by Paul Theroux
THE AUTUMN DOG
her when Mark left, and she grew anxious when she remembered that she would have to leave eventually. She had no destination; she stayed another month: it was now November, and before Christmas she would exhaust herself of this boy. She was not calculating, but she saw nothing further for him. The affair, so complete on this bright island, would fail anywhere else.
Mark spoke of college, of books he planned to read, of jobs he'd like to have. It was all a hopeful itinerary she had traced before: she'd made that trip years ago, she'd read the books and known all the stops. She felt - listening to him telling her nothing new -as if she'd returned from a long sojourn in the world, one on which he, encumbered with ambition, was just setting out. She smiled at his innocent plans, and she gave him some encouragement; she would not disappoint him and tell him he would find nothing. He never asked for advice; he was too young to know the questions. She could tell him a great deal, but youth was ignorance in a splendid body: he wouldn't listen.
'I want to marry you,' he said one day, and it sounded to Milly like the expression of a longing that could never be fulfilled, like saying, If only I could marry you!
'I want to marry you, too,' she said in the same way.
He kissed her and said, 'We could do it here, the way the Balinese do - with a feast, music, dancing.'
Til wear flowers in my hair.'
'Right,' he said. 'We'll go up to Ubud and-'
'Oh, God,' she said, 'you're serious.'
His face fell. He said, 'Aren't you?'
'I've been married,' she said, without enthusiasm, as she had once said to him, 'I've been to Monte Carlo,' implying that the action could not possibly be repeated.
'I've got lots of money,' he said.
'Spend it wisely.' It was the closest she had ever come to giving him advice.
'It would make things easier for us.'
'This is as easy as it can ever be,' she said. 'Anyway, it's your mother's money, so stop talking this way. We can't get married and that's that.'
'You don't have to marry me,' he said. 'Come to the States -we'll live together.'
'And then what?'
DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS (i): THE CONSUL'S FILE
'We'll drive around.'
'What about your college - all those plans of yours?'
'They don't matter.'
'Drive around!' She laughed hard at the thought of them in a car, speeding down a road, not stopping. Could anything short of marriage itself be a more boring exertion than that? He looked quite excited by the prospect of driving in circles.
'What's wrong?'
'I'm a bit old for that sort of thing.'
'We can do anything you want - anything,' he said. 'Just live with me. No strings. Look, we can't stay here forever-'
It was true: she had nowhere to go. Milly was not fool enough to believe that it could work for any length of time, but for a month or two it might be fun. Then somewhere else, alone, to make a real start.
'We'll see,' she said.
'Smile,' he said.
She did and said, 'What would you tell your mother?'
'I've already told her.'
l No What did she say?'
'She wants to meet you.'
'Perhaps - one day.' But the very thought of it filled her with horror.
'Soon,' he said. 'I wrote to her in Hong Kong. She replied from Bangkok. She'll be here in a week or so.'
'Mine was so pathetic when I left him,' Milly was saying. 'I almost felt sorry for him. Now I can't stand the thought of him.'
'As time goes on,' said Maxine, 'you'll hate him more and more.' Abstractedly, she said, 'I can't bear them to touch me.'
'No,' said Milly, 'I don't think I could ever hate-'
Maxine laughed. 'I just thought of it!'
'What?'
'The position my husband suggested. It was called "The Autumn Dog." Chinese, I think. You do it backward. It was impossible, of course - and grotesque, like animals in the bushes. He accused me of not trying - and guess what he said?'
'Backward!'
'He said, "Max, it might save our marriage"!'
It struck Milly that there were only a few years - seconds in the
THE AUTUMN DOG
life of the world - when that futile sentence had meaning. The years had coincided with her own marriage, but she had endured them and, like Maxine, earned her freedom. She had borne marriage long enough to see it disproved.
'But it didn't save it - it couldn't,' said Maxine. Her face darkened. She said, 'He was evil. He wanted Mark. But Mark wouldn't have him - he was devoted to me.'
'Mark is a nice boy.'
Maxine said, 'Mark is lovely.'
'At first I was sorry he told you about me. I was afraid to meet you. I thought you'd dislike me.'
'But you're not marrying him, are you?'
'I couldn't,' said Milly. 'Anyway, I'm through with marriage.'
'Good,' said Maxine. 'The Autumn Dog.'
'And Max,' said Milly, using the woman's name for the first time, 'I don't want you for a mother-in-law!'
'No - we'll be friends.'
'What a pity I'm leaving here.'
'Then we must leave together.'
And the other woman's replies had come so quickly that Milly heard herself agreeing to a day, a flight, a destination.
'Poor Mark,' said Milly at last.
'He's a lovely boy,' said Maxine. 'You have no idea. We go to plays together. He reads to me. I buy all his clothes. I like to be seen with him. Having a son like Mark is so much better than having a husband.'
Milly felt the woman staring at her. She dropped her eyes.
'Or a friend like you,' said Maxine. 'That's much better. He told me all about you - he's very frank. He made me jealous, but that was silly, wasn't it? I think you're a very kind person.'
She reached across the table. She took Milly's fingers and squeezed.
'If you're kind to me we'll be such good friends.'
'Please stop!' Milly wanted to say. The other woman was hurting her hand with the pressure of her rings, and she seemed to smile at the panic on Milly's face. Finally, Milly said it, and another fear made the demand into a plea. Maxine relaxed her grip, but she held on, even after Mark appeared at the agreed time, to hear the verdict.
Dengue Fever
There is a curious tree, native to Malaysia, called 'The Midnight Horror.' We had several in Ayer Hitam, one in an overgrown part of the Botanical Gardens, the other in the front garden of William Ladysmith's house. His house was huge, nearly as grand as mine, but I was the American Consul and Ladysmith was an English teacher on a short contract. I assumed it was the tree that had brought the value of his house down. The house itself had been built before the war - one of those great breezy places, a masterpiece of colonial carpentry, with cement walls two feet thick and window blinds the size of sails on a Chinese junk. It was said that it had been the center of operations during the occupation. All this history diminished by a tree! In fact, no local person would go near the house; the Chinese members of the staff at Ladysmith's school chose to live in that row of low warrens near the bus depot.
During the day the tree looked comic, a tall simple pole like an enormous coatrack, with big leaves that looked like branches - but there were very few of them. It was covered with knobs, stark black things; and around the base of the trunk there were always fragments of leaves that looked like shattered bones, but not human bones.
At night the tree was different, not comic at all. It was Ladysmith who showed me the underlined passage in his copy of Professor Corner's Wayside Trees of Malaya. Below the entry for Oroxylum indicum it read, 'Botanically, it is the sole representative of its kind; aesthetically, it is monstrous . . . The corolla begins to open about 10 p.m., when the tumid, wrinkled lips part and the harsh odour escapes from them. By midnight, the lurid mouth gapes widely and is filled with stink . . . The flowers are pollinated by bats which are attracted by the smell and,
holding to the fleshy corolla with the claws on their wings, thrust their noses into its throat; scratches, as of bats, can be seen on the fallen leaves the next morning . . .'
Smelly! Ugly! Pollinated by bats! I said, 'No wonder no one wants to live in this house.'
DENGUE FEVER
'It suits me fine/ said Ladysmith. He was a lanky fellow, very pleasant, one of our uncomplicated Americans who thrive in bush postings. He cycled around in his bermuda shorts, organizing talent shows in kampongs. His description in my consulate file was 'Low risk, high gain.' Full of enthusiasm and blue-eyed belief; and open-hearted: he was forever having tea with tradesmen, whose status was raised as soon as he crossed the threshold.
Ladysmith didn't come round to the Club much, although he was a member and had appeared in the Footlighters' production of Maugham's The Letter. I think he disapproved of us. He was young, one of the Vietnam generation with a punished conscience and muddled notions of colonialism. That war created dropouts, but Ladysmith I took to be one of the more constructive ones, a volunteer teacher. After the cease-fire there were fewer; now there are none, neither hippies nor do-gooders. Ladysmith was delighted to take his guilt to Malaysia, and he once told me that Ayer Hitam was more lively than his hometown, which surprised me until he said he was from Caribou, Maine.
He was tremendously popular with his students. He had put up a backboard and basketball hoop in the playground and after school he taught them the fundamentals of the game. He was, for all his apparent awkwardness, an athletic fellow, though it didn't show until he was in action - jumping or dribbling a ball down the court. Perhaps it never does. He ate like a horse, and knowing he lived alone I made a point of inviting him often to dinners for visiting firemen from Kuala Lumpur or Singapore. He didn't have a cook; he said he would not have a servant, but I don't believe he would have got any local person to live in his house, so close to that grotesque tree.
I was sorry but not surprised, two months after he arrived, to hear that Ladysmith had a fever. Ayer Hitam was malarial, and the tablets we took every Sunday like communion were only suppressants. The Chinese headmaster at the school stopped in at the Consulate and said that Ladysmith wanted to see me. I went that afternoon.
The house was empty; a few chairs in the sitting room, a shelf of paperbacks, a short-wave radio, and in the room beyond a table holding only a large bottle of ketchup. The kitchen smelled of peanut butter and stale bread. Bachelor's quarters. I climbed the
DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS (i): THE CONSUL'S FILE
stairs, but before I entered the bedroom I heard Ladysmith call out in an anxious voice, 'Who is it?'
'Boy, am I glad to see you,' he said, relaxing as I came through the door.
He looked thinner, his face was gray, his hair awry in bunches of standing hackles; and he lay in the rumpled bed as if he had been thrown there. His eyes were sunken and oddly colored with the yellow light of fever.
'Malaria?'
'I think so - I've been taking chloroquine. But it doesn't seem to be working. I've got the most awful headache.' He closed his eyes. 'I can't sleep. I have these nightmares. I-'
'What does the doctor say?'
'I'm treating myself,' said Ladysmith.
'You'll kill yourself,' I said. 'I'll send Alec over tonight.'
We talked for a while, and eventually I convinced Ladysmith that he needed attention. Alec Stewart was a club member Ladysmith particularly disliked. He wasn't a bad sort, but as he was married to a Chinese girl he felt he could call them 'Chinks' without blame. He had been a ship's surgeon in the Royal Navy and had come to Ayer Hitam after the war. With a young wife and all that sunshine he was able to reclaim some of his youth. Back at the office I sent Peeraswami over with a pot of soup and the latest issue of Newsweek from the consulate library.
Alec went that night. I saw him at the Club later. He said, 'Our friend's pretty rocky.'
'I had malaria myself,' I said. 'It wasn't much fun.'
Alex blew a cautionary snort. 'He's not got malaria. He's got dengue.'
'Are you sure?'
'All the symptoms are there.'
'What did you give him for it?'
'The only thing there is worth a docken - aspirin/
i suppose he'll have to sweat it out/
'He'll do that all right/ Alec leaned over. 'The lad's having hallucinations/
'I didn't know that was a symptom of dengue,' I said.
'Dengue's a curse.'
He described it to me. It is a virus, carried by a mosquito, and begins as a headache of such voltage that you tremble and can't
DENGUE FEVER
stand or sit. You're knocked flat; your muscles ache, you're doubled-up with cramp and your temperature stays over a hundred. Then your skin becomes paper-thin, sensitive to the slightest touch - the weight of a sheet can cause pain. And your hair falls out -not all of it, but enough to fill a comb. These severe irritations produce another agony, a depression so black the dengue sufferer continually sobs. All the while your bones ache, as if every inch of you has been smashed with a hammer. This sensation of bruising gives dengue its colloquial name, 'breakbone fever.' I pitied Ladysmith.
Although it was after eleven when Alec left the Club, I went straight over to Ladysmith's house. I was walking up the gravel drive when I heard the most ungodly shriek - frightening in its intensity and full of alarm. I did not recognize it as Ladysmith's -indeed, it scarcely sounded human. But it was coming from his room. It was so loud and changed in pitch with such suddenness it might easily have been two or three people screaming, or a dozen doomed cats. The Midnight Horror tree was in full bloom and filled the night with stink.
Ladysmith lay in bed whimpering. The magazine I'd sent him was tossed against the wall, and the effect of disorder was heightened by the overhead fan which was lifting and ruffling the pages.
He was propped on one arm, but seeing me he sighed and fell back. His face was slick with perspiration and tear-streaks. He was short of breath.
'Are you all right?'
'My skin is burning,' he said. I noticed his lips were swollen and cracked with fever, and I saw then how dengue was like a species of grief.
'I thought I heard a scream,' I said. Screaming takes energy; Ladysmith was beyond screaming, I thought.
'Massacre,' he said. 'Soldiers - killing women and children. Horrible. Over there-' He pointed to a perfectly ordinary table with a jug of water on it, and he breathed, 'War. You should see their faces, all covered with blood. Some have arms missing. I've never -' He broke off and began to sob.
'Alec says you have dengue fever,' I said.
'Two of them - women. They look the same,' said Ladysmith, lifting his head. 'They scream at me, and it's so loud! They have no teeth!'
DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS (i): THE CONSUL'S FILE
'Are you taking the aspirin?' I saw the amber jar was full.
'Aspirin! For this!' He lay quietly, then said, Til be all right. Sometimes it's nothing - just a high temperature. Then these Chinese . . . then I get these dreams.'
'About war?'
'Yes. Flashes.'
As gently as I could I said, 'You didn't want to go to Vietnam, did you?'
'No. Nobody wanted to go. I registered as a CO.'
Hallucinations are replies. Peeraswami was always seeing Tamil ghosts on his way home. They leaped from those green fountains by the road the Malays call daun pontianak - 'ghost leaf - surprising him with plates of hot samosas or tureens of curry; not so much ghosts as ghostesses. I told him to eat something before setting out from home in the dark and he stopped seeing them. I took Ladysmith's visions of massacre to be replies to his conscientious objection. It is the draft-dodger who speaks most graphically of war, not the soldier. Pacifists know all the atrocity stories.
But Ladysmith's hallucinations had odd highlights: the soldiers he saw weren't American. They were dark orientals in dirty undershirts, probably Vietcong, and mingled with the screams of the people with bloody faces wa
s another sound, the creaking of bicycle seats. So there were two horrors - the massacre and these phantom cyclists. He was especially frightened by the two women with no teeth, who opened their mouths wide and screamed at him.
I said, 'Give it a few days.'
'I don't think I can take much more of this.'
'Listen,' I said. 'Dengue can depress you. You'll feel like giving up and going home - you might feel like hanging yourself. But take these aspirin and keep telling yourself - whenever you get these nightmares - it's dengue fever.'
'No teeth, and their gums are dripping with blood-'
His head dropped to the pillow, his eyes closed, and I remember thinking: everyone is fighting this war, everyone in the world. Poor Ladysmith was fighting hardest of all. Lying there he could have been bivouacked in the Central Highlands, haggard from a siege, his dengue a version of battle fatigue.
I left him sleeping and walked again through the echoing house. But the smell had penetrated to the house itself, the high thick
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DENGUE FEVER
stink of rotting corpses. It stung my eyes and I almost fainted with the force of it until, against the moon, I saw that blossoming coatrack and the wheeling bats - The Midnight Horror.
'Rotting flesh/ Ladysmith said late the next afternoon. I tried not to smile. I had brought Alec along for a second look. Ladysmith began describing the smell, the mutilated people, the sound of bicycles, and those Chinese women, the toothless ones. The victims had pleaded with him. Ladysmith looked wretched.
Alec said, 'How's your head?'
'It feels like it's going to explode.'
Alec nodded. 'Joints a bit stiff?'
'I can't move.'
'Dengue's a curse.' Alec smiled: doctors so often do when their grim diagnosis is proved right.
7 can't-' Ladysmith started, then grimaced and continued in a softer tone. 'I can't sleep. If I could only sleep I'd be all right. For God's sake give me something to make me sleep.'