Fresh Air Fiend (71 page)

Humpage missed him in the resentful way a bully misses his victim. Nevertheless, he drank, and red-faced with grog he cursed the chief and spoke with renewed hope of handbags.

The night was too black to reveal any listener.

Humpage flipped marmalade into the lagoon, and he awaited the mail boat and Christmas at Thorncombe.

One day soon after, the lagoon was heaving with crocodiles. These were the estuarine variety, thriving in salt water, and as sturdy and sleek as the islanders who venerated them.

In previous years the creatures had seemed grateful for a spot of jam, and so it was odd when one fat beast made straight for Humpage.

Monty went rigid.

In a single gulp the reptile bolted the Lord of Thorncombe Manor and then sank beneath the muddy lagoon. All that night there were bubbles and the agreeable sounds of digestion.

The mail boat was a day late, though not late enough to explain the crocodile, impassive and upright on the jetty. Nor was Monty anywhere in sight.

Without a word, the crocodile boarded the mail boat, occupying Humpage's usual cabin. It was this same creature—green and enigmatic, but with a tremulous dignity—that stepped off the 11:37 from Waterloo in the snow at Thorncombe Halt, causing talk and twitching curtains in the village.

On Christmas Eve, the crocodile joined in the trimming of the tree, hooking on an ornament peculiar to the island, and standing just ahead of the Wetherups and the Pratts, and Sasha, and little Algy, as Bingo had done in years past.

"Being a Stranger" is based on a lecture I gave at Michigan State University in March 1999. "Memory and Creation: The View from Fifty" I wrote off my own bat, to console myself; a shorter version was printed in
The Massachusetts Review,
1991.

"The Object of Desire" first appeared in
Vogue.
"At the Sharp End: Being in the Peace Corps" appeared in a Peace Corps book entitled
Making a Difference
(1986) and also in the
New York Times.

"Five Travel Epiphanies" was written for the fifth-anniversary issue of
Forbes FYI.

"Travel Writing: The Point of It" I wrote after the Tiananmen Square massacre, in June 1989, when I reflected on the waspish reviews my book
Riding the Iron Rooster
had been given. The reviewers' line was that I had been beastly to the Chinese authorities. After the massacre, my book was seen as prescient; in fact, I had just written truthfully of what I had seen over the course of a year in China, and writing the truth can sometimes seem like prophecy.

An earlier version of "Fresh Air Fiend" appeared in
Worth.
"The Awkward Question" formed the introduction to
Alone,
by Gerard d'Aboville. Soon after "The Moving Target" appeared, as an op-ed piece in the
New York Times,
a woman jogger was beaten and raped by a gang of boys in Central Park—a notorious example of the sort of thing I discussed in the piece. "Dead Reckoning to Nantucket" appeared first in
Condé Nast Traveler;
"Paddling to Plymouth" in the
New York Times.

"Fever Chart: Parasites I Have Known" appeared under a different title in
Condé Nast Traveler
and formed the introduction to Dr. Richard Dawood's book
Travelers' Health
(1994).

"Diaries of Two Cities": I am not a diarist. In general, a diary is a waste of a writer's time. I kept one-week diaries in London and Amsterdam at the suggestion of different editors, one at the
Guardian
in 1993, the other at
Handelsblad
in 1990.

"Farewell to Britain: Look Thy Last on All Things Lovely" I wrote for
Islands.
"Gravy Train: A Private Railway Car" was published in
Gourmet.
"The Maine Woods: Camping in the Snow" appeared in the German edition of
Geo;
"Trespassing in Florida" in
Travel & Leisure;
"Down the Zambezi" in
National Geographic;
"The True Size of Cape Cod" in
Outside;
and "German Humor" in the
New York Times.

"Down the Yangtze" was first written as a short piece for
The Observer
in 1981. I then expanded it to include the whole trip. Under the title
Sailing Through China,
I published this at my own expense, in a limited edition, with illustrations by Patrick Procktor. This little book appeared in a commercial edition, and after it went out of print, it resurfaced as a Penguin book under the present title. As it is no longer in print—perhaps it was too small to survive—I have included it here.

"Chinese Miracles" is the account of an extensive trip I took in 1994 through newly prosperous south China for
Harper's Magazine.
"Ghost Stories: A Letter from Hong Kong on the Eve of the Hand-over" was published, in somewhat different form, in
The New Yorker.

"The Other Oahu" first appeared in
Travel Holiday;
"On Molokai" in the German edition of
Geo;
"Connected in Palau" in
Condé Nast Traveler;
"Tasting the Pacific" in
Vogue. Outside
published both "Palawan: Up and Down the Creek" and "Christmas Island: Bombs and Birds."

"The Edge of the Great Rift" was the introduction to the Penguin edition of my three novels with an African background:
Fong and the Indians, Girls at Play,
and
Jungle Lovers. "The Black House
" appeared in
The Independent. "The Great Railway Bazaar," "The Old Patagonian Express,
" and "
Kowloon Tong
" appeared in new editions of those books. "The Making of
The Mosquito Coast
" appeared first in
Vanity Fair.

"
Robinson Crusoe
" is the introduction to the Signet paperback edition of the novel; "Thoreau's
Cape Cod
" is the preface to the Penguin edition; "A Dangerous Londoner" is the introduction to the Everyman edition of
The Secret Agent; "The Worst Journey in the World
" is the introduction to the Picador edition of that book. "Racers to the Pole" is adapted from my introduction to
The Last Place on Earth,
by Roland Huntford. "
PrairyErth
" and "
Looking for a Ship
" first appeared as critical pieces in the
New York Times.

"Chatwin Revisited" was the introduction to the book
Now here Is a Place,
and when it appeared, it greatly angered some of Bruce's friends, who felt it was too breezy and disrespectful. After biographies of Bruce began to appear, my portrait was seen to be accurate. "Greeneland" is a gathering of four separate pieces published in various places. "V. S. Pritchett: The Foreigner as Traveler" I wrote for the
New York Times
on Pritchett's death. "William Simpson: Artist and Traveler" was the introduction to the English edition of a book by Muriel Archer about this little known painter. "Rajat Neogy: An Indian in Uganda" was published in a newly revived series of the magazine
Transition.
"The Exile Moritz Thomsen" is my introduction to Thomsen's travel book,
The Saddest Pleasure
— a title he found in my novel
Picture Palace,
but it was actually a line spoken to me by Graham Greene.

"Unspeakable Rituals and Outlandish Beliefs" appeared in
Granta;
"Gilstrap, the Homesick Explorer" in
The Independent;
"The Return of Bingo Humpage" in the
New York Times.
These last three pieces I wrote while traveling, to amuse myself. I think of them, as I often think of my travels, as fugues.

 

For various reasons (off the subject, repetitious, insubstantial, being saved for later), I decided to exclude a number of pieces from this collection. In the interest of bibliographical completeness, I list them here. Anyone who wishes to read further may find these pieces on the shelves of a good library.

"Beijing in 2040,"
Omni;
"Big Sur,"
Bon Appétit;
"Carnival in Brazil,"
Bon Appétit;
"Christopher Okigbo," Introduction,
Collected Poems;
"Crossing Nantucket Sound,"
Sea Kayaker;
"D. J. Enright," portrait of a poet,
Life by All Means;
"Doctor Sacks," a profile of Dr. Oliver Sacks,
Prospect;
"Hawaiian Cruise,"
San Francisco Examiner;
"Hong Kong: The Persistence of Memory,"
New York Times;
"It's About Time: The Work of Daniel Brush,"
Gold Without Boundaries;
"James Lewton Brain, Anthropologist,"
The Independent;
"Nurse Wolf," portrait of a dominatrix,
The New Yorker;
"Return to Malawi,"
National Geographic; Waldo
—Introduction. "What About Salman Rushdie?"
New York Times;
"Why I Write,"
Nouvelle Observateur.

Many of the subjects in these pieces are or were friends of mine. Okigbo, a Nigerian poet, was killed in the Biafran war; Enright rescued me by giving me a job in Singapore; Oliver Sacks is a source of continuous enlightenment; Daniel Brush works magic as a goldsmith; Jim Brain taught me Chichewa and Swahili and gave me access to Africa; Salman's life and work are incomparable—and he was part of a little band of writer friends (Jonathan Raban among them) who worked and thrived in London and helped me feel at home in the years I lived there. As for "Nurse Wolf"—who must remain anonymous—she just laughed when I told her that, after my profile of her appeared, a record number of
New Yorker
subscriptions were angrily canceled.

SIR VIDIA'S SHADOW

"Exhilarating ...a complex fabric, a tapestry ...depicting the rich companionship of two difficult men." —
Los Angeles Times Book Review

A heartfelt and revealing account of Paul Theroux's thirty-year friendship with the legendary V. S. Naipaul,
Sir Vidia's Shadow
is an intimate record of a literary mentorship that traces the growth of both writers' careers and explores the unique effect each had on the other.
ISBN
0-618-00199-9

 

SUNRISE WITH SEAMONSTERS

"A steamer trunk full of delights." —
Chicago Sun-Times

This collection of decidedly opinionated articles, essays, and ruminations transports the reader to exotic, unexpected places in the world and also into the thoughts and emotions of the writer himself.
ISBN
0-395-41501-2

 

KOWLOON TONG

"A cleverly, tightly constructed, fast-paced book."—
New York Times Book Review

In this novel set in Hong Kong, Neville "Bunt" Mullard and his mother are
one of many caught up in the hand-over of the British colony to China.
Bunt is forced for the first time to make decisions that matter and even begins,
maybe, to discover love in the process.
ISBN
0-395-90141-3

 

MY OTHER LIFE

"Theroux's best and most entertaining book to date... a seriously funny novel." —
Time

From his early education at the knee of his eccentric uncle, to his years as a fledging novelist, the fictional "Paul Theroux" moves through young bachelorhood in Africa and between continents.
ISBN
0-395-87752-0

 

THE OLD PATAGONIAN EXPRESS
By Train Through the Americas

AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

Starting with a rush-hour subway ride to South Station in Boston to catch the Lake Shore Limited to Chicago, Theroux winds up on the poky, wandering Old Patagonian Express steam engine, which comes to a halt in a desolate land.
ISBN
0-395-52105-x

 

Visit our Web site at
www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com
.

 

AVAILABLE FROM MARINER BOOKS

* "Blindness is a confinement, but it is also a liberation, a solitude propitious to invention, a key and an algebra" (Prologue to "The Unending Rose," in Borges's
Collected Poems
).

[back]

***

* A hubristic and, it turns out, inaccurate assertion. Since these words were written, severe dehydration on a long trip down the Zambezi River in 1997 traumatized my kidneys and brought on my first attack of gout. In 1999, squinting miserably, I was diagnosed as suffering prematurely from severe cataracts, because of exposure to the ultraviolet rays in the tropical sunshine that I have encountered as a fresh air fiend.

[back]