by Paul Theroux
It happened again: this time it was a woman near the back, who was not old and who might have been pretty, though at that distance it was hard to tell.
“I was fascinated by your talk,” she said. “I was thinking it must take an enormous amount of courage to live in the place you described. You were so far away! Didn’t it ever get you down or depress you?”
“The lack of privacy of course is a very great nuisance,” said Munday. “Sort of goldfish bowl existence. But, no, I didn’t get depressed. As I say, village life can be taxing, and baffling, but that’s as true here as it is in Africa.”
“Are you saying the Africans are the same as us?” asked a man down front.
Several replies occurred to Munday. He was going to say, “God forbid!” but that was cruel; and “Yes,” but that was untrue. He said, “The issue isn’t as black and white as that,” and there was some laughter.
“You said in your lecture there were pygmies in that area,” said a man holding his hat at his chest. “What are they like? Are they as small as people say?”
“Bigger than your hat. About the size of a nine-year-old. I say that because nine-year-old Bwamba kids used to stand on the Fort Portal road and flag down tourists’ cars. They’d claim to be pygmies and ask to have their pictures taken for a shilling. Tourists didn’t know the difference. But it’s quite easy to spot a real pygmy. When you see a tiny girl with fully developed breasts you know you’re looking at a pygmy—that’s the litmus test, you might say—the breasts.”
“Do they intermarry with other tribes?”
“The Bwamba take them, usually as second wives. You can have any pygmy woman for life for just under ten quid, two hundred shillings. They only marry in one direction. I mean to say, no pygmy man would ever marry a Bwamba woman. “Once,” Munday went on, “I met a pygmy man whose ambition it was to marry an American Negro. Some writers want to be Shakespeare and some of you would like knighthoods. This pygmy, as I say, wanted to marry a fully-grown Negro woman. Well, we all have our dreams.”
There were more questions, tentative ones about sanitation, specific ones about hospitals and food. Mr. Lennit asked about the railway. “I take it you believe in ghosts,” one man said. Munday said he believed in the possibility of ghosts: “People I respect have seen them.” Then a small precise lady in a fur-collared coat asked about the heat. Munday swiftly gave the reply he had practiced, and speaking above the laughter, the vicar said, “I think we’ll close on that note—”
Later, with Lennit assisting him, Munday put the implements into his canvas sack. Emma was talking to the vicar, as he helped her on with her coat. She was explaining the muddy paw prints she had not been able to wipe off.
Munday said, “Something’s missing.”
“What is it?” asked Lennit.
“I don’t know. But I started out with twenty items, and now I only have nineteen.”
“You’re sure?”
Munday did not reply; it was a doubting question he hated.
“Here, let me count them,” said Lennit
“I’ve done that already.”
“What seems to be the trouble?” asked Crawshaw.
“Says someone nicked one of his spears,” said Lennit, and shrugged.
Now, Munday wanted to kick the old man.
“You’re sure?” Crawshaw asked Munday.
Emma saw that Munday was furious. She said, “He always counts them before he passes them round.”
“It’s a habit I picked up lecturing to African audiences,” said Munday, and he snatched at the drawstring of the canvas bag.
9
It was like flight. They caught the 8:20 train to London outside Crewkeme at a narrow Victorian station of soot-blackened stone, with high church windows and a steeply pitched roof. The sharp spires and clock tower were wreathed in morning mist, and there was a similar whiteness, mist and a sprinkling of frost on the grass, in the fields that lay beyond the siding. Standing there, waiting for the train, Munday had feared it might not come to take them away, and he felt gleeful when he saw it rounding the
bend, the yellow and blue engine hooting. “You keep these,” said Munday, giving Emma the day-return tickets in the empty compartment. She slipped them between the pages of the novel she’d brought, an Agatha Christie from the shelf. Munday had his Times he read the Diary, the letters and glanced at the obituaries and then folded the paper flat and held it in his lap, not reading it, his hands spread over it, as Emma’s were on the book that rested on her knees. They faced each other, rocking, only looking out the window when the train slowed down. At Yeovil Junction Emma said, “East Coker is near here. We must drive over some time.”
“East Coker?”
“T.S. Eliot.”
“Of course,” said Munday, but he had no clear idea of what she was talking about.
Breakfast was announced at Sherborne, where a tall severe man whom Munday said must be a classics master stood on the platform with a briefcase and a book in his hand, waiting to board. Emma and Munday left the book and newspaper on their seats to show they were occupied and went into the dining car. Emma had toast and tea, Munday the complete breakfast.
“Why no kippers?” he asked the waiter.
“They do kippers on the busier trains,” said the waiter, whose tight jacket was stiff with starch. “Not on this line, though. Not important enough.”
Munday felt the waiter was getting at him for riding an unimportant line. He said, “I shall write a letter to The Times ”
“They’re rationalizing the catering. We don’t serve more than a dozen breakfasts in all. After Salisbury it’s just coffees. How do you want your eggs?”
When breakfast came Emma said, “He’s forgotten my marmalade.”
“He hasn’t forgotten,” said Munday. “Rationalizing the catering.” He ate methodically, glancing out the window between swallows. There were cows and sheep in the fields, and still fog and mist in some valleys, and vapor the color of the sky hanging in bare branches. He saw a man emptying a pail in a trough; the man paused and looked up at the passing train. Munday saw him clearly, the large-fingered gloves, the peaked cap, the cutoff boots. He knew the man did not see him; he saw a train, only that, but he was completely exposed. Munday felt guilty, observing him in this way, eating his eggs, and he pitied the man for whom a train was an event to relieve his solitude and make him turn away from his work. Then he disliked the man for his curiosity and saw him as a possible thief.
“It’ll be nice to be in London again,” said Emma. “I’ve got so much shopping to do.”
“It’s a bit raw,” said Munday.
Emma looked out the window. She said, “I really, don’t want to go back.”
Munday wondered how he might console her. Nothing came to him. He said, “The day-retum fare is damned cheap.” Then after a while, “They pinched one of my daggers.”
“Depressing people.”
“I’m glad you finally agree with me.” He thought again of the man in the field. He said, “I’m finished,” and pushed his plate aside.
They paid the bill, and the car filled up, but they did not go back to their compartment immediately. They lingered, enjoying the warmth, the breakfast smells of bacon and coffee and the pipe smoke of a man at the next table. The train lurched, gathering speed, cups chinked and the hanging folds of the white tablecloths moved like skirts. Trees and bushy embankments shot past the window. Munday played with the heavy silver. Near Salisbury the landscape opened; it was flatter and the fields they passed seemed to revolve, roughly circular furrows spinning on the skid of the train.
“What about lunch?” asked Munday.
“I’m meeting Margaret at Selfridge’s. We’ll have lunch somewhere, then spend the afternoon together shopping.”
“I can’t imagine her without those sunglasses and sandals.”
“And that yellow cotton dress,” said Emma.
“What’s Jack doing?”
“She says she doe
sn’t hear from him.”
“Such a scandal there,” Munday said. “All that excitement. Here it seems so ordinary and stupid.”
“W'ill you be seeing Silvano?”
“No time for that. My appointment’s at eleven-thirty.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll just make it And Alec said he’d be at the Wheatsheaf at one. It’ll be good to see him. The last train’s just after seven. Why don’t we meet at that pub in the station at quarter-to?”
“I wish we didn’t have to go back so soon.”
At Salisbury they groped their way to their compartment and found four people in it, but the newspaper and book remained on the vacant seats next to the windows. They watched the people on the platform, some mothers with large clean children, an older woman who looked like any of the ones in the church hall at Four Ashes except that she was distinguished by a copy of the orange Financial Times, rolled like a truncheon in her string bag. Most were women dressed for restaurant lunches, with the soberly elegant clothes that women wear to impress other women, rather than attract men: large hats, gloves, some with neat, damp corsages; they boarded in groups of three and four. One of these entered the Mundays' compartment; she sat smiling and waving discreetly to a woman squeezing down the passage. She had a copy of the Telegraph, which she read in glances, folding it and turning it inside out. The windows steamed up, and this woman perfumed the small space with lavender. Near Woking there was a sign saying stop coloured immigration in neat square letters on a brick wall next to the track. A Daily Express lay on the single empty seat.
It was retrieved by a thin man in a blue nylon jacket when the train drew in to Waterloo.
In the main hall of the station, dangerous with little yellow vehicles towing baggage carts and vibrating with the ponderous throb of announcements of train times and place names, none of which was distinct, Munday showed Emma the pub he had mentioned, and standing near it he thought he recognized the black man he had addressed in Swahili. They parted on the Bakerloo Line, Emma got off at Oxford Circus, Munday continued to Regent’s Park where he walked in a fine drizzle to Harley Street.
The receptionist was prompt; he had introduced himself as Doctor Munday, and though there was another man in the waiting room she said to follow her. She led him down a corridor, past framed eighteenth-century cartoons—one of a toothy man falling violently and spouting a bubble of script caught Munday’s eye. The doctor’s office resembled a study. There was a wall of leather-bound books, a large dark painting of a highland scene, and heavy green curtains. The desk was wide and held a silver inkstand, and the stethoscope which rested on the blotter was the only indication of the work of the dark-suited man who sat fingering it. He rose as Munday entered; the receptionist introduced them, then went out, shutting the door.
“So you were Dowle’s patient,” said the doctor, motioning Munday to a chair. “He wrote me about you. How is he?”
“Just the same,” said Munday. “Full of bluster, and absolutely punishing himself with whisky. They have a new cook at the mission, a Polish priest named Pekachek—mad about cabbage.”
“Dowle and I were at medical school together.”
“So he told me,” said Munday. “Old Father Tom.”
“That what they call him? He was a lad, he was— the last person in the world I’d have thought to go into the priesthood.” The doctor winked. “A great one for the ladies, you know. I suppose with these black women he’s not in any danger of breaking his vow of chastity.”
“Some can be quite lovely.”
“You’ll have a hard time convincing me of that,” said the doctor.
“I don’t intend to try,” Munday said evenly. He would not be provoked. It was a vulgar subject—and anyway he had never himself made love to an African woman: it would have put his research at risk. But something else prevented him from discussing the matter any further with the doctor. He saw himself repeatedly cast in the role of defender of Africans—with Flack, with the vicar, with the pompous spokesman in the church hall. He defended Africans by inverting the abusive generalities, until he had found himself saying things he didn’t mean. What he knew of the real weaknesses of Africans he would withhold from these ignorant sceptics who didn’t deserve to know.
“I see the wives of some of these black high commissioners. West African, I should think. Great big bottoms. They never pay their bills, but if I refused to take them on they’d complain to the minister.”
“And they’d be quite right to complain,” said Munday. He added, “But I agree—they should pay their bills.”
“Tell them that,” said the doctor, who had become noticeably less friendly. With a hint of impatience he said, “All right, let’s have a look at you.”
He examined Munday thoroughly, running the cold smooth disc of the stethoscope over his chest and back. Then he wrapped a thick rubber bandage around his bicep and inflated it with a bulb. Munday felt his forearm tingle and his hand go limp. The doctor took that off and asked Munday to squeeze his extended fingers. Munday squeezed.
“Harder,” said the doctor.
Munday got a better grip on the doctor’s fingers and clutched them tightly until his own fingers turned white.
“Fine,” said the doctor. “Dowle said something about a stroke.”
“It surprised me,” said Munday. “I’d always been fit. It was after a large meal. I felt pretty ropey—had a pain here,” he said, touching his chest. “My wife said I had awful color and I was gasping—couldn’t get my breath.”
“Sounds an awful lot like indigestion,” said the doctor with scorn.
Munday winced. “Your friend Dowle called it a seizure.”
“Sometimes they happen like that. It’s hard to tell. Your blood pressure’s a little above normal, and I thought I heard a slight flutter. But that’s not so unusual.”
“Father Dowle said something about a scar on one’s heart.”
“ ‘Knickers,’ we used to call him,” said the doctor, smiling, and the statement mocked at the mission doctor’s diagnosis. He pointed at Munday. “The heart’s a tough organ, you know—it’s a great pumping device. There might have been a constriction, a kind of blockage. It can kill you by pinching off the blood flow, or the heart itself can repair the damage. It leaves scar tissue, that’s all he meant. How do you feel? Any discomfort?”
“I don’t sleep well,” said Munday. “And lately I’ve felt pain, a burning sensation. I get short of breath. It seems to come with worry.”
“Most ailments do,” said the doctor. “But I’ll book you for an electrocardiogram just the same.”
Munday was going to speak of how Emma confirmed what he had feared in the black house, in that inhospitable village. But the doctor’s dismissive manner put him off; at that distance, too, the black house and his fears seemed unreal—only a nearness of the dark comers, the liquid shadows, the rub of that unexampled smell at his nose alarmed him. Not near it, he could doubt it. In London it all seemed absurd, and this consultation seemed unnecessary, like a pain struggled with for days that disappears in a miraculous cure in the doctor’s waiting room. His fears were hollow words, neutral and without urgency, simply a memory of terror grown quaint in a distance that allowed him to forget. It was the way he sometimes felt about Africa. Up close, as a resident in the Yellow Fever Camp, it excited so many particular fears and made his mind nimble but now he had trouble seeing it except as a formless dazzle of the exotic. The rest was forgotten; it wasn’t lost: it was all, he knew, buried in his mind.
“What exactly do you worry about?”
“My work.”
“What is your work?”
“At the moment—I’m being frank—nothing. An anthropologist studies people. I have none.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about.”
“You don’t know,” said Munday. His memory, his fear was of being hunted down, thrown out of the black house by a gulping phantom.
“Do you get depressed?”
It w
as that woman’s question. Munday could not honestly say no. He said nothing.
“A lot of doctors would fill you up with pills. I’m against that,” said the doctor. “Get a lot of fresh air, take exercise. Moderate drinking’s all right. Do you smoke?”
“A cigar occasionally.”
“You’re lucky you can afford them. But watch what you eat. Diet’s very important. My receptionist will give you a diet card. You can put your shirt on.”
Buttoning his shirt, Munday said, “Father Dowle thought it was serious enough to send me home.”
“I’m not saying it’s not serious. You’ve got to take care of yourself. But you’re better off here in any case, aren’t you?”
“Here?”
“England,” said the doctor.
A black house in a remote village, Munday wanted to say, that’s the only England I know now. But he said: “Father Dowle specifically said—”
“God,” said the doctor. He walked over to the door and opened it. “I remember once when we were doing a urinalysis. There was a girl in the class—forget her name, not very pretty. Dowle slipped gold filings in her specimen when she wasn’t looking, then showed her how to do a gold test on it. She thought he had taken leave of his senses, of course, but when it came out positive she was beside herself. ‘Gold in my urine!’ she said, and Dowle leaned over and said in a heavy brogue, ‘They’re laughing, but I’m thinking we should sink a shaft, my dear.’ ”
“That’s ten guineas gone west,” said Alec in the Wheatsheaf. He had been waiting at the end of a long bench by the wall, and seeing Munday enter he rose and greeted him loudly in Swahili, the way he always had on the verandah of the Mountains of the Moon Hotel on a Saturday morning. That was Munday’s day in Fort Portal and he always spent it with Alec in continuous drinking, watching the road and the progress of the sun, until it was time to drive back to the camp, a long bumpy trip his drunkenness shortened by blurring. At the end of those afternoons, watching the fierce blood-red sunset, crimson chased with yellowing pink on the mountains, Alec used to say, “They’re killing each other again in Bwamba.”
