Paul Theroux - Blinding Light

Nestor was squatting on his haunches a little distance away, smoking a cigarette, listening to the rant and watching the negotiation. Several Secoya men with him were similarly squatting, hugging their knees, puffing pipes.

As though anticipating a probing question, Nestor called out, “It is not part of the tour package.” They looked at him and Nestor seemed to see another question in their faces, which he addressed. “So I am not responsible.”

This hint of risk attracted Steadman and, raising his eyes past Nestor, he saw the others, the ones who called themselves the Gang of Four, looking disconsolate on their log, like monkeys in the rain.

Steadman was indifferent to the bargain that Manfred was trying to strike. Instead, he saw a chance to rescue something from this trip — something to write about, something new, which would be part of his own story. And the fact that Ava was against it was another reason for him to go ahead with it. They were at an end. This decision to try the rarer drug was something final that would demonstrate this. It was more than a gesture; it was like a new aspect of separation, an act of defiance.

“Don’t listen to this cheeseball,” Ava said. “He comes down here with his big fat plant book and puts himself in charge, and you’re buying it?”

“Yup,” Steadman said, and gave Manfred two hundred and fifty dollars, counting the bills into his hand. Manfred objected with a movement of his mouth. Steadman added, “You get the rest when it’s over. But you can’t have my story.”

Ava said, “He’s the devil!”

But Steadman smiled. He was amused by Manfred’s meanness and manipulation, the transparency of it, especially when compared to the self-satisfied spending of the Americans and all their high-end gear — the contrast of Manfred’s beat-up Mephistos and rotting socks with the Americans’ expensive Trespassing Treads. Manfred’s shorts and all-purpose black sweater had tears and pills; Wood’s Trespassing jacket had seventeen pockets — so he kept saying — and Manfred had a greasy sack into which he stuffed everything, including the hard-boiled eggs he routinely sneaked.

Manfred’s sunglasses were misshapen; the Americans wore titanium TOGs and peaked caps with neck flaps, like Foreign Legionnaires. When there was a brief flutter of rain the Americans took out their Trespassing rain jackets and Trespassing ponchos and crouched in the drizzle and waited it out. Manfred was the picture of discomfort, with muddy legs, bruised fingers, dirty nails, clawed sweaty hair, and a mud-streaked cheek from his having rolled off his sleeping mat in a convulsion during his ayahuasca trance. And at his muddiest he was capable of insisting, “I have good connections in Washington and New York. I am working on a book. Many people know my name.”

“This watch is good for two hundred meters,” Hack had said.

“See this watch? I found it,” Manfred said.

Steadman liked Manfred’s recklessness and saw him as a natural ally, the improvisational traveler that he had once been. That, too, made Ava insecure.

“Do you know anything about this business?” she asked Nestor.

“Only that it is done outside the village,” Nestor said. “It is a shaman’s drink. Not like ayahuasca. This plant is new. It is rare. It is an accident. I saw a couple of people take it. Only one of them got a buzz.”

“What was the buzz?”

“That is the funny part. The guy just got quiet. He could not see. It was like we say, una ceguera, a blinding. Ugly to think about. But he knew everything that was going on — more than we knew.”

“What is it?”

“The one he showed you.”

“Angel’s trumpet?”

“The toé. Borrachero,” he said. “La venda de tigre .”

Manfred tapped his plant book and said, “Datura. Methysticodendron.”

“The tiger’s blindfold,” Nestor said. “He called it a crazy name. ‘A necessary poison.’”

“It is not very far,” the Secoya man said, pressing through the low bushes. His Spanish was as basic and approximate as Ava’s— “No muy lejo .”

“ ‘Not far’ always means it’s far,” Ava said.

She followed Steadman, knowing she wouldn’t take the drug — and certainly not on Manfred’s terms — but she felt protective toward Steadman. Her sympathy and patience were an unexpected reaction to their breakup, as strange as the sudden irruption of sex. But the desire to make sure he would be out of danger had nothing to do with their future; there was no question of compensation or reward. She had at last realized that they were each of them alone, and after the infatuation, the romance, the attachment had ended, and they were indifferent to each other’s power, underlying it all were frailty and friendship — mutual understanding.

But there was an awkwardness, too, the realization that they did not know each other completely. They had withheld something, they still had secrets. Those secrets exerted a subtle force, and their being blindfolded had made them unselfconscious enough to exploit the secrets, made them strangers again in the eyeless darkness of sensuality, less inhibited. For Ava eroticism was anonymous hunger—“I am stuffing myself,” she had told him with a greedy smile; never mind his pleasure.

She was free, no one’s wife, no one’s fiancee, no one’s girlfriend; just his friend — she could do as she wished. Being with Steadman was her choice. She wished for the time when she would be certain that he would be safe. Then she would be finished with him.

The Indian had been accurate; it wasn’t far. Beyond the bushes and split-bamboo stockade fence of the compound, another lashed-together pavilion stood a bit back from the riverbank and out of sight of the village.

“I guess we’re on our own now,” Steadman said.

Nestor had wanted to join them, but the Hacklers and the Wilmutts had demanded that he stay close to them, with Hernán, in case there was a problem. Nestor had mumbled “Niños " and stalked toward them, as though wishing them ill. Then he stood and ignored them and smoked, because they hated smokers and had not allowed it in the van.

Welcoming them to this different pavilion was the small smoothfaced shaman, Don Esteban, who had assisted Don Pablo in administering the ayahuasca. He had been the cook; he had stoked the fire, chopped and peeled the vine stems, stirred the pot; he had brewed the mixture.

Ava said, “He looks like he has a stocking over his face.”

Hearing her speak, Don Pablo clapped Don Esteban on the shoulder and said, “ Vegetalista. Toéro.”

And there were others: three Secoya men watching blank-eyed, or perhaps not expressionless but with faces so expressive, so peculiar, they could not be read — riddle-faced Indians squatting on their haunches and being obscurely busy, like scullions in a primitive kitchen. A frown might be a smile; their sniffing was like inquisitiveness; when they pressed their lips together it might have meant anything — pique, frustration, impatience.

Nor was language any good. In German-accented Spanish, Manfred said, “We start. I am first.”

They ignored him and went on stirring the pot, stewing the peelings of the dry slender stems, crushing them into it and reducing the liquid until it was darker and thicker. Steadman saw that it was the simplest boiling and simmering. He thought, I could do that. They were making tea, but strong stewed tea. Don Esteban, the shaman they called the toéro, was working over another fire, ladling liquid into another pot and reducing it, mixing it with more plant fragments, stirring it until it grew soupy.

Manfred announced himself again with a question, but the Secoya were so preoccupied in their cookery they did not notice his standing over them, nor did they acknowledge him until, in frustration, he squatted, rocking on his haunches, and then called out to Steadman.