Paul Theroux - Blinding Light

“I’m not missing anything,” Sabra said.

“He knows your Social Security number,” Steadman said.

He surprised himself with his own fluency, for he said these things without being aware of knowing them. And time was irrelevant, for nothing was hidden and he seemed to have access to the past in perfect recall. He knew everything that he had seen, and beneath each surface, as though in a state of controlled ecstasy — Sabra fussing in her wallet and Manfred staring hard at her clump of cards, the Social Security card on top, giving her full name and number.

“He memorized your numbers. He has one of your American Express card numbers too, but there’s a credit limit,” Steadman said. “He has all your details. He can do a lot with them. Ever hear of identity theft? He can open an account in your name. He can access more of your information on the Internet. He can get a lot of money out of you long before you realize it. That’s why he’s leaving tomorrow. By the time you get back to the States, your cards will be maxed out.”

The room was silent except for the coarse scraping sound of Manfred’s breathing through his nose.

“I’m going to ask the hotel to go through his room,” Hack said. “If they find my knife and Janey’s binoculars, I’m calling the police.”

“Go ahead, look,” Manfred said, with energy the others took to be bluff. But he stood up and seemed to be edging toward the door, as if to prevent anyone from leaving.

“You look worried, Herr Mephistos,” Wood said.

Hack said to Steadman in a slurry drunken way, matey, slightly cockeyed, “I don’t know how you knew this, but if you can prove any of it, there’s something in it for you.”

Steadman said, “Maybe it’s better not to look for the things that Manfred stole. I mean, what he said is true — he has quite a lot of influence.”

“He’s a thief. You said so.”

“You’re a thief, too,” Steadman said.

Ava said, “Darling, please,” as Hack bristled, stepping back, looking as though he were about to take a swing at Steadman, who was still seated impassively in an armchair. He stared straight ahead, looking through Hack’s face.

“You’ve been sleeping with Sabra,” Steadman said.

Sabra gasped and stood up and denied it. Wood went close to her and said, “Beetle?”

Janey started to cry, saying, “I knew it!”

Hack made a dive for Steadman, but was body-checked by Manfred, who simply stepped into his path and tipped the lunging man aside. With this new revelation, Manfred was attentive to Steadman, who seemed to know everything.

“It’s probably been going on for years,” Steadman said. “For all the time you people have been taking trips together. Maybe it’s the reason you’ve been taking the trips.”

“Get this guy out of here before I fucking kill him,” Hack said.

Wood said, “If there’s any truth in this, Hack, I’ll take you apart.”

“What a muggins I’ve been,” Janey said, sobbing.

Hack said, “Can’t you see he’s trying to start trouble?”

“But you’re a cheat too,” Steadman said to Wood. “You told me about your business, but your figures don’t add up. That can only mean that when you paid off all your partners you were cooking the books so you could sell the company for an inflated price. That’s just one instance. You are incapable of telling the truth. Every time you say a number, it’s false. That book you claimed you wrote was written by some students you hired and ripped off.”

“Bullshit,” Wood said.

“All you’ve ever done is screw people and play with a stacked deck,” Steadman said. “So it’s kind of appropriate that your wife is a liar too.” Sabra said, “No, Wood, it’s not true. Don’t believe him.”

But her protests were drowned out by Janey, who had slumped to a sitting position on the floor and was sobbing loudly like a big sorrowing child.

“This is the saddest one of all,” Steadman said, still facing forward, speaking in a confident monotone. “Poor little Londoner, lost in America. She’s having a nervous breakdown and doesn’t even know it. Her husband is fucking her best friend. Both of them are lying to her. She thinks she’s going crazy.”

Janey was murmuring “No, no, no.” Wood was glaring at Hack. Sabra’s eyes were blazing. Manfred was smiling at the confusion, looking vindicated, and he loomed over Steadman like a protector.

Hack said to Ava, “If you don’t get your boyfriend out of here I will fucking destroy him.”

After all these revelations, spoken with assurance, Steadman rose to go and staggered slightly. Now grasping absently for something to help steady him, he seemed uncertain. He groped forward, seeing a different room, and then hearing Ava—“This way,” she said — he stumbled and fell.

“What’s with him?”

“He’s blind,” Manfred said, almost in triumph, as though Steadman belonged to him. “He can see nossing.”

Sabra looked at Steadman with wonderment, searching his eyes. She moved her hand back and forth before his face. Steadman did not blink. “I was right,” she said in a hollow voice. “He doesn’t know anything.”

Ava went to him and helped him up. Steadman whispered with feeling, “I can’t live without you.”

He had never needed her more. He felt woeful, as though lost on a muddy star.

STEADMAN ASKED, “What’s that?”in a different tone, slipping into a small suspicious murmur and sucking air. He had interrupted himself in another voice, lost his fluency. His whole face went hot. He was reminded of his blindness only at times like this — the moment of intrusion by an unknown visitor, a dark noise, a sudden shadow he knew to be human.

You’re in full flow, the most intimate description, your last word “lingerie,” and now there’s a distant glimmering, the gulp of a quickening pulse, the chew-grind of trodden gravel, pebbles masticated by advancing footsoles. Until then it had been an average afternoon in his many-gabled house, on his estate up-island on Martha’s Vineyard. He was lying on the sofa with his back to Ava, dictating his novel — drugged, blinded. Then he heard the stranger’s heartbeat.

His voice was sharp: “The back door. It sounds like someone. A woman.”

“I don’t hear anything.”

“She hasn’t knocked yet. Go look.”

Narrating a sexually candid episode, he was unusually self-conscious; he had heard the sounds and felt like exposed prey. He lifted his head into the silence and moved like a listening animal, adjusting his body, tuned to danger, his alertness stiffening his neck, the whole room droning in his ears. He sensed that something was wrong. Anything unexpected here was like a threat to him.

“It’s nothing,” Ava said. She did not glance up — his back was still turned to her anyway. He preferred this paranoiac posture, especially in the more sensual episodes. Even so, he could feel the warmth of her body when she was near him, as she was now, waiting, glowing, radiating body heat.

Ava reversed the tape to play the last of Steadman’s dictation, where he had broken off: All he could think of was the woman waiting for him after the meal, the lingerie —

Still poised upright, startled, animal-like, gone rigid in attention, listening as though in a green clearing, he seemed to see the shrouded head, the suggestion of a uniform, the reaching hands, the broken fingernails of a meddler. The staring eyes, the big heavy feet. Only such a heedless intruder would make those sounds. Someone who did not belong always announced the fact in clumsy noises, or in the glare of meaningless silences. Even without knowing who owned it, strangers were often attracted to the big Gothic island house set in a meadow behind high stone walls, its cupola taller than its oldest oaks; but all strangers were unwelcome here.