Paul Theroux - My Secret History

I wrote this information on a scrap of paper. Popatlal Hirjee gouged the names and the date on the inner surface of the rings. Hers said Andre 4-Aug-68 .

“Bariki,” the goldsmith said. Blessings on you.

I drove one last time to Umoja in Kenya, and picked up Jenny and her two suitcases. On our way back to Kampala we stopped at Eldoret for the night. Two days later we woke in each other’s arms.

“We’re getting married today,” I said. “I love you.”

To wake up and say that seemed reckless and wonderful.

We went together to the Kampala Registry Office. The contract was read to us by an African in a three-piece suit. Our witnesses were my Indian friends, Neogy and Desai, and their extravagant signatures appeared on our marriage certificate. We gave a party at the Staff Club and before it was over we drove towards Fort Portal, stopping for our first night at Mubende at the rest house near the witch tree, and the next day at The Mountains of the Moon Hotel, where we spent a happy week.

The night we arrived back in Kampala the bush-baby appeared at the window — not looking for food, not even restless, but simply watching. He returned on successive nights, and over the next few weeks, with his large eyes staring in, my life changed.

Jenny said that Hamid would have to go. We couldn’t have a parrot and a child in the same house — and how could I stand the damned bird gnawing my books and shitting on my furniture. And Jackson went too when Jenny discovered that he hid garbage in kitchen drawers; I hadn’t been able to break him of the habit. We hired Mwezi — her name meant moon — a bucktoothed woman who made scones and who longed for the baby to arrive. The house was cleaned, perhaps for the first time since I had moved in.

The bush-baby watched; it asked for nothing more. It came and went, and was no longer a portent. I had my own bush-baby now. I loved waking beside her, I eagerly left work and hurried home to her. My habits changed. I seldom went to the Staff Club. Jenny was the only person I needed. We went out together — eating, drinking; sometimes we went dancing. I bought presents for her — an ivory carving, a silver buckle from Zanzibar, some kitenge cloth. We took long trips to West Nile and Kitgum to visit my student listening groups. I became very calm.

And my novel came alive. It was about Yung Hok, the Chinese grocer — the only Chinese shopkeeper in the country, the ultimate minority, a single alien family. I had once seen him as vulnerable, but now that I was married I saw that he was strong and that he was part of a family — he had a wife and children I had not noticed before. He wasn’t a symbol of anything. He was himself, an unusual man. He was something new in my experience, and he made me see the country in a new way. This made him vivid, and so I was able to write about him. For my spirit and inspiration I silently thanked Jenny. I worked in the spare bedroom, delighted that Jenny was nearby. I had no reason to think about leaving Africa now. I was at last home.

At about this time I saw an item in the Uganda Argus entitled AMERICAN WRITER DIES. It was Jack Kerouac. He was forty-seven. Years ago he had seemed old to me. Now he seemed young — much too young to die. The item did not say how. I thought about him, and how I had read On the Road , and I could not remember whether I had liked it. I continued writing my own novel.

I always had lunch at home now. Mwezi usually cooked it, and after we had sent her away we made love in the afternoon and had a nap before I went back to work.

One of these afternoons, waking from the deep and sudden sleep produced by energetic sex, I looked across the pillow and saw Jenny turning away. She was murmuring, trying to stifle her sobs. The bush-baby appeared at the window — listening.

“What’s wrong?”

She said, “Everything!” and began to sob out loud.

“Please tell me,”

I said, horrified to see her so distraught.

“Isn’t it obvious?” It was not obvious to me.

She said, “I feel miserable.” Her crying was not dry breathless hysteria or panic; it was slow painful sobs like waves breaking.

What made this so awful was that I was so happy — until that moment. I had never been so happy: I had told her that many times. I told her again, and this time it made her scream.

“Of course you’re happy!” she said. Her face was wet, and the fact that she was naked made her crying seem worse. I could see misery in her whole body.

I got up and handed her my bathrobe, because I couldn’t bear to look.

She said, “You haven’t had to quit your job. You have work, you have money. I’ve given up everything — even my name. I never wanted this to happen. I have nothing to do.”

It surprised me. I never imagined that anyone would object to having nothing to do. Why would anyone want to work if they didn’t have to? What she said baffled me so completely I did not know how to argue against it.

I said, “We take trips, don’t we?”

“You do all the driving!”

“I know the roads,” I said. “I know the shortcuts.”

“I can learn. I’ve driven in Africa. I speak Swahili,” she said. “I’m not stupid. I have an Oxford degree — and you made me quit my job.”

She became quieter and that worried me more, because she had been sobbing in grief, and this seemed to turn to anger.

“Now I’m just like all these expatriate wives I used to pity and despise. I’m a memsahib — you made me a memsahib. I stay at home and wait for you.”

I wanted to say You’re lucky , but I didn’t dare. I disliked her for making me fearful of saying it. But she was lucky, I was convinced of that. It seemed perverse of her to be so unhappy. But then didn’t pregnant women get fits of depression like this and wasn’t this all attributable to that? The bush-baby clinging to the window grille seemed to see it that way.

Jenny complained a bit more, then described what she hated about being a memsahib, and she said that she hated dealing with Mwezi. These were mostly irrational grievances and because of that I was able to understand them. She was being cranky.

Then she sat up and said, “I came here to teach Africans.

That was the only thing I wanted. And you put a stop to it.” That was when I lost my temper.

I said, “Teaching Africans what? How to speak English. How to do math. That’s ridiculous. I’m sick of doing it — sick of hearing about it. Half the students here are married and have families, and they pretend they’re schoolboys. They say they want to go abroad and study. They’re lying — they want to get out and never come back. They hate their lives. They want a ticket to England or America. They hate farming. They want to wear suits and neckties. Those girls you were teaching will all end up in a village pounding corn in a wooden mortar. They’ll have ten kids each and a drunken husband. What is the point of teaching anything here except farming?”

“You dislike Africans, I know you do,” Jenny said.

“The only friends I’ve had for more than four years here have been Africans — and some Indians. What you’re saying is bullshit. You don’t know me.”

“You make remarks about them,” she said. “Don’t deny it. When we were in Moroto—”

“You mean, those bare-assed Karamojong? Was I supposed to pretend they weren’t naked? I’m standing there with you and those men and I see four huge salamis swinging back and forth, and so I make a remark about a delicatessen.”

“It was so cruel,” she said. “You could have pretended you didn’t see anything.”

“Oh, God,” I said. By now I was dressed — and I was late for work. “That’s perfect. Pretend you don’t see their dongs. Pretend this is a real city. Pretend they don’t kill each other. Pretend they don’t envy and hate you. Pretend you’re not white. Pretend they’re not staring at your tits. Pretend your teaching is helping the country. Pretend you’re not here to have a grand old time in the bush. Pretend that in a few years there’s going to be a big improvement in Uganda. Pretend the president is not a total asshole as well as a murderer, a torturer—”