Paul Theroux - My Secret History

“He charges the goddamned battery and you hand him your ass,” I shouted. “Where was he sleeping that night? Huh? You woke up with him and the car wouldn’t start. He was sleeping in my bed!”

She had gone sullen. She squinted at me and said, “I’m not going to say another word. How dare you talk to me that way.”

I wanted to hit her. It was not kindness or compassion that restrained me, but rather the thought that if I started I would not stop until I had beaten her brains out — hurt her badly, throttled her, or killed her. It was not the gentleman in me that stopped me but rather the cunning murderer, who knew what violence I was capable of.

So I didn’t hit her then. We went to bed, and without warning or any preparation I rolled her over and pushed her legs apart. In silence — but daring her to resist — I entered her and bore down on her in a rapid and brutal way.

It exhausted me. She had not uttered a sound the whole time. I realized soon afterwards, as I was dropping off to sleep, that she was crying softly.

“What’s wrong?”

She tried to stifle her sobs. She said nothing.

The only regret I had was that she might be feeling sorry for herself rather than for me.

In the days that followed, every moment we were together it was on my mind. In the middle of the most innocent conversation about such matters as Jack’s progress at school, or the loose slates on the roof, or should we buy a new carpet for the hall, I would say, “Who is it?”

“I told you — it’s over.”

“Did he sleep here?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“He took you out. He took you to the park.”

“Please stop. If we go on like this you’re just going to end up screaming at me.”

“Crystal Palace Park — I know he did. And Greenwich, too. Don’t lie — I know it.”

It was Greenwich Park in the snapshot. I had studied it with a magnifying glass and seen the hill and a corner of the Observatory in the background. And I resented such a good picture of Jenny and Jack, both of them smiling and happy. I knew it was taken with an expensive camera — something about the size of the print, the clarity and color. We had a cheap camera; we had no money. His was obviously a 35mm, and he probably had a shoulder bag with lenses and filters, someone serious and at the same time very egotistical, the way I imagined all obsessed photographers to be, sticking his nose in everything, because everything belonged to him, and believing he was bestowing a great favor on my wife and child by taking their picture. He had slept with my wife and played with my child.

Look at the dinosaurs, Jack. Let me hold you up so that you can see them. Here you go—

That same day, in Rangoon or Calcutta, or some other pitiful place, I was sitting in my underwear on the edge of my bed, with a book on my knees to write on, and beginning my letter, Darling—

“I know he slept here,” I said. “How could you let him? Sleeping in the same house with Jack! You let your son see you screwing another man. You are a bitch, and what a whore—”

But she had started to cry. That was what I wanted, to reduce her to tears. It was the only satisfaction I had: that she might be sorry and ashamed, that she might be afraid.

She said, “If you want to leave me, go on. But please don’t hurt me any more than you have done. Go—”

I didn’t want to go, nor did I want her to go. What I wanted was impossible. It was a wish for the whole affair to have been imaginary. I wanted it never to have happened. I wanted her, I think, to deny it. But in her sorrowful honesty and her anger and her tears, she admitted everything.

I said, “Poor little Jack.”

Jenny was crying.

“He knows all about this. He has seen everything. He will always remember it.”

Jenny’s tears were like a further admission that this was so.

“Please leave me alone, Andy.”

She knew she was weak, and that my anger gave me strength; but her weakness was my only hope. It was no good my knowing one or two distorted details. I thought: If I know more, if I know everything, it might make it easier.

“He works in the bank, I know that.”

I didn’t know that. It was simply the thought that only someone in the office could have passed her the note. I was sure it had been handed to her — slipped somehow — and not sent.

She was sobbing — she didn’t reply.

“It’s probably someone I’ve met.”

Her eyes were red, and the flesh around them was loose and raw. They were like two wounds, still bleeding.

“As soon as I was gone you took up with him, and all those letters I wrote meant nothing—”

“I loved getting your letters,” she said, and I was hurt because I wanted her to deny the other thing. “I saved all of them — even all the postcards. I have them upstairs. You don’t believe me.”

But I did. I had seen my letters in the back of one of her drawers, all neatly stacked. I knew everything that was in those drawers.

I said, “He slept here, you cooked for him — I’m sure Betty knew about it, too. That’s probably why she left—”

Jenny’s face was in her hands. Was this true? I thought: Deny it .

“—and I know that the day I called you from Siberia — early that morning — you were with him in bed. You had been out the night before. You hated my waking you up. That’s why you were so snappy with me, even though I’m your husband. He was in the bed, on my side of the bed, waiting for you—”

She was still crying bitterly, and I thought: Say something .

“—And he’s waiting for you now. He writes you notes. You’re still seeing him!”

She said, “No — it’s over!”

It was her only denial, and it was a terrible one, coming just then, because it meant that everything else I had accused her of had probably been true.

It was not only the thought that someone else had made love to her — though that appalled me and wakened in me a primitive insanity: a man with a hatchet got to his feet and began to dance in my mind. There was something worse. In many ways, mine had been a dangerous trip. I remembered the bad episodes, the rickety buses on mountain roads; the poisonous food and water; hotels that were firetraps; the abusive and crazy people I had met; Vietnam.

I might have died. It had always been a persistent worry of mine that I was doomed to die in a casual accident in a dismal place, where I had no business to be. I often dreamed of train smashes, of my arms being hacked off by an angry mob, of catching fire. I always traveled as a stranger. But I reassured myself with the sentiment that my family was waiting. It was a methodical superstition, like singing to keep my spirits up, and as long as they were thinking of me I would be safe — they were keeping me alive; and if I died they would be brokenhearted.

Now I knew better. I knew that if I had died it would have made little difference. They would have been sorry in the guilty way that people are when some awful thing they desire deep down actually occurs. It might have been convenient, my death, for someone else had already taken over and totally displaced me. He had sat in my chair, written at my desk, probably used my books. He had put his feet on my Chinese stool. He had slept on my side of the bed, and made love to my wife, and played with my child. I imagined it in the simplest way. My vision was of the dining table, and a sticky spoon in the jam jar. It was there when I left; and then I died, and someone else was at the table. But the jam jar hadn’t moved. It remained, with the smeared spoon in it. The pronouncement It doesn’t matter if you die is devastating. She hadn’t said that, but I knew she was thinking it.