by Paul Theroux
In this mood, one of uselessness, he felt entirely without obligation. The world was illusion - he had invented a marriage and an existence, and it had all vanished. He was a victim twitching in air, with a small voice. What he had mistaken for concreteness was vapor. Only lovers had faith. But he didn't want his wife back; he wanted nothing.
His surprise was that he could enter a strange restaurant in a remote Corsican town and see a woman and want to marry her. He wondered if defeat had made him bold. This island, the first landscape he had seen as a newly single man, had a wild shipwrecked look to it that suited his recklessness. He would ask that woman to leave with him.
He was bewitched by her peculiar beauty, which was the beauty of certain trees he had been admiring all afternoon in the drive from the stinks of Cateraggio. She was slim, like those trees, and unlike any woman he had seen on this island. He knew then that he would not leave Corte without her. She was the embodiment of everything he loved in Corsica. The idea that he would take her with him was definite. There was no doubt in his mind; it was rash and necessary. And while he found a seat and ordered a drink and then chose at random from the menu, he had already decided on his course of action. It only remained for him to begin.
His French was fluent. Indeed, he affected a slight French accent, a stutter in his throat and the trace of a lisp, when he spoke English. But language was the least of it. She had small shoulders and almost no breasts, and slender legs, and her hair was cut short. He spoke to her about the food, but only to detain her, so he could be near her. She smelled of lilies. She brought the wine; his meal; the dessert
- fruit; coffee, which her husband - almost certainly her husband
- made on the machine. And each time, he said something more, trying to grow intimate, to make her see him. He had no clear
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plan. He would not leave the town without her. He was due in Ile-Rousse that night. She wore a finely spun sweater. She was not dressed for a restaurant: she was no waitress. Her husband owned the place - he forced her to help him run it. Sheldrick guessed at these things and by degrees he began to understand that though he had only happened upon her, she was waiting for him.
She approached him with the bill folded on a saucer. He invited her to look at it, and when she bent close to him, peering at the bill, he said, 'Please - come with me.'
He feared she might be startled: for seconds he knew he had said something dangerous. But she was looking at the bill. Was this pretense? Was she stalling?
He said, 'I have a car.'
She was expressionless. She touched the bill with a sharp red claw.
Trying to control his voice, Sheldrick said, 'I love you and I want you to come with me.'
She faced him, turning her green eyes on him, and he knew she was scrutinizing him, wondering if he were crazy. He smiled helplessly, and her gaze seemed to soften, a pale glitter pricking the green.
His hands trembled as he placed his money on the saucer.
She said, 'I will bring you your change.'
Then she was gone. Sheldrick forced himself to stare at the tablecloth, so as not to betray his passion to the man he supposed was her husband.
She did not return immediately. Was she telling her husband what he had said? He could hardly blame her. What he had asked her in a pleading whisper was so insane an impulse that he knew he must have frightened her. And yet he did not regret it. He knew he had had to say it or he would not have forgiven himself and would have suffered for the rest of his life. After five minutes he assumed she had gone to the police; he imagined that now many people knew the mad request he had made to this woman.
In the same stately way that she had approached before, she crossed the restaurant with the saucer, and with some formality, bowing slightly as she did so, placed it before him. She went away, back to the bar where he had first seen her.
There was nothing more. She had not replied; she had not said a word. So, without a word, there was no blame; and it had all
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passed, like a spell of fever. Now it could remain a secret. She had been kind enough to let him go without making a jackass of himself.
He plucked at his change, keenly aware of the charade he was performing in leaving her a tip. But gathering the coins, he saw the folded bill at the bottom of the saucer, and the sentence written on it. The scribbled words made him breathless and stupid, the fresh ink made him flush like an illiterate. He labored to read it, but it was simple. It said: J will be at the statue of Paoli after we close.
He put the bill into his pocket and left her ten francs, and not looking at her again he hurried out of the restaurant. He walked, turning corners, on rising streets that became steps, and climbed a stone staircase on the ramparts that towered over Corte. Alone here, he read the sentence again and was joyful on these ruined battlements and thrilled by the wind in the flag above him. Beneath him in the rocky valleys and on hillsides were the trees he had come to love.
He gave her an hour. At five, in brilliant twilight, he found his car, which was parked near the restaurant. The steel shutters of the restaurant were across the windows and padlocked. It was Sunday; the cobblestone streets of this hilltop town were deserted, and he could imagine that he was the only person alive in Corte. Not wishing to be conspicuous, he decided that it was better to drive slowly through the Place Paoli than to walk.
He found it easily, an irregular plaza of sloping cobbles, and rounding the statue he saw her, wearing a short jacket, carrying a handbag, her white face fixed on him. He stopped. Before he could speak she was beside him in the car.
'Quickly,' she said. 'Don't stop.'
Her decisiveness stunned him, his feet and hands were numb, he was slow.
'Do you hear me?' she said. 'Drive - drive!'
He remembered how to drive, and skidded out of the town, making it topple in his rearview mirror. She looked back; she was afraid, then excited, her face shining. She looked at him with curiosity and said, 'Where are we going?'
'Ue-Rousse,' he said. 'I have a room at the Hotel Bonaparte.'
'And after that? 1
k l don't know. Maybe Porto.' 'Porto is disgusting.'
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This disconcerted him: his wife had often spoken of Porto. One of her regrets when she left him, perhaps her only regret - though she had not put it this way - was that they would not be able to visit Porto, as they had planned.
The woman said, 'It is all Germans and Americans.'
'I am an American.'
'But the other kind.'
'We're all the same.'
She said, 'I would like to visit America.'
'I hope I never see the place again as long as I live,' he said.
She stared at Sheldrick but said nothing.
'You are very beautiful.'
'Thank you. You are kind.'
'Beautiful,' he said, 'like Corsica.'
She said, 'I hate Corsica. These people are savages.'
'You're not a savage.'
'I am not a Corsican,' she said. 'My husband is one.' She glanced through the rear window. 'But that is finished now.'
It had all happened quickly, the courtship back in the restaurant, and she had greeted him at the statue like an old busy friend ('Do you hear me?'). This was something else, another phase; so he dared the question. 'Why did you come with me?'
She said, 'I wanted to. I have been planning to leave for a year. But something always goes wrong. You worried me a little. I thought you were a policeman - why do you drive so slow?'
'I'm not used to these roads.'
'Andre - my husband - he drives like a maniac'
Sheldrick said, 'I'm a university professor,' and at once hated himself for saying it.
The road was tortuous. He could not imagine anyone going fast on these curves, but the woman (what was her name? when could he ask her?) repeated that her husband raced his car here. Sheldrick was aware of how the car was toiling in s
econd gear, of his damp palms slipping on the steering wheel. He said, 'If you're not Corsican, what are you?'
'I am French,' she said. Then, 'When Andre sees that I have left him, he will try to kill me. All Corsicans are like that - bloodthirsty. And jealous. He will want to kill you, too.'
Sheldrick said, 'Funny. I hadn't thought of that.'
She said, 'They all have guns. Andre hunts wild boar in the
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mountains. Those mountains. He's a wonderful shot. Those were our only happy times - hunting, in the first years.'
'I hate guns,' said Sheldrick.
'All Americans like guns.'
'Not this American,' he said. She sighed in a deliberate, almost actressy way. He was trying, but already he could see she disliked him a little - and with no reason. He had rescued her! On a straight road he would have leaned back and sped to the hotel in silence. But these hills, and the slowness of the car, made him impatient. He could think of nothing to say; and she was no help. She sat silently in her velvet jacket.
Finally, he said, 'Do you have any children?'
'What do you take me for?' she said. Her shriek jarred him. 'Do you think if I had children I would just abandon them like a slut in the afternoon and go off with a complete stranger? Do you?'
'I'm sorry.'
'You're not sorry,' she said. 'You did take me for a slut.'
He began again to apologize.
'Drive,' she said, interrupting him. She was staring at him again. 'Your suit,' she said. 'Surely, it is rather shabby even for a university professor?'
'I hadn't noticed,' he said coldly.
She said, 'I hate your tie.'
White Lies
Normally, in describing the life cycle of ectoparasites for my notebook, I went into great detail, since I hoped to publish an article about the strangest ones when I returned home from Africa. The one exception was Dermatobia bendiense. I could not give it my name; I was not its victim. And the description? One word: Jerry. I needed nothing more to remind me of the discovery, and though I fully intend to test my findings in the pages of an entomological journal, the memory is still too horrifying for me to reduce it to science.
Jerry Benda and I shared a house on the compound of a bush school. Every Friday and Saturday night he met an African girl named Ameena at the Rainbow Bar and brought her home in a taxi. There was no scandal: no one knew. In the morning, after breakfast, Ameena did Jerry's ironing (I did my own) and the black cook carried her back to town on the crossbar of his old bike. That was a hilarious sight. Returning from my own particular passion, which was collecting insects in the fields near our house, I often met them on the road: Jika in his cook's khakis and skullcap pedaling the long-legged Ameena - I must say, she reminded me of a highly desirable insect. They yelped as they clattered down the road, the deep ruts making the bicycle bell hiccup like an alarm clock. A stranger would have assumed these Africans were man and wife, making an early-morning foray to the market. The local people paid no attention.
Only I knew that these were the cook and mistress of a young American who was regarded at the school as very charming in his manner and serious in his work. The cook's laughter was a nervous giggle - he was afraid of Ameena. But he was devoted to Jerry and far too loyal to refuse to do what Jerry asked of him.
Jerry was deceitful, but at the time I did not think he was imaginative enough to do any damage. And yet his was not the conventional double life that most white people led in Africa. Jerry had certain ambitions: ambition makes more liars than egotism does.
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But Jerry was so careful, his lies such modest calculations, he was always believed. He said he was from Boston. 'Belmont actually,' he told me, when I said I was from Medford. His passport - Bearer's address - said Watertown. He felt he had to conceal it. That explained a lot: the insecurity of living on the lower slopes of the long hill, between the smoldering steeples of Boston and the clean, high-priced air of Belmont. We are probably no more class conscious than the British, but when we make class an issue it seems more than snobbery. It becomes a bizarre spectacle, a kind of attention seeking, and I cannot hear an American speaking of his social position without thinking of a human fly, one of those tiny men in grubby capes whom one sometimes sees clinging to the brickwork of a tall building.
What had begun as fantasy had, after six months of his repeating it in our insignificant place, made it seem like fact. Jerry didn't know Africa: his one girl friend stood for the whole continent. And of course he lied to her. I had the impression that it was one of the reasons Jerry wanted to stay in Africa. If you tell enough lies about yourself, they take hold. It becomes impossible ever to go back, since that means facing the truth. In Africa, no one could dispute what Jerry said he was: a wealthy Bostonian, from a family of some distinction, adventuring in Third World philanthropy before inheriting his father's business.
Rereading the above, I think I may be misrepresenting him. Although he was undeniably a fraud in some ways, his fraudulence was the last thing you noticed about him. What you saw first was a tall good-natured person in his early twenties, confidently casual, with easy charm and a gift for ingenious flattery. When I told him I had majored in entomology he called me 'Doctor.' This later became 'Doc' He showed exaggerated respect to the gardeners and washerwomen at the school, using the politest phrases when he spoke to them. He always said 'sir' to the students ('You, sir, are a lazy little creep'), which baffled them and won them over. The cook adored him, and even the cook's cook - who was lame and fourteen and ragged - liked Jerry to the point where the poor boy would go through the compound stealing flowers from the Inkpens' garden to decorate our table. While I was merely tolerated as an unattractive and near-sighted bug collector, Jerry was courted by the British wives in the compound. The wife of the new headmaster, Lady Alice (Sir Godfrey Inkpen had been knighted for his work in
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the Civil Service) usually stopped in to see Jerry when her husband was away. Jerry was gracious with her and anxious to make a good impression. Privately, he said, 'She's all tits and teeth.'
'Why is it,' he said to me one day, 'that the white women have all the money and the black ones have all the looks?'
'I didn't realize you were interested in money.'
'Not for itself, Doc,' he said. 'I'm interested in what it can buy.'
No matter how hard I tried, I could not get used to hearing Ame-ena's squawks of pleasure from the next room, or Jerry's elbows banging against the wall. At any moment, I expected their humpings and slappings to bring down the boxes of mounted butterflies I had hung there. At breakfast, Jerry was his urbane self, sitting at the head of the table while Ameena cackled.
He held a teapot in each hand. 'What will it be, my dear? Chinese or Indian tea? Marmalade or jam? Poached or scrambled? And may I suggest a kipper?'
'WopusaP Ameena would say. 'Idiot!'
She was lean, angular, and wore a scarf in a handsome turban on her head. 'I'd marry that girl tomorrow,' Jerry said, 'if she had fifty grand.' Her breasts were full and her skin was like velvet; she looked majestic, even doing the ironing. And when I saw her ironing, it struck me how Jerry inspired devotion in people.
But not any from me. I think I resented him most because he was new. I had been in Africa for two years and had replaced any ideas of sexual conquest with the possibility of a great entomological discovery. But he was not interested in my experience. There was a great deal I could have told him. In the meantime, I watched Jika taking Ameena into town on his bicycle, and I added specimens to my collection.
Then, one day, the Inkpens' daughter arrived from Rhodesia to spend her school holidays with her parents.
We had seen her the day after she arrived, admiring the roses in her mother's garden, which adjoined ours. She was about seventeen, and breathless and damp; and so small I at once imagined this pink butterfly struggling in my net. Her name was Petra (her parents called her 'Pet'), and her pretty b
loom was recklessness and innocence. Jerry said, 'I'm going to marry her.'
'I've been thinking about it,' he said the next day. 'If I just invite
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her I'll look like a wolf. If I invite the three of them it'll seem as if I'm stage-managing it. So I'll invite the parents - for some inconvenient time - and they'll have no choice but to ask me if they can bring the daughter along, too. They'll ask me if they can bring her. Good thinking? It'll have to be after dark - they'll be afraid of someone raping her. Sunday's always family day, so how about Sunday at seven? High tea. They will deliver her into my hands.'
The invitation was accepted. And Sir Godfrey said, 'I hope you don't mind if we bring our daughter-'
More than anything, I wished to see whether Jerry would bring Ameena home that Saturday night. He did - I suppose he did not want to arouse Ameena's suspicions - and on Sunday morning it was breakfast as usual and 'What will it be, my dear?'
But everything was not as usual. In the kitchen, Jika was making a cake and scones. The powerful fragrance of baking, so early on a Sunday morning, made Ameena curious. She sniffed and smiled and picked up her cup. Then she asked: What was the cook making?
'Cakes,' said Jerry. He smiled back at her.
Jika entered timidly with some toast.
'You're a better cook than I am,' Ameena said in Chinyanja. 'I don't know how to make cakes.'
Jika looked terribly worried. He glanced at Jerry.
'Have a cake,' said Jerry to Ameena.
Ameena tipped the cup to her lips and said slyly, 'Africans don't eat cakes for breakfast.'
' We do,' said Jerry, with guilty rapidity. 'It's an old American custom.'
Ameena was staring at Jika. When she stood up he winced. Ameena said, 'I have to make water.' It was one of the few English sentences she knew.