Paul Theroux - The Consul's File

She said, 'I'll hide Alfie in the pouch. I'll be your secretary. I'm out of my element here, but I'm a damned good secretary.'

'Perfect.'

She said, 'It's a date. Can I freshen your drink?'

How appropriate those phrases were to her 'fifties chic, the girdle, the beautiful shoes, the lipstick, the jewels.

'Business,' I said, and put my empty glass down out of her reach. 'I have an appointment. You understand.'

She did: I had reminded her that she was a secretary. She said, 'Maybe I'll see you at breakfast.'

'I'll be on the road before seven.'

'Whatever you do, don't call me at seven! ' She smiled and said, 'Hanoi, then.'

She knew she was absurd and insincere; she had no idea how brave I thought she was. She stood between me and the barking dog and let me kiss her cheek.

'Diplomatic relations,' she said. 'Off you go.'

I went to my room and drew the curtains, cutting off the aching late-afternoon sun. I lay on my bed and tried to sleep, but it was no good. I felt I had revealed more to Jill in my reticence than if I had been stark naked and drunk. This thought was like a bump in the mattress. I did not wait for morning. That night I checked out of the hotel, roused Abubaker and went home. And now I knew why I hadn't let her visit Ayer Hitam: I didn't want her to pity me.

For the past week or so, I have been putting off writing my report to the State Department — three pages to sum up my two years in Ayer Hitam — and then, this morning, your letter came. A good letter — what interesting things happen to people your age! You're game, impatient, unsuspicious: it is the kind of innocence that guarantees romance. I'm not mocking you. The woman sounded fascinating. But I advise you to follow your instinct and not see her again. It is possible to know too much. A little mystery is often easier to bear than an unwelcome fact; leave the memory incomplete.

Forgive my presumption. I haven't done my report, and here I am lecturing you on romance. I do think you'll be all right. You had quite a scare in Ayer Hitam — your bout of dengue fever has become part of the town's folklore. Isn't it amazing? What happens after the ghostly episode in the tropical place — the haunting, the shock? Of course — the victim picks himself up and leaves, meets a woman on the plane and has another experience, totally unrelated to the ghost. Stories have no beginning or end; they are continuous and ragged. But the sequel to the ghost story must be something romantic or ordinary or even banal. I have never believed that characters in fiction vanish after the last page is turned — they have other lives, not explicit or remarkable enough for fiction, and yet it would be sad to think they were irrecoverable.

You mention getting 'culture shock' when you arrived home. I know the feeling. You certainly didn't have it in Ayer Hitam. I'm sure you'll be back here sooner or later, as a contract teacher or whatever. It's fairly easy to get to countries like this; it's very hard to leave, which is why all of us who don't belong must leave. We crave simple societies, but they're no good for us. Now I understand why these rubber planters stayed so long — overstayed their visit, wore out their welcome. We have no business here. Up to a point — if you're young enough or curious enough — you can grow here; but after that you must go, or be destroyed. Is it possible to put down roots here? I don't think so. The Chinese won't, the Tamils can't, the Malays pretend they have them already, but they don't. Countries like this are possessed on the one hand by their own strangling foliage, and on the other by outside interests — business, international pressures (as long as the country has something to sell or the money to buy). Between jungle and viability, there is nothing — just the hubbub of struggling mercenaries, native and expatriate, staking their futile claims.

You asked about Squibb and the others. The others are fine. Squibb is another story. It was he who said, 'I came here for two weeks and I stayed for thirty-five years.' I didn't say anything, but I thought: Those first two weeks must have been the only ones he spent in this country that mattered.

He is so strange. I found it impossible to read his past; I have no idea what will happen to him. He told me that he had been in the Club dining room when I entered, my first day in Ayer Hitam. He took credit for recognizing me — he discovered me — and sometime later he gave me the low-down on the other members. He told me about Angela Miller's breakdown and how Gillespie used to drive an old Rolls. He filled me in on the Club's history — the polo, the cricket, the outings they made to Eraser's Hill just after the war. 'Your people are all over the place,' he said. And they were, too — though now, apart from missionaries and teachers, there isn't an American between here and the Thai border. 'Gillespie's an old-timer,' he said. 'Plays polo. An American who plays polo is compensating for something. I've got no time for him.' And yet Gillespie's murder shook him.

'Bachelor,' he said, when I told him I wasn't married. 'But you're too young to be a confirmed bachelor. Singapore's the place for a dirty weekend, by the way. Evans goes down now and again. Strang used to go, when his wife was on leave. His wife's devoted to him — you won't get anywhere with her. The Prosser's are about your age, but they're new, and dead keen on the drama group. The locals are thick as two planks, the Sultan's a bloody bore, the missionaries don't speak to me, Angela's a rat-bag, and Alec Stewart's an odd fish. Yes, he's an odd one, he is.'

I looked at Squibb.

He said, 'He likes the lash.'

I must have made a face, but he went on talking. Already he had taken me over. He had put it this way: if the people didn't like him, they would not take to me; if he found them odd, so would I. He wanted me on his side.

I hesitated, hung fire, or whatever the word is. I made him understand that I'd see for myself. And all this time, in the way a person offers information in order to get a reaction, he was searching my face, listening hard. He wanted to know what I was up to. What were my weaknesses? Did I drink, whore around, do my job? And, of course, was I queer?

I'm afraid I disappointed him, and perhaps many others. Typically, the consul is a character: a drinker, a woman-i/er, reckless, embittered, a man with a past, an extravagant failure of some sort with a certain raffish charm. I wasn't a character. I didn't drink much. I was calm. I thought I might make an impression on him, but if I did — on him or the others — it was not because I was a bizarre character, but because I was pretty ordinary, in a place that saw little of the ordinary.

I tried to be moderate and dependable, for the fact is that colourful characters — almost unbearable in the flesh — are colourful only in retrospect. But Squibb was angling. He wanted me on his side, and he searched me for secrets. He saw nothing but my moment of revulsion when he told me about Alec: 'He likes the lash.' I listened attentively; the Club Bore, that first hour, strikes one as a great raconteur.

He was what some people call a reactionary; he was brutal and blind, his fun wras beer. It had swollen his little body and made him grotesque, a fat red man who (the memory is more tolerable than the experience) sat in the Club at nine in the morning with a pint of Tiger and a can of mentholated Greshams, drinking and puffing. Smoke seemed to come out of his ears as he grumbled over the previous day's Straits Times.

1 used to wonder why he stayed, when others had gone. Like many so-called reactionaries he had no politics, only opinions, pet hates, grudges, and a paradoxical loathing for bureaucracy and trust in authority. He wanted order but he objected to the way in which order was established and maintained. If he'd had power he would have been a dictator — it was true of several other expatriates in Ayer Hitam; but weak, he was only a bore.