Paul Theroux - Blinding Light

He sank into sleep just afterward. He dreamed, tumbling into dark depths, and just before he drowned he woke, gasping and helpless, but unbound, his hands untied, and he was canted sideways, like a man washed ashore, dumped on a beach, almost lost, regaining consciousness, remembering. He could see Ava seated next to him, seeming demure, her legs crossed.

“It’s late. Work tomorrow.”

She was being stern again, but distant and prim. Her primness aroused him as much as her sensuality.

“Time for bed,” she said, and helped him to his feet.

As she propped him up, he muttered helplessly. All his vitality was gone, and drained of it he could hardly see anything at all — he never could in this state. Ava led him to his room. Again he slept. He hardly dreamed. He woke to a dimmer light, a different sunrise, another kind of wakefulness.

He had been blind. He had chosen to be blind. Now, on waking, he could see clearly, but was dissatisfied and impatient with the washed-out colors, the ugliness beyond the window, hideous midsummer with wind-tortured leaves, a sky like cat fur — the old world.

At breakfast, averting his eyes from the sickly light, he found the jug of datura tea. As he gagged — the concoction was clammy and cool, like a jungle in its darkest dripping hours — the day telescoped, all the sunlight flattened into shadow in just under a minute. He waited, knowing what was coming. Still at breakfast, his eyes dimmed, twilight fell, and he was ready for dictation, a blind man again.

FOR ALMOST EIGHT MONTHS he had prepared himself with the datura, the controlled blinding, a mask as exquisite as a falcon’s hood, keeping to his secluded house. That had been a typical day: a whole day, including night. Darkness was a zone Steadman entered in order to know his mind and advance the narrative of his book. Daylight was unhelpful and ambiguous for seeming to be true, yet it was shabby and misleading. He spent his days dictating the revelation of his nights, which were bright and long and Active. Engrossed in both sides of the day, dark and light, and both sides of his life, work and sex, he at last felt complete.

On this island he wanted no interruptions. He had never encouraged visitors to his house on the Vineyard. And few people came here in the bleak off-season months. For most mainlanders the island did not exist in the winter, nor even in the spring, which like the past one could be sleety and cold, the raw northwest wind scooping across Vineyard Sound and along the ponds and banks, flattening daffodils, tearing through his trees to claw at his windows. For Steadman it was writing weather.

In summer the island was full — more than full, spilling over, people clinging, harbors crammed with jostling boats, the roads dense with big slow cars. So in summer especially he had hid himself in his up-island house. And he had reflected that the Vineyard had not always been like this. He had fled to the island for solitude in the first years of his fame, when he had felt the need to hide, crouching like a hunter in a blind.

Time had passed and made the better places busier, and sometimes destroyed them. The Vineyard suffered, its beauties trampled for the very fact that they were beautiful — crowded and pawed by too many admirers. Even Steadman was sought out, like any other Vineyard curiosity. On his arrival he had announced that he was withdrawing, and the announcement had been like a challenge to the people who had pestered him. But the Vineyard was full of hiding places. He had found one in the green heart of the island, down a country road, behind a perimeter stone wall and high hedges.

Because he had bought the large estate with the merchandising and TV profits from Trespassing, the purchase was classified as celebrity news and reported in the newspaper columns listing hot properties. His scheme backfired. His very wish to be left alone made him a target. His taste for seclusion had singled him out, made him specific, a greater prize. It seemed the press was not interested in anyone who was accessible. A person who cooperated in publicity or agreed to be interviewed was regarded as a self-promoter and an easy mark. So reporters looking for a story tried to sniff him out because he was unwilling, a recluse.

To be first with the Steadman story would be a coup. No one succeeded, but that failure was a greater goad. Isolated, unwritten about, Steadman was more obvious, and was talked about more, speculated on, the subject of gossip. For some years his desire to remain out of the public eye became as much the basis of his fame as his book had, but the title Trespassing was like a dare to readers who wanted to know more about him. He was mentioned constantly, conspicuous by his absence, his name still attached to that one book.

Steadman did not in the least resemble the author of Trespassing. This was odd, for that person was falsely fixed in readers’ minds as only a one-book author can be, a monochrome in one dimension. This man, the trespasser, was his book. The book was all that was known. The mentions of him in the press described someone Steadman scarcely recognized, which was another reason that for years he had stayed at home.

His fame disgusted him, not because it was hollow and cheaply won — he had earned it, he had craved it — but because as more time passed he felt unworthy. There was just that one book, the chronicle of a reckless stunt, and where was his second? His self-disgust made him cynical and envious, his inaction shamed him. He collected the names and studied the lives of one-book Americans — Salinger gone to seed in New Hampshire, Ralph Ellison teaching literature in New Jersey, Jim Powers drunk and frail in Minnesota. Steadman understood their anger and bitterness. They were not forgotten, but they had been abandoned.

People hardly talked about them anymore. If you didn’t produce another book, you were as good as dead. That same sudden obscurity befell Steadman; he realized it when the phone stopped ringing and the talk ceased. Once he had pleaded to be left alone; then, years later, he had his wish and he was at sea. There was no need to hide, no one to hide from. Who cared? As the Vineyard had grown in popularity, his own fame had slipped, and it had gotten to the point where, though the title Trespassing was well known, his own name was not linked to it. The book was associated with the TV series, the bad film, the branding of the outdoor clothing line and the licensed accessories — waterproof watches, footwear, binoculars, sunglasses. His own name was forgotten, or perhaps — suggested by Sabra in Ecuador and her referring to him as a “legendary has-been”—Steadman was thought to be dead.

In old age most writers fell silent and existed without force, in a precious obscurity indistinguishable from death. Mute, aged, feeble, unremembered, they were little more than moth-eaten ornaments, wheeled out for prizes, for ceremonies, the indignities of being patronized for giving keynote speeches and getting honorary doctorates, the ridiculous robes and unwearable medals, the pompous tributes of philistines who served merely to remind an indifferent public that such forgotten fogies were still alive. You saw them looking like tramps or mad uncles, with wild hair, twitching fingers, baggy trousers. Old writers were uglier and crazier-looking and smellier than other civilians — shuffle-hurrying to the men’s room after the ceremony, and the next thing you knew they were actually dead.

In his first years of seclusion Steadman had wanted to write a novel as original and strange as his travel book. But all he wrote were magazine pieces, travel stories that were the opposite of Trespassing, the opposite of what he wished his writing to be. And he told himself that he had another writing life, which was more real to him for being his secret. He was confident in his own ideas — the unwritten books, the stories that were just jotted notes, the sheaf of false starts. There was time for them — why spoil a good idea by being hasty? He didn’t want to rush his book. He wrote nothing substantial.