Paul Theroux - Blinding Light

“Pit stop!” Wood called out.

Hernán slowed the van and parked it by the side of the road, near a café, but before he opened the door a commotion began at the back of the vehicle.

“Do me a favor!” Hack shouted, for Manfred had reached up to the luggage rack, bumping the Hacklers’ backs. Janey said, “Do you mind!”

Manfred paid no attention to the protests. He dragged down his bulging duffel bag and unzipped it, taking out a large basket, not smooth like most of the ones at the curio stalls, but a bulky one of slender woven twigs still encased in their bark. From the wide opening of the basket he produced a human skull.

“My frent.”

The skull was dark and smooth, with the grain and shine of polished wood. The eye holes gaped at Ava, who stared back.

“Your friend has sustained serious trauma to the superciliary arch and the zygomatic bone. I think someone hit him in the eye with a blunt object,” Ava said. “I hope it wasn’t you.”

“I buy him in the village.”

Hack said, “And I got this,” and unsheathed a crudely made knife with a woven raffia handle. He pointed the blade at Manfred and set his jaw and said, “A shank. To replace the one they stole.”

Manfred said a German word and stuffed the skull back into the basket. Ava glanced at Steadman.

When they went outside to the café and the toilets, Steadman took Manfred aside and said, “That’s amazing.”

“Is old, the head. They call it tsantsa .”

“But what I want to know,” Steadman insisted, “is where you got the money for it.”

“Was my last money,” Manfred said, losing his fluency in his evasiveness. “Was why I require some loan from you.”

Manfred swallowed and something stuck in his gullet and made his eyes go out of focus, as they had glazed over when he had seen Hack’s knife blade pointing at him.

Ava said, “A loan is something you pay back.”

Manfred had a bristly face and spiky hair. He had been sleeping in the van, his mouth gaping, his hands gripping his knees. Steadman admired him for the way he slept so easily, despised him for the way he took advantage, hogging a whole seat to sleep on. Steadman, who thought of himself as thin-skinned, easily offended by slights and criticism or even hearty encouragement—“When are you going to write another book?”—was fascinated by someone who did not care how much he was disliked. More than that, Manfred seemed to be energized at being singled out by other people’s contempt.

Ava said, “He wants his money now.”

Manfred did not turn to her, but he laughed, liking the aggression. “Ha! I don’t have!”

This took place at a lookout point on the road, next to the café. A dog lay by the roadside in the dirt, probably sleeping but so skinny it was flat enough to be dead. The others who had used the baño —“It’s just a hole in the ground, like Bhutan”—were now adjusting their clothes and squinting and sidling back to the van. They looked defeated. This return trip was a form of retreat, and their rumpled expedition gear made them seem greater failures, because the clothing was a symbol of their ambition and their conceit.

“You got Mister Bones,” Steadman said.

“Is just a memory. A curio, so to say.”

Steadman looked up to see Nestor smiling at their quarrel. He seemed impressed by Ava’s presence, her tenacity, for she was smaller than Manfred but more aggressive than Steadman. With her as a bystander, the encounter seemed a more serious dispute.

Nestor said, “Who is winning, America or Germany?”

“I am American,” Manfred said, so sharply the dog in the road jackknifed and raised its head to listen.

Nestor glared at him and said, “ Usted es una persona aprovechada .”

Steadman said to Nestor, “What would an Ecuadorian customs inspector say if he saw a human skull in someone’s luggage?”

“They like it,” Nestor said. “They see them sometimes. They are very happy.”

Manfred looked puzzled, and Steadman smiled, wondering what was to come.

“Because then they ask you for a dádiva, a fat soborno, a bribe.” Nestor was big and confident and took his time, using his cigarette for drama and delay. “And you say yes. And you are happy, too, because they are so dishonest.”

“You sink so.”

“Yes. Because if they are honest, they do not ask for a bribe. They arrest you for breaking the law. If you ever see an Ecuador jail you know how lucky you are that they ask you for a bribe.”

After that, they rode in silence up the escarpment to Quito. Steadman looked out the side window, seeing nothing, not even his reflected face, but only remembering his episode of blindness, the taste of the datura, and wishing he could remember more. He had his story, he had found peace, he was bringing something back. He knew he was selfish in wanting more, for his lingering feeling of the experience was like desire: the infatuation that had once made him obsessive with Ava, needing her constantly, his saying “I believe in pheromones — you have them,” and her replying “You’re cunt-struck. I like it.”

Manfred, he could tell, kept wanting to start a conversation, so he turned away and held Ava’s hand and imagined her blindfolded again.

In Quito, after the others had taken their bags and gone with Nestor into their hotel lobby, Manfred said, “I have no money.”

“So I’ll take something else.”

The German frowned and pulled on his nose. He said, “You think I don’t know you, but I read your book. When I read it I say to myself, ‘If I can write a book like that I will be so happy.’ That is why I want your story for my book. You are a great writer — better than me. You don’t need money.”

“This guy is just so incredibly smooth,” Ava said, and Manfred scowled at her.

“He heard what Nestor said. When he goes through customs he’s going to have a problem with his skull. I’ll make sure.”

Manfred smiled grimly, seeming to expect this as part of the negotiation. He wasn’t flustered, he was nodding — calculating. He said, “Okay.

I pay you. Tomorrow.”

“You heard him, honey.”

They were dropped at the Hotel Colon. They bathed, they drank beer from the minibar, and then, exhausted, they lay apart on the big bed.

Ava said, “What was it like?”

Steadman knew what she was asking, but he had no words for it. And he did not want to say that he was thinking how the trouble with the darkness here and everywhere was that it was not dark enough. The blindness he had known in the village just yesterday was so seamlessly black it was beyond eyesight, beyond vision, and really not the shadow he thought of as darkness, but a void of such profound blackness it was also its opposite, a brilliant light that endowed him with power.

In the morning he looked for Manfred. He was determined that Manfred would not get away without paying him back. He saw Nestor in the lobby with Hernán, and even before Steadman spoke, Nestor pointed with a knowing smirk toward the coffee shop.

Manfred was in a corner reading the Miami Herald. Steadman sat down opposite him at the same small table.

“Five hundred bucks,” Steadman said.

“Is not even much money,” Manfred said.

“But it’s mine.”

Manfred said, “The datura. You liked it?”

Steadman did not want to be drawn into replying; the experience had been private. He was annoyed by Manfred’s bringing it up, especially since Manfred had not responded to the drug, and had only watched while Steadman came awake, his face glowing. He had not even wanted to talk about the experience.

“I give you some datura. You can use it, make it like tea. Better than money.”