My Other Life

by Paul Theroux

  "Is that why you want me to see this?"

  "No." Rupert was smiling. "Didn't you notice anything strange in it?"

  I started to answer. Rupert began rewinding the tape, making Tripodi clownish, doing everything rapidly, backwards, twitching. And then Rupert hit the Play button and the tape began again from You sound so certain.

  I saw the old man hesitate and then turn. Rupert froze the tape.

  "What do you see?"

  "Nothing."

  "Look again."

  A blur, a figure in the distance glimpsed through the window moving towards the back door, just the back of a small head and narrow shoulders. It could have been a cluster of leaves blown by the wind, a gulp of light, the snap of a clean rag.

  In the foreground Arturo Tripodi had turned and I could see the back of his neck—stringy, weak, pathetic, too small for the collar and tie which, on this poor flesh, was bunched like the drawstring on a loose bag. People are so solitary when seen from an oblique angle, so defenseless when seen from behind.

  "What is it?"

  "You mean, 'Who is it?'" Rupert said. "Remember that blur."

  "Your wife?"

  Rupert laughed so hard at this I knew my fumbling question had to have a private meaning that excited him, even though his shrieking laughter was like mockery to me.

  At last he wiped his eyes and gasped and said, "The charlady's daughter, Clara."

  So there was a mustached old woman who looked after him. I said, "You want to tell me something."

  Rupert's eyes glistened with excitement. His expression was lit with the knowledge that he was about to tell me something I could not even guess at. That was one of his most affecting traits, the way his face shone as he screeched. Being wise is someone's knowing something you don't. Rupert was usually absent, but when he showed his face he was enthusiastic, which was more than I could say for Arturo Tripodi.

  With his hand on the tape machine Rupert kept the moment frozen—the blur at the window, the turned head of Tripodi, the feeble neck, the posture of retreat.

  "When we were done," Rupert said, "and had put the furniture back, we thanked him and left."

  Again, in my mind, I saw the hot little room of dusty books and the overdressed old man in his heavily upholstered chair.

  "I was halfway home when I remembered the key that I had been given to let myself and the crew in with. I still had it. I couldn't call him—he was too deaf to hear my explanation. That was why I had the key in the first place, because he couldn't hear the doorbell. The arrangement was that I would put it into an envelope and push it through the letter slot."

  He smiled and pressed his fingertips together as though he held a key.

  "I was going to send my wife, but she was down in the country and wasn't due in London until that evening. So I went back, and—I didn't have an envelope—I let myself in through the front door. Arturo Tripodi was not in the parlor."

  I saw Rupert in the parlor, holding his breath, peering, listening, his face shining with pleasure.

  "I could have put the key down. But I had plenty of time. I didn't have to meet my wife until seven. Something made me hesitate. It was his voice. I thought I heard the word 'trance.' That seemed to me perfect."

  He looked for my reaction, and he seemed to be enjoying the suspense, the way I hung on, waiting for his next word.

  "He was seated in the library, his back to me. Just a few feet from where we had recorded the program. It's a small house, with more rooms than you might imagine, but this was the next room, just a few feet from where he had discussed the new novel so seriously, his concept of fiction. Candor. Solitude. Man alone."

  Rupert was gleeful, his fine skinny fingers trembling.

  "He sat in his big hairy jacket, but he was not alone. He was watching a small girl, the one there"—the blur on the tape—"and she was naked. She was so pale, so fragile, no more than eight or nine, no breasts, wearing only a pair of white socks. Her eyes were large and fearful. You can imagine. And Arturo Tripodi was whispering, 'Dance, dance.'"

  That was the story Rupert told me.

  A few years later Arturo Tripodi died of heart failure. Rupert Moody died of AIDS.

  EIGHT

  The Shortest Day of the Year

  1

  A WRITER OFTEN chooses to leave a chapter out of a book. I have always been fascinated by the undressed father and daughter in that ramping perversity Edith Wharton deleted from her novel Beatrice Palmato (see the appendix of Professor Lewis's biography of EW); there is the dreamy river chapter that Mark Twain left out of Huckleberry Finn, and the sexual ambiguity J. R. Ackerley excluded from Hindoo Holiday. There must be thousands more. I suspect this writing to be revealing stuff, but it may be suppressed on other grounds—that it offends polite taste, or strains credulity, or seems inappropriate. Or is it simply a bad fit? Whatever, it is a question of timing: writers are careful not to throw anything of value away. The fact is, no matter how bizarre or scandalous, the sunken chapter always surfaces.

  I traveled the coast of Britain in the spring and summer of 1982. Afterwards, writing The Kingdom by the Sea, I sometimes returned to a seaside place to verify a fact or confirm an impression. Anton and I spent some summer days in Orwell's Southwold; Will biked with me, checking place names on the Isle of Wight. Soon, autumn had emptied the summer resorts, and the gusting winds made them barer still. They were blackened by the sweeping rain of late November. The seas were higher, the cold strands were narrower, the surf noisier. But these were seasonal variations, differences in smells and skies; they did not alter the judgment in the manuscript I carried with me from one place to the next.

  Four days before Christmas I was in Yorkshire, looking at a section of coast I had missed north of Whitby. In the spring, for the purposes of my book, I had taken the branch line from Middlesbrough. This time I was walking. I thought I had set off in good time, but as twilight gathered the shadows I realized it was the shortest day of the year.

  Dusk slowed me down, and at Runswick Bay and Kettleness I found it hard to see my feet. It was that uncertain time of day, just after a winter sunset, when the way is made visible by the pale sky showing in puddles on the muddy path.

  And then everything was black. I stumbled on through the wykes and dumps until I saw a wavering light. This is how I came to Blackby Hole.

  The village was not yet visible, but I knew there were cottages hidden in the nearby darkness, because there was in the air the cozy burned-toast smell of smoke from coal fires, in those days the sharpest odor on frosty nights in English villages. There was only darkness and this coal smoke for a few hundred yards, and then clammy air rolled over me. The next time I saw the light it was smudged and refracted by the drifting fog.

  This was the North. I had expected Christmas snow, but the sea fog was much stranger and just as cold and penetrated deeper. It was as if I lay with my face against a marble slab, and the ghostly progress of surf, flopping and gasping on the foreshore under the cliffs, suggested terrible things. I imagined stepping off one of those cliffs, or else the crumbly cliff's edge collapsing under me and the loose chunks of headland bearing me down and flinging me into the black water of the North Sea. The fog had settled and thickened, shrouding the coast and muffling all sounds except that of the suffering sea.

  I regretted this trip already. England is one of those safe, overdeveloped countries where a traveler like me has to go to a great deal of trouble to place himself in danger. After days of struggling against the tameness and safety of the coastal footpath called the Cleveland Way I had at this dark hour now succeeded in placing myself at risk. And Christmas was another peculiar problem—the holiday was like an ebbing tide that left all strangers stranded. I might not be able to leave until I was released by the next tide, the normal working days that were more than a week away, or perhaps well into January.

  Alison had said, "If you're not back well before Christmas..." and had not finished the sentence, so as to send me off ima
gining what the dire implications of the rest of it might have been. She felt, with some justification, that I had let her down many times in the past.

  The swimming light showed me a stile. I plunged over it and into a narrow lane. I heard the creak of a sign before I saw the pub itself, the Crossed Keys. And cottages appeared as faint shadows of dripping walls and shuttered windows. I was muddy and cold, so I considered warming myself in the pub. There was a cardboard sign saying Vacancies in the window, yet I procrastinated. If I could find a bus or a lift out of the village, I would leave this very night. I was sure that if I stayed I would discover nothing beyond what I could now see in Blackby Hole. It was a tiny place. Move on, I thought. And then I saw the crackling fire in the Crossed Keys.

  I did not notice at first that there were people in the pub. I saw tangled strings of Christmas lights and hanging ribbons. And there were bunches of holly among the horse brasses on the beams, one round holly wreath on the wall, and a twist of tuberous mistletoe drooping over the door. Because these plants were real, and dying, they seemed less festive to me. Then I saw people: two men in chairs and a woman on the far side of the horseshoe shape of the bar. They had not moved when I entered. I had taken them for pieces of furniture—it was that kind of country pub. But why should they care about me? They must have seen plenty of travelers like me, muddy and sodden from the long-distance path that cut through the village. I was haggard from almost two weeks of this fact checking, and wearing ridiculous hiking boots, and masked with a beard I had grown because I was sick of seeing my face in hotel mirrors.

  And who is a more unpromising companion than an unshaven middle-aged man bent under a battered knapsack? He is encircled by a damp odor of frugality and monomania. He will accept a drink from you, but he is unlikely to buy you one in return. Go about your business, don't make eye contact, he will leave soon. He will never come back. Anyway, he might well be a lunatic or a child molester. Hiking in the dark alone so near Christmas? If he had a home, he would be there. All this and much more. No one acknowledged me, or spoke.

  So I was the first to speak, but I had to wait some while for an opportunity. The bell over the door tinkled as a little old woman in a loudly crackling plastic mackintosh entered with a small wet dog.

  "A tin of shandy and a packet of cheese-and-onion flavored crisps, there's a good lad," she said.

  It was worth a day's hard slog through drizzle to be rewarded by an English sentence like that. I copied it into my notebook while she was served.

  At the sound of the bell a man had appeared from a back room of the pub. He grunted and filled the woman's order, and I noticed that he handled her money clumsily, using all his fingers. He had the dirty fingers and enormous thumbs you associate with a strangler.

  The woman fed the potato chips to the dog, talking the whole while—reminding the animal to watch its manners. And then she was gone. That was my opportunity.

  "I don't think I've ever seen a dog do that."

  When I spoke, the two men in the chairs stood up and left the pub, plucking at their wool sweaters and yanking their caps down.

  "I wonder whether it's hard for him to swallow them," I said.

  "I reckon it's right easy like."

  That was the man behind the bar, probably the landlord of the pub, a balding round-eyed fellow in a sweater that was much too big for him. He looked at me briefly and said, "I'm stopping inside for my tea," and he left.

  "They don't like to talk about Mrs. Pickering," the next voice said. It was the woman on the far side of the bar. "You've driven them away."

  "I have that effect on some people," I said, and when she obliged me by laughing, I added, "Why don't you join me? It's much warmer here by the fire."

  To my surprise she took the other chair by the hearth and said, "I never know whether it's all right to sit here. There are a couple of old boys who always use these chairs. The fog probably kept them at home."

  She had beautiful teeth, and bright eyes, and soft hair cut short, and a pale indoor complexion. Lost in studying her, I gabbled without thinking, wanting only to keep her there by the fire. I had not spoken to anyone all day. Such long silences always made me feel invisible, so talking to this woman I became real again—and more, I became hopeful.

  "And what is the mystery about Mrs. Pickering?"

  "No mystery. It is well known." The woman stared solemnly at me and I was sorry I had been so chirpy. "She murdered her fiancé."

  I tried to remember Mrs. Pickering's face. I strained, and recollected a sad shawled figure in small boots. I recalled the crackling raincoat, the fingerless woolen gloves, and I had her whole sentence (A tin of shandy and a packet of...) written into my notebook. But I could not see her face. My distinct memory was of a wet terrier smacking its jaws and half choking in the effort to eat the potato chips.

  "Not everyone is what they seem."

  "She seemed very sweet," I said.

  "I was thinking of her fiancé. He was a busybody and a terrible bully. Like a lot of men with sexual problems, he was aggressive and violent. The local people knew what he was like, and what she had to put up with. It was only strangers who were fooled by him. She killed him one night with a billhook. He deserved it. She Was given a suspended sentence—an incredibly enlightened decision on the part of the judge. But no one likes to talk about her. They think everything you say about her is gossip. And it is, really. Where have you come from?"

  Her explanation was also a warning. I accepted it and answered her question, saying I had come from Whitby.

  She had been so straight with me and so friendly I wanted to avoid my usual fictions about being in publishing and telling her whatever name came into my head. I wanted to tell her that I had written the first draft of a book about traveling around the coast of Britain and I was here looking at places I had missed the first time around.

  "By the way, my name is Edward Medford."

  The false name slipped out in spite of my desire to tell her the truth. I almost laughed at the absurdity of it. Then I saw that it was my name; that whatever I said, because I had said it, had to be true; and that it was also the case with writing—that the act of writing made the word true.

  "Can I get you a drink?"

  "I'd love another drink. This is whiskey and lemon," she said. "I didn't have any in the house. I'm battling a cold." When I returned with the drink she was stoking the fire, tonging lumps of splintery coal from a scuttle. She thanked me for the drink and said, "I'm Lucy Haven." From the way she smiled I knew she wanted to say something more.

  "Yes?" I said, to encourage her.

  "Today's my birthday," she said, "Saint Lucy's Day. Thus my name."

  "Happy birthday."

  "I'm no saint, though," she said, and laughed softly.

  She might have been forty, she could have been a bit more, and she was restrained in the most dignified way. She seemed wary when she smiled—she breathed in nicely when she did so. She struck me as independent and fearless, and solitary, if not lonely. I liked her sensible clothes and heavy boots, her knitted scarf and thick coat. She seemed self-reliant and frank. She was not afraid of me. I found her extremely attractive.

  We talked about the fog, the crumbling cliffs, the Crossed Keys, and the distance to Saltburn, where there was a railway station. Then I said, "What's there to do around here?"

  "I listen to the wireless or play my gramophone most evenings, and I have my knitting."

  Those old-fashioned words were among the loneliest I had heard on the coast of Britain.

  "And I do a great deal of reading."

  I was too depressed to think of a proper response. I stroked my beard and saw that my silence was making her self-conscious.

  "I suppose it's a very quiet life. But it suits me." She leaned forward and said, "What's that insignia on your tie?"

  "Royal Geographical Society," I said. "I wear it when I'm hiking. Helps my morale."

  I lifted the little gold emblem with my thumb, offe
ring it, so that she could see it better.

  "Ties are very phallic," she said.

  I let the thing drop. Ties?

  "It's obvious, isn't it?" she went on, perhaps because I had not said anything. "I read somewhere that neckties didn't become popular until the sixteenth century. And that was when the padded codpiece went out of style."

  It did not seem possible that anyone could say this without smiling, and yet her face remained expressionless, while I straightened up so that my tie wouldn't dangle. I smoothed it against my shirt.

  "I suppose beards are, too," I said. "Phallic symbols."

  "Yours is."

  It was the first one I had ever grown. I thought it made me look beaverlike and fat-faced, but when I heard her make that extraordinary remark, I felt I had succeeded at something I had not been aware of having attempted. I had always resisted growing a beard, because I felt that a beard brought on a personality change—it happened to many men. She clearly approved.

  "Some penises are phallic symbols," I said.

  "You're an American, aren't you?"

  "Yes, I came here to get lost."

  "You came to the right village."

  We had another drink, and another, and went on talking in this friendly way—she was full of unexpected remarks. The wind in the chimney disturbed the fire. It had become a bleak, murky night. No one else entered the pub.

  "What time does this place close?"

  "Half-ten," she said. "But if we left before then, he'd probably shut up shop. It's a filthy night."

  "But if we left, where would we go?"

  She gave me a lovely unexpected smile, and it was more than a facial expression: it was a beautiful thought in her eyes and her mouth.

  "My cottage isn't far," she said. "We could have a drink there. You haven't let me buy my round!"

  "It's your birthday, Lucy."

  All the while I had been wondering how this might end. I still did not know, but at least I had a chance. And it was not as a traveler wanting to be welcomed and warmed and told a good yarn, but for something more. I liked her, and I was grateful to her for taking charge of me.