Paul Theroux - My Secret History

I went back to my squawking parrot and sat among the books he had gnawed, feeling a paralyzing sadness.

I had always loved being alone, and so departures — no matter whose — left me feeling free, even happy. Parting from someone allowed me to go back to my life — my real life, which was always interesting to me because it was hidden. This secret life was usually peaceful and in my control. It was not a refuge or a hole I crawled into to be still and silent. It was an active thing with noisy habits, and it contained the engine of my writing.

It had been a succession of departures in my life that had made me feel bold — sometimes like a pilgrim and sometimes like an adventurer. I took pleasure in seeing myself as wolfish and slightly disgraceful. I had loved being with Rosamond in London, but I had felt liberated in going away; and the same with Francesca in Accra and Femi in Lagos. In Kampala I had always regarded the prospect of a night with Rashida as exciting, but the next morning I had never wanted her to stay longer, and those afternoons at the Botanical Gardens could be very long. I liked sleeping alone. It was only alone that I had good dreams. Sleeping with a woman often gave me nightmares. I never tried to explain it. It was only that in my life so far I had been happiest when I was alone and had elbow room. I liked to wake up in that same solitude.

But from the moment Jenny left, I missed her. Her train pulled out and I went home like a cripple. I saw Rashida on my way through Wandegeya. She was just leaving the Modern Beauty Hair Salon where she worked, and I recognized her white smock and pulled up next to her.

“Hello habibi . Are you a nurse?”

“Yes, bwana ,” she said, without a missing a beat. “I have some dawa under here”—and she touched her smock. “It is good medicine. It will make you feel strong.”

That was the relationship: corny jokes. I felt friendly towards her but nothing more. She was a person I had once known.

I was too confused to write to Jenny, and when I did my letter was incoherent. It was an attempt to hide my jealousy, my sadness, my loneliness and fear. I simply said I missed her. And I told her how when I was writing it there was a scratching on the window above the bed. I had looked up and seen the big lemur eyes of the bush-baby. He seemed to be appealing to be let in. I gave him a piece of banana, keeping him outside. He seemed sorrowful. I wanted to take him into my arms, and I became tearful as I watched him. That story was true.

Love did not seem the right word to explain how I felt. I was physically sick, I felt weak. I missed Jenny, but I also missed myself — I missed that other person I had been when I was with her. I had not been a tease or a manipulator or a baboon wagging his prong at her. I had wanted to please her. She had made me kind and generous, she had made me patient. I liked myself better behaving that way, and because she had left I had lapsed back into being the other person. No, it was not love but rather a kind of grief — I missed her and this other self. She was the daylight that had showed me my secrets, and most of them weren’t worth keeping.

I never lost this grief, but along with it I was also angry that she had left me. Then the anger passed and self-pity replaced it. I sat in my room listening to the mutters of my parrot. In my office I went through the motions of working; and I hardly spoke, because all my sorrow was in my voice.

People said, “Are you all right?”

They knew I wasn’t.

When I said I was fine they knew I was lying, because of the sadness in my protest. I was sure that they talked about me all the time in the Staff Club.

They were too hearty with me. They made a great effort to be friendly. Their effort made me feel worse.

Crowbridge said, “Are you leaving?”

I shook my head. “What gave you that idea?”

“Someone mentioned the University of Papua-New Guinea the other day and you went all quiet.”

People in Uganda were always looking for a new place to go, permanent and pensionable jobs in the tropics — warm disorderly countries which offered good terms of service. This university in Port Moresby was the current one.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.

“Excellent,” Crowbridge said. “There’s a good chap.”

He bought me a drink. I drank slowly, sadly; I didn’t have the energy to get drunk. I simply grew sadder.

“How’s your Nubian?” Crowbridge said.

Then I felt much worse, and I left without saying anything, knowing that I had made myself conspicuous and pitiful.

At home I managed to make myself drunk and wrote a fifteen-page letter to Jenny, gasping as I scribbled and finally collapsing over it. When I read it the next morning I tore it up. It was a harangue. It contained phrases from a book I had been reading, Kafka’s Letters to Milena —morbid love letters. My own would have frightened her.

It would have been convenient, I thought, if we’d had a mutual friend to tell her about me: Andy loves you — He’s really suffering — He’s in terrible shape — He’s quite a good writer, you know — And he’s director of the Institute — only twenty-six! — But God, we’re worried about him — He’s never been like this — We hardly recognize him — He hasn’t been the same since you left.

I could not say such things myself. I didn’t want to excite her pity. I wanted her to love me in return and for us to talk about the future.

In my loneliness, feeling abandoned, I made plans for both of us — marrying Jenny, having children, getting a job in Hong Kong or Singapore. I wanted to get away from Africa, which now made me feel like a failure — and Africa was my rival for Jenny’s love. I also resented her, because she had destroyed my love of solitude, invaded my secret life; she had made me need her.

I wrote her friendly letters and suppressed my fear. If she rejected me I knew I would leave. I applied — just to be sure I had an alternative — for a job in Kuala Lumpur and one in Oulu, at the University of Northern Finland.

Three weeks went by. My impatience affected me like a fever. I felt ill, I stayed in bed, and the bush-baby appeared at the window like a mocking demon. One night I went to the Staff Club, not because I wanted to but because I knew that if I didn’t I would become the subject of further gossip. I found the energy to get drunk, and when I went home I burst into tears. I realized that I was moved by the thought of myself alone, drunken and blubbering. I had never wallowed like that before — and my pleasure in the pathetic melodrama horrified me.

One day I thought of killing myself, but when I went through step by step — the locked door, the note, the rope, the noose, the kicked-over chair — I laughed and embraced life and felt vitalized by the thought that I would never kill myself.

I might kill Jenny, though. I’d never leave her, I’ll never stop loving her. But I might kill her .

When she wrote at last, four weeks after she left Kampala, I felt worse, not better.

It was a postcard, a picture of a goofy Kikuyu man with varnished-looking skin and dents in his face. He was carrying a leather shield and a curio-shop spear. The message said, Dear Andy, Some settling in problems (no water!) but the girls are sweet and the other teachers very helpful. I have my own house and inherited the previous tenant’s cook. Very hectic at the moment, term starts Mon., but I’ll write again when I get a chance! Love, Jenny .

Three things bothered me about the note — that it was short and breezy, that it made no reference to the six letters I had written, that it did not invite my affection. I hated exclamation marks. She was fine, she was happy; and knowing that made me miserable.