My Secret History

by Paul Theroux

  Larry had said, “It’s your friend,” and I found her out by the turnstile.

  “You’re not free by any chance, are you, Andy?”

  This was not one of our regular days.

  But I was free and I told her so. Larry had begged to take my shift in the afternoon if I would cover for him in the evening. He was taking Loretta, the nurse from the Blood Donor Department, to the Boston Pops Concert at the Hatch Shell just down the Esplanade.

  He had said, “I want to impress her—listen to the old masters, and then plank her.”

  “I could probably knock off now,” I told Mrs. Mamalujian.

  “That’s perfect. I want to take you somewhere special, because today’s a special day.”

  “There’s a restaurant I’d like to eat at,” I said.

  Mrs. Mamalujian was delighted: she liked giving me what I wanted, and always complained that I didn’t ask for enough.

  “The Waldorf, near the Coop.”

  She made a face. “That’s a greasy spoon. It’s all students. But if it’s what you want we shall do it. Let’s take a taxi—I’m planning on getting too drunk to drive.”

  I did not tell her why I had chosen the Waldorf—which didn’t seem like a greasy spoon to me, and far from it, rather nice. But when I ordered she knew.

  “At last you’re getting your whale steak,” she said. “Have two of them. Have three!”

  “They are pretty good-sized,” the waiter warned.

  “He’s got a huge appetite,” Mrs. Mamalujian said.

  “One’s enough,” I said.

  “And how would you like it?”

  The question baffled me.

  The waiter tried to help. “Medium? Well-done?”

  I had no idea that whale steaks were cooked like other kinds of meat.

  “Medium,” I said. “Regular.”

  “This isn’t such a bad place,” Mrs. Mamalujian said.

  She was already on her second drink. She kept her swizzle sticks as a way of keeping track. She often ended up with a fistful of them.

  “This tastes so good,” she said, sipping her gin and tonic. “You could probably live on these.” She had stopped looking anxious: the drink had stopped her looking forgetful. “I hope you like shrimp salad. I know I’m not going to want much of mine. You’ll have to help me.”

  Perhaps fat people didn’t get fat from eating their own meals but rather from also eating everyone’s leftovers, as a sort of greedy favor. I wanted to ask Mrs. Mamalujian this, but she was downing her second drink and with her free hand waving to the waiter for a third.

  “That whale steak is all I want.”

  The other thing that pleased me was the cheapness of this place. I had not braved it before, but now I saw that at these prices I could afford to take Lucy here. I began to think of an evening when I might do it. And it was only four stops on the subway from where she lived, so there would be time to make love, too.

  “You didn’t ask me why today’s a special day,” Mrs. Mamalujian said.

  “Is it your birthday?”

  “When you say dumb things like that I realize how young you are.”

  “What’s wrong with birthdays?”

  “Oh, my God,” she said, and really seemed distressed, as if I had mentioned something dreadful, like sickness or death.

  She looked around desperately and then seeing the waiter approach with a drink on his tray, reached out and took the glass and swigged from it. There were also two plates on the tray.

  “Shrimp salad for madam. Whale for the gentleman. Enjoy your meal.”

  I had planned a whole conversation around this dish—how Stubb craved it and woke up the cook to prepare it; and their discussion; and the long chapter on eating whalemeat.

  It was gray-brown and scorched, about the size of a boy’s shoe, with burned onions on the side, and a scoop of mashed potato next to it. But it looked like an ordinary steak, except that there was no bone.

  Mrs. Mamalujian lit a cigarette. She often did that when she saw food, and smoked instead of eating. She moved both hands to her mouth—smoke, drink, smoke, drink. She had begun to look distracted again.

  I cut my steak with the sharp knife and was surprised by the wounded-looking redness of it and the bloody inside. It was a discovery but I said calmly, “Red meat.”

  “I’ve decided to leave my husband, that’s why it’s special,” Mrs. Mamalujian said.

  I had put a piece of meat into my mouth, my first taste of whale. It was not like any other meat I had ever eaten. It was tough, it was oily, and most striking of all it was salty—sea-salty, with the tang of fish. What the hell had she just said?

  “He was completely flabbergasted.”

  I was blinking from the taste of the whale.

  “Don’t look so worried,” Mrs. Mamalujian said.

  Melville had never defined that taste: the one thing he had failed to say about whales.

  “It was the last thing he had expected me to do.”

  Then I remembered what she had said.

  “You mean you just went up to him and said,” and I chewed the whale, “ ‘I’m leaving.’ ”

  “Yes, isn’t it thrilling?”

  I could not hide my real feeling. I said, “No, I think it’s terrible.”

  “How can you say that, when you had something to do with it, Andy.”

  I managed to ask her what she meant by that by eating some more whale steak and hiding my embarrassment in my chewing. It was the strangest meat in the world. I had wanted it to be different, and it was. There was plenty to talk about in it, which was another reason I was discouraged that Mrs. Mamalujian had chosen today to reveal to me that she had ditched her husband.

  “I didn’t realize how dull my life was until I met you,” she said. “You’re fun to be with. You read books. You laugh. You’re alive. And you’re a terrific listener. I want to spend more time having fun.”

  This worried me very much—praise always did, but this was worse because this was praise mingled with expectation. What could I offer her? I hated this change, I was frightened by her announcement, and I knew I would not be able to cope with it.

  I said, “What about your family?”

  “They can take care of themselves,” she said. “Anyway, they think I’m a joke.”

  “But you must have thought about this before you met me,” I said, trying not to be responsible for her decision.

  Why did she choose now to tell me? I wanted to eat this whale steak, but after that first taste I couldn’t concentrate. It was like someone talking when you’re trying to listen to music.

  “No, sir. Before you showed up at the club pool I assumed my life wouldn’t change. I’d just continue going through the motions. Now all that’s changed. You don’t seem very happy for me, Andre.”

  It is impossible to say “I’m happy” at someone’s request and sound as if you mean it, and when I said “Really” it sounded totally false.

  There was a phase in Mrs. Mamalujian’s drinking when she became petulant, usually after four or five. I knew by her tone and the number of swizzle sticks that we had reached that mood. A few more drinks and she would be jolly; then scandalous; then sad. She often finished in tears. They were like her kisses, big wet ones. They smeared her makeup, but they didn’t go on long and she always went off smiling in an exhausted way—well, no wonder. But I didn’t want this today. I wished I were back at the pool instead of here.

  “I’m going back to college after Labor Day,” I said, because her saying I want to spend more time having fun seemed to implicate me. “I won’t be around much.”

  I could not eat this strong briny meat quickly, but I was nearly done. I wanted to dispose of it, think of an excuse and get out of here. If she started crying I was stuck: I could never leave her in tears.

  “I can drive up and see you. We can go for picnics. There must be lots of good restaurants up there. Bon appetit!” That was jolly.

  Making plans for the futu
re like this made me feel like a prisoner who has no choice but to follow that narrow track until he has served his sentence.

  “Your husband must be really upset,” I said.

  “Stop talking about my husband. You don’t even know him. Some of the things I’ve found in his drawers. You wouldn’t believe!” That was scandalous. She drank again and said sadly, “I was hoping you’d go to New York with me some weekend. Maybe take in a show. Wouldn’t you like that?”

  No, I thought, but I said, “Sure. The trouble is I don’t get any time off. If I don’t work—”

  “I’ve got lots of money,” she said, and gulped another drink defiantly. “You’re eating too fast. You’re going to make yourself sick.”

  “I have to get back to the pool.”

  “You don’t care about me,” she whimpered.

  Then I was determined to go. She’d be tearful in two seconds.

  I stood up and kissed her and said, “I’ll give you a call—I want to hear more about it.” But I didn’t want to hear anything about it, and I hoped she would get drunker and forget about me. I thought I would no more go to New York with her than I would do this again—spoil a good whale steak with a fruitless argument. Mrs. Mamalujian was smoking with all her food in front of her when I left. Almost an inch of cigarette ash was suspended over her shrimp salad. I did not want to see it fall.

  That lunch with Mrs. Mamalujian made me lonely and restless. Reading didn’t help. I had to see Lucy. I called her the next day at the bookstore.

  She said, “I was trying to get you all day yesterday, Andy,” and that made me feel better. “I want to talk to you.”

  “How about having dinner with me tomorrow night? There’s somewhere I’d like to take you.”

  She said, “You weren’t at the pool” in a monotonous way. It was very unusual of Lucy not to listen to me.

  She hardly looked at the menu the next night.

  I said, “I usually have the whale steak. Ever had it?”

  She didn’t reply, she wasn’t looking at the menu, she wasn’t listening.

  “Lucy, what would you like to eat?”

  Her eyes were staring at nothing in a blind wide-open way.

  I was silent, but after about fifteen seconds my question reached her.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not hungry.”

  Then she looked straight at me.

  “I mean, if I eat anything I’ll throw up.”

  She had not smiled once.

  “They have whale steaks here,” I said.

  She looked at me as if at a moron, with a kind of hopeless pity.

  I said, “You think whale’s going to be gray blubbery stuff with square edges and about six inches of white fat. But remember the line in Moby Dick where Stubb says something about the ‘red meat’? That’s not Melville’s usual hyperbole, that’s a literal fact. The whale steak is red like a sirloin, and very sinewy. There’s a strange contradiction between the look of it and the taste”—Jesus Christ, it was so hard talking to someone who didn’t reply—“it looks like beef but it has a fishy taste.”

  It occurred to me that the odd salty fishy taste was the taste of Lucy herself, for after she did the nameless thing to me and took me into her mouth and lovingly noodled with me, I did a nameless thing to her. I knelt down and lifted her legs and, as if making a deep dive, put my face against her and madly moved my tongue. My ears rang from being squashed between her thighs. And now I knew that her wetness on my twisted tongue was whale. So I had tasted it before I knew its name.

  I wanted to tell her, but we never talked about sex. It was all done by touch. In bed we shut our eyes and were very silent and active. When it came to sex we were blind and deaf and mute. It was as if we were adventuring in a prohibited place, in a landscape so forbidden none of it had a name.

  And I thought that if I told her she tasted like a whale steak she might become very shy and self-conscious, and that would be the end of it. We were different people in bed from the people we were on the street. In this restaurant it was almost impossible for me to imagine making love to her.

  She looked very sad. I asked her whether anything was wrong. She let a long moment pass and then she sighed.

  “Why do they kill them?” she said, not answering my question. “They are beautiful creatures. They’re enormous. They’re very friendly. They’re intelligent, too. And they sing—haven’t you heard that record?”

  I said, “No.”

  I hated the direction this conversation was taking. It was like showing someone a target with a cluster of holes you had brilliantly shot into the bull’s-eye, and the person making a face and saying I hate guns, undermining the whole subject.

  Lucy screwed up her face and said, “It’s very haunting.”

  You always had to take someone’s word for that. When someone said haunting I was never haunted, I was only annoyed.

  I said, “If you stick up for whales you get a pretty distorted impression of Moby Dick. The whole sense of it is ruined. I mean, Jesus, the whale’s supposed to be evil.”

  “Please don’t yell.”

  That plea was always a provocation to yell, and I was on the point of it when the waiter came over.

  We ordered—a whale steak for me. Lucy languidly said that she’d have half a grapefruit and a bowl of soup. I thought she was deliberately ordering those dull things to get back at me for eating whale. She didn’t know she tasted like whale meat.

  I said, “It’s like hating that Hemingway story, ‘Francis Macomber,’ because you’re against killing buffaloes.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Then you miss the whole point of the bad marriage and the symbolism in the story.”

  “I hate that story. I hate Hemingway. He’s a bully and a brute. I know you’re not supposed to say that because he won the Nobel Prize and he’s so important and all that. But I can’t stand all this animal killing. It’s murder.”

  “Jesus, what are you a vegetarian or something?”

  “What if I am?” she said, sounding tearful.

  But I was so exasperated I kept on, and said, “And you only read vegetarian stories—no hunting, no fishing, no meat-eating, no trespassing. That leaves out Hemingway and Melville. What about that great Faulkner story, ‘The Bear’? Would you like it better if it were called ‘The Cabbage’?”

  “You’re angry. Please don’t be angry.”

  “Or ‘The Head of Lettuce’?” I said. “Actually there is one called ‘The Dill Pickle.’ I’ll bet you like that one a lot.”

  “You’re making me feel like the woman in it,” Lucy said.

  I tried to remember what it was about. Was it a woman seeing an old lover and being very disappointed because the man was such a crumb?

  Lucy said, “It’s just that I heard that whale record recently. We had it in the record section of the store. I was moved by it—the haunting sound, sort of echoing and calling out in a watery and yearning—”

  It was very unfortunate that she was rhapsodizing about whales at that moment, because as she was talking, with a plaintive half-smile on her lips, the waiter put my plate down and a whale steak was bleeding on it.

  That stopped her. She loosened a grapefruit segment and spooned it into her mouth, and frowned as she chewed. I wanted to say You never hear vegetarians eating and saying “Yum!” and “Boy!” and “That sure hits the spot!” Eating this stuff was her way of punishing herself for being hungry—she was a real Yankee. And the grapefruit gave her the exact expression of disapproval she wanted, I was sure, and every time she spooned some of it into her mouth I was put into my place.

  She said, “I think it’s as bad as killing human beings.”

  “You’ve got to be joking,” I said, and chewed the whale steak in an ostentatious way to make my point, which was: There is no use pursuing this argument. Chomping the meat was my rebuttal.

  I was also thinking: We’re incompatible, she’s nagging, she’s nuts, this is no
good. And I decided that I didn’t want to see her again. This was it. We couldn’t agree on the simplest thing. I believed that vegetarians were irrational. A person who refused to eat hamburgers I regarded as insane, because that was someone who took a hamburger seriously.

  When she was served her soup—it was vegetable soup—she hunched her skinny shoulders and put her head down and submerged her spoon in a pathetic way. I almost felt sorry for her until I remembered how she had tried to make me feel bad for eating the whale steak.

  Being angry with her gave me indigestion, or perhaps it was the fact that I was eating too fast in my eagerness to get out of there. I wanted to take her home. Mentally I was on the subway, and then getting out at Memorial Drive, walking down Charles Street and up to Pinckney, kissing her goodnight, saying, “I’ll call you” and not meaning it. Just the feeling I had had with Mrs. Mamalujian two days ago.

  “Let’s go,” I said, and called the waiter for my check.

  She said, “I’ll be right back,” and hurried toward the sign that said REST ROOMS.

  Her absence first made me dislike her; then made me worry and hate myself for thinking I disliked her; and when she returned after fifteen minutes—but it felt like an hour—I actually did dislike her for making me wait and worry for nothing. I thought: Good night, goodbye, I will never see you again.

  We traveled back to Pinckney Street in silence. I loathed her for looking sick, and I told myself she was faking.

  “Want to come in?” she said.

  “Nah.”

  Did she know what I was thinking? But when I kissed her I was aroused and I thought What the hell.

  “If you want to come in,” she said, “we can sneak past Miss Murphy and you can do whatever you like with me.”

  That made me break the promise I had made to myself in the restaurant, but inside her room she seemed weak and inert. She lay back and stuck her legs out and she was as pale as a sacrifice. She did not move when I touched her, which spooked me, and when I saw her cheeks were wet I went no further. Tears always stopped me.

  I said, “Never mind,” and started to go.

  Her room was so small she was able to stretch out her hand and stop me. “Andy, I missed my period,” she said. “It’s two weeks late. I keep praying, but—oh, God, I don’t know what to do—”