My Other Life by Paul Theroux Read Free Book Online Page B

and calm. They were not eager, but curious, watching me, waiting for me to teach them, the way they stood at the dispensary with their hands out, empty palms upward, expecting me to pass them medicine.
    "Repeat after me," I said. "It's a dog."
    I chose them at random.
    "Is a dock."
    "It's a dog," I said. "You."
    "Is a dock."
    "But this is a duck."
    "Thees a dock."
    "A duck," I said. "You."
    "A dock."
    "A dog," I said.
    "A dock."
    While they repeated these words, saying them with little comprehension, I could hear the clank of pots, the murmur of voices, the whack of wood being chopped, the timid complaining of chickens and dogs.
    "It's a dog."
    "Is a dock."
    The cooking fires were all alight; each hut had its own fire in front, filling the clearing with a stink of burning and a low crackle. The heavy wood smoke rose so slowly that it became tangled in the jutting bunches of thatch, and hung there, disentangling itself, and seeping upward into the somnolent air in blue rags of smoke. This atmosphere was everlasting; such villages had always sounded and smelled this way. It was not a sleepy village—it was the opposite, a place of continuous activity, but the idea of all that toil had a fatiguing effect on me. Its simplicity overwhelmed me and made me tired.
    "That's all for today," I said.
    "It is not yet six o'clock," Johnson said in a challenging tone, rising to his feet at the back of the room.
    I smiled defiantly at him.
    "A class last for one hour. I am knowing that from English lessons. I have been schooling in my district."
    The way he stood, in a domineering posture, his hands on his hips, taking up more space than he needed, seemed to indicate that he was speaking on behalf of the others, or at least trying to. I was already sick of him. I would have preferred a roomful of Africans who spoke no English at all, beginning with a blank slate and bringing them along.
    "This is American English," I said. "The class lasts forty-five minutes. We will meet again on Friday."
    Just saying that, anticipating the day, wearied me even more. The class was silent, attentive in the failing light. They were not looking at me but rather at the side of the shed where one of the nuns stood, her white robes luminous in the dusk.
    "This man is in the wrong place," she said.
    It was Birdie, in a nun's habit, wearing the starched bonnet that doubled as a sun hat.
    "His family is looking all over for him."
    She extended her hand to the silent man in the front row, and helping him up seemed to frighten him. He allowed himself to be tugged along, and went with her, with a stiffness that looked like resistance. He was obedient but his eyes were filled with terror.
    I dismissed the class and joined Birdie and the man, and said, "I hadn't realized you were a nun."
    "I'm not," she said. "It's just that I get more respect dressed this way." She smiled. She was friendlier than when I had first met her in the dispensary. "And this stuff's cooler."
    Just her face was visible, framed by the bonnet that looked as though it were made out of brilliant white cardboard, a prettier face than the one from the other day.
    "I mean, I'm naked underneath," she said.
    Without knowing why—perhaps it was my confusion—I looked at the African, his glassy eyes, his fists at his side, his rigid way of walking. Birdie laughed at me and steered the clumsy African towards his hut.
    For a long time afterwards I could not think of anything else. I was dizzy with the words
I'm naked underneath.
Her saying that stunned me, had a physical effect on me, made me slightly deaf and nearsighted and stupid. She must have known that, from the way she laughed. Over cards that night, and in the darkness of my room, and in the dusty heat the next day and especially during meals, while I was swallowing something, I thought of what she had said, and went stupid again.
    On Friday there was another class, this time a dozen Africans, big and small, sick and well. The simpleton was