My Secret History

by Paul Theroux

  I delivered my book and collected my money and bought tickets to the States for the three of us. Just before we left London the telephone rang. It was one of those late-evening calls when it was sure to be very important or very irritating. It was America, the sound draining out of the wire, and then peep, and then my editor’s voice.

  “I hope you’re sitting down,” she said.

  I laughed, and said I had just had two pints of beer.

  “It should be champagne,” she said, “because I have some wonderful news for you.”

  I could not imagine what it could be, which was why I was so attentive. I wanted to tell her that I already had everything.

  Then I discovered that the best happiness was unimaginable and couldn’t be forced. It was like a different altitude bringing on a physical change: breathing was easier, time was altered. And years passed—mostly sunshine. Good news, good news.

  SIX

  TWO OF EVERYTHING

  1.

  The plane cut lumberingly through the winter-bright afternoon, and down below I could see the geography of my childhood—the neck of Nahant, the stripe of Revere Beach, the lumpy islands of Boston Harbor, and beneath our approach the rest of it, Wright’s Pond, St. Ray’s, Elm Street, the Sandpits where I had kissed Tina Spector. Our altitude miniaturized it and made it look like a map of the past, the way it was in my memory.

  We banked, Massachusetts was tipped on its side, we came in low over East Boston and Orient Heights, and it seemed—as it always does to people landing at Logan—that we were landing in the harbor chop. There was only blue water beneath us. Just before we touched down in the sea the runway appeared like a breakwater, and I was happy—my heart lifted. Every landing I made in America was a homecoming, something to celebrate.

  I was first in line at customs, which looked like a supermarket checkout.

  “Bags?” the customs officer said, as I handed him my declaration.

  “I don’t have any.”

  He looked up. He had the Boston face—an Irish face, with meaty cheeks and a small mouth, thin lips, a close policeman’s haircut, narrow shoulders, and a big solid belly pushing his belt buckle down.

  He scratched his hairy forearm and started to intimidate me. He had blue unfriendly eyes and pale eyelashes.

  I put my book down. It was Arthur Waley’s translation of The Secret History of the Mongols.

  “Is this all you have?”

  “Yes.”

  He clutched my customs declaration with stubby fingers and leaned over the counter to see whether I was lying.

  “This is all you have?”

  I hated nags who repeated the same question.

  “I just answered that,” I said, and seeing his neck shorten in sudden anger I added, “Right. A history book. Thirteenth century.”

  “Where are you coming from?” He flipped the pages of his thick book, looking for my name on his wanted list.

  “London.”

  He scribbled on my customs declaration, not looking up.

  “Business or vacation?”

  “Both.”

  “How long were you away?”

  “Two months.”

  He looked up again and took a sip of air through his small mouth.

  “You’re away two months and you don’t have any bags?”

  “I have a house in London.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I have everything I need there.”

  “What’s this address in Barnstable?”

  “My house,” I said. “My other house.”

  He looked angry in anticipation, and envious—his envy showing in his small bunched-up mouth, as though he had been thwarted in something he wanted to eat.

  “You don’t even have a toothbrush.”

  “I own two toothbrushes.”

  He was still looking at me in that hungry and disgusted way, and I hated him for being obstructive. This is my country, I thought. I am home.

  “That’s nice. You got two toothbrushes.”

  “I have two of everything,” I said. “One here, one there.”

  “That’s very nice,” he said. “What business are you in?”

  “Writing. I write books.”

  “Have I heard of you?”

  “Obviously not.”

  But he hesitated. “What kind of books? Thrillers—stuff like that?”

  “Not exactly.”

  He was still initialing my customs declaration. He glanced aside and saw that arriving passengers were waiting.

  “My wife’s the reader,” he said, and lost interest in me. He hammered my passport with a rubber stamp and slipped the customs declaration inside it. “Give that to the officer at the door.”

  I pushed my book in my pocket and went outside, where it was clear and cold, with a faint kerosene tang of airplane fuel in the air. I cut across Central Parking to the Eastern Airlines terminal and caught the early afternoon PBA flight to Hyannis—just me and a noiseless Yankee woman and her bulging L.L. Bean canvas shopping bag in the eight-seater plane. The Osterville Taxi was waiting in the deserted parking lot.

  When I gave the driver the address and some directions he said, “I’ve driven you before.”

  “Right.”

  “Big house. Top of the hill.”

  “Right.”

  “Nice spot.”

  I disliked his showing an interest in my privacy, so I said no more. I cracked the window open and smelled the air—pine needles and salt marsh and damp leaves. The creamy dunes showed like surf across the marsh under a blue sky.

  The driver knew the way. When I paid him he said again, “Nice spot.”

  It always made me apprehensive when strangers praised the house. I feared their interest, because I knew they would always remember it. It was that sort of towering house on its own hill. I wanted it to remain secret.

  I watched him go, so that he wouldn’t linger, and then I went inside. Everything was as I had left it. It was warm from the sun through the huge windows, my book was on the table where I had been reading, my slippers by the front door, my teapot and teacup next to the sink, the refrigerator door ajar. I tore two months off the calendar, and I called Eden.

  “I’m here.”

  She let out a little scream of delight and said, “Oh, Andy, it’s so wonderful to hear your voice. When can I see you?”

  I unrolled the carpets and squared them off. I carried the framed Japanese prints that were stacked in the library and rehung them. I dug out the statues from the attic—the gold Tara, silver lama and bronze Buddha—and set them on their pedestals. I opened the windows, dusted the tables, and made the bed. I switched on the refrigerator and the hot water heater. I walked around the yard—picked up a few fallen branches and threw them into the woods, swept the pine needles out of a storm drain, picked some pebbles off the muddy lawn and tossed them on the path. I examined the shrubs. The magnolia blossoms were just blowing open, the tulips were rising, the azaleas were in bud. And there were small, hard, blood-colored buds on most of the bushes and trees. I unlocked the garage and looked for signs of mice: there were no corpses and yet all the poison had been eaten from the trays I had set out in January. I took the canvas cover off my rowing skiff, I pumped up a soft tire on the boat trailer. I reconnected the battery in the Jeep and let the engine run, while I cleared the spiders from the Jacuzzi. By then the household water was hot. I filled the tub and sat in the turbulence, easing my muscles; and then dressed in my Cape clothes—a sweatshirt and blue jeans, and moccasins that were cool from the closet.

  I found a beer in the pantry and lay on the chaise lounge facing west and reading The Secret History of the Mongols. I became engrossed in the career of the Ong Khan, the supreme ruler of a people called the Keraits. He was a resourceful and imaginative leader and I began fantasizing about him and seeing myself on horseback, urging my warriors forward and ranging over great tracts of Mongolia. I wondered why someone as powerful as the Ong Khan had not posed a greater challenge to
Genghis Khan.

  And then I knew. The Ong Khan was unexpectedly defeated in a short battle. He lost his horse and all his equipment. He hurried away empty-handed, but he was safe—and he believed there would be more battles. He traveled a great distance—I looked up and saw the sunset reddening over Sandwich.

  The Ong Khan [I read] was thirsty after this long journey and was going down to the stream to drink when a Naiman scout called Khori-subechi seized him.

  He said, “I am the Ong Khan,” but the scout did not believe him, and killed him.

  I stopped reading, I closed the book, I considered my life. I had not used it much in my writing. The sunset was still in my face, and I watched it, thinking of the Ong Khan and myself, until the daylight was gone, until the last drop was wrung out of the sky by the night, and my house was in darkness.

  In that darkness, without a book, I watched for Eden. At the foot of the hill was a distant solitary streetlamp, and its old-fashioned blob of light showed on the road. It was an austere and moody Edward Hopper, like the undecorated gas station down the road, like the white clapboard house on the marsh to the north. I listened to the foghorn from the Cape Cod Canal entrance—one low hoot every fifteen seconds. For the moment it all seemed perfect—my solitude, the sky full of stars through the high windows of my house, the streetlamp standing like a single daffodil, and the foghorn sounding in the blackness beyond it while I lay, propped up on one arm and drinking. I had forgotten the Ong Khan; I was thinking only of Eden. To me anticipation was bliss, and nothing was better than waiting in the warm shadowy house for this woman to arrive. It wasn’t anything like repose. It was all motion, like a vivid journey, producing wave upon wave of fantasies and sensations.

  In a random and disorderly world of hectic days and long nights this was a sure thing—certain happiness. The foretaste was so sweet that I became wistful when I saw the lights of Eden’s car in the long drive and knew that the thrill of my wait was over. The two wheels with golden cogs that had been turning against each other in my mind slowed and stopped.

  In the stillness I went out to the car.

  “Why didn’t you tell me when you were arriving?” Eden asked as we embraced in the driveway. “I would have met you at Logan.”

  “I didn’t know what flight I was on until just yesterday.”

  I wondered in a little shudder why I had told her this lie. Was it because I wanted to arrive at the Cape alone and savor the moments of anticipation?

  “You never plan ahead,” she said gently. “You never have any idea what you’re going to do from one minute to the next.”

  I clutched her and said, “I know what I’m going to do with you.”

  She said, “Anything,” and kissed me long and hard, and began to cry—I could feel the sobs through her body. “I missed you,” she said.

  “I missed you, too.”

  Everything I said I examined for its truth. I told myself that this was true, as we went into the house, holding hands.

  “Why did you stay away so long?”

  “I had so much to do,” I said, thinking: That was not it at all.

  “Don’t go away again, please.”

  “No,” I said. “Never.”

  I was restless and somewhat self-conscious in the house with Eden, and time seemed to snag against us. I sensed us faltering. I kept asking myself: What would I be doing if I were alone? What would I eat—where would I go?

  Eden said, “I want to cook you something.”

  “There’s no food.”

  “We can get some—let’s go shopping. Aren’t you hungry?”

  I did not know. If I were alone I would know, I thought.

  “I ate on the plane,” I said. “Let’s have a drink.”

  “Then you’ll conk out on me,” Eden said. “You always do when you have jet lag.”

  It was still dark in the house. I had not bothered to put the lights on. I poured the wine in the dark and we drank at the window by starlight, watching the single streetlamp down on the road and listening to the foghorn from the canal.

  “We have to talk about India,” I said.

  “Do you still want me to go with you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  When I said that she came to me and crawled into my lap and nuzzled me. Her skin was soft and had the odor of flower petals, and I could feel her warmth against my eyes. She touched me and my mind went dead, my tongue became thick and stupid, and something deep within me came alive—a circuit that began to throb—whipping up my heart and my blood.

  She said, “I was asking someone about India and they said this was the best time to go.”

  She spoke in a casual way but there was something in her tone that was anything but casual. It was vibrant enthusiasm and relief that the matter seemed settled. She was planning on this, she had been counting on me. When I was away I often forgot her intensity, and I had to be this near her to be reminded of how her life was connected to mine. But which of my lives was she depending on, and who had she told about India?

  “Wait till you see it—the temples, the ruins, the rice fields, and the black trains chugging for days under huge hot skies.”

  Eden sniffed and said almost tearfully, “I’m so happy—you’ve made me so happy.”

  I kissed her and smiled in the dark, and I watched the tipsy stars, their streaks of light as they sprawled trying to move.

  “I have something to show you,” Eden said. She got up quickly and left the room.

  She returned saying, “Can you see me?”

  A match flared in her hand and she lit the candle and brought it nearer.

  She was wearing a short black slip that reached to the top of her long white legs. Her lips looked black—she had put on lipstick, and in the starlight and the leaping candleflame her skin shimmered. She was like a night bloom, and when she knelt to put the candlestick onto the floor her pale white buttocks protruded as her slip tightened. Then she stood up and the candlelight shone through the silk showing her slender naked body. She approached me and stroked my outstretched leg and locked my knee between her thighs.

  “Am I a bad girl?”

  She squatted like a child playing horsey, chafing herself on my knee.

  “Yes,” I said eagerly.

  She sighed and crept forward and sat on my lap, holding me and crushing her breasts against me. Her thick hair was in my mouth, her saliva on my lips, and my hands full of the black silk that had been warmed by her skin.

  “If I’m bad you’ll have to put me to bed,” she said.

  We went upstairs, clumsily holding each other. We made love blindly at first, and then we grew very sure of each other, and with that confidence in each other’s flesh it was like seeing in the dark.

  I came awake in the dark and the glowing clock showed that it was just after five. Eden lay asleep beside me, sleeping compactly, her body drawn up against mine, and her shoulders seeming to enclose her head. I slid out of bed and went downstairs in the woolly darkness and dialed London on the phone in the library.

  “Jenny—is that you?”

  “Darling,” she said—she was surprised and pleased. “I didn’t think I’d hear from you so soon. What time is it there? It must be the crack of dawn.”

  “Five-fifteen. I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Is anything the matter?”

  “No. Just jet lag.”

  “Your voice sounds so strange.”

  “I’m tired, I guess.”

  “You poor thing—get some rest. You’ll be all right in a few days. You must be very excited about India.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve got so many other things to think about.”

  “Anything I can help you with?”

  “Not really—no,” I said quickly and then, “I have the guidebook I used ten years ago. I’m taking the same route.”

  “Wouldn’t it be amazing if it were just the same?”

  “It won’t be,” I said. “It can’t be.”

  �
��Jack misses you, too. He’s nagging me skinny about buying him a computer.”

  “Buy him one,” I said.

  It seemed so innocent to want something that could be bought with money. I was going to tell Jenny that when she spoke up.

  “I wish I were going to India with you,” she said. “But I’d just get in your way. And I know you have your heart set on going alone.”

  All this time the dawn was breaking, like a tide turning, and as it ebbed rinsing the darkness out of the sky. I put the phone down in the whitened room and heard Eden call my name.

  * * *

  Three weeks later I rolled up the carpets, disconnected the battery, put the statues away, shut off the water, took down the pictures, and all the rest of it. I locked the house, and we left.

  2.

  Eden was tall and slender, with thick black hair that hung straight down, and pale skin that gave her a gaunt indoor look. And yet she was athletic. She had been a dancer—and she still practiced her steps for exercise and still stuck to her dancer’s diet. It was only late at night, when she was hungry or amorous that she pouted and became a little girl. The rest of the time she was an elegant and intimidating woman with jangling bracelets and gray-green eyes like a fox.

  I told her she was perfect. I described her carefully, praising her hair and eyes, to show her I noticed everything.

  “I dye my hair. It’s a color called ‘Night-shine.’ I use makeup, I use lip gloss. My contact lenses are tinted.” She smiled. Was she taunting me? “I saved the first money I made to have my teeth capped. I have huge feet—haven’t you noticed?”

  This unexpected honesty only made her more appealing to me.

  “I’m impossible,” she said. “I’d drive you crazy.”

  Only women used those expressions, and I had always felt that when they did they must be believed—that they knew best.