Paul Theroux - My Secret History

“That’s sweet,” Philippa said.

Rosamond looked happy, and was about to speak when Ronnie began to laugh in a mirthless and hostile way.

“Do you know there’s no cure for rabies?” he said. “If one of these sultry-eyed little creatures bites you, you froth at the mouth and die the most horrible and painful death through dehydration.” He smirked and went on, “It’s all in that boring book with the delightful pictures of fetuses that we published last month. God, is that the time? Michael’s going to scream the house down. What a pleasure to me you are, Andre. Were you named after Andre Gide, by any chance? I hope the answer’s yes!”

“Michael’s his boyfriend,” Rosamond said, after Ronnie had gone. “He took him to the Christmas party last week. No one was the least bit shocked.”

Philippa said, “I must go. It’s late closing at Selfridges. I have shopping to do. ’Bye, Ros. Lovely to meet you, Andrew.”

All that time I had wanted to be alone with Rosamond, and now I was content. I hoped to sit there drinking with her for a few more hours, and to get drunk, and take her home and make love to her. I saw it as something like climbing four flights of stairs, and an event taking place on each landing, drinking on one landing, arriving at her place on the second landing, and the third and fourth a bit far off at the moment to be clearly described. But I felt we were already one flight up that long climb.

We talked about African politics, and English weather, and American money. Meanwhile I was looking at her pale skin, and the way the heat of the pub had reddened her cheeks and dampened her small ringlets of hair against her forehead and neck.

She said there was a play she wanted to see sometime. I said, “We could go together,” and she quickly agreed. I said, “We should go out to eat—”

I loved saying “we” and watching her eyes brighten. I hadn’t touched her.

“Have another drink,” I said.

She smiled and shook her head. “Do you know what I’d really like?”

Then we were outside, swaying, hugging each other in order to stay upright. I thought: If I’m this drunk so is she.

Yellow light lay in spattered puddles on the black street, and pelting raindrops were dazzled by the headlights of oncoming cars. We walked through the rain and London seemed more than ever like a city underground. This wet sloppy weather looked dramatic to me. The rain and my drunkenness made me feel romantic and reckless. In the back of the taxi I took Rosamond in my arms and kissed her, and slid my hand under her huge coat, and groped for her. She didn’t resist; she squirmed and helped me a little — moved closer to me and touched my hair. Before we reached her street she had made it clear with her hands and her tongue that I could make love to her. Nowhere I had ever been had seemed a better place for kissing a stranger than a London taxi.

In the dark hours of the following morning she said, “Are you surprised I slept with you so quickly? I’m not usually such an easy lay. But when you told me that story about the bush-baby I trusted you somehow. I knew you wouldn’t hurt me. And I knew you wouldn’t turn me down.”

Bless that bush-baby, I thought, and I remembered Africa.

I told her I had to go but that I wanted to see her again — tomorrow. Today , she said, and kissed me. I put on my clothes and walked into the street. I was not afraid to be in this empty London street at four in the morning. I walked along and when a taxi approached I hailed it, and went back to Prasad’s across the river.

Prasad was in his purple bathrobe and Indian slippers, sitting at his empty desk in his study, with an unlit pipe in his fingers. He said he had insomnia.

“I’m waiting for the birds to start chuntering,” he said. “Are you all right, Andy? Of course you are!” He sniffed and smiled — he’d had a whiff of Rosamond. “You young chaps!”

I felt I had arrived in London at last.

Within a week I began to have habits and haunts in this city: I invented routines and kept to them as a way of dealing with strange places and lengths of time.

I slept late, and after lunch Prasad and I went for walks. We visited bookstores, we went to an uneventful séance at the Brixton Spiritualist Church, we went to museums. He was my guide. He was a solitary man. He knew everyone, but he had no close friends. His loneliness had made him intensely observant, as though this studious scrutiny were a remedy for being lonely. He knew the most obscure details of the paintings in the museums. He would lunge at the pictures, pointing out brushstrokes. “It’s a tiny smear. Now step back. It’s a person — is it a child? Back farther. It’s a man. Look at the hat!”

I could only think how many afternoons he had spent looking at these pictures on his own and discovering these secrets. I liked him, I was grateful for his friendship, and I admired his writing; but his isolation frightened me. I wanted my life to be different.

He grew quieter as these afternoons wore on, and at the end of the day he always asked, “Are you meeting your friend?”

“Yes,” I said. “At that pub I told you about. Why don’t you come along?”

“I hate pubs,” he said, and he made his sour face. It was his look of disgust, as when he talked about sex, or meat, or bad books, or music.

“She’d love to meet you,” I said, although that was not true.

“I am quite happy,” he said. And he looked happy: declining, refusing, withdrawing — such actions gave him pleasure. He sometimes smiled when he said no. “I don’t want to know any new people.”

That was the way it went. I spent my days with Prasad and my nights with Rosamond, one life turning within the other, and both spinning within me. I always met Rosamond at the Museum Tavern and we always drank too much and always took a taxi back to her flat in Victoria. Before dawn I got up groggily and wandered the streets until I found a taxi to take me across the river. I never saw her building in daylight, and probably would not have recognized it if I had. We always spoke of going to movies or plays, but we never went.

We made love recklessly, like strangers — mishearing every cry. Rosamond groaned and sighed and fought back; and when I relented she encouraged me, startling me with certain words. This prim blonde English girl with her interesting job and her dainty way of drinking, would take off her pretty dress and pretend to be a whore. Plunging blindly on in the darkness of her room, I was almost convinced. She loved it when I told her she was hungrier than any whore that I had ever known.

Afterwards, when we lay panting for breath, I thought of Prasad. “This sex thing is important to you,” he had said. “You young chaps. All that libido.” And once in a matter-of-fact voice he said, “I’ve got a very low and unreliable charge.”

It was a week before I realized that Rosamond had what she called flatmates — there were three other young women in this large apartment, and each had her own bedroom. One of them was Philippa. We returned one night to find Philippa in the kitchen with a young man. I felt we had interrupted them in something very tender.

“Andrew, I’d like you to meet my fiancé.”

The formal word surprised me and made me feel faintly indecent.

His name was Jeremy. He was in advertising. He said, “You Americans have some super ideas,” and seemed very nice and a bit shy.

Philippa said, “Howlett’s could do with some good advertising ideas. Roger thinks book promotion is vulgar.”

“Michael says he’ll never be a really first-rate publisher because he’s too much of a gentleman.”

This conversation continued for a while, and I listened and said nothing. But I was thinking: They are living in the world, generating ideas, publishing books, making money, thinking up advertising slogans, working from day to day and solving problems. Nothing they did or said had anything to do with me. I pretended I had a job, I said I was a writer; but really I was simply living in Africa, waiting for something to happen to me.