Mr. Bones

by Paul Theroux

  Raleigh had visited the States before—book tours, the lecture circuit—but that was a different routine: hotels, handshakes, expensive meals, free laundry service, key to the minibar. This, the monotony of a resident, seemed to occur in another country, of bills and frowns and strangers and inconveniences. And it was odd how a Pakistani or a Jamaican, or the Haitian taxi driver who lived in the house next door, also considered themselves resident in the same way, hanging on, never intending to return to their homeland. It disconcerted him to think, They’re just like me.

  This litany of grievances played in his head as he smiled and spoke, a silent counterpoint to everything he said aloud. His subject tonight had been billed as “Anglo-Boston”: English writers who’d visited and written about Boston—notably Dickens, Trollope, and Kipling; and Bostonians who’d visited and written about England—Hawthorne, Henry Adams, and James.

  The names were like chloroform: hearing them, the audience smiled and drowsed, but remained upright in listening postures. The writers he mentioned had felt at home, had made friends, had written their experiences, and were quotable. He meant to flatter the listeners, but also tactfully to educate them by reminding them of these traveler-writers, and he implied that these men had shown him the way, that he was one of them, for he wished to make a place for himself in Boston.

  “They had secret lives,” Raleigh said in a pleading tone, hoping to rouse. “Dickens was in an adulterous love affair with an actress, Henry Adams was a ferocious anti-Semite, Hawthorne had an incestuous relationship with his sister, Kipling was at war with his American brother-in-law, Henry James was desperately lonely. But Trollope was a happy man.”

  Had they heard? He said, “And I am happy too.” But it sounded insincere, like a protest. He added, “Almost without trying I have found a routine, and a routine is like a one-word definition of a life.”

  He glanced at his watch and saw that thirty-five minutes had passed, his allotted time was almost up, his cue for his prepared closing, about there being a Boston in Lincolnshire, but that it was little more than a market town with a cathedral tower so odd they called it the Stump. “Your Boston is the real thing, and I am grateful that you’ve welcomed me here.”

  He reached into his pocket for his handkerchief, and his fingers snagged on his phone, which was tangled in it, and he removed them both. His face and neck were damp in the hot bright June evening, and he knew his cheeks were pink, his face flushed. He wiped his face with one hand and with the other undid the top buttons of his shirt and opened the collar.

  Mrs. DeWicky, who had introduced him, now appeared at his side and shook his hand in thanks, and when she looked more closely, with concern, he touched his throat and drew his collar together.

  “Questions,” she said into the microphone. “We have ten minutes before I turn you into the furnace of Arlington Street.”

  He glanced down at the phone and read, U cant git away, I find u and buss u face. U be real sorry, and shut it off with such force that the flesh under his thumbnail throbbed.

  “Yes?” he said to a woman in the front row with her hand raised.

  “My husband and I go to Britain almost every year,” she began, and he was sure it would be a question related to travel. But he smiled and listened, and when the woman was done, he repeated the gist of what she’d asked—destinations in Scotland—and he offered several suggestions.

  After that, more hands, more comments. One thanking him for writing Lifers, his book about English prisons (“But I felt at home there because I’d been at an English boarding school,” Raleigh said), another asking whether he knew any of the English writers who had relocated to New York (“Many of them are my Oxford chums,” Raleigh said. “We’re all enfants terribles in our sixties now. We can misbehave here to our heart’s content”), and the inevitable English pedant ticking him off about his reference to Boston in Lincolnshire and elaborating on Saint Botolph. When he tried to signal an end, a man stood up at the back and spoke loudly.

  “Do you think you’ll be writing something about Boston?” he asked. “Or, um, what sort of work will you do here?”

  “I have found a welcome here.” His hand was in his pocket on U cant git away.

  “Maybe some kind of book?” the same man said, persisting.

  “I can only quote Henry James,” Raleigh said, and sensed the same slackening of attention when he spoke the name. Why was that? Because they hadn’t read him, or had read him and found him dull? To try again to rouse them from their torpor, he spoke with whispered urgency: “We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”

  When they applauded—and he suspected they were applauding his theatrical delivery rather than the message—he thanked them for being there and said he looked forward to seeing them again.

  As he left with Mrs. DeWicky, several tried to detain him, just to chat, and he listened and smiled and edged toward the door, seeking to be free of them, and at the same time feeling that, apart from that one comment about Lifers, there had been nothing else about his books, no mention of his novels, no indication that anyone had read his journalism. But that was all right. He was holding his cell phone in his damp hand.

  The taxi was waiting for them. At the foot of the stairs, glancing back, Raleigh said, “This is a first for me. Speaking in a church.”

  “Unitarian Universalist—it’s a Boston landmark,” Mrs. DeWicky said in a correcting tone. And in the taxi, “You must be thirsty! It won’t take us long. It’s just on Commonwealth Ave., but I’ve had a hip replacement, so I’m quite compromised. It’s quite wonderful of you to have come.”

  Raleigh’s phone vibrated again, but instead of looking at it, he tightened his hand over it, and now he could feel the buzz rudely interrogating his fingers.

  “My pleasure,” he said, and sat back, waiting for a compliment on his talk. He believed he had done a good job, had been witty, helpful, most of all patient with an audience he had regarded as mostly inert, ignorant of his work. As a cue he said, “Lovely audience.”

  “Perfectly marvelous,” Mrs. DeWicky said. “They always ask great questions.” Her smile faded as she turned to him. “What have you done to your neck?”

  “Yard sale,” Raleigh said.

  “I have no idea what that means. English people are so verbal.”

  “I’ll explain inside,” he said, because the taxi was slowing down, the driver maneuvering it toward the curb.

  “It’s just a small group,” Mrs. DeWicky said. “But it’s a good group. Book lovers. They’re the sponsors, and very eager to meet you.”

  He saw them as soon as he mounted the front stairs of the brownstone. They were gathered in a first-floor room, visible in the bow window.

  The room soared, with a ceiling like a vast clamshell, lighted paintings on the walls—a somber landscape, a portrait of a child wearing red mittens—a Chinese long-necked vase, a celadon salver slanted on a stand at the center of a refectory table on which there were hors d’oeuvres and trays of drinks. Behind the guests—about a dozen—there was a wall of fine bindings, a ladder propped before them.

  “You’ll never remember all the names,” Mrs. DeWicky said. “Eventually you’ll get to know us well. You’re a Bostonian now.”

  “I’m indeed a Bostonian,” Raleigh said with a gummy tongue.

  He was introduced to each person, some standing on their own, others in groups. One man shaking Raleigh’s hand held on and said, “Are you all right?”

  “Fine.”

  “You’re feverish. I’m a doctor. I should take your pulse!”

  “No need,” Raleigh said.

  But he did feel harassed and hot, and these people were calm, serene, coolly sizing him up.

  Another man said, “Sorry I couldn’t make your talk. Tee time.”

  “I know Bostonians are punctilious about their tea,” Raleigh said.

  “Golf,” the ma
n said irritably, as though he’d been mocked.

  None of them, it seemed, had been to his lecture, and because this was so he felt slightly hostile toward their casual manner and felt no compunction to stay for long.

  “Mr. Crindle has a story for us,” Mrs. DeWicky said.

  “But first I must use your—” He didn’t know what to say next. He settled on “gents.”

  “We’re all gents. Take your pick.”

  They’d been drinking.

  “The restroom is down the hall on the right,” one man said.

  There were framed prints inside, and an old map labeled Back Bay. Raleigh locked the door and looked in the mirror. He touched his neck, tracing the welt, and then he turned his head left and right, all the time keeping the redness in view.

  He opened his phone again. U r in deep truble. I will find u. I will destroy u.

  He wondered if he was paler when he returned to the room. They were waiting for him, looking tipsier, perhaps having guzzled in his brief absence. Some of them were seated, and Mrs. DeWicky looked pleased, taking charge again, making another announcement.

  “In the taxi on the way here, I remarked on a redness on Mr. Crindle’s neck. He became very obscure! He said, ‘Yard sale.’ He has kindly agreed to explain this to us.”

  The man who’d said he was a doctor took a step toward Raleigh and inclined his head, appraising him, searching his neck.

  “Heat rash,” he said. He made a reflective gesture, chewing his lips. “Allergy.”

  “Yard sale,” Raleigh said, and brightened as he began to explain. “I thought everyone knew this expression.”

  “A kind of rummage sale in front of your house,” a woman said. “Stuff you don’t want.”

  “That’s the general meaning.” Raleigh was still smiling. “You’re skiing, shall we say, and you’re on the slopes. You hit a bump or someone thumps you and—whoopsie!”—he flung out his arms—“your poles go left and right, your gloves get yanked off, your skis are stripped from your boots, there go your goggles! Your bobble hat is gone like a shot off a shovel. And you’re on your back with all your kit scattered on the slope. Just picture it—yard sale!”

  “Yes, yes,” Mrs. DeWicky said. “Very good.”

  The doctor said, “And did that happen to you?”

  “That was my point,” Raleigh said, touching his neck. “It’s left rather a mark. I call it my necklace.”

  “Abrasion,” the doctor said. “This pressure bruise on your wrist is a little more serious. Could be a hematoma.”

  Raleigh slipped his hand into his trouser pocket and held his cell phone to steady himself and said, “I’m sure you know the story ‘The Necklace’ by de Maupassant.” He sensed another slackening of attention, almost boredom, and the paradox was that it manifested itself by the guests leaning closer, as if Raleigh had begun to speak in a foreign language they were pretending to translate.

  “Yes, yes,” Mrs. DeWicky said. “We read it at school.”

  “Lovely old tale. And there’s a delightful story by Maugham called ‘A String of Beads.’ Variation on a theme. What is it about necklaces? Henry James’s story ‘Paste’ is written in that tradition, and our V. S. Pritchett also wrote a short story called ‘The Necklace.’ Theft was involved.”

  The names numbed them. Some of them winced as though finding the names hostile. Raleigh was sensitive to listeners tuning out. They had not read the stories, would probably never read them, but never mind: they had no need of literature—they were too happy, too social, too busy to need books or care about the madness of art, the madness of life. They were whole people with no desperate secrets, and he was broken and exiled. Even now they were smiling at him as if he was a lunatic, and for that reason they would care about him, and he knew he could always depend on them.

  “I must take this call,” Raleigh said, and snatched his phone from his pocket and jammed it against his ear.

  But there was no voice. As soon as he stepped into the hall, he looked at the text message on the small screen. U cant hide. I no were u r.

  “I’m awfully sorry,” Raleigh said, reentering the room. “I am afraid I’m going to be terribly rude and uncouth and make my exit. Something incredibly boring has just raised its tedious head.”

  They were smiling as he spoke, liking his stagy apology, and perhaps relieved that he was going, so that they could resume speaking about other matters, things they cared about, and in their own language.

  “I could drop you,” Mrs. DeWicky said.

  “I will not uproot you from this delightful bower,” Raleigh said, and got the same smiles, like dogs hearing music, some opening their mouths in thanks.

  “I wish we could do something,” Mrs. DeWicky said. “You’ve been so sweet.”

  “Invite me back,” Raleigh said. He kissed her on both cheeks and gave her shoulders a squeeze. “That would be such a treat.”

  “Soon.”

  “If I am spared,” he said.

  He lingered, feeling tearful, because he had meant it about wanting to come back. Then he hurried out of the house, and seeing a stoplight at the end of the avenue, near the Public Garden, he walked down the sidewalk. He glanced around and then cautiously opened his phone again. U r dead meat. He was glad to be away from them. He had a sense that the blood had drained from his face, that had he been among those people someone would have said—why did Americans always speak their thoughts?—“You’re so pale. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  And he would have had to protest, “Yes, yes, I’m fine,” and invent another story, and go paler.

  He began to give the taxi driver the address through the side window, as he would have done in London. But cutting him off, the driver—foreign—said, “Hop in.”

  He spoke the address slowly, stammering a bit.

  “Where’s that?”

  “Roxbury.”

  “Cost you extra.”

  “No problemo.” And Raleigh laughed, saying the word.

  Alone, sitting in the back seat of the taxi, he felt safe at last. And when, after all the traffic, the taxi dropped him and he stepped into the hot street, then made his way to the shady side and turned into the alley, he was free again, his heart pounding.

  He found the doorway and knocked. There was no answering voice, and he was anxious until he heard a sound, a chair being scraped backward across an uneven floor, the bump of heavy shoes. And then the door opened a crack, and he saw the cruel mouth and bloodshot eyes.

  “Git on in here.” The voice was fierce.

  Thrilled, averting his eyes, whinnying a little once again, he obeyed.

  Incident in the Oriente

  WE WERE SITTING, heads bowed in prayer, waiting for the local Indians, Secoyas, to come barefoot into the mess container with the platters of food. When Max Moses said grace, as he was doing tonight, his terrifying vitality shone in his bulging eyes. Yet, rumbling on in his old smoker’s vibrato, he did not raise his voice. His slight speech defect made him seem truthful: there was a babyish innocence in “daily bwed.” His lazy tongue turned and snagged with a soft fruity catch on words like “church” or “chicken,” and instead of “gravy” he said “meat juice,” probably for the slushiness of the sound. It was “Wab” when referring to Silsbee’s dog, a Labrador retriever. He said grace standing.

  I was always surprised when Moses stood up, because the man I regarded as a giant was almost as small as the Mbuti pygmies we’d had on the payroll on the Uganda job. His tenacity and godlike resourcefulness in getting his people to obey him seemed to enlarge him. Though he could be chivalrous even in the worst conditions, we knew our lives depended on our obedience to him. Whenever strangers asked me how he was able to command unswerving loyalty, I used this meal as an example—every incident that had led to it.

  In a world where many private companies were chasing the money from little countries to complete development projects, Moses was a rarity. His record of success was brilliant, his costs were low, his
estimates fair, and he always had work. “I sometimes surprise myself.” You think of charity or foreign aid as the deciding factor in the completion of these projects, but no, it is always the private contractor. “I want to surprise you, too. We are all in this together. If someone fails, everyone is accountable.”

  Moses’ rule was to oversee every job himself and to be judicious in the matter of corruption. He had an odd neutrality when it came to bribes (“Cost of doing business—think of it as a tax”), always paying off the top man, whoever that happened to be, and depending on him for protection at lower levels. He used local labor at slightly above the going rate, and local materials whenever possible, even to the point of dismantling abandoned buildings if it meant a ready supply of steel or timber. Most of the others imported expensive building materials. Moses often used scrap, recycled wood, made bricks using local concrete and molds, bulking out the bricks with rubble that we crushed ourselves from the broken buildings. He rehabbed heavy machinery, so you would see an old bulldozer or cement mixer, good as new. “Found it. Fixed it up.” That also meant profit. He had the frugality of a junkman, and the foresight too. We lived in steel shipping containers.

  All this depended on cooperation. He often said that his business model was a traveling circus. The circus arrived in town with all the rides, the tents, the cages, the food stalls, and local labor was hired to raise the tents, bolt the seating, fetch water, sweep, scrub, wash dishes, feed the animals. The talent was in the circus; the muscle was local, and cheap. It meant the circus could travel light, picking up labor along the way, paying them off, leaving them behind.