The collected stories

by Paul Theroux

  Mr McCloud seemed very eager, 'like a college boy,' said his wife, which made them both smile.

  'You go,' said Mrs McCloud. 'I'll just park myself right here.'

  'Doris, you're no damned fun, you know that?' said Mr McCloud. 'To hear you talk anyone would think you're sixty-six years old.'

  'I will be,' said Mrs McCloud, 'next March,' and she started to cry.

  'Aw, come on,' said Mr McCloud. 'People are looking at you.'

  'I can't help it,' said Mrs McCloud. 'Ambrose, you're so good and I'm such an old bag.'

  'You're as young as you feel,' said Mr McCloud, winking.

  'I feel eighty-seven,' said Mrs McCloud.

  'Let's skitter up to that top floor and have us a look, eh?'

  'You know how I am about heights,' said Mrs McCloud. 'I can't

  *37

  SINNING WITH ANNIE

  even climb a ladder to change a bulb. I go dizzy and feel limp as a rag.' Her last phrase seemed to depress her and she cried again; many people in the cocktail lounge turned to watch her.

  Mr McCloud dropped the subject and put his arm around his wife.

  On the way home Mrs McCloud said, 'Ambrose, you just went through a red light!'

  'Wrong again,' said Mr McCloud, driving fast. 'It was green.'

  Mrs McCloud stayed home for a week. She said it was a kind of convalescence, but instead of getting better she seemed to worsen, and each time Mr McCloud came home his wife was paler and more feeble than she had been in the morning.

  'I wish you'd come home for lunch,' said Mrs McCloud one day.

  'I can get me a nice cheap lunch in town,' said Mr McCloud. 'Little bowl of noodles, little bit of boiled fish, tasty little omelette.' He lighted his pipe. 'Sixty cents,' he said, puffing.

  'If you came home for lunch you could give me a hand when things go wrong.'

  'Don't tell me things have been going wrong, Doris.'

  'So many things,' said Mrs McCloud. 'The other day it must have been something I ate. I think it was that sandwich you made for me, or it might have been a rotten egg, gave me tummy pains. I threw up. Today I blew a fuse. I just plugged in my hair dryer and it made a fizz and the TV shut off.'

  'Who fixed the fuse?'

  'The gardener,' said Mrs McCloud.

  'You didn't mention it when I called up.'

  'I was ashamed to,' said Mrs McCloud. 'Thought I'd make you mad.'

  Mr McCloud was looking at the hair dryer; it was pistol shaped and blackened. 'She's all burned out inside. Wires must have shorted,' he said. 'Good thing you didn't get a shock,' and he looked closely at his wife.

  'I did,' said Mrs McCloud. 'But it wasn't a bad one.'

  'That hair dryer cost a pretty penny,' said Mr McCloud.

  'You can get a Japanese one to replace it.'

  'Not this month,' said Mr McCloud. 'Oh, no! That'll have to wait, my dear. I can't be throwing my money away on hair dryers. I've got the insurance coming up and God knows what else.'

  'How will I dry my hair?' asked Mrs McCloud.

  YOU MAKE ME MAD

  'Sit in front of the air conditioner and shake your head,' said Mr McCloud gruffly. He stamped the floor with one foot, as he often did when he was very angry.

  Several minutes of tuning, twisting the knobs with two hands, had produced only squawks, the underwater babble of Tamil, a high-pitched Chinese opera and some Malay gongs; though they came in clearly, the Chinese salesman said these foreign noises were not showing the radio to best advantage, and he became anxious. He apologized to Mr McCloud and rearranged the antenna, whipping it around and just missing Mr McCloud's left eye. Mr McCloud touched at the lucky eye, making a light tear-wiping motion with his finger; but he was smiling.

  The salesman offered to demonstrate a powerful shortwave radio.

  Mr McCloud said not to bother. 'This one's going to do me just fine.'

  'Let me search some English,' said the salesman breathlessly, still hunting. He flicked the antenna again.

  Mr McCloud leaned over and switched the radio off. He took out his wallet and grinned at the perspiring salesman. He asked, 'How much?' He removed the pipe when he counted the money, licking his thumb and peeling the bills into the salesman's palm.

  'That's a mighty fine little radio,' said Mr McCloud. 'Get me some nice programs on that radio.'

  'Don't mention,' said the salesman, smiling and opening the door. 'See you next time.'

  That evening Mr McCloud turned on all the air conditioners in the house. His wife complained, 'I'm going to catch a death of cold,' but Mr McCloud calmed her by saying, 'Don't worry - I put them on low. Freshen up the room a bit,' he said over the roaring of the air conditioners.

  Mrs McCloud said, 'Time for my bath,' and Mr McCloud said, 'you do that. I'll just sit here and fill my pipe.'

  Mrs McCloud was singing softly to herself when Mr McCloud entered the bathroom. She stopped singing and covered her breasts, holding one in each hand, as her husband, chuckling, turning the radio he carried in his hand onto full volume, said 'Alley-oop' and pitched the yelling thing into the water at his wife's feet. He stepped quickly out and shut the door.

  *39

  SINNING WITH ANNIE

  'Ambrose!' Mr McCloud heard his wife scream. He nibbled on his pipe stem and smiled.

  But she was out of the bathroom a minute later, wrapped in a towel and still wearing her plastic cap. 'You silly old fool,' she said, and slapped him with a force that sent his pipe flying out of his mouth.

  Mr McCloud did not retrieve the pipe. He watched his wife with the extreme attention of disbelief. She looked very angry, but not ill. At once, her face lighted with a thought, became concerned, grew rather small; she murmured, 'Oh, God,' and sat down, as if exhausted.

  'Oh, shoot,' said Mr McCloud, and went to pack.

  240

  Dog Days

  The Indian said: 'I take hand of woman and I squeeze and look in eyes, and if she return look and do not take hand away I know I can make intercourse. If also she squeeze my hand back it is most certain I can do it that very day. Only thing is, husband must be elsewhere.'

  He smiled and lifted his long brown hands, displaying their emptiness like a conjurer. He went on in his lilting voice: 'In Asia, namely India, Pakistan, Indochina, Siam, here in Singapore, wherever, it is enough to touch body of woman, even arm or whatnot. If they do not object to that, path is quite open. And what,' he inquired, 'is done in States?'

  'In the States?' Len Rowley thought a moment. 'I don't know. I suppose we just come out and ask the girl if she wants to.'

  'Just looking and saying, "Cheerio, let us make intercourse"?'

  'No, probably something like, "Would you care to come up for a drink?'"

  'A drink? The Indian threw his head back and gave a dry croaking laugh. His teeth were bony and stained dark red with betel juice.

  'Or to see your pictures. Any excuse, really. The idea is to get her up to your room. If she says yes you know you can do it.'

  The Indian nodded and spoke to the empty chair beside him, solemnly rehearsing: 'You would like to come up to take drink, yes?' Then he said to Len, 'I think it is same as touching body. Woman enjoys, but she do not like to name.'

  That conversation had taken place in a bar on Serangoon Road, the heart of the Indian district of Singapore. Len had been out walking and had stopped at the bar. He hadn't intended to drink. But the Indian sitting by the door had given him a welcoming wobble of the head, and had smiled and tapped a chair seat and said, 'Try some toddy?' They had talked, first about toddy, then about hot food, then about women. Len did not ask the Indian's name, nor did he ever see the Indian again.

  SINNING WITH ANNIE

  But Len had replayed the Indian's voice many times. He found the explanation satisfying and revealing, such a close glimpse into the mind of Asia that he had never divulged it to anyone. It was like a treasure map, described by a casually met pirate and committed to memory. / take hand of woman and 1 squeeze . . . I
t is enough to touch body. The Indian had a way of saying body - he had pronounced it bho-dhee, speaking it with wet lips and heavy tongue-working - that made it sound the leering name for something vicious.

  Len Rowley was a private soul, and marriage had increased his loneliness by violating his reveries. His attachment to Marian was not deep: he had lingered beside her for nearly seven years. She had put him through college, and now as an expatriate lecturer in English literature he was paying the bills. Marian was learning to play the guitar which hung on a hook in their living room. Friends found them an odd couple. Len and Marian talked of divorce, in company; this frightened listeners, but it always seemed to bring them together. Len was sometimes startled to recall that he had been unfaithful only once - with a prostitute in Newark, a year after the marriage. That was like making love to a chair tipped on its back and it cost Len twelve dollars.

  The Forbeses and the Novaks were over for drinks. In a room full of people, Len became a recluse: he was still mentally speaking to the Indian.

  But Ella Novak was saying, 'In Midnight Cowboy, yes, that party. Remember? When Ratso faints? It was actually filmed at Andy Warhol's! That was a real partyV

  'It's the new thing,' Tom Forbes said. 'Of course, your French have been doing it for years - at least Truffaut has.'

  Marian said, interesting, isn't it? Like Eldridge Cleaver's wife being in Zabriskie Point.'

  'Which one was she?' asked Ella in annoyance.

  'At the beginning, when those students - I think they were students - were talking. With the hair. Holding the pencil and sort of . . . leading the discussion.'

  'Has anyone here seen Easy Rider}' Joan Forbes put in.

  'That hasn't come to Singapore yet,' said Ella.

  'And probably won't,' said Tony Novak. 'Unless the Film Society gets it.'

  'Len still refuses to join,' said Marian, looking at Len in the

  DOG DAYS

  corner, slumped in the Malacca chair with a dreamy look in his eyes.

  Roused, returned to the living room by Marian's words and the ensuing silence, Len said, 'Film Society. Foreigners out of focus. Too much work reading all those subtitles!'

  'I knew he was going to say that,' said Marian to Tony. 'He's really very puritanical.'

  Len smiled. He heard: It is enough to touch body. Bho-dhee.

  'Tom and I saw it when we were on leave,' said Joan, adding, ''Easy Rider. ,'

  'I didn't know you got home leave every year,' said Marian.

  'Ford Foundation,' said Joan, and put her hands primly into her lap.

  'We don't go home until seventy-two,' said Marian. 'Seventeen months more.'

  Tom Forbes asked Marian about Len's contract, and he commiserated while Joan Forbes explained to Ella and Tony what happened in Easy Rider.

  Len was silent. He heard the Indian's piratical voice and he watched the kitchen. Ah Meng was at the sideboard flexing a plastic freezer tray and popping the ice cubes into a pewter bucket. She stood in the bright rectangle of the half-open door, a shelf of corn flakes and Quaker Oats behind her head making her unremarkable profile more interesting. Her forehead was long and sloping, her pug nose set just below the rise of her high cheeks; her chin was small but definite, her mouth narrow and almost grim. Len could see her stiff black hair which was wound in a pile on her head, and he knew what her eyes were like: hooded, the sly changeless shape of the skeptic's; they were amused eyes, but some would say contemptuous. She was all but breastless and only her hands could be called beautiful, but it was the total effect that excited Len, the flower and stalk of face and body, the straightness of her length, her carriage. In a slim woman posture was beauty. She was tall for a Chinese and she moved in nervous strides like a deer.

  Len had compared her with others' servants: the Forbeses' Ah Eng had muscular legs, bowed as a pair of nutcrackers. The Novaks' Susan was a pale, pudgy, worried-looking little thing who always wore the same dress and once went bald. Tony was on the verge of firing her but, fortuitously, her hair grew back, porcupiny at first, then to her old bush.

  SINNING WITH ANNIE

  When there was company, as on this evening, Ah Meng wore a loose blouse (raising to show a flat stomach when she reached for clean glasses on the top shelf), and tight, red skier's slacks. She went about the house swiftly, treading on the ankle loops of her slacks, in bare feet: Len found the feet attractive for the wildness they suggested. She had been with the Rowleys for nearly three months - replacing the bossy old Hakka woman - and for much of that time Len Rowley had been trying to get into bed with her.

  Trying was perhaps the wrong word. He had been thinking constantly about it, the way he thought of the Indian's advice. But something a man at the university had said made him hesitate. It was in the Staff Club. A man from Physics left, and Davies from Economics said, 'See that bloke?' Davies told a story which cautioned by horrifying: the man from Physics had pinched his house girl's bottom. That very evening the girl disappeared, and the following day at a stoplight three youths jumped into the man's car, beat him with bearing scrapers, slashed him, and fled. The man still wore bandages. The house girl's boy friend was in a secret society, and the boy friend's final piece of revenge was upon the next girl the man employed. She was threatened; she resigned. This became known, and no one would work for the man. Davies said the man was going to break his contract and go home. That for a bottom-pinching.

  This story had to be balanced against the easy explanation of the Indian; it made Len hesitate but he did not put the thought of sleeping with Ah Meng out of his mind. Sometimes he wondered why and decided it was lust's boldness, lechery's curiosity for the new. Unlike the man who feels challenged by the unwilling, Len was aroused by those who were passive, who would say yes instantly. He didn't like the devious ploys of love, and it was Ah Meng's obedience ('Shut the door' 'Yes, mister') that made an affair seem possible.

  For his lust he blamed his dog days. In some of the books he lectured on they were mentioned as days of excessive heat, unwholesome influences, practically malignant. The dog days were the hottest time of the year; the days Len passed, replaying the Indian's words and staring into the kitchen at Ah Meng were the hottest in his life. And it was literally true: it was always ninety in Singapore.

  But hotter on Thursdays, Marian's Film Society night. These nights Len sat, soaking his shirt with sweat and wondering if he

  DOG DAYS

  should make a move. Ah Meng would be in the downstairs shower, the one that adjoined her room, sluicing herself noisily with buckets of water and hawking and spitting. Later she would sit on the backstairs, holding her small transistor to her ear.

  The story of the man in Physics restrained him; but there was something more. It was shame. It seemed like exploitation to sleep with your house girl. She might be frightened; she might submit out of panic. The shame created fear, and fear was an unusual thing: it made you a simpleton, it unmanned you, it turned you into a zombie. It was as a zombie that he had passed nearly three months.

  '. . . early class tomorrow,' Tom Forbes was saying. He was in the center of Len's living room, stretching and yawning, thanking Marian for a lovely evening.

  Len looked up and saw that everyone was standing, the Forbeses, the Novaks, Marian, waiting for him to rise and say good night. He leaped to his feet, and then bent slightly to conceal his tumescence.

  'What's on?' asked Len, who was marking essays on the dining-room table. Marian clawed at objects inside her handbag.

  'Knife in the Water,' she said, still snatching at things inside the bag. She muttered, 'Where are those car keys?'

  'They usually show that one,' said Len. 'Or a Bergman.'

  'And some cartoons,' said Marian, who hadn't heard what Len had said. 'Czech ones,' she said, looking up, dangling the car key.

  'Enjoy yourself,' said Len.

  'I've told Ah Meng to heat the casserole. Tell her whether you want rice or potatoes.' Patting her hair, snapping her handbag shut, Marian left
the house.

  As soon as Marian had gone Len pushed the essays aside and lit a cigarette. He thought about Ah Meng, the man in Physics, what the Indian had said. It occurred to him again - this was not a new perception - that the big mistake the man had made was in pinching the girl's bottom. That was rash. The Indian would have advised against it. There were subtler ways.

  Ah Meng was beside him.

  'Yes?' He swallowed. She was close enough to touch.

  'Want set table.'

  'Okay, I'll take these papers upstairs. Make some rice.' Distracted, he sounded gruff.

  SINNING WITH ANNIE

  And upstairs at his desk, he continued to pursue his reverie. A squeezed hand was ambiguous and had to be blameless, but a pinched bottom signaled only one thing - and was probably offensive to a Chinese. Also: if Ah Meng had a boy friend, where was he? She took a bus home on her day off. A boy friend would have picked her up on his motorbike, a secret society member in his car. The Indian's way seemed unanswerable: his method was Asian, bottom-pinching was not.

  'Mister?' Ah Meng was at the study door. 'Dinner.'

  Len got up quickly. Ah Meng was in the kitchen, scraping rice from the pot, by the time he had reached the second landing. He was breathless for a moment, and he realized as he gasped for air that he had hurried in order to catch her on the stairs.

  He ate, forking the food in with one hand and with the other retuning the radio each time the overseas station drifted off into static. He stared at the sauce bottles, and forked and fiddled with the radio knobs.

  He put down his fork. It made a clank on the plate. Ah Meng was in the room, and now leaning over the table, gathering up silverware, piling plates, rolling up placemats. She said, 'Coffee, mister?'

  Len reached over and put his hand on hers. It was as sudden and unexpected as if his hand belonged to someone else. His hand froze hers. She looked at the wall. / take hand of woman and 1 squeeze . . . but the damned girl wouldn't look him in the eyes! It was getting awkward, so still squeezing he said, with casualness that was pure funk, 'No, I don't think I'll have a coffee tonight. I think I will have-' He relaxed his grip. Her hand didn't move. He tapped her wrist lightly with his forefinger and said, 'A whiskey. I think I'll have a whiskey upstairs.'