Paul Theroux - Blinding Light

But this event at the Wolfbeins’ was not that at all. It was a gathering of older, milder, successful people, all of them friends, and well past the frenzied adulteries of their earlier lives. Steadman was a friend, too, but different in being a year-rounder on an island where summer people believed they mattered most.

The summer-camp atmosphere of the Vineyard in high season was so intense and infantilizing that Steadman hardly went to parties. Besides, when the summer people departed just before Labor Day, the year-rounders were on their own, and it was awkward for them to admit that in the off-season the islanders seldom met except at the supermarket, the post office, or the ferry landing.

“The guest of honor isn’t here yet.”

“Steadman thought he was the guest of honor.”

“Maybe he is, now,” Wolfbein said softly, with a new sort of reverence. “It was really nice of you to come, Slade.”

The gratitude in Wolfbeins chastened voice Steadman heard as piety — that Steadman, crippled and handicapped, was doing them all a favor by showing up, being brave. Like a limper dragging himself into daylight, the proud damaged man was going public.

If only they had known. Steadman believed himself to be gifted through his blindness, superior to them all, with the power of special insight. He had come just to be visible, to declare his blindness. He was Ishmael, believing that no man can ever know his own identity until his eyes are closed. Steadman thought: No one can ever claim to know me now.

And, as he had suspected, the fact of his blindness at the party gave him a kind of celebrity. The only way to reveal his secret was to present himself here, where most of his friends happened to be, none of them his confidants, since he had none. He was greeted by Mike and Mary Wallace, Beverly Sills and her daughter, Alan Dershowitz, Mike Nichols and Diane Sawyer, Mary Steenburgen, Walter and Betsy Cronkite, Skip Gates, Evelyn de Rothschild and Lynn Forester, Olga Hirshhorn, Ann and Vernon Jordan. He would either keep his blindness a secret or allow these people to know. He could not be selective in telling people on this island, where people talked — did nothing but talk.

“I feel like Zelig,” Dershowitz said, bumping into him, then profusely apologizing, before inquiring about the cause of his disability, as though appraising his condition in a bid for a possible personal-injury lawsuit.

“All my fault,” Steadman said.

“Our own Tiresias,” Styron said with his customary gallantry.

Steadman did not mind being seen as a tragic hero. The only alternative was to joke about his blindness, and he saw that as vulgar ingratiation — not beneath him, but a distortion of how he regarded his blindness. When his book appeared, his true responsibility would be known.

As though commiserating, Wolfbein was talking about someone he knew who had macular degeneration — how sad it was — and Steadman seemed to surprise him by saying, “That might be the best thing that ever happened to him. What’s his profession?”

“That’s the point,” Wolfbein said. “He’s a writer, like you. He needs his eyes.”

“He doesn’t. He’ll be a better writer,” Steadman said.

“I don’t get it.”

“Our eyes mislead us,” Steadman said.

“I hope you’re right.”

“You’re looking at me as though I’m a cripple,” Steadman said. “Your eyes deceive you.”

“What do I know?” Wolfbein said, insincerely, helplessly conceding it, as if deferring to a cripple, changing the subject.

Steadman said, “Harry, you’re not convinced. You’re thinking I am a poor bastard trying to make the best of it, putting a brave face on his handicap, saying, ‘Cripples have a lot to teach us!’ Because I’m a hopeless case, banging into walls, grinning into empty space, stumbling down stairs, with food on my chin.”

“I don’t think that,” Wolfbein said, but still he sounded insincere.

“‘The blind man shits on the roof and thinks that no one sees him,”’ Steadman said. “Arab wisdom.”

“Don’t be a putz.”

Steadman could sense the man’s uneasiness. Wolfbein was trying to be a friend. He was so overwhelmed by the sight of Steadman, transformed with dark glasses and a white cane, he did not know how to conceal his pity. And so, more than ever, Steadman was sure he had done the right thing in showing up here. He would never have known this otherwise.

But between his up-island house and this party — between the seclusion of his Gothic villa, with its long blind nights and sexual revelations, and the glare of this public appearance — there was nothing. Anyway, wasn’t that the point? He was glad to attend such a lavish party, because it allowed everyone he knew here to see at once what had happened to him.

When he had said that to Ava, she had replied, “They’re seeing what didn’t happen to you. Why are you misleading them? This is such crap. You can see perfectly well.”

“No. I can see better this way. Only they don’t know it.”

Ava cringed whenever the partygoers expressed their sympathy for him. And it was worse for her when they commiserated with her, confiding their fears. They clucked and urged him to be brave, and all the while Steadman was laughing and protesting, “I’m fine. I’m working again. I’m doing a book.”

Wolfbein said, “No reflection on Ava, but are you seeing a good doctor?”

“I am seeing what is not visible,” he said. “And I am seeing more of Ava than you will ever know.”

Wolfbein had been joined by his wife, Millie. She kissed him, her large soft breasts cushioning her embrace. She said, “I’m really glad you came.”

“So am I,” Steadman said. “I didn’t realize until I got here that it was such a big deal. Whom are you expecting?”

In the silence that ensued he could tell that she exchanged looks with her husband, hers a meaningful frown that mimed, Who told him?

“It’s someone important,” Steadman said, sure of himself.

“Whose mind have you been reading?”

“There are so many people here who don’t belong. I don’t mean guests. I mean lurking heavies, muttering men. The tension, too. Some people suspect, some don’t.”

He knew Millie was smiling, and he could hear the flutter of her heart.

“All this apprehension,” he said. “What are you waiting for?”

“POTUS.”

“What’s that?”

“Elvis.”

“I knew it.”

Millie squeezed his hand and left him, and a heavy breather he knew as Hanlon massaged his shoulder, said, “Great to see you”—the blind, Steadman now knew, were constantly being touched. Since arriving at the party he had been pinched, fingered, handled, steered, all by well-intentioned people.

Even Ava touched him when she reappeared. He said, “The president’s coming.”

“Cut it out,” she said, but he sensed her looking around and recognizing the oddities — the generator, the buzzing phones, the extras, who must have been security men.

The president was on the island — everyone knew that — and there was always a possibility of his appearing, since Wolfbein was a friend and a fundraiser. But of all the guests, Steadman alone knew with certainty that it would happen. He understood the voltage that seemed to run through the party, heard the scattered cell phone crackle, the awkwardness of the advance team.

The party guests saw only the people they knew; he saw everyone. The deck and the garden were full of people, but near the big garage and among the trees were the president’s support crew and the mute, watchful Secret Service people. Beyond this crowd was another crowd.

Before anyone else, before the Wolfbeins even, Steadman knew that the president’s car had drawn up at the front of the house, and after the president was greeted in the driveway by his hosts, Steadman was the first to know when he came near and presented himself. It was a pulsing in the air and a heartbeat — distinctly the president’s, distinctly quickening, an ugly flutter of embarrassment.