Paul Theroux - My Secret History

He wanted to reminisce. He wasn’t even thirty-five, and he was looking backwards.

I said, “Which bar near the museum?”

“Waste of time,” he said. “Have a drink, Andy.”

“I’ve got one, thanks.”

I don’t want to spend another night in this place, I thought.

Potter said, “Did you see Festus following Alma out the door?” He smacked his lips. “I can see him driving his hand smartly up her jumper.”

Nor did I want to ponder that.

“I think I’ll go down to the jazz club,” I said.

Potter frowned. “I might as well go with you.”

We went together in my car. The bar didn’t have a name, but it was easy to spot — all the cars, all the music and noise. It was Dixieland music, and the bar looked like a little roadhouse anywhere in the world. We parked under a thorn tree and pushed through the crowd on the veranda — they were all talking about the earth tremor, what it had felt like, what they had thought it was. They had the tipsy hysteria of survivors, congratulating themselves that they were still alive.

At the bar Potter said, “Can’t even get a bloody drink.”

I saw a very pretty blonde, about twenty or so, talking to a big bald man on a settee against a wall. The man got up and went into the other room. I said to myself, Oh well.

I went over and sat down next to the blonde. She smiled at me, but more in surprise than in welcome.

“Hello,” I said, and just saying that single word convinced me that I was drunk. “How about that earthquake — amazing huh?”

She sighed. She said with feeling, “It frightened me rigid. Everyone thinks it was so funny. I hated it.”

I wanted her to say more — it was what I wanted to hear. To encourage her I said, “Hey, I was scared shitless.”

“You’re an American,” she said.

“How did you know that?”

She smiled again, and then laughed softly.

I said, “Are you with anyone tonight?”

“Yes. He’s just gone to the loo.”

I said, “Then listen carefully. Meet me on the steps of the library at six-thirty tomorrow. Okay?”

She nodded, because the big bald man was approaching with a look of alertness on his face and that same tension was visible on his scalp, too. I excused myself and ducked out, amazed at my boldness.

On the way back, Potter said, “What did I tell you? Waste of time.”

I saw her through a break in the hedge, and I lingered because I was so relieved. She was sitting on the low steps of the library, smoking a cigarette. She did not have the thoughtful and vexed expression of a person waiting for a stranger, but rather she looked contented, with light on her face, the last bright sunshine before the sun dropped beneath the trees. In that moment before we met I had the irrational thought that we knew each other and were friends. Of course it wasn’t true. It was a good feeling though — happiness and flickering hope. She was smiling.

She stood up and stamped on her cigarette when she saw me crossing the road. With the sun in her hair and in her summer dress she was very pretty. She was nearly as tall as me. She looked confident, and it was only when she spoke that I realized she was shy — but shy in an English way, watchful and formal and a little hesitant.

“Shall we get a drink somewhere?” I had asked her, trying not to stare at her.

And she was saying, Oh, yes — That’s fine — Wherever you say.

I said, “What about the Veranda?”

It was a bar that adjoined the Speke Hotel.

“Isn’t that expensive?” she said, and smiled again.

I was touched, because it wasn’t expensive at all, but just another bar in a town that was full of them.

“You’re a student,” I said. Students were always thinking about money and economizing in bewildering ways.

“Yes. I’m getting a Dip Ed.”

“And what are you going to do with it?”

“Go into the bush and teach,” she said, with such eager independence that I felt excluded and already a bit abandoned.

At the Veranda we found a table under the trees, which had strings of lights in their branches. They were flame trees, and a blossom plopped on the table as soon as we sat down.

“Maybe I should wear it in my hair,” she said, and picked it up and fixed it over her ear. She looked exotic.

Then she glanced into her compact mirror and frowned. “God, I look stupid!” She clawed it out of her hair.

The waiter brought us our drinks. She sipped hers and seemed detached and appreciative. I guzzled mine out of nervousness and said, “I didn’t think you’d be there.”

“I didn’t think I would either,” she said. “I’m fussy about being picked up.”

“You must be. I mean”—I was still guzzling—“you let me pick you up.”

“I had other plans but they fell through,” she said.

There was not the trace of a smile on her lips.

“Really?” I said. “That bald guy? Was he busy?”

“He’s actually very nice. He’s an anthropologist, studying the Bwamba. He’s frightfully het up about their circumcision ceremonies.”

“So you were going to meet him, were you?”

She laughed and said, “Don’t listen to me. I didn’t have any other plans. I went to the dentist today and had a tooth pulled. To tell you the truth I didn’t think I was going to make it to the library. But I’m glad I did.” She took another sip of her drink. “I feel better already.”

“I was glad to see you.”

“You mean that, don’t you?” She touched my hand, but casually, as though in a reflex, like touching wood for luck.

She inhaled the fragrance of the flowers around us and said how happy she was to be here.

“In this bar?”

“In Africa.”

“Why is it that people in Africa are always talking about being in Africa?” I said. She did not reply, so I went on, “It might be nice to live somewhere else, in order to talk about something else.”

“I came here to teach,” she said. It sounded like a reproach, but it was the strength of her conviction that made it seem so. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

I knew exactly how she felt: it was the way I had felt in Nyasaland, my first year.

She loved being in Africa. Very well, so did I. And so I chattered and boasted, trying to impress her, because I wanted to see her again. I was the acting director of the Institute, I said. I ran the place, I had eighty students and five part-time lecturers. I didn’t tell her that everyone else had quit and gone home, that I was the only person left to do the job and as soon as a qualified African applied I would be replaced. I told her that we had regional centers all over Uganda and that I would shortly be setting off to visit them.

“I’d love that kind of job,” she said. “One that involved traveling up-country.”

“You’re welcome to come along.”

“You don’t need my help,” she said.

She was very firm — I admired her for it. But I was also wondering how it was possible to tempt her.

I could see that she had a definite objective — being in Africa, teaching in the bush, being independent. She was a free spirit, and she knew what she wanted. I could not be part of her plans. My job was here, in Kampala. And I had no other plans.

I was careful in my questions. I did not want to be disappointed by any of her replies. She said she was a Londoner; she had gone to Oxford; she liked Wordsworth and D. H. Lawrence; she was a socialist, her father worked for the Water Board, she had acted in various plays — Rosalind in As You Like It in a student production. This was just chat; I did not want to go any deeper and discover that she had a lover.

“Please let me pay my share,” she said, when the waiter brought us the bill.