furrow. It led to a field of broken-down corn shucks, and before I had gone twenty feet a shadow beneath me came alive — a long black snake, as thick as a garden hose. It scraped on the corn shucks as it slid past my feet. A superstition in Nyasaland said that a person had to turn back if a snake crossed his path. I did so, and went in the opposite direction. Five steps later I saw another snake — much bigger than the last one, and blacker. I imagined that there were nests of black mambas beneath all these corn shucks. It was the most poisonous snake in the country.

I was in a wide, snake-infested field. I picked up a stick and beat the shucks ahead of me in order to frighten the snakes. I had a dread of stepping on the creatures. After almost two hours of this I came to the road of pale dust. It was growing dark when I found my way back to Gloria’s village.