Paul Theroux - Blinding Light

Steadman could not say anything. The vision was still within him, slowly slipping away, the light leaking.

“I decided not to take any,” Ava said. “I thought I might come in handy if anyone seriously choked. This is pretty heavy stuff.”

The old man and Nestor crept over to Steadman. And Steadman saw from the mottled sky behind the pavilion that it was now early morning.

“Good?” Nestor said. “You okay? You see some things?”

Steadman smiled and said, “A lion, a big cat. Beautiful, powerful, with”—and he made a plumping gesture with his hands to indicate a pair of breasts.

Nestor spoke to the old man, who all this time was staring into the middle distance with his damaged eyes.

“So, let’s boogie,” Hack said.

“Maybe better we stay here another day,” Nestor said. “The people who took the yajé are tired. This is a good village — good people, and safe. We go back tomorrow to Lago Agrio.”

“That’s going to muck up our schedule,” Janey said. But she spoke wearily, for the effects of the drug and the nausea were still evident in the slurring way she spoke.

“Shed-jewel,” Nestor said, imitating the woman’s way of saying the word.

“We’re supposed to be flying to the Galápagos the day after tomorrow,” Wood said.

“Oh, Jesus, it’s Kenya all over again,” Hack said. “Look, let them rest now and we can leave later — tonight.”

Hernán said, “Even the Secoya, they no go about in the night.”

Nestor said, “In the night here in Oriente, snakes sometimes drop down from the branches of the trees into the boat, and they don’t say ‘Excuse me.’”

There was no dispute after that, though there was more complaining, especially from Hack, who had not taken any ayahuasca and seemed stronger, and also from Sabra, who had been excluded and was angry. Wood and Janey looked weak; they were pale, they were quieter, as if convalescing.

Hernán said, “The Secoya say it is better not to take a bath today. If you do, you wash away the nice things you see and the pinta”

On the way back to the center of the village Nestor fell in with Steadman. He said, “The old man, Don Pablo, I told him what you said. He wants me to tell you that you did not see a lion. It was a puma, a tiger. Your dream was true. He knows — he had the same dream.”

THEY WERE NOT used to failure. They took it badly, as though it suggested the weakness and defeat of character flaws, so they denied it. They were not ashamed but angry and blaming. “It’s all Nestor’s fault,” Hack said. “What a loser.” And Janey chimed in, “It’s a bloody shambles”—she the one Steadman remembered looking at the village huts and saying, “Isn’t that fun, the way they gather and finish those good strong reeds in the roofs? I could use that in my arbors and garden thatch.” She was now saying, “We should never have come. The whole rotten thing’s a dog’s breakfast.”

The others agreed: Nestor, hired to provide the ayahuasca experience, had let them down. The trip had been uncomfortable, the blindfolds had been unnecessary and disorienting, the village hideous, the people objectionable and unfriendly, the shaman an impostor in a ragged feather crown and elf’s smock, never mind all his trinkets. Wood had almost been poisoned. Janey was still nauseated: “I’m feeling ever so precious.” Sabra was frightened by everything she heard, and Hack, who had been appalled at the memory of his having been terrified, kept saying how shocked he was. “You could have suffered liver damage! Kidney failure!” he shouted to Wood. “And this food is crap.”

“What’s in this stew?” Sabra asked.

“Probably the same as before. Turkey. Yuca.”

“Why not fish? There must be lots of fish in the river.”

“Mudfish. Eels. Manta rays. Snakes. You want snakes?”

Nestor was impassive, smoking with one hand, picking at his food with the other. He said, “Not pavo today. It is cuy. Guinea pig.”

The four Americans stopped eating. They dropped their spoons onto the food-splashed mat. They seemed beaten, their expensive jungle adventure clothes the more deranged and dirty-looking because they were so stylish, making the wearers like parodies of travel gone wrong. And the labels mocked them: Hack’s crumpled North Face cap bore the legend Never Stop Exploring, the back patches on Sabra’s jeans and Janey’s fanny pack and Wood’s windbreaker said, Trespassing Overland Gear.

“This isn’t what we were expecting,” Hack said. “My wife might be ill, and we’ve still got the Galapagos to do.”

“You expect us to sleep another night in this village?” Wood said.

“There is such an incredible pong here,” Janey said. “Even some of these flowers smell like stinky feet.”

“Maybe you could try holding your nose,” Nestor said. “You’ll be in a hotel room in Quito tomorrow.”

“I’m not talking tomorrow!” Wood howled. “I am talking now!” Instead of being alarmed by the shout, the villagers smiled and crept closer to look at the big red-faced man in short pants waving his arms and stamping, his knees dirty, his chin dripping, sweat patches darkening his shirt.

With the morning sunshine slanting through the trees the clearing was full of luminous silvery smoke from the cooking fires and seemed haunted rather than miserable, the people more spectral than destitute. Stepping off the canoe two days before, the visitors had seen the place as filthy yet picturesque. But that was when they had believed they were just passing through. Now they were mocked by their first impressions: picturesque meant grubby. The prospect of spending another night there made the village seem dangerous, without privacy, and as Janey Hackler pointed out, there was nowhere to sit.

“I just want to wash my face,” Sabra said. Then she walked a little way off, as though she might find a washbasin, towel, and soap dish, and after a few steps she screamed. “It’s a spider! Get it away!”

Wood hurried to help her—“Get back, Beetle!”—but when he raised his stick to beat the spider out of its hanging web, Steadman stepped behind him and deftly snatched the stick, whipping it out of his hand.

“Don’t kill it,” he said.

“What’s your fucking problem, man!”

“Just keep walking,” Steadman said, staring him down.

With a low chuckle of approval, Manfred said, “Yah. Is not necessary to kill.”

But the outburst soured the atmosphere further. The others were so humiliated they did not talk about their fear or their nausea from the ayahuasca. They blamed the village for being dirty and Nestor for not caring and said that they would be faxing the agency. That they wanted a refund. That they would ask for a meeting with the tourist board in Quito.

“I will make sure you get to Quito,” Nestor said, and they hated his insolence the more for its being enigmatic.

In all this Manfred Steiger, who might have been expected to complain, had only seemed more enthusiastic. Steadman admired the man’s animation and his pounce, the way he could fasten his attention on the minutest pedantic details of the plants and the ceremony. He was inexhaustibly nosy, as cheap people often are, and his parsimony made him impatient and a nagger; but when he did complain, his complaints were unconventional, and he never whined. He was boring, but in Manfred this was like a virtue, his dullness and his ponderous industry making him seem indestructible. He made notes, he consulted his plant book, he interrogated the Secoya boys — and was not deterred even when they smiled at him, not understanding a word he said.

He boasted that he never tipped anyone — didn’t believe in it, did not pay his way if he could avoid it. He always took second helpings of food, and sometimes thirds. Steadman had noticed that he had asked for a third helping of ayahuasca. Manfred often stuffed food in his pockets — an extra orange, the hard-boiled eggs, sugar cubes, bananas. After wolfing down noodles at Papallacta, he had snatched fritters and wrapped them and sneaked them into his pockets. When something was offered, Manfred’s empty hand was the first extended, and he always took more than his share, as though counting on the fact that everyone else would be too genteel to object. He was a successful predator, whose success depended on everyone else’s being unwary or hesitant or polite.