Paul Theroux - My Secret History

She meant it — it was another example of her insistence on being independent. I was impressed but a little uneasy — I wasn’t used to women paying their way.

I said, “Do you want to see the best view in Kampala?”

She seemed puzzled but said yes, and I drove her to Wireless Hill. We parked on the edge of the summit and looked out at all the lights. This hill was a place for furtive lovers who had cars — there were two other cars parked nearby, and people embracing on the front seats of them. The lights were scattered in the bowl of the town, and behind the mosque and the cathedral and the illuminated mansions and monuments was the impenetrable blackness of the Ugandan forest on one side, and Lake Victoria in the distance, under a warm and pockmarked moon.

I kissed her, and we embraced innocently for a while, just holding on, as though consoling each other. I wanted more but I didn’t know what to say.

Finally I said, “I really like you.”

“You hardly know me.”

“I know enough.”

Then she relented. “I’m glad you like me,” she said. “I like you too.”

As she said it I saw that the car parked next to mine was Graham Godby’s old Austin. Inside, Alma Godby’s head was jammed against the rear window. An African with her, smiling with effort, his eyes popping, I saw very clearly was Festus Okello. They looked as though they were beating time to music with their wagging heads. But I knew better, and just as Alma’s head seemed to flatten against the glass and slip down, I turned away.

It was embarrassing because it was predictable, the Kampala custom of getting laid on Wireless Hill. It was always adulterous expatriates, and I saw there was something selfish and routine about it. I had parked there many times in just that way — because this was where you took the person you couldn’t take home; it was more secret than a borrowed apartment or the little hotel in Bombo that we called the knocking-shop. This was where an adulterer took someone to be safe from his mistress. It was one of the darker and more desperate places. I had once found that thrilling, but when I saw Alma and Festus in that trembling car I became flustered. It seemed to me a bad beginning for us.

I said, “I like you so much that”—thinking fast—“I don’t want to sleep with you.”

She was silent. Then she snorted. “What a strange thing to say. God, you’re funny!”

“I mean, I’m happy being with you,” I said, hurriedly. “I mean, for now. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m very interested in sex.”

She was looking out of the front window and smiling at the lights.

“That’s very reassuring.”

She had an English person’s devastating knack for balancing a statement between irony and sincerity.

“Sometime we must try it,” she said. “But it might help if you knew my name.”

Her name was Jennifer — Jenny; though she didn’t tell me until the next day. It was her way of teasing me and also of making me wait. This time I waited for her, at the swimming pool. She said she swam most days.

“Don’t you?”

“I can’t do it here,” I said. “It gives me the creeps to stand around in my bathing suit while Africans hang on the fence watching. Look at them.”

There were five ragged Africans clinging to the chainlink fence that surrounded the pool, and others lay on the grass, looking in. They were there all day, watching the expatriates in the swimming pool, wearing small tight bathing suits, splashing or sunning themselves. The nakedness fascinated the Africans, and the idea of people lying in the sun was such a novelty that the Africans simply gaped, wondering why they didn’t move. Whites in the sun had the torsion and muscularity of snakes, and like snakes the most they did was blink.

I avoided the place usually, though this voyeurism seemed an appropriate African response to whites in Uganda who stared at bare-breasted tribeswomen or Karamojong warriors who never bothered to conceal their thick floppy cocks.

“I give African kids swimming lessons,” Jenny said. “I’ve taught some of the students to swim.”

“I wouldn’t swim here. I’d hate Africans staring at me.”

“That’s just silly. That’s snobbery.”

It was our first disagreement. She was intelligent, logical, and articulate; but I also felt she was wrong.

“You probably dislike swimming.”

“I used to be a lifeguard.”

That night I took her to the Hindoo Lodge. Jenny liked the place — vegetarian food served at communal tables. The waiters were Brahmins, though they wore grubby pajamas. I saw my friends Neogy and Desai and I introduced Jenny. They smiled from a nearby table and watched her eat. It was the only orthodox restaurant in town — water in brass jars, a washroom in back, no knives or forks. Jenny made no fuss, though she had a little difficulty managing the rice with her fingers.

“Those men are staring at me,” she said.

“Because you’re eating with your left hand.”

“So what?”

“You’re suppose to eat with your right hand, and make love with your left.”

“Tell them I’m ambidextrous,” she said.

After that we often ate out — at the Sikh’s, at the Grand Hotel and the Greek’s, at Fatty’s and the Chez Joseph. I introduced her to spending Sunday afternoons strolling at the Botanical Gardens among milling Indians, and usually we had tea afterwards at the Lake Victoria Hotel. I was very happy, except when Jenny said how much she was looking forward to finishing her diploma course and her posting up-country. She spoke enthusiastically of the isolation of teaching school in the bush, in places like Gulu or Arua, or even more distant towns like Pakwach and Kitgum and Moroto, haunts of naked cattle rustlers with flopping dongs.

I did not want her to go, but I never said so. I said that I might visit her. In the meantime we could spend our time together, if she happened to be free.

“I happen to be free,” she said.

“I have to visit some listening groups,” I said. “Would you like to come along?”

“What’s a listening group?”

“We used to have tutors all over the country, but the government cut our budget. So I organized groups in outlying villages and gave each group a radio. We broadcast lessons to them over Radio Uganda — English, political science, African history, whatever. Every few months I visit the groups to see whether any problems have arisen.”

“Where do you go?”

“Everywhere.”

The morning Jenny and I left Kampala was one of the happiest in my life. It was sunny, and we raced under a blue sky, going west towards Kabale, past the rivers and the swamps that were choked with feathery papyrus, and the smoky villages that lay under scarred baobab trees, and the plains of Ankole where there were giraffes and gazelles. We stopped in Mbarara for lunch at the little hotel. As we ate, a Land-Rover drew up — some tourists and guides in safari clothes, hacking jackets and broad-brimmed hats and big boots; they were hunters, and very excited to be in this apparent wilderness. After lunch we sped off again towards Kigezi District, where the road twisted around the low hills and volcanoes.

I had never traveled these roads with another person. I had always gone alone. It was wonderful to be with this woman. We talked about books we liked. We took turns quoting poetry we had memorized. She recited Wordsworth and T. S. Eliot; I did Baudelaire and Robert Frost. We chanted “Ozymandias.” We sang folk songs, and when it grew dark in the winding roads of Kisoro, we sang Christmas carols.

It came upon the midnight clear

That glorious song of old …

We arrived at the government rest house at ten o’clock after a twelve-hour drive, and took turns in the bathroom. The dining room was empty. The African waiter brought us steamed bananas and stew, and bottles of Primus Beer smuggled from the Congo — the border was nearer than Kampala. The insects were loud. We sat on the veranda, where it was cool enough to wear a sweater. I could see the lamplights in the huts through the trees and could smell the smoke of the cooking fires.