Paul Theroux - My Secret History

His name was Mr. Wangoosa. He was a member of one of those churches who believe you are either saved or damned. He was saved; I was damned — he had made that plain enough to me the first time we had met, so I felt no need to be polite to him. He had already consigned my soul to Hell.

He asked me for the list of new students.

I said I didn’t have the list, and thought: What new students?

“I reckon you have masses in the pipeline,” he said.

That was the current expression for being busy. I said, yes, though I did not have anything at all in the pipeline.

I went home for lunch after that, walking slowly in the sunshine and cutting through the heat. Jackson had fried some bananas and made a curry.

He said in Swahili, “I told the cook upstairs about your safari in Europe and what you said about West Africa — that it is no good. He was very excited to hear it.”

“Good,” I said. I was eating, and he was hovering over me. “Do you know there are cockroaches in the kitchen?” I didn’t know the word for roaches — I used the all-purpose word for insects, doodoos .

“I will kill them completely,” he said, making a murderous swipe with his very large hand. “What food do you want to eat for dinner?”

“No dinner tonight, Jackson.”

“Please give me some money,” he said. “Twenty shillings.”

He had broken teeth and bloodshot eyes and a torn shirt and long skinny arms. He crushed the twenty shilling note in his hands and touched it to his forehead.

“That woman Miss Rashida came looking for you,” he said. “I told her you were on safari in Europe. She will come back.”

He left and I lay on the sofa, thinking about Rashida, and how complete this life was: a job, a house, a salary, and friends — even a girlfriend. When I was away I had forgotten it all; and if I had stayed away I might never have remembered that I had a real life here.

There was an Extra Mural class in the afternoon, one that had nothing to do with the Adult Studies Institute. This class had been organized by my predecessor, another acting director. It was called English for Diplomats. The students were all embassy personnel in Kampala — a Greek, a Rwandan, an Egyptian, two Chinese, and the Italian ambassador. It was regarded as a coup to have an ambassador in the class, and as long as he attended we kept it going.

The Chinese were from the People’s Republic, Mr. Chen and Mr. Sung. They wore Mao suits and they hardly spoke a word of English. Mr. Solferini the Italian was a dapper and very courtly man who had lived in Somalia for twenty years. His English was poor but he was rich in gestures. He urged me to go to Somalia. It was a good place for hunting. Mogadishu, he said, and kissed his fingertips. Leopards, wild pigs, rabbits, birds. The rest of the class listened and watched. They were very shy.

Usually we practiced speaking lines of a dialogue that I wrote on the blackboard. Today it was about borrowing money.

“I waant to bowrow zum mooney frem yo, plis,” Mr. Solferini said.

“Da iss da seko tie dis wik you ha as-kid me dat,” Mr. Chen said.

“I nid eet forr an aimairgency,” Mr. Solferini said.

“Emergency,” I said.

“Hay-mergency,” he said.

The rest of the diplomats listened with apprehension, fearful that I would ask them to speak. But everyone took a turn: that was the routine. They did so, stammering, trying to keep their dignity.

After the class Mr. Chen and Mr. Sung lingered and presented me a copy of Volume One of The Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung and a recent issue of China Reconstructs , with a portrait of Mao on the cover.

“Maybe you can teach me to speak Chinese,” I said.

They laughed nervously at this.

“I would like to go to China,” I said.

“China, yes!” They had no idea what I was saying.

When I spoke again they looked panicky, and bowed, and hurried away.

It seemed I was always talking to people who hardly knew English. But I did not mind, and I was often glad of it, because I was able to preserve the monologue in my mind, and remember it. In London, speaking English all the time had tired me and made me lose track of time. It was another world. I had not been real there; and I had just passed through Ghana, and listened in Lagos.

I was happier here. Even the most exotic sights here — the bats, the herons, the Nubians with their teeth knocked out, the Dinkas’ foreheads, which were bumpy with ornamental scars, or the muslim women in their black silk shrouds — were so familiar to me I found them restful. The Ugandan soldiers, always red-eyed and drunk, seemed to me odder and more dangerous. But they kept to their camps and their roadblocks in the bush.

The phone rang. It was the librarian, asking whether I had initialed the acquisition file. I said I was dealing with it. I liked being able to say that meaningless sentence and for the librarian not to care. He was an English homosexual who lived in an apartment block that adjoined mine. He called his African lover his house boy. Like me he was real when he was home.

All day I had been thinking about my articles — one about England, one about Ghana, one about Nigeria. If I had a good thought I could simply embroider upon it. I felt the excitement of having an idea that I had not set down — it was still fluid and provisional, ink that had not yet dried, like my life. I liked living in this temporary way.

When the office was empty and Veronica had gone home I started my England article on her typewriter, and filled a page. Then I put it away. Night had fallen, the bats had flown. Africa smelled differently at night — it was less dusty, and had the damp fragrance of flowers. But it was noisier at night — the screech of insects, the car horns, the shouts. Rafeekee , someone cried, calling his friend.

Rashida was waiting for me at my apartment, sitting on the steps, with her elbows on her knees.

She said, “Your cook said you had come back.”

She spoke in Swahili. She was shy because I had been away, and she always spoke Swahili when she was nervous.

I said, “You look very pretty, habibi.”

She was about seventeen and small, with a funny malicious face and skinny legs. Her lipstick made her look like a tough woman but when it wore off at the end of an evening she looked like a child. Today she was wearing a red dress and high heels and a yellow shawl. Her cheap jewelry jangled and she looked lovely to me. She had large brown eyes and long lashes. She was proud of her Hamitic nose and thin face.

“Are you hungry?”

“I ate some bananas.”

“What about a drink?”

We were still speaking Swahili, but she replied in English, “No beer. I don’t want,” as though to impress Allah with her indignation.

We went inside and Hamid began to squawk, imitating the squeaky door. Rashida called to him— kasuku , parrot.

“How long were you waiting for me?”

She shrugged — didn’t know, didn’t care.

“I want to go dancing,” she said, and then coyly, “No jig-jig.”

“First jig-jig, then dancing.”

She just laughed and twisted her shawl tighter.

I poured her a glass of orange squash, and opened a bottle of beer for myself. Rashida drank in silence, and I distractedly examined the label of the beer bottle, the script of Indian Pale Ale and the emblem of a bell, from the brewery on Lake Victoria. I drank that one and another, glad that I had taken the last of my penicillin at breakfast.

Rashida was playing with the parrot, saying Kasuku, kasuku .

“Come here,” I said, and switched off the light.

She got up shyly and sat beside me on the sofa. The curtains were open and the glimmer from outside was enough light. I hugged Rashida and ran my hands over her and kissed her. She primly kept her hands in her lap, and her knees together, and when I made a move to lift her dress she resisted. I laughed and kissed her again, and was aroused. It was the first time since Ghana that I had had any desire.