Paul Theroux - Blinding Light

He sank into sleep, and was unconscious, wrapped in a happy dream of release. He had regained his eyesight. Sex had freed him. He recalled how he had suspected that there had been another person in the house — the shadow, the presence, the odd sounds. In his dream he was in the White House, at a jostling press conference in which he was doing all the talking to a respectful crowd. But he was defiant, tearful, saying “See? I was right!”

FEELING FOR AVA with creeping spider-like fingers in the bed when he woke, not knowing whether it was day or night, he found her arm and grasped it. At once he was doubtful, remembering. “Is that you?” She kissed him and drew him to her. He kissed her shoulder in a grateful way. She was happy, he could tell, not by anything she said — all she did was murmur — but by the teasing sigh in her throat, a simple grace note of irony.

“Who was that woman?”

“What does it matter if you liked what she did?”

He wondered whether he had really enjoyed it, because it had been so unexpected and unasked for, too sudden to savor. He did not reply at first; he considered that Ava, with her customary doctor’s thoroughness, had been preparing the encounter for weeks. He had to admit that he had finally been aroused, coaxed out of his impotence. But the truth was that he had felt lost in the act, slightly panicky and bewildered, too startled to be possessed. He had been foundering and flailing at the periphery of her pleasure. Her enjoyment had disturbed him.

“I loved it,” he said.

From the way her body settled as she was pressed against him, he knew it was the answer she wanted. Still, he felt the need to apologize.

“Maybe it’s because I’m feeling so anxious about my eyes. I can’t believe I’m so feeble.”

“You were blind before. You were blind for months. And you managed.”

“It was nothing like this. That was a kind of insight — you know! This is a prison. It’s punishment. And I’m not taking the drug”

“There’s such a thing as discontinuation syndrome.”

“I’m afraid to go very far.” He was too humiliated to say that he feared to leave the house at all.

“You should try. You’re stronger than you think.”

“Find me an eye doctor,” he said. “Please help me.”

“I have one lined up. She’s in Boston. She makes a monthly visit to the island. She’ll see you and run some tests.”

“What do I do in the meantime?”

“Write your story. You said you wanted to.”

He had told her of the short story he had planned, something like a Borges tale, compressed and allusive, something he would publish to prove that he was able to work. But all he had was a vague notion of the form; he had no narrative, no characters, no names or incidents.

“Nothing,” he said, summarizing what was in his mind.

“Can’t we do this?” She felt for him, but playfully.

Sex was like an intrusion, a hovering threat that made him feel small. When she touched him he felt clumsy and ignorant, like a big goofy boy intimidated by the mysteries of life and death, darkness and light, thinking, What will I do when I grow up? He had lost the ability to take a walk, to drive down the road, to sail a boat, to swim. He was a cripple, blind and incapable in the most fundamental way. Listening to the radio humbled him by reminding him of how futile he was, twisting a knob, holding his pathetic earphones. Though he struggled, mumbling to himself, he could not read or write, and even his speech seemed to be impaired. Half the time he stammered, unsure of whether he had a listener. For sex, for any pleasure, he needed the insight he had known before: the liberation of light.

What convinced him of that was the third hand of the night before. At one point in the intensity of his arousal, during the cramped convulsive unknotting, the sudden slippage of his ejaculation, he had sensed a sliver of light pierce his eyes. But no sooner had it blazed within the crevice of its narrow entry than it was gone. It was another reminder of what he had lost. He could not think of sex without feeling sad.

“Anyway, I was right,” he said, remembering the niggling thought. But it was a victory of sorts for him, something he badly needed. “There was someone in the house.”

Instead of speaking, Ava kissed him, but in a thoughtful way, holding her lips against his as though replying. She was always so scrupulous. She might refrain from responding but she never lied to him. He wondered what lesson there had been in her life that prevented her from deceiving him. Perhaps her study of medicine: the exactitudes of science had kept her truthful.

“Maybe I’m not as blind as I thought I was.”

“Gotta go,” she said, and bounded out of bed. “I’ll be late.”

He lay in bed trying to recall details of the night before. He had resisted, he had felt enticed, but he had little memory of it. The third hand had been like a wicked imp emerging from the darkness.

Before Ava left for the hospital, she said, “Try to get out today. Call a taxi, go into town. It’ll do you good.”

But when she was gone he became self-conscious, believing the other woman might still be in the house. He listened hard for a telling sound. Walking, he held his arms out, feeling his way forward, prepared to defend himself. His greatest fear was that without warning a stranger would touch him.

“If you’re here, say something.”

From the way his voice rang in the room he guessed there was no one, that she had gone.

He moped all morning, and toward midafternoon he called the taxi service and asked to be dropped on Main Street. “You going to be all right?” the young driver said with the bossy insincerity all the rest of them showed. In Vineyard Haven Steadman could tell that the sidewalk was busy with shufflers, but he also heard the remarks of people making way for him, even heard his name whispered several times, and “the writer.”

Moving slowly, tapping his cane, he did not fall, and he was encouraged to walk farther than he had planned. He made it past the deli, the gift shops, the Bunch of Grapes bookstore, the drugstore, and kept going, past the bank and the bagel shop. He was still going slowly but, more confident, more upright, now he guessed he was on West Chop Road — no people crowding him. A car with a rapping engine pulled beside him and a man’s voice called out, “Slade Steadman.”

Steadman stopped and, taking care, angled his body toward the street.

“Let me give you a lift.”

The car door slammed. The man was close to him, nudging him.

“Do I know you?” Steadman asked.

“Don’t think so, but I sure know you. Here, get in,” and the man guided him into the car. Steadman was too tired and confused to resist. “You’re not safe stumbling around like that,” the man said.

“I wasn’t stumbling.” Steadman spoke so sharply the man was silent. “Who are you?”

“Whitey Cubbage?” the man said in a querying way. “I guess your friend didn’t like that,” as if he had already forgotten Steadman was blind.

“What friend?”

But the man didn’t seem to hear. He drove on, narrating: “Lovely day… Damned cyclists… God, they’re tearing down the Norton place”—and soon made a turn. The car engine strained, seeming to climb a steep driveway, and with the car on this incline he stopped and yanked the hand brake.

“Where are we?”

“I live here,” the man said testily, as though rebuffing an ignorant question. “Come on in. Bet you could use a cup of coffee.”

He helped Steadman out of the car, and was so abrupt and impatient, leading him so clumsily, that Steadman stumbled on the porch steps. Seeing Steadman on his knees, holding the handrail, the man apologized.