My Secret History Read online

  A WONDERFUL BOOK …

  “Theroux’s gift for painting Third World characters … is equal to that of Graham Greene or Somerset Maugham.”

  —Los Angeles Times Book Review

  “Engagingly intimate … The chapters in this novel devoted to Andre’s years in Nyasaland and Uganda display Mr. Theroux’s now patented ability to describe the foreign, the alien, the strange, with both an insider’s affection and an outsider’s eye for incongruous detail.”

  —The New York Times

  “No one has written about the inner life of the American male lately with more comic, poignant candor than Paul Theroux in his new novel.… He writes brilliantly about people.”

  —Playboy

  “Jenny is one of Mr. Theroux’s great female creations.… MY SECRET HISTORY has a kind of artistry all its own.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “A strikingly vivid picture of a writer.… Theroux’s trademark place descriptions are as vivid as ever, but with MY SECRET HISTORY, he takes us on a journey unlike any other.”

  —The Houston Post

  “Theroux’s account of the street-level effects of independence in ‘emerging’ nations is wryly funny and bitterly sad.… [The] last episode is marvelous, humming with tension, as Theroux at last makes Andre face up to what he has made of his life as a man and a writer.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “The pleasure of reading MY SECRET HISTORY is that one comes home to the fact that one is reading for one’s life, taking deep breaths and trying to come alive, sharing many more secrets than we would at first admire or imagine.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “First-rate … Theroux reveals the secret life and divided loyalties that make up a writer’s world. The result is a witty and wise portrait of a writer as he travels the globe searching for self-understanding.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Scandalously sexy.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  “Funny and engrossing.”

  —Newsday

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  FICTION

  Waldo

  Fong and the Indians

  Girls at Play

  Jungle Lovers

  Sinning with Annie

  Saint Jack

  The Black House

  The Family Arsenal

  The Consul’s File

  A Christmas Card Picture Palace

  London Snow

  World’s End

  The Mosquito Coast

  The London Embassy

  Half-Moon Street

  O-Zone

  Millroy the Magician

  Chicago Loop

  CRITICISM

  V. S. Naipaul

  NONFICTION

  The Great Railway Bazaar

  The Old Patagonian Express

  The Kingdom by the Sea

  Sailing Through China

  Sunrise with Seamonsters

  The Imperial Way

  Riding the Iron Rooster

  To the Ends of the Earth

  The Happy Isles of Oceania

  A Fawcett Columbine Book

  Published by Ballantine Books

  Copyright © 1989 by Cape Cod Scriveners Company

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  The author gratefully acknowledges permission from the following sources to reprint material in their control:

  Henry Holt and Company, Inc. for lines from “Into My Heart” by A. E. Housman. Copyright 1939, 1940, © 1965 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Copyright © 1967, 1968 by Robert E. Symons. Reprinted from The Collected Poems of A. E. Housman, by permission of Henry Holt and Company, Inc.

  Warner Bros. Inc. for lyrics from “Moonlight Bay,” lyrics by Edward Madden, music by Percy Wenrich. © 1912 Warner Bros. Inc. (renewed). All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  http://www.randomhouse.com

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-96618

  eISBN: 978-0-307-79026-2

  This edition published by arrangement with G. P. Putnam’s Sons, a division of the Putnam Berkley Group, Inc.

  v3.1

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  Epigraph

  ONE: ALTAR BOY [1956]

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  TWO: WHALE STEAKS [1960]

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  THREE: AFRICAN GIRLS [1964]

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  FOUR: BUSH-BABY [1968]

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  FIVE: LEAVING SIBERIA [1974]

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  SIX: TWO OF EVERYTHING [1984]

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  About the Author

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Although some of the events and places depicted in this novel bear a similarity to those in my own life, the characters all strolled out of my imagination. My wife Anne, for example, does not in the least resemble Andre Parent’s spouse. As Evelyn Waugh wrote in a similar context, I am not I: thou art not he or she: they are not they.

  PAUL THEROUX

  Into my heart an air that kills

  From yon far country blows:

  What are those blue remembered hills,

  What spires, what farms are those?

  That is the land of lost content,

  I see it shining plain:

  The happy highways where I went

  And cannot come again.

  —A. E. HOUSMAN

  ONE

  ALTAR BOY

  1.

  I was born poor in rich America, yet my secret instincts were better than money and were for me a source of power. I had advantages that no one could take away from me—a clear memory and brilliant dreams and a knack for knowing when I was happy.

  I was at my happiest leading two lives, and it was a satisfaction to me that the second one—of the dreamer or the sneak—I kept hidden. That was how I spent my first fifteen years. Fifteen was young then and I knew this: The poor don’t belong. But one summer out of loneliness or impatience my second self did more than wake and watch, and more than remember. He began to see like a h
istorian, and he acted. I have to save my life, I used to think.

  Early that summer I was walking down a lovely crumbling little street lined with elms, called Brookview Road. The city of Boston, with its two tall buildings, was visible from one end of the road looking east along the Fellsway. The brook was a shallow ditch at the other end of the road, where the Italian families had tomato gardens. There were rats in the ditch, but it was a pretty part of town when the wineglass elms were heavy with leaves.

  It was a perfect day of blue sky and the hot summer hum of insects, which made a sound like the temperature rising. I had my rifle over my shoulder—a Mossberg twenty-two—as I passed Tina Spector’s house. She was sitting on her piazza, which was our word for porch. I had planned it this way.

  She said, “Hey, Andy, where are you going with that gun?”

  “Church,” I said.

  “It’s Tuesday!”

  “But I’ve got a funeral.”

  I was still walking, and now Tina started off the piazza towards me. I knew she would: it was part of my plan.

  “How come you’re bringing your gun to church?”

  “Target practice, up the Sandpits,” I said. “After.”

  She said, “My mother can’t stand guns.”

  Everybody said that. I kept walking.

  “And you’re not even sixteen,” she said.

  I could feel the warm pressure of her eyes on the back of my neck.

  She said, “Can I come with you?”

  “Okay,” I said, probably too eagerly—but I didn’t want her to change her mind. I had planned to agree very slowly and reluctantly. I had blurted it out, because I was so glad she had asked. The thought of being alone with Tina in the Sandpits on a hot summer afternoon was very erotic, and having my rifle with me made it still more erotic, for a reason I could not explain. I did not know what erotic meant; wicked was the word that went through my head.

  “Meet me outside Saint Ray’s.”

  “My mother doesn’t want me near that church.”

  Her mother was a non-Catholic.

  “What’s in that bag?” she asked—she was still following me, three steps behind.

  “Ammo,” I said. “Bullets.”

  That was a lie. My cartridges were in my pocket. In my bag I had a starched surplice—a white smock with starched sleeves and a stiff plastic collar. I was an altar boy, on my way to serve at a funeral.

  I heard her sneakers crunch behind me. I knew she had stopped but I didn’t look around.

  “See you later,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  We were both fifteen years old. I did not know whether she would be waiting for me. Things always happened suddenly, without much warning. Some days nothing happened and other days everything.

  * * *

  The rule at St. Raphael’s—St. Ray’s—was that if you served at three funerals you got a wedding as a reward. Funerals were gloomy, and it was an elderly parish, so there were plenty of them. But there was money in a wedding. The altar boys usually got two dollars, and the priest got ten. The money was handed over by the best man or the bride’s father. It was always in a white envelope, always in the sacristy. “Here you are,” they’d say to us, and then turning to the priest, “This is for you, Father.”

  “God bless you,” the priest would say, as he folded the envelope into his vestments. Meanwhile we were tearing ours open.

  There was no money in funerals, and it could be terrible, especially if it was Italians—the shouts and nose-blowings of big competitive families, and the loud abrupt sobbing, or “No!” or the screaming of the dead person’s name. “Salveeeeee!”

  I unslung my Mossberg and held it muzzle down, walking stiff-legged to conceal it. I sneaked into the sacristy and saw Chicky DePalma pulling on his cassock.

  “I hosey the bells,” he said, before I could speak. Ringing the bells at the consecration was considered one of the enjoyable duties of an altar boy, and the boy who rang the bells also got to hold the plate at the communion. That was a flat gold pan that was placed under a person’s chin to catch any falling flecks of the consecrated host.

  Chicky had started buttoning his cassock—a finicky job, thirty buttons or more.

  “Hey, shitface, you’re not supposed to bring guns into a church!”

  He fought the buttons with his big fingers.

  “It’s not loaded. And I took the bolt out.”

  “It’s still a gun! It could go off, asshole!”

  “You don’t know shit about guns,” I said. “Anyway, this is the sacristy.”

  The sacristy was a safe place—not sacred, but a sort of neutral area, like a lobby where we altar boys met and waited until it was time for mass. In the meantime we were growing up. Whenever a priest tried to explain what limbo or purgatory was I thought of the sacristy. Who would know if there was a gun here?

  I slipped the Mossberg into the closet behind the hanging cassocks, and then looked for a cassock my size.

  Chicky said, “I saw you with Specks.”

  “She was following me.” I decided not to tell him I was taking her to the Sandpits—he would laugh or else mock me.

  “Her sister got knocked up—she had to get married.” Chicky was now working his arms into his surplice—it was pure white and pleated and fringed with lace. Italians always had the best surplices, because of their mothers; and they even brought them on hangers. “She was a real tramp. She once took on six guys. She used to give hand-jobs. She let Moochie eat her out.”

  “Quit it,” I said.

  “You fairy,” Chicky said, and smoothed his surplice in the mirror. “I was making out last night. I’m not going to say with who. After about two seconds she was letting me have bare tit. I was really getting her hot.”

  “I’ll bet you weren’t,” I said, to encourage him. I was eager for more. I buttoned my cassock and pretended I wasn’t listening.

  “He doesn’t believe me,” he said, in a confident way, and then teased me with silence.

  “How did you know?” I whispered, looking around. The priest had still not arrived, although the vestments were out, folded neatly on top of the altarlike cabinet, the stacks of linens and the bright chasuble; and his cope, his cincture and stole.

  He said, “I could feel it.”

  I was staring at him, holding the skirt of my cassock.

  He said, “When a girl gets hot her hole gets bigger.”

  I could picture this very distinctly, the dark opening and the way it widened in a round welcoming way. My mouth was very dry. No one had ever said those words to me before, but it made perfect sense.

  Chicky was fixing his plastic collar—twisting it to fasten the collar button into it.

  “She was really hot,” he said. “I got three fingers into her.”

  The sun was streaming through the stained-glass window over the vestments, and the alb and the white linens blazed. The sacristy was warm and smelled of floor polish and soft candlewax.

  “Who was it?”

  Now I had my cassock and surplice on, and I was tying the black bow in front of my collar. It was impossible for me to hide my fascination with what he had told me.

  He grinned to tease me with another delay, and then he said, “Magoo.”

  It was a girl named Eloise McGonagle, but no one called her anything but Magoo.

  Chicky was still grinning, but now his lips were purple. He held out a bottle of mass wine and said in a man-of-the-world way, “Want a swig?”

  I tried not to look shocked. It was not that he was drinking mass wine—I had seen him do that before, and had even had some myself—but rather that he was doing it so near to the time the priest was to arrive. His tongue was purple, he had a purple mustache. He sloshed the wine in the bottle and said, “Go ahead.” His face was Italian yellow, he had long eyelashes and a birthmark like a bruise on his cheek. When he smiled he looked like a monkey.

  I took a swig. It tasted harsh and bitter—it tasted dreadfu
l. I had another. It tasted even worse.

  “Have one of these,” Chicky said.

  He was holding out a handful of communion wafers, small papery disks, and some spilled to the floor as he offered them.

  “They’re not consecrated, so what the fuck,” he said recklessly and stuffed the hosts into his mouth.

  Just then the priest came in, walking fast.

  “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” the priest said, blessing himself as he strode from the sacristy door to the sideboard where the vestments were neatly folded, and there he genuflected.

  “Let us pray,” he said, and paused, before he added, “for the conversion of Russia.”

  His face seemed to swell up when he closed his eyes to pray. He murmured—the little whimpers that suggested that the prayers were for a lost cause—and Chicky gulped down the last of the hosts and made a face that said, “Who’s this dink?” which was a remark he often made.

  “Amen,” the priest said, and began the slow business of putting on his vestments, murmuring more prayers and kissing each garment before wrapping it around himself.

  I had never seen him before, and I knew at once he was unlike any of the other priests at St. Ray’s. The Pastor was white-haired and tall and had a stern chalky forehead and small pitiless eyes and pale lips; and the other priests—Father Skerrit, Father Hanratty, and Father Flynn—were young, thin, and Irish. They had knobby joints and large Adam’s apples and the popping eyes that usually go with them, and blush blotches on their cheeks. They smelled of clean laundry and talcum powder; the Pastor had no smell at all.

  But Father Furty (I saw his name in the Mass List on the sacristy wall) was a big man—thick arms and an overhanging belly—and although not old he had grayish hair cut very short in a sort of Julius Caesar style. He was bottle-nosed and had a meaty face and sausagey fingers. I could tell he was strong—the way he filled his vestments, the way his loafers squeaked. That was another thing: I had never seen a priest wear anything as sporty as loafers—and to a funeral!

  He seemed unusual, but I could not figure out what it was about him that made him different. Then I realized what it was: he was human. He looked like a normal man. He was a man in a priest’s clothes. I had never thought of priests as men before—and I had certainly never thought of nuns as women.