Paul Theroux - Blinding Light

“What about cosas cristalinos?” Manfred said, ignoring Hack and speaking to the old man, who looked more and more like a goblin as he got nearer the fire. When the old man tilted his head, a vagueness that seemed to indicate “sometimes,” Manfred began talking excitedly to Steadman. “Fischer Cardenas was the first to isolate the alkaloid crystals from yaje. He called it telepathine. The crystals are very beautiful, like jewels. They are harmala alkaloids.”

Don Pablo brought them to the edge of the open-sided pavilion. A pot was simmering near the fire, a brown liquid inside, twigs and broken leaves floating on the surface. Using a long fork, he fished up some cut segments of a thick vine. The liquid itself was muddy and clotted in the firelight.

“That’s the Kool-Aid,” Hack said.

“Psychotropic substance,” Manfred said.

“Ayahuasca,” the old man said.

The others became animated on hearing it, as though congratulating themselves, for it was the first word he had spoken that anyone could recognize.

Without another word or any ceremony, ladling some of the liquid into a large enamel bowl, he showed it, an opaque brew like overboiled tea that had stewed too long without being strained. He shook it a little, as if verifying its viscosity, then poured it back into the pot and returned to his seat at the back of the pavilion, where Don Esteban sat, still chanting, his lips rounded like a chorister’s.

Steadman and Ava were sitting cross-legged. Manfred was kneeling, intending to be first. Wood sat with the Hacklers, behind Manfred. The Secoya men watched from the sides of the pavilion with eager, firelit faces.

“You go,” Janey said to Wood. “You’re the one who was so cock-a-hoop about doing it.”

“Probably a big mistake,” Wood said with an anxious giggle. He took the bowl, tilted it, and sipped at the rim.

“Drink it all,” Nestor said. “Then lie down.”

Wood did so — the others watching in alarm — and coughed and retched. Then he lay down, waiting for the drug to settle within him.

“Nothing yet. But it’s real bitter,” he said, and on the last word he retched again, tried to contain himself, doubled up, and instead of vomiting he heaved and clutched his face, clawing his throat and his eyes. Janey stared for a moment, then turned to Hack, who looked blank and helpless and who smiled in empty terror. Janey got to her feet and walked lamely, stumbling in fear and uncertainty, toward Wood, who was gagging.

Using his stick, Don Pablo stepped between them, not looking at either of them — and anyway, the shaman’s eyes made Steadman think of burned-out bulbs. The shaman grasped a smoking bucket and from it he took an ember, and this he held over Wood’s head, wreathing it in smoke and repeating a litany of quacks.

“Has the old man had any ayahuasca?” Ava whispered to Nestor.

“Maybe a little. He drinks to understand.”

Wood was now lying on his side, batting at the smoke, still heaving and gasping, kicking his feet as though struggling for breath. Everyone stared, seeming shocked by this sudden casualty, who had been overcome and was sniveling with suffocation.

“Did he get it down him too fast?” Janey said. “He looks ghastly. Are you ghastly, Woody?”

“He’s baked,” Hack said. “He’s fucking jacked.”

“Choking,” Ava said. She looked down at him as if in triage, examining a patient on a stretcher, staring hard, scrutinizing his vital signs, trying to size him up. “Some kind of convulsion.”

Spasms shook Wood, then he retched some more, heaved without spewing, and kicked again, the veins standing out on his forehead and neck.

Steadman noticed that Wood was wearing new hiking boots, a style from the catalogue that Trespassing intended as an improvement on Timberlands. He found something sad in their newness, the bright toe caps, the unscuffed soles, the yellow laces. Wood’s knees were filthy, his hands were dirty too, and they streaked his face as he dragged his fingers against his cheeks.

“Looks like he’s swimming,” Hack said, seeming detached now, almost relieved to be standing at a distance from the flailing man.

“Drowning,” Ava said.

Wood began seriously to gag, inhaling and unable to exhale, filling with wind, and when he gasped, in an effort to breathe, he began to cry — to whimper, anyway, tears smearing his cheeks, dirtied by his hands. The effort quieted him, as if he were dying from lack of air. Then he slumped, drugged, a trickle of thin yellow vomit running from the side of his mouth and sticking his face to the mat, his eyes still open, seeing nothing.

All this while, Nestor had stood apart, his arms folded, frowning in satisfaction. “He will sleep a little. Maybe a lot.” He turned to the others. “Who is next?”

“Not me,” Janey said. She was looking down at Wood as she spoke. Wood lay awkwardly on the mat like a sick child, his fingers crooked, the mat rucked up from his having convulsed and twisted it.

Biting her lower lip, Janey looked horrified. Her wrinkled clothes made her seem childlike and pitiable, a fat girl out of her element, unconsoled by Hack, who was smiling in confusion.

“I’m not touching it,” Janey said with an empty laugh.

Manfred struggled forward impatiently on his knees and said, “Yah, I go now.”

Don Pablo raised his plastic jug and poured some of the ayahuasca mixture into a small bowl. This he held before the German, and when he lowered the bowl and nodded, Manfred got the point and rocked backward, sitting cross-legged again, unsteady in his attempt to look decorous. He accepted the bowl with two hands — they were very dirty — and he raised it and drank it slowly, glugging it like a stein of beer. Afterward, he wiped his mouth with the back of one hand and shook his head, seeming annoyed and impatient again.

“No anything. Just my fingers only.” He flexed them and held them to his face. The splashed liquid had left blotches on his dirty hands, and he stared in dumb puzzlement at these dark stains on his skin.

The others stepped away, as though expecting him to explode. But he grunted, demanded more to drink. Don Esteban seemed to refuse, and he conferred with Don Pablo. Manfred was made to wait, and then he was given another full bowl. He drank it the same way, pouring it slowly down his throat.

Still he waited, and he looked at his hands, but in a different way, for his hands lay limp on his knees. He lowered his head to look at them, as if they belonged to someone else. He asked for more, a third cup, but before he could drink it he tottered. And with a dog-like motion of his head, he had just begun to complain when he toppled forward onto his face and vomited, his hands at his sides, and he lay there, his lips dribbling. He shuddered once and then was still, lying beside Wood, who was also motionless, his mouth open, the pair of them like poison victims sprawled on a puke-splashed mat.

“Okay, I’ll do it,” Hack said with reluctance, accepting the bowl, and bobbling it, splashing the potion a little. “I mean, this is why we came, right? I’m chugging it.”

“Don’t, lovey,” Janey said, seeing the uncertainty in her husband’s hands, the unwillingness in his fingers, his anxiety converted into clumsiness. “Marshall. Please don’t do it.”

Janey seized Hack’s moment of hesitation and took the bowl from him. He let go easily, looking relieved, and then watched helplessly as she drank.

Janey caught his eye and gave him an insolent smile and licked at the brown liquid, teasing him until Hack glanced away, as though shamed by the woman. She said, “This is going down a treat,” and did not gulp but rather sipped it slowly, creating more silence in her slowness, then set it down, sloshing the dregs and the residue. She hugged herself and concentrated, and when she lay down she began to moan softly and moved onto her side, away from Hack, and made swallowing sounds. She looked serene, breathing lightly, like a woman dreaming.