Paul Theroux - My Secret History

He took it in his fingers like a turd.

“Those are your words on that paper,” I said.

He pinched the paper but said nothing.

“Eat it,” I said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said.

“I’ll shoot!” I moved nearer him and my big wet sleeve trembled near his face. “Now stick it into your mouth and make it snappy.”

The heavily breathing woman was whimpering, trying to contain her sobs; but they burst through her nose.

Slee put the paper on his tongue and closed his mouth on it.

“Swallow it.”

He hesitated. I jerked the pistol again to startle him. His mouth moved and from the effort of it tears came to his eyes.

“If you go near my wife again, you fucker, I’ll kill you.”

He looked as though he was going to vomit. The others, perhaps realizing they were safe — that my quarrel was with Slee — were very quiet and attentive, except for the whimpering woman. All their worry about my intrusion had changed into a sort of resentment directed against Slee.

He stood up slowly, as I backed towards the door. It was the feeblest show of defiance.

“Sit down,” I said.

I could tell his teeth were locked together.

I took a step towards him and said, “You’re dead, asshole,” and squirted my pistol at him. “You’re history.”

“My eyes!” he shrieked — the suddenness of it alarmed me. He put his hands over his face. But before he could recover and chase me I ran out of the room, I heard someone say, “Is it acid?” I slammed the dining room door so hard the wall shook and there was a series of crashes, like china plates or vases, or perhaps large framed pictures, dislodged and hitting the floor.

I fled into the rain, laughing.

Sunday we went to Richmond Park and looked at the deer, and had tea in a drafty old building on the west side of the park. Jenny said, “On my way to the loo I saw a sign saying Bertrand Russell grew up here.”

Jack said, “Who’s Bertrand Russell?”

“A famous man, who was very clever,” Jenny said.

“He was a silly shit, with a filthy mind, who hated Americans,” I said.

“Daddy said ‘shit,’ ” Jack said, trembling with excitement. His lip curled and he said, “Shit!”

On Monday, as Jenny was putting on her coat, I told her I had been to Sevenoaks. I wanted to prepare her.

“I’ve taken care of your friend Slee.”

Leaving out the wild hair, the wet raincoat, and the water pistol filled with urine, I told her what I had done. “Made a fuss” was the expression I used. I did not say that I had ordered him to eat the message, though as I was telling her in euphemisms of the encounter I kept seeing his tears as he choked on the piece of paper, like a young child being forced to eat cold oatmeal.

“Oh, God,” she said, hesitating at the door. “Oh, God. You didn’t. You fool. How could you?”

For a moment I thought she had decided not to go to work. She looked sick, she looked terrified. The craziness of it came to me as I saw her face.

She said, “This had better not be as bad as you make it sound.”

I knew it was worse. I had left all the bad parts out. But I was counting on their summary, and expected them to exclude the details: dripping on the table, yelling at Wilkie, saying “fucker,” and squirting piss in Slee’s eyes, not to mention making him chew and swallow the paper.

Just the way she slammed the door when she got home told me that it was going to be a long night. She did not say a word to me until Jack was in bed. We had taken turns reading him his current favorite, Ant and Bee and the Rainbow , how they created the colors. I lay in the darkness reading, and dreading what was to come.

“Are you out of your mind?” she said.

Fury had given her a different face. She had stiff unpleasant features and hateful eyes. Her skin was the color of cement. She loathed me.

“Are you crazy?” she said. “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

All these questions; and there were more.

“What are you playing at? Do you want to get me fired? What’s your problem?”

She then told me what I had done. It was a surprisingly accurate version of my caper at Greville Lodge — conning the maid, bursting in, interrupting the dinner, snapping at Wilkie, swearing, making Slee eat the paper, frightening everyone with the gun. The gun was the worst of it: the English hatred of firearms, their horror of all weapons as instruments of intimidation.

She told it meaning to shame me, but as she spoke it all came back to me and seemed wonderful. Remembering it, I smiled.

“It was a water pistol,” I said.

“He thinks you might have damaged his eyes. There were chemicals in it.”

“Piss,” I said.

“You’re sick,” she said, disgustedly.

“He deserved it. He deserved much worse than that. He was lucky.”

“It wasn’t only him, you know. You ruined their dinner party — you ruined their whole weekend.”

“If I’d had a real gun I would have shot him,” I said. I remembered the Mossberg I used to own when I was fifteen. I pictured Slee’s look of terror as I threatened him with it, and the way he wilted and bled as I shot him. “I will shoot him.”

“Wilkie thinks you should see a doctor. I was in his office an hour. He was so humiliated — and you can just imagine how I felt. He kept telling me that he would have gone to the police if it hadn’t been for Terry—”

“Stop calling him Terry!”

“I’ll call him anything I like. You should thank him. He persuaded Wilkie not to press charges.”

“What charges? Making him eat a piece of paper? Is that a criminal offense? Hah! I’d love to see him in court.”

I saw him saying, Then he made me put the paper into my mouth, Your Honor , while people in the public gallery laughed.

“You terrorized those people,” Jenny said. “You broke some valuable china. Mrs. Wilkie was hysterical. Oh, God, you’re pathetic. You think this is funny.”

When she said that I remembered the moment of squirting Slee, and the way he had put his hands over his face, and I laughed, thinking My eyes!

“You’re mad because I forced him to eat a piece of paper. Hey, it was his own piece of paper! It was funny. I’d do it again. I’d make him eat more.”

“I’m not cross about that,” she said. “I know your pride was hurt. I didn’t realize you’d take it so badly.” She had become very rational, but was still angry. I hated her in her logical moods, because she was intelligent, and I could only get the better of her when she lost her temper. “What I object to is your making a mess of things — ruining the weekend. And especially all that talk. You can’t keep your mouth shut, can you? Now everyone in the bank knows.”

It seemed to me appropriate that she should have to face them. She had wanted to hide and be blameless.

“You brought it on yourself,” I said. “If you hadn’t fucked the guy this would never have happened.”

“I told you I was sorry,” she said. “I told you that I still loved you, that I was glad you’re back, and that I wanted our life to continue as normal.” She had been looking at her hands; now she raised her head and looked me in the face. “But that wasn’t good enough for you.”

It wasn’t: true. I needed the triumph of humiliating that man. Now we could continue.

I said, “We’ll be all right.”

“No,” she said. “You’ve spoiled it. You’ve put me in a horrible position. I can’t forgive you for that.”

“That’s right — stick up for that asshole. He didn’t put me in a horrible position. Don’t think about me.” But sarcasm didn’t help, and I could not keep myself from adding, “I’ll shoot him!”