My Secret History

by Paul Theroux

  I still spent Friday night with one, and Saturday night with another, and Sunday with a third.

  Rockwell said he had heard that some volunteers were picking up girls in town and taking them home.

  “How can people do that?”

  I said, “Are you saying that we’re just exploiting them? That we’re not giving anything back?”

  “That’s the opposite of what I mean,” he said. “They’re exploiting us. All we do is give.”

  He meant his latrine.

  “All they do is take.”

  I said, “We’re not doing much for them. This is an experience for us. They’re not getting much in return.”

  “They love it,” he said.

  He was partly right, which was always his most annoying characteristic.

  “You probably take African girls home with you.”

  I said nothing. I concealed everything from him—everything I did. And I concealed it from everyone else. It was important, it was my strength, that no one knew anything about my secret life; that way they did not know me at all.

  “ ‘This is an experience for us,’ ” Rockwell said. “You sound so grateful.”

  “I am grateful. Ward, we could be in Vietnam.”

  “I’m four-F on account of my feet, so speak for yourself,” he said. “Listen, they’ve got incurable diseases. Hookworm, eye-worm, bilharzia, malaria, sleeping sickness.”

  “You don’t get those from screwing, Ward.”

  “They’ve got the clap. We had a movie about it in training.”

  “Oh, dry up.”

  “You’re going to get the crud.”

  Everyone said that. He got a dose in Rhodesia. But this was not that kind of place. It was innocent, it was new. We were still children, all of us. That was perhaps why it seemed such an odd experience, at times a kind of frenzy, and to an outsider like Rockwell it must have looked like insanity. It had become such a habit that I hated to be alone.

  Sex was an expression of friendship: in Africa it was like holding hands. There were times when I felt uncomfortably that it was exploitation, but then I thought: How could it be? It was friendly and fun. There was no coercion. It was offered willingly.

  “You like me?” Boopy said.

  “I like you, sister.”

  “You buy me beer?”

  “I buy you two beers, sister.”

  “You take me home?”

  “I take you home right now, sister.”

  “That is better,” she said, and pinched me with her skinny fingers. “Okay.”

  They never asked for money. It seemed to be the easiest thing in the world, and now that I had moved out of my house in Chamba and was living in the African township of Kanjedza I felt I was practically on equal terms with the girls.

  Equality itself was a new thing. But I also tried to please them. I was gallant and attentive. I was very grateful. In Nyasaland these were novelties, which was why I was such a success. I was not imposing a system on them, I was simply attaching myself to their system and trying to treat them fairly. These African girls had been kicked out of their villages. I was far from home, too.

  I used to imagine that I had attained a kind of maturity, and I knew I was very lucky. I thought: This is the right time, this is the right place, and I know it. It is all happening now. I was headmaster; I had a little responsibility, and a little power. And there was something about teaching English and hearing it spoken back to me that was very satisfying. Everything seemed to be working perfectly.

  My weeks were full. After the busy weekend I went seriously about my duties at the school. I woke early and cycled up to Chamba through the dripping steepness of pines that had been planted by Her Majesty’s Forestry Commission. I conducted morning assembly and taught my classes and answered memos. If someone forgot to do something, I did it. The chimbuzi was rising. If I asked anyone to do anything the answer was yes. They always said yes. The students said yes. The people at Kanjedza said yes. The African girls said “okay” and that meant everything.

  One Tuesday at the end of May I was teaching my English class and felt a tickling at the end of my penis. The lesson was gerunds and participles. I sat down behind my desk, still talking, and covertly touched myself. Was my underwear too tight?

  “And gerunds include words like touching, tickling and rubbing. But the word order is very important. It’s a verbal noun. Take ‘itching.’ ‘The itching was driving him crazy.’ What’s the subject of that sentence? Miss Malinki?”

  I stood up, wrote the sentence on the blackboard, and was stung again. But when I sat behind my desk to touch it I only made it worse. But touching also gave me little moments of relief.

  “ ‘Squeezing’ is a gerund, too. Not ‘They were squeezing the banana’—that’s a verb. But ‘Squeezing is something that often produces pain.’ ”

  And I squeezed. It was agony. My penis was limp and overheated, and pinching it made it raw.

  “Excuse me.”

  I hurried to the chim. It had walls but no roof yet, though it really had begun to look like The Alamo. And because all the pipes were in it was usable. Rockwell was nowhere in sight, and I assumed he was taking his math class.

  I swayed and pissed razor blades, but the pain didn’t go. There was ground glass still streaming out of my bladder. Pinching my penis brought tears to my eyes and yet I felt it would relieve the itch.

  “Anything wrong, Andy?”

  That startled me. Rockwell was above me, laying brick, his head and shoulders above the end wall.

  “Of course not,” I said. Had he seen the flame colored rosette at the tip of my dick?

  “I think this is coming along real good, if I do say so myself.”

  He disappeared, and I heard his boots on the rungs of the ladder. I tried to leave, but he met me at the door and began gesturing with his trowel.

  “Notice how I staggered the joists and reinforced the supports? That’s for added strength. And what do you think about the returns on those corners?”

  He wanted to talk. He propped himself against the door, blocking my way, and drew my attention to the hardwood beams.

  “They look great,” I said. My penis was on fire.

  “I figured a traditional design was best. Something you could adapt. You’re probably wondering why I didn’t make it look like an African hut, with mock-mud walls and a thatched roof.”

  I had been wondering—and what was the point of making a traditional American design, the primitive Spanish look of Fort Alamo? But I wanted to scratch myself.

  “I’m not wondering, Ward. Excuse me.”

  He didn’t hear. Bores are always deaf.

  “See, the point is they never had sanitary facilities before. Chimbuzi, as I understand it, just means latrine—well, we’re just talking about a trench.”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “I’m not asking you how it looks,” he said, somewhat offended. “I’m also talking about strength and durability.”

  “It’s the best chimbuzi in Nyasaland.”

  “Don’t put me on.”

  I wanted to claw the itch out of my penis.

  I said, “Ward, it’s a shithouse. It’s a great shithouse, but it’s still a shithouse. Don’t get carried away. Did you join the Peace Corps to build shithouses?”

  He set his face at me. I frowned at him. I was perspiring; my penis throbbed.

  “You’re a very moody guy,” he said.

  “I have to get back to my class!”

  But he was deaf.

  “Hey, if I can say after two years in Africa that I managed to accomplish one thing—and even if that one thing is a sanitary facility, I’ll be very proud. Now you’re probably saying to yourself, ‘Hey—’ ”

  I was saying to myself: I once thought that. It was as though in his wordy way he was satirizing me. And God I was in pain.

  “Later!” I said, and ran into my office. I slammed the door and massaged my penis, trying to ease it. But the tickle, whic
h had become an itch, was now a fiery agony.

  The pain was inside. It was enclosed, it was not visible, it was within me. It did not occupy a large space. It did not need to. It hurt like a sliver of blue flame. And as the hours passed it was like something molten, a hot pellet was forming in a vein of fire, and when I tried to soothe it I succeeded only in enlarging it and extruding it through the length of my penis. The pain was intense. I could not think of anything else.

  I went back to my classroom and told them to start an essay, using as many gerunds as possible; and then I sat in my office and suffered.

  The other effect, just as bad, was that it deadened my penis. And it was worse than dead—it was desecrated, mocked and humiliated. It was useless—impossible to erect, forever limp, and unimaginably painful to piss with. It could not function, and I hated myself for the euphonious phrase that it was neither a hose nor a horn. When the throbbing pain subsided it felt like a hot noodle. I imagined that it had turned black. I expected it to drop off. I tried to keep myself from clawing it, and yet—sitting there in my office—it felt as insignificant as a piece of string.

  I was reminded of how important I regarded it. It was essential to me. Now it was inflamed and unusable, and I knew that something had gone seriously wrong. I was depressed. I canceled my afternoon class so that I could sit in my office and worry.

  I wanted to peek at it, I kept having urges to look. Rockwell was still bricking in the latrine, so I went behind the filing cabinets and unzipped and took the sore thing in my hands. It was soft and swollen and looked mangled, like a half-cooked sausage.

  “Mr. Parent?”

  Miss Natwick had toppled in, flourishing a copybook.

  “I think we have a plagiarist in the Fifth Form.”

  “Just checking the paintwork here,” I said.

  My surprise made me pretend to be very serious, and she immediately became suspicious.

  “The paintwork?” she said in an incredulous way.

  She stepped beside me as I finished stuffing the sore thing into my fly. I hitched up my trousers. I hated my penis. To divert Miss Natwick I knelt and began looking at the wall with regretful scrutiny.

  “There’s nothing wrong with the paintwork,” she said, in a way that suggested that there was something wrong with me.

  “It’s raw, it’s been scorched, it’s all coming apart. If you scratch it the whole thing will collapse. I just noticed it this morning. It’s like an infection—”

  What was I talking about?

  I think Miss Natwick knew. She narrowed her eyes at me and made pitying lips. She seemed disgusted when she left.

  Then I looked again. I was leaking.

  6.

  Growing up, I had been taught to regard sickness and disease as something I had brought on myself. I was to blame for whatever illness I had. A weakness in me had made me give in to the ailment. I had a cold because I had gone out without a hat, or had gotten my feet wet. I had a toothache because I ate candy and didn’t brush regularly. It was a terrible equation, because whenever I was sick I was made to feel guilty.

  Now I had the clap. This was the ultimate penalty and it was peculiarly appropriate. The very organ I had misused was now blazing with infection. It was like being struck dumb for telling a lie, or blinded for staring at something forbidden. The clap was not merely a disease—it was a judgment on me.

  That was what I had been taught. But I resisted it. I knew better than to think that this was a moral fault. It was a physical ailment, not a blot on my soul. It was germs. You killed them and then you were cured. I told myself that it was simply an inconvenience. And yet the guilt remained.

  There was a practical side to the guilt. If the Peace Corps found out I could be sent home. It was not only that I was a blunderer, I was also a health hazard. But I was too far from the capital to see the Peace Corps doctor that day. I would not have seen him in any case. I didn’t want it on my record. It had to be concealed: another secret.

  The small hospital in the town of Zimba was called The Queen Elizabeth. I had taken a student there for stitches once: Emergency Outpatient. It had been a five-hour wait for him.

  I went there late that same afternoon, grimly cycling. Ahead of me on the pewlike benches of Emergency Outpatient were twenty wounded and ailing Africans. On one bench alone, there was a sniveling child in a bloodstained shirt, a man with a slashed neck, another with a swollen bandaged foot, a woman with yellow liquid leaking from her bulging eye, a small whimpering girl clutching her head, and a young man with smashed toes—he had probably hit them with an ax. There was a stink of infection and rags—and the pain was audible in the gasps and sighs. I did not feel so ill here. I sat, determined not to touch my aching penis.

  When she spotted me, the nurse at the table in front beckoned me forward and told me I had come to the wrong place. She did not say so, but I knew that it was because I was white. It was unheard-of for a mzungu to come here.

  “I have to see the doctor.”

  “What is wrong, bwana?”

  “It is my leg, sister,” I said in her language.

  She smiled at that—perhaps she guessed I was lying?—and said, “Mr. Nunka will see you when he is free.”

  “These other people were here before me.”

  “They can wait.”

  “They’re sick.”

  She wagged her head. “They are used to waiting.”

  It was unfair, and yet I seized the chance to cut ahead of them. A seam of pain ran from my throat to my penis.

  “Room Three,” the nurse said.

  On the way down the corridor, it began to throb again. I tried to wring its neck, and tears sprang to my eyes.

  Mr. Nunka was washing his hands in Room Three. His back was turned to me. Drying his hands, he glanced at the slip of paper the nurse had given me and he said, “Injury to leg.”

  I was closing the door to the room as he turned to face me.

  “Doctor,” I said.

  “I am not a doctor,” he said. “I am a medical assistant. Livingstone Nunka is my name. Go on.”

  “It’s not my leg,” I said. Not a doctor—did he know anything? “There’s something wrong with my penis. I mean, inside it.”

  “Any discharge?”

  I nodded. “Sort of greeny-yellow.”

  “There is pain when you pass water?”

  “Yes.”

  “Chinsonono.”

  I glanced around, thinking he was calling the orderly. But he smiled and repeated the word, and I knew he was describing my condition.

  “Gonorrhea.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It must be,” he said. “Have you been going about with African girls?”

  “Yes. Now and then.”

  He threw his handtowel into a laundry basket and opened a cabinet over the sink.

  “When did you last have contact?”

  “Sunday.”

  “Excuse me for asking these questions. And before then?”

  “Saturday.”

  “Any other times?”

  “Friday.”

  He smiled and removed a large jar of tablets from the cabinet.

  “She is probably a carrier.”

  “They,” I said, and cleared my throat. “It wasn’t the same girl.”

  Now he looked directly at me, but he was no longer smiling.

  “Three girls,” I said.

  “African girls.”

  He spoke very gently. He said chinsonono was very common, and he tipped some of the white tablets from the jar onto a square of paper and counted them.

  “How do you know it’s not syphilis?”

  “It might be, but syphilis is much rarer. Anyway, these will cure syphilis too. And any other infections you have.” He was printing on the label. “Don’t worry. The symptoms will clear up in a few days. It will be gone in week.”

  “I’ve heard of gonorrhea being incurable.”

  “Not in Nyasaland.”

  “I w
as thinking of Vietnam.”

  “That is a different story.”

  “Don’t you think you should examine me?”

  “It is not necessary,” he said. “But take all the tablets. Don’t stop taking them just because the symptoms go away. You must finish the course. And it’s a good idea not to drink alcohol or milk.” He plunged a hypodermic into a small bottle. “Roll up your sleeve, please.”

  “What for?”

  “If I give you an injection of penicillin it will get started a little quicker,” and he stabbed my shoulder.

  When he was done I said, “How much do I owe you?”

  “Nothing. It is free. This is Emergency Outpatient—no charge.”

  “I’d like to give you something.” I was embarrassed: he had made it so easy for me. Already I felt better. I wanted him to ask for a bribe.

  “You can come by and help me someday.”

  “I wouldn’t know what to do!”

  “Just orderly work. We are so understaffed.”

  “I don’t have any training.”

  “I don’t have much myself,” Mr. Nunka said. “But you can be useful.”

  The leak stopped the next day, and then the itching. But it was still sore. It felt useless—not dead but battered and limp. The thought of sex made it limper. It had lost its personality and so had I. No dick, no drinking—it was strange. At school I thought: I have no secrets, I am exactly what I seem. One whole side of my existence had vanished. I was surprised that people treated me the same. I felt bored and simple and rather unfunny. Jokes annoyed me. But I was grateful to be cured.

  On the following Saturday, conscious that I was repaying a debt, I went to The Queen Elizabeth and asked for Mr. Nunka.

  “You are better,” he said.

  He had confidence in his medicine. And I was thankful that he did not browbeat me. The Peace Corps doctor would have given me a lecture and made me feel guilty. He would have taken the view that I had caught the clap because I had done something I shouldn’t have. But that was not true—I had done nothing wrong. I had merely been unlucky.