Paul Theroux - My Secret History

“I should move from here,” Prasad said, as the taxi slowed on a narrow street of bulgey brown brick houses. “I’ve put this little place on its feet. It’s time to go.”

The house looked freshly painted — bright trim, a new gate, a garden in which the slender trees still flew tiny white tags from the nursery.

“You ring the bell,” Prasad said, pocketing his latchkey. “Sarah likes a little drama.”

His wife appeared a moment later, and threw her arms around me, and exclaimed, “Andy!”

“I’ve been thinking of a small flat in an area that is uncompromisingly fashionable,” Prasad was saying behind me. I could tell he was biting on his pipe. “Haven’t I, darling? Oh, do go in!”

I had been an admirer of Prasad’s writing for about four years when we met by chance in Africa. He said he was passing through; he was restlessly working on a book that he carried from hotel to hotel. He read some things of mine and said, “Promise me one thing. That you will write about this place.”

He meant Africa. I promised I would. And so we became friends. When he and Sarah left Africa he urged me to spend Christmas with them in London. Christmas was a long holiday in Uganda, where I was teaching — three weeks of rain and stifling heat, and nothing to do but drink. And there was nothing to keep me there — I had no family. So I gladly went to London. I was grateful for Prasad’s invitation.

“You’ve never been here before!” he shouted in his friendly way. “Sarah — it’s Andy’s first day in London!”

He laughed very hard and asked me how old I was — although he knew. And then he became grave and motioned with his pipe.

“You saw Nyasaland and Tanganyika before you saw England,” he said. “You think it’s nothing, but that simple fact will probably affect you the whole of your writing life.”

From the other room, Sarah said, “Nyasaland and Tanganyika have new names, you know.”

“But who can pronounce them, darling?” And he laughed. “They’re jolly hard — but I’ll bet Andy can!”

Then he took off his jacket and tie and put on his pajamas. He wore a purple bathrobe with velvet lapels and carpet slippers. It was eleven o’clock in the morning. He said he had work to do.

He saw that I was puzzled.

“I dress for dinner,” he said. And he laughed. “I dress for dinner!”

The next morning when I came downstairs for breakfast I saw Prasad sorting Christmas cards. He took a letter from another pile and handed it to me. It had a bright Ghanaian stamp on it.

Prasad said nothing, he was still sorting the Christmas cards; but I knew he was watching me as I read it. I had been expecting this letter from Francesca.

Over breakfast he said, “Sarah, Andy got a letter this morning — from the Gold Coast! Imagine.” He turned to me. “Are you going to pay them a visit, the old Gold Coasters?”

“I was thinking about it.”

“But European handwriting,” he said, and he squeezed his features in intense thought, and making this face he said, “French? Italian? It had a certain—”

“Italian,” I said.

He saw everything.

“Ah,” he said. “I wish I had your energy, Andy.”

He changed into a different pair of pajamas before he went to his study, and passing me on the way he said, “All this travel, all these tickets. I imagine you’re very well paid out there. The salaries are so grand. You probably have a pension plan. But what about your writing?”

“I’m going to write some articles for a newspaper in Boston,” I said. “That’ll pay my way.”

“That’s it,” Prasad said. He looked pleased at the news that I was paying my way. “You’re full of ideas, Andy. You have such a gift for these things.”

“It means I’ll have to go back via Ghana.”

“The Gold Coast,” Prasad said. “But you have a friend there.”

He said friend as though he were saying woman: he knew.

“And then maybe Nigeria.”

“More bongo drums,” he said.

“Then Uganda.”

“The bow-and-arrow men.”

To change the subject, I said, “Are you working on anything?”

“A story,” he said. “Want to hear the opening?”

This was unlike him — he never spoke about his work. I said I would be delighted to hear it.

He said, “John Smithers was buggering Simon Panga-Matoke when the telephone rang. He withdrew, and with tainted tumescent penis entered his study. He picked up the receiver. It was the Director of the Ugandan Space Program.” Prasad stared at me. “You like it?”

I shook my head slowly, not wanting to speak.

“I don’t know how you stand it, Andy,” he said. “Now remember your promise.”

Sarah asked me to call him for lunch when I returned from a walk that morning.

Prasad’s study was in total darkness, but when I opened the door I saw him lying on a sofa, still in his pajamas, smoking a cigarette.

“I finished my book,” he said. “I have nothing to do. The book almost killed me, man. I’m like a bird with a broken wing.”

My problem was that I had no name for him. He was known as S. Prasad. His first name was Suraj — no one called him that. (His hotel and restaurant reservations often appeared in the name “Sir Arch Prasad,” which pleased him.) I was beyond calling him Mr. Prasad. Sarah called him “Raj.” It suited him, particularly when he was wearing his purple bathrobe and his Indian slippers. I did not know what anyone else called him. I had never met any of his friends. But that second day at lunch I said, “I’d like to take you both out to lunch tomorrow.”

“You go with Raj,” Sarah said. “I have work to do.”

“What do you say, Raj?”

It was the first time I had used this intimate name.

He smiled, and I felt we had advanced in our friendship, yet I was still conscious of our being master and student.

“Lunch is a delightful idea,” he said. “And I can drop off my proofs afterward.”

He went to his study — to work, he said. But now I knew he was smoking in the darkness, lying on the sofa, like a man grieving.

In the evening we watched television. I found the programs fascinating and intelligent, and I watched them hungrily, like a dog watching his meat being dumped into a bowl. Prasad hated them.

“You think that man is smiling? That man is not smiling. That is not a smile. That man is a politician. He is very crooked.”

That was a documentary on the BBC. Then there was a discussion. The chairman made a joke and the studio audience laughed.

Prasad’s lips were curled in disgust and pity. “Poor Malcolm,” he said. He turned to me. “Promise me you’ll never go on a program like that, Andy.”

Sarah snickered as I solemnly promised never to appear on the panel of The World This Week .

But Sarah wasn’t mocking me. She found Prasad endlessly amusing and unexpected. She was English, exactly his age, and such a good companion to this new friend of mine that I did not dare find her attractive.

She stood at the door the next day as if seeing two boys off to school, or an outing — she fussed and hurried us and said, “Now remember not to leave your umbrella on the tube, Raj.”

He didn’t kiss her. Perhaps he saw that I noticed.

“I hate displays of affection,” he said.

On our way to the station he stopped at a newsagent’s bulletin board and peered closely at the various cards that were pinned to it. French Lessons. Theatrical Wardrobe. Very Strict Games Mistress Will Not Spare the Rod. For a Good Time Ring Doreen. Young Model Seeks Work. Dancing Lessons. Dusky Islander Seeks Driving Position .

“This is a little lesson in English euphemism,” he said. But he kept his eyes on the cards. “I wonder if there’s anything here for you.” He did not move his head, and yet I knew he was watching me in the reflection from the glass. “No, I suppose not.”