Paul Theroux - My Secret History

Why does this story happen in this macabre way? I could not answer the question, so I thought of another story, about an American in London. He stood at the window, looking out at the street —always the same opening sentence. I knew everything about this man, that he was my age, that he had been in Vietnam, that he was alone. Looking out the window, he saw a street-sweeper being bullied by a young man. What made this particularly awful was that the streetsweeper’s son witnessed his father being humiliated. The American followed the bully through south London, and picked a fight with him and killed him. The story was the price he had to pay for doing that: a long story that I saw in vivid scenes.

I did not stop in Moscow any longer than it took to cross the city in wet snow and get a Polish visa. I boarded the next train and went straight through to the Hook of Holland, seeing everything in a blur, and reading the whole time to hold myself together.

My book was a collection of Chekhov’s stories; I had started it in Russia, and now I was on the last story, “Lady With Lap-dog.” It was the progress of a love affair, and it appalled me with its truthfulness. I kept reading, and stopping; reading, and stopping. When I finished it I sat silently in the train, holding the paperback in my hands. I read it again. I read it four times. Each time I was drawn and stalled by the same paragraph, which began, As he was speaking, he kept thinking that he was going to meet his mistress and not a living soul knew about it. He led a double life, one for all who were interested to see … and another which went on in secret .

It was something I understood perfectly, but it was a way in which I had ceased to live. I had one life now — I had Jenny and Jack. I had no mistress. I had been happy at home, which was why I had felt secure enough to leave for such a long time on this trip: I had a home to return to. But the description in the story was such an accurate description of how I had once felt. And by a kind of strange concatenation of circumstances, possibly quite by accident, everything that was important, interesting, essential, everything about which he was sincere and did not deceive himself, everything that made up the quintessence of his life, went on in secret …

Not anymore, I thought. I had rid myself of my secrets; my life was simple now, and I shared it with my wife and son. But still the paragraph nagged at me. He judged others by himself, did not believe what he saw, and was always of the opinion that every man’s real and most interesting life went on in secret, under cover of night .

Not mine; but crossing the Channel I became sad, and the sadness stayed with me. It was deeper than a mood — it was more like a physical condition. I could not bear to read the story anymore. I kept having nightmares that I was still in Siberia.

After all that time I was very eager to see her. I also wanted to be seen. Was I the same? How did I look? I needed someone to tell me I was all right. That was one. of the anxieties of coming home — the fear of someone saying You’ve changed, you’re different , and looking closely at your face and frowning.

I had been married to Jenny for five years, but traveling for nine — since Africa; so the travel overlapped the marriage, and circumscribed it. It was not a routine, nothing annual or planned far in advance. It was an impulsive going-away, whenever I could. It was not an escape, but a means of concentrating my mind and being alone. It helped my writing. I found it extremely peaceful to travel. And it gave me ideas. It seemed to suit Jenny, a modern woman, whose idea of freedom was a job. She knew that to me travel was air.

Marriage made travel possible by giving me a corresponding sense of peace: I was not a searcher, looking for another home; I was a wanderer, interested in everything and always intending to return to my little family. For me, nothing was better than arriving back home. I was reassured by the solidity and the dullness, by the smells and the pictures on the wall, and by the familiar simplicities. Most of all I was reassured by the faces of the people I loved, Jenny and our son Jack.

I arrived in the dim late afternoon at Harwich, but it was night, black and blowy, when I reached London. I met some Indians in the taxi rank at Liverpool Street Station, and we agreed to share a cab to south London. We were aliens in a strange city, trying to save money. And having been so long in India it seemed more natural for me to talk to them than to the English people waiting for a taxi.

When we were under way one said, “We were just cooling our heels at that cab stand. The driver stopped for you, my friend.”

“Where are you from?”

“From Broach, in Gujarat. You are knowing Gujarat?”

“Ghem cho. Magia ma chay.”

“Oh, it is so incredible, Mr. Bhiku,” the man said to his silent companion. “This American is speaking this difficult tongue.”

“I only know six words.”

“So what? You use them superbly.”

They complained of the cold in London, but after Siberia it did not seem cold to me — only wet and gleaming a sulphurous yellow, like the streetlights. London in winter had often seemed to me like a city underground, in a damp dripping cavern.

“I’ll get out at the next corner,” I said, and gave them half of what was showing on the meter.

“And your name is?”

“Andre Parent.”

“Enjoy the rest of your visit, Mr. Andre.”

What was the point of correcting them? And it was partly true: I was temporary, an alien, just a visitor. A paying guest, in the English phrase.

I had deliberately gotten out of the taxi in the High Street, so that I could walk the rest of the way home, completing the journey I had started almost five months before, when I had walked to the station. I liked walking; it was like writing in longhand.

And perhaps I had another reason for walking. I didn’t want to be announced by the noise of a taxi. All London taxis had a loud and peculiar shudder. I wanted my arrival to be a surprise. I had not spoken to Jenny since that phone call in Khabarovsk two weeks before.

I was very apprehensive as I pressed the bell. I felt like a stranger — worse, like an intruder.

There was a human shadow on the frosted glass of the door; and the mutter, “Who is it?”

“It’s me,” I said.

The door opened quickly.

“Andy!” Jenny threw her arms around me and kissed me, and all the warmth of the house and its lovely ordinary odors flowed over me through the doorway, warming my face.

Upstairs I went into Jack’s tiny room. He was awake — he had heard the bell and the commotion. He peered at me in the dark and seemed shy. Why was he hesitating?

“Jackie, it’s me,” I said. “I’m back.”

“Dad,” he said — it was a gasp of relief. He raised himself up and hugged me with such strength that it seemed to me more like panic than love. And with his skinny arms around my neck I thought: I’ll never go away again.

It was that lifeless period in London, between Christmas and New Year’s — the holiday that is like low tide, or an endless Sunday afternoon. Empty streets, gray skies. But inactivity was just what I needed after all the motion I had endured.

Suddenly I belonged to them again. I went shopping, I began cooking dinner, and in a passionate and grateful way I performed the most humdrum chores. I washed the car, I put up shelves. I had missed Christmas, but the tree was still standing. I disposed of it and put away the decorations.

Jenny said, “You seem to have all this energy.”

“I’m so glad to be back,” I said.

It was New Year’s Eve. We had always made a point of not celebrating, not going to a party; simply giving thanks that the old year had ended peacefully and then going to bed before midnight.