Paul Theroux - My Secret History

“Let’s jig-jig, then we’ll go to a nightclub,” I said, and slipped my hand under her dress.

“You are a monkey,” she said.

“Yes. I am a monkey.”

“Tell me you love me.”

“I love you,” I said, and I thought: I am not real — this is playing, this is fun.

“I love you, habibi .” She kissed me, and then licked my face. She stood up and giggled and took her dress off, and folded it carefully on the sofa so that it wouldn’t wrinkle. She was wearing a red slip, edged with lace that I had given her, and a pair of red shoes that were scuffed from all her walking. She yawned, twisting her slender body inside the flimsy slip, and I reached out for her. She dodged my hands and hurried into the bedroom on her clacking shoes.

Not then but later as she was leaving the bedroom to go to the toilet, she opened the door and paused and looked back at me. In the light from the hall she looked lovely — delicate and black, like a kitten, on her tiptoes. She said in English, “I am coming just now”—to reassure me that she wasn’t running away — and I felt my desire for her returning in me, and thought: I am happy.

We made love again, and she was like a cat, biting my neck, clawing my back, and thrashing, weeping in her orgasm, until finally she shuddered and lay still.

“I am not finished,” I said.

“What do you want?” she said calmly.

I told her.

“Do you love me?”

“I love you, habibi.”

She smiled and pushed me down tenderly.

After that, we went dancing at the Gardenia, until I was too tired to move. I dropped her at her house — just a hut near the Indian beauty parlor where she worked.

“I have no money,” she whispered.

I gave her some, pretending to be drunker than I was. And this isn’t real either, I thought.

The days passed. I went to my office and dictated letters to Veronica. I wrote my articles. She typed them. Mr. Wangoosa asked me about students and plans. “Everything’s in the pipeline,” I said. Nothing was in the pipeline, but each day had its events.

The parrot woke me with its squawks when Jackson uncovered its cage. Then I had breakfast — tea and papaya, and now and then Jackson fried me an egg. I read the Uganda Argus in my office, and at eleven went to the Senior Common Room for a coffee with the other faculty members. Back to my office, to sit and look at the herons, until lunchtime, usually at The Hindoo Lodge, with Neogy and Desai. If we had a curry we always went to the panwallah afterwards, and I walked home with a wedge of pan in my mouth, and spitting betel juice along Kampala Road. After a nap I went to the office again and answered the phone. “I’m dealing with it.” “I’m studying the file.” “It’s in the pipeline.” And then teatime flowed into sundowner time at the Staff Club, and I drank beer — often with Rashida — until I was drunk. I love you, habibi , we said.

Saturdays were simpler. I shopped at Yung Hok’s, and then had a curry in town and drank all afternoon, until Rashida finished work. Then we danced and made love and slept until noon on Sunday, when the London papers went on sale at Shah’s. One Sunday I read about the demonstrations in London and saw pictures of the angry students. I understood their anger, but I hated the unanimity of the mob. Rashida was fascinated by their heavy coats and hats, their beards and scarves. That Sunday, like all the rest, we spent the afternoon in the Botanical Gardens, and we finished the day in bed.

The bush-baby returned. It scratched on the screen and seemed to plead for food. I gave it fruit — soft melons and drooping bananas — and it was always eager for more. It clung to the window. I went on feeding it, but I never let it in. What would it do inside my room?

Rashida had no name for it except nyama , which meant meat or animal and was interchangeable. She was nyama , and so was I.

I kept my office hours; clocked in, clocked out, and drank, and made love to Rashida. I wrote my Yung Hok novel in my office, because there was no other work to do until the students came back. I could not imagine being happier. Kampala was a lovely place, of yellow-plaster shops under leafy trees; a small town scattered across seven rounded hills.

I read Robinson Crusoe , and felt it was like my life. I read Tarzan and felt the same. I read Victory and The Secret Sharer . I was the hero of every book I read.

I did not envy anyone, or want anyone else’s life. I had everything I wanted. I could only imagine someone envying me. But I felt I was unlike anyone else on earth — not better, but different — and that, having just realized that, I had just begun to live. So my whole life was ahead of me. I was twenty-six years old.

Rashida laughed when I asked her about her plans for next week: the future hardly existed for her. Her laughter was genuine. It was absurd to contemplate the future. Her fatalism absolved me, and it took away all her questions.

But she was particular about her appearance — very conscious of her shoes and her dress. Her hair was always done — the other girls at work experimented on her. She mocked me for wearing sneakers with a suit, or a T-shirt with a sports jacket.

“You dress like an African in the bush,” she would say, looking scornful.

Only appearances mattered. It was so easy to forget how much people cared about fashions in Uganda. If you wore the wrong clothes you were conspicuous. But this also made life simple. I had to remind myself that I was no more than a white man to anyone here — most of all to the other whites. So I kept all my secrets. I had a disguise that no one in Africa could crack: a white face.

One of those nights when Rashida laughed at my mismatched clothes we went to see Thunderball , a James Bond movie, at the Majestic. Rashida loved James Bond, and was thrilled by the fires and explosions and speeding cars in the movie. Afterwards we drifted to the Gardenia, and danced among the prostitutes and drunken men. Later, walking down Kampala Road I heard an inhuman shriek — like a monkey that had caught fire. It was an Indian boy being cornered by an angry African, Rashida said— “Muhindi .” But she herself must have been part Indian — one of those in-between people in East Africa to whom no rules applied except the code of Islam. For a woman this meant obedience and prayers and no alcohol, though I never saw her pray.

The Indian’s shrieks seemed to excite her. She hurried me to my apartment and took off her dress. She kissed me, and struggled, encouraging me. She had an eager way of touching me all over with her fingertips, and when she was most passionate I could feel the frantic bones beneath her flesh.

“Do you love me?”

“Yes. I love you.”

And then she gasped, and devoured me.

“I do not want to go home,” she said, afterwards. She was breathing hard, her eyes were bright.

There were two single beds, pushed together. We lay in the one nearer the window, where I always saw the bush-baby.

“I want to sleep here.”

With that, she began to snore softly. She smelled of her hut, its dirt floor and its dog; of perfume and sweat and hair-spray.

I woke to pandemonium — screams and alarms, car alarms, burglar alarms, a riot of bells and beeps. At first I felt I had caused it all, but I could not get out of bed to find out. The room seemed to twist in the darkness, the walls were brightly streaked from the lights flashing outside — what strange emergency was this, or was it a nightmare? I thought the room was going to fall on me. The gray ceiling whitened and seemed to ripple and bend towards me.

It was not a dream. It was an earth tremor, and it set off every alarm in the city. I lay there after the minute or so of the earth’s movement and my room’s twistings. I sweated and listened to the sirens. It had all passed, but I was afraid when I thought of it and how we might have died like that. I stayed awake, scarcely able to breathe. Rashida did not stir. It was Sunday. She slept until noon.