Paul Theroux - Blinding Light

Steadman tried to disguise his interest in the proposition, yet he saw Manfred smile, for Manfred knew he had succeeded in his pitch. More of the drug was exactly what Steadman wanted.

“You brought some back?”

Manfred tugged at the cloth bag at his feet. He opened it for Steadman, who saw the skull resting in the big basket, empty eye sockets, splintered nose bone, toothy jaw.

“All I see is a skull.”

“You don’t see the basket?”

The basket, so big and so obvious as to be scarcely visible, lay on its side, like a badly made and fat-bellied clothes hamper.

“The basket is datura — best kind. Five kilos of it. They make it from the flower stems. Just a small amount boiled into tea is what you took in the village. This basket is all Methysticodendron, pure drug, but not a drug that anyone knows — not described in any official book. Is what I tell you. Is a clone of Brugmansia.” He put his fingers to the lip of it and a small pinch of bark broke free. This crumbly fragment he showed Steadman. He said, “I know you want it. And maybe someday you will tell me what you see.”

“Sure I will. How much for the basket?”

Manfred lowered his head and said, “Two sousand.”

“Fifteen hundred. You already owe me five. I’ll give you a grand.” Steadman began counting the fifty-dollar bills.

They settled on seventeen hundred, and Steadman had to restrain himself. He would have paid much more. The agreement was that Nestor would hold the money. After Steadman had tested the datura tea and agreed, the money would be handed over. Nestor complained that he was being kept in the dark—“What’s all this money for?”—but Steadman suspected that he knew exactly the nature of the transaction.

Then, narrowing his conspiratorial eyes, and with a movement of solemn intrigue — Steadman smiled at how truthful Manfred was in his tactlessness — Manfred eased him away from the others.

“You will like the datura, and sometime”—Manfred raised his arms to take in everything—“we will come back to Quito, and back here, yah? Just the both of us. Down the river, to the village. We will drink again. We will have fissions.” Manfred fastened his gaze on Steadman’s eyes. “You will give me your story.”

Back to Quito? Down the river? To the village? Visions? He smiled at Manfred, and Manfred had never looked hairier or more spider-like.

“Sure,” Steadman said.

Upstairs, Ava looked at him with the same who-are-you? expression Steadman had seen on her face in the village. Noticing the big bag in his hand that contained the basket, she knew that the matter had been settled with Manfred. She could tell that Steadman was satisfied — more than satisfied: he was so happy he hardly acknowledged her.

She said, “Nestor wants to give a farewell party for everyone tonight. His way of thanking us.”

Steadman did not respond. He was examining the Indian basket, scraping at it with his fingernail. Loosely woven of thick, unpeeled, shaggy twigs, some of them splitting, it looked like a crude oversized version of many of the baskets he had seen in the curio markets in Quito.

Ava came back to her old question. “What is it? What did you see?”

If he told her that the drug had made him blind, she would have been misled, would never have understood, for “blind” was the wrong word. “I have seen among the flowers, tigers in the skins of men.”

“You’re just being evasive,” she said, which was true. “You’ve hardly said anything this whole trip.”

That was true, too. No one had noticed how silent Steadman had been. That was not unusual. Talkers never noticed; only listeners tended to be aware of the back-and-forth of discussion. Steadman had passively encouraged the others to talk by not appearing to listen.

Ava turned away, went to the window, muttered something. He knew she was not looking at anything, just gazing at empty space, the way she had six days before when he had blindfolded her and made love to her. Maybe she felt that had been a charade and was now feeling futile, probably thinking: What a waste, all this time and trouble, what have we learned?

Apart from Manfred, who in his clumsiness appeared to be the shrewdest one of all, Steadman knew the others were dispirited, impatient to go elsewhere, needing more travel. They were talking about the creatures they would see in the Galapagos. “Big goofy turtles.” They had not spoken about the ayahuasca. They were like children who had smoked their first cigar and gotten sick and said, “Never again.” They had learned nothing.

Ava was still facing the window. She was at her prettiest with the light behind her. Possessing the Indian basket filled Steadman with confidence. He only needed a way to tell her. He saw that he had a future, not earnest hope but the certain knowledge of inspired work.

NESTOR LEFT A NOTE for them at the Colón saying that he had organized the farewell party in a private room in a hotel restaurant, and el precio incluye todo — as though emphasizing that the party was included as part of the tour price would tempt them to attend. Ava laughed and crumpled the note and tossed it aside, but Steadman picked it up and smoothed it. He studied the map printed on the back, then folded it and put it into his pocket.

Ava said, “You seriously want to go to this thing?”

“No choice.”

The hotel was in the Mariscal Sucre district, within walking distance of the Colon, down the wide avenue called Amazonas, the narrow side streets leading off it full of strollers and youthful tourists on this chilly November night. No masks, no finery, no processions: the fiesta had ended. What costumed people they saw were Indians from the mountain villages, wearing shawls and beads and woolen leggings, selling woven mats and brightly colored rugs. Most of the shops on the avenue were shut, but Ava remarked that they catered to visitors who wanted jungle tours and Panama hats and leather jackets and raffia bags. The Ecuador experience.

“People like us,” Steadman said.

Seeing them approach, Nestor waved from the foyer of the restaurant. Steadman could tell from the hostility that hung over them like the stink from cold ashes that it would not be a friendly party but an absolute farewell, something verging on the funereal, but a ritual of empty gestures, as though they were burying a stranger. From the outset no one made eye contact. Manfred had already gone inside the restaurant and taken his place at the table and started drinking.

“This kind of goodbye party, we call it a despedida,” Nestor explained.

Janey's greeting to Steadman was “We didn’t reckon you’d pitch up.”

“The man of mystery,” Hack said.

Steadman had watched Hack drinking from an elegant silver pocket flask, and Steadman’s smile was his usual misleadingly mild one, his silence defiant and provocative.

“We have this feeling you think you’re too good for us,” Wood said.

“Is that the mystery?” Ava asked.

“The mystery is that he doesn’t say anything,” Hack said, and it really was like a chorus, this quartet of travelers. “The mystery is that we give a shit.”

Ava said to Nestor, “We were looking forward to your despedida .”

Steadman was still smiling. He knew that his smile was an irritant and that his silence and his gaze had worn them down.

“What is it about this guy?” Hack said, but it was less a question than an unfinished statement.

The hotel restaurant, Papagayo, had an Amazonian Indian theme — jungle foliage and macaws in cages and straw mats and even an assortment of oversized baskets that resembled the one that Manfred had sold Steadman. The floor show promised “folklore.” Nestor obviously chose the place because it was attached to the hotel where the Hacklers and Wilmutts were staying, as some sort of barter arrangement.