My Other Life (67 page)

"I want to go to the airport," I said.

"I know." He smiled and, before I could ask him how, went on, "I know who you are."

It was not the voice but rather the statement that seemed familiar. Where had I heard it? Then I remembered—on the phone. And I recognized the voice, the same voice.

"Do you live at Kalaupapa?" I asked.

"You're wondering if I am a patient here," he said. "No. I'm cured. These are harmless scars," and he raised his withered fingers, saying goodbye.

I dreaded going back to Honolulu, because now I knew my nights would be terrible and that the phone would ring and the leper's voice would tell me that I was dead. And so it happened that very night, but I let it ring. Its ringing was worse than any words could be, because I imagined the ringing to
be
the words, jangling and repeating my death sentence.

The middle of the night in Honolulu is morning in London. I picked up the receiver and stabbed at it until I got a dial tone, and I made my call. I knew the number so well I could dial it in the dark, and was sad as soon as I heard the familiar musical phrase of the seven notes of the touch tone.

I had dreaded this day, but I went ahead and said it: "I'm divorcing you."

It was a short conversation, and afterwards I was alone. I had never felt so solitary. The sun came up, but I was so tired I dozed off and overslept and began to dream. They were dreams of great happiness that I had never had before, and they were tinted by the color and light of the dawn.

T
HE BOXES
had been sent from London, marked
Personal Effects.
I opened them at random, unwrapping the bandaged and wadded contents and setting each item down on the sunny lawn.

One large brass samovar, Moscow, 1968, with a dent from my having kicked it under my seat as I flew to Delhi on my way to Singapore. I had been worried that the Soviet customs official would ask me where I had changed my money to buy it. I had done so illegally on the black market, eight rubles to the dollar. The samovar had cost ten dollars. The Soviet official tore open the paper wrapper and saw it was a samovar. He smiled and said, "You like tea!"

A wooden teapot in red lacquer, a present from my Japanese hosts in Tokyo, 1976. I had admired one in a noodle shop, just lingered over it, saying, "That's nice," and this was given to me the next day without explanation.

A thick ceramic mug penciled on the bottom in Will's writing:
To Dad. Will made this the Summer Term 1984 under the stern vigil of
Mrs.
Whalen.

A meerschaum pipe bowl of a bearded and turbaned Turk: Istanbul, 1973,
Railway Bazaar
trip. An English-made silver tankard: Whitbread Literary Award, 1978, for
Picture Palace.
A medal encased in Lucite, inscribed:
Playboy Magazine Best Short Story
1975. Associate Alumni Award plaque, 1984, University of Massachusetts, "For Distinguished Professional Service," handed to me by Michael Dukakis, governor of Massachusetts and unsuccessful presidential candidate, 1990.

A gunmetal box made in India, inlaid with silver and inscribed on the bottom:
To Alison and Paul with much Love on your marriage, Barbara and Rajat, Dec.
1967,
Kampala.

A
split rock, half of purple crystal, given to me in London, 1972, by a woman who said, "It's a geode. You mean you didn't know that?"

A dog-tooth necklace, New Guinea. "Please come back, Mister Paul. We go fishing catch too mas this time." A brass turtle incense burner from south India, bought when Anton was working at'S.O.S. Children's Village outside Madras, 1986, the year he went to Cambridge.

A human skull with a latched, lift-up cranium, sold to me by a former Singapore student, Chung Yee Chong, for £150. Her name for the skull was Henry.

A Chinese pale jade bowl, a small rock-crystal fish from a shop in Chengdu, Sichuan. A large antique brass temple pitcher from the market in Lhasa, Tibet. A gold Tara, Tibetan. A bowl made of a human skull, lined with silver. A set of wooden bowls lined with silver.
Iron Rooster
trip, 1986–87. Tibetan guide: "I am obliged to tell you that you are forbidden to take these objects out of China. You can try, but you understand that I have to tell you this."

A collection of walking sticks: one made from the spine of a shark (an iron rod running through it), the handle a dodo's beak; another of ebony, the handle a tiger's tooth—from Wales,
Kingdom by the Sea
trip, 1982; two Malacca canes, one with a silver handle; a bamboo cane, a sword stick.

A leather box from Florence, present from Mother, 1976, with a Florida seashell inside. A brass oil lamp bought in the Singapore flea market in 1969. A baby crocodile skull from Zimbabwe, bought on a visit to Will, who was teaching at Guruve, 1988, the year he went to Cambridge. A jawbone of a cow found in a field near Eddleston, Scotland, 1982, on a family walking holiday. That same day we found a sheep so heavy with wool that it had tipped over and could not right itself, like a turtle on its back.

A high-powered microscope bought at an auction in Putney, southwest London, 1975. I bought my first microscope when I was in the sixth grade and planned to be a doctor; one of the regrets of my life is that I did not become a medical doctor. I have owned and used microscopes ever since I was twelve years old.

A porcupine quill from Malawi, 1964. The quill, regarded as a good luck charm, was sold to me by a doctor at the market in Lilongwe. He was called a
mganga,
a witch doctor, not because he was a witch but because he cured people of witchcraft and possession. He said, "It is sixty shillings." I said, "I will give you two." He said, "That is all right," and handed the quill over.

A dagger with a horn handle carved in the shape of a lion, bought in Colombo, Sri Lanka, 1973, used by me as a letter opener. The toothy hinged jaws of a barracuda, from Mombasa, 1985.

One kudu horn, found in a London junk shop, 1974. A rectangular marble paperweight, London, 1978. A large ceramic glazed disc depicting a phoenix perched on a stump, Kunming, China, 1986.

A small pewter teapot with a jade handle, Süchow, China; a large carved and lacquered fish, from a trip down the Yangtze, 1979. A metal inkpot in the shape of a frog, from Hong Kong, 1987.

A small wooden mortar and pestle for mixing betel nut and lime; two carved canoe splash boards, two carved canoe prows in the shape of crocodiles: New Guinea, 1991.

Two bronze Buddhist Taras, Darjeeling, 1984. A Chinese puppet head of a demon, Yangguo, 1986. A pair of binoculars. An opium pipe, Singapore, 1970. A large glazed fishbowl, decorated with carp motif, eighteenth century, from Shanghai. An African hand ax, from Malawi, 1965. A wood panel painting depicting a mandarin with two attendants, torn from a Vietnamese temple that had been partially destroyed in a rocket attack, and bought from a Chinese antiques dealer who ran his business from an attic in Saigon, 1973.

A wooden armchair bought in Fulham, London, 1976, with two large worn velvet cushions. A hand-woven square yard of cloth, from Guatemala; an eighteenth-century painting of Saint Dominic, from Peru—
Old Patagonian
trip, 1978. A topographical map of coastal Honduras. A small carpet, woven in Iran, with a motif of men carrying machine guns. A Victorian garden statue, cast in lead, based on Michelangelo's
The Freed Slave.
A copy of
In the Clearing,
by Robert Frost, inscribed,
To Paul Therouxfrom Robert Frost, 1962.

One teak writing desk with large, ingeniously designed detachable legs; one teak armchair—both made to order by a Chinese carpenter in Singapore. I drew a picture of the ideal desk and had it made because I was having trouble with my novel
Jungle Lovers,
working on a wobbly table.

Some pictures, some books, some files, a trunk of manuscripts, a sum of money.

And a large glass mixing bowl, stamped on the base
Made in Poland
and bought in Nyasaland at the Limbe Trading Company in 1964. Somehow, this inexpensive and ordinary household object, perhaps the first I had ever bought, had survived almost thirty years. But that was only part of its fascination. This was the bowl that my African cook, Julius Magoya, had used to hold fruit salad.

He had asked me to buy it, and he had filled it that first day with cut-up fruit: pawpaws, bananas, apples, oranges, grapes, and tangerines, for which he used the Afrikaans word
naartjies.
There was far too much fruit salad. After a week, half a bowl of it was left. Julius did not throw it away. He cut up more fruit and added it, filling the bowl again, giving it a stir. A week later, though I had not finished the fruit salad, he added more, and the bowl brimmed again. He repeated this every week, mixing the new with the old, the sweet with the sour, the crisp with the sodden. He never tossed out what was in the bowl, no matter how small the amount. It was replenished every week; years later I was still eating fruit salad out of the same bowl, which had never been emptied.

At the age of fifty, I was glad to have that bowl back. Now I saw the point of it: Julius's endless fruit salad represented for me the meaning of life and the source of all art.