Paul Theroux - My Secret History

“God, I love this place.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that,” Jenny said.

I loved the smell of woodsmoke, the clayey odor of the dirt road, the racket of insects, the sound of a jangling bike and its feeble bell, the fragrance of the jacaranda after rain, and the way the giraffes loped when they hurried, the great hot distances of the day and even the simpler evocative smells of the rest house, the varnish and floor wax and cooking bananas.

“Maybe we should turn in,” I said. “We have to drive again tomorrow.”

In our room there were two single beds. Jenny had thrown some clothes on one, and I had done the same with the other — so we had each staked a claim.

But after I turned the light out I said, “Can I get into bed with you?”

She was silent. Was she asleep so soon?

“I promise to behave myself,” I said. “I just want to snuggle next to you.”

“Okay,” she said. I could tell from the way she said it that she was smiling.

Her skin felt damp and warm in her cotton nightgown. She was perspiring slightly. She went to sleep and began to breathe softly in a dreamy way. I could not sleep. My heart was pounding. I was awake, with wide-open eyes.

I touched her, and this woke her. She drew away.

She said, “You promised not to.”

As I kissed her and lifted her legs and parted them she said “No,” but the sound she made when I entered her was a sigh like a yes.

* * *

I saw my class, and then we set off. It seemed an empty land. There were few people in between the towns — no villages, only animals. We drove in the darkness of the high forest and then broke through to the plains. In one place there was a herd of elephants. We tried to count them, but got to sixty and lost count, distracted by the crested cranes and the wildebeest nearer the road. We said nothing about last night.

“Did you know a wildebeest is a gnu?” Jenny said.

She also knew Grant’s gazelle from Thomson’s gazelle, and the names of the various thorn trees. She told me that elephants grieved when one in a herd died — they actually mourned and trumpeted and sometimes tried to bury the carcass.

We continued north to my listening group at Katwe, where there was a salt lake, and to Lake Edward, which was full of hippos, some up to their nostrils in water and others grazing and snorting and shitting — whirring the lumps with their tails, like shit hitting a fan. We went past the copper mine and the deserted railway station at Kilembe, and we entered the region of tea estates — still there were no people, only the lovely dense tea bushes. It was sundown when we reached Fort Portal. We stayed at The Mountains of the Moon Hotel and made love again.

We crossed the mountains on a narrow road through the Ituri Forest. It was shadowy and damp in the forest and we were pestered by pygmies when we stopped to rest. These people were smaller than the ferns and they hid and threw stones at the car when we refused to take their picture. When I blew the car horn they vanished, thinking I was going to drive into them. I was glad to have Jenny with me, in this forest. I realized that I could carry on for a long time — as long as we were together I had no reason to go back. We slept in each other’s arms in a narrow bed at Bundibugyo, and a few days later we drove north to Gulu, where she had asked to go. The road turned from mud to sand, zebras watched us change a tire, and we were stopped at a roadblock by toothless Acholi soldiers with shiny faces and wicked-looking rifles. They asked for bribes; I paid up — and Jenny was chastened by the casual menace of those men. Gulu was hot, and its only sound was that of locusts howling. The thin trees were penetrated by the sun, so there was no shade. Hawks hovered over grass fires, occasionally dropping on mice and snakes that were put to flight by the flames.

It was only ten days of travel, but at the end of it we knew each other well — so well that when we arrived back in Kampala I kissed her and said, “I love you.”

I had always felt that love was a word that had been worn smooth by overuse, and yet she seemed slightly shocked when I said it.

She did not say that she loved me. Instead she used fond and oblique expressions that tantalized me. If she had been American I would have known what she meant — if she had been African it would have been much plainer to me. But she was English, and the language could be as maddening and ungraspable as smoke. I meant a lot to her, she said. She was as happy as she had ever been with anyone, she said. The trip had been tremendous fun, she said. She had been desolated by having to come back to town, she said. She would miss me enormously …

I wanted more. There was no more. She was going away. Within a few weeks she passed her exams and had her diploma. She delightedly told me that she had been posted to a bush school in the highlands of Kenya. Wasn’t it absolutely super?

I said yes, because she seemed so pleased. But I was sick at the thought of it.

“How could the Ugandan Ministry of Education send you to Kenya?”

“I was sent by the British Ministry of Overseas Development,” she said. “It’s a three-year scheme.”

It was the first I had heard of it. She was part of a high-powered economic aid program; but she had never mentioned it. It was partly that she never boasted and seldom talked about herself; and also that I had done most of the talking.

“I know the white highlands,” I said, and she winced. But that was how they were known even with Jomo Kenyatta as president. “It could have been worse, I guess. They might have sent you to Zanzibar.”

“I’d love to go to Zanzibar,” she said.

I found her enthusiasm very discouraging and wanted to say What about me?

“What if you got married?” I asked. “What would the ministry say?”

“It’s just for single people — couples aren’t as flexible. Anyway, I have no plans.”

Before she left we spent four days at Lake Nabugabo, where there was no bilharzia, and so we could swim. We lived like castaways in a cozy hut, cooking our meals on a wood fire and drawing water from a well. I paddled her in a dugout canoe to the leper colony on the island — we had brought them sheets to be made into bandages. We gathered wild flowers and pressed them into Jenny’s book. We made love. And driving back to Kampala she said it had all been tremendous fun.

She cried when she left for Nairobi. She took the overnight train. On the platform there were Indians, Africans, British, refugees, Greeks from the Congo, Belgians from Rwanda, people going only as far as Tororo or Jinja, or nine miles down the line; other people leaving for good, with everything they owned, and their servants watching them like orphans. Everyone was saying goodbye differently.

“Don’t be sad, honey.”

“I’m not sad,” she said. “I’m so excited to be starting I can’t control myself.”

“I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you, too”—but would she have said that if I hadn’t prodded her?

“I’ll write to you.”

She said, “I’m terrible about answering letters.”

I hated that.

“Can I visit you?”

“It’s so far!” she said, but in a surprised way, as though the thought had not occurred to her that I might want to visit her.

The whistle blew. A bell was rung on the platform. It was a steam train — noisy, drawing attention to itself, and it gathered speed slowly. No other vehicle on earth seemed to depart so reluctantly or with such self-importance.

I walked beside it, feeling forlorn, and when the train finally left it took a part of me with it. I felt physically incomplete, as if I’d suffered a stroke — part of my body wasn’t working. For the first time in my life I understood why lovers always talked about their heart. It seemed the most fragile part of me, and I could feel it squeezing below my throat.