Paul Theroux - Blinding Light

He gave Steadman’s shoulder one last massage, the big brother grip of encouragement, and he moved away, into the throng of beaming guests who had lingered nearby, wishing to be noticed. Ava remained beside Steadman, her flank against his leg, and he knew by just this glancing touch that she was unhappy, inert, sullen.

“What’s wrong?”

“I feel so humiliated. How could you do this?”

He said, “Why do you want to have a private argument in such a public place?”

“I can’t help it. I feel awful. I should have stayed home. I hate being part of this charade.”

“I am blind,” he whispered.

“You’re not. It’s such a lie. And here you are soliciting all that pity. Is it that you need an audience?”

“It’s not a choice. It’s who I am.”

Ava was silenced but not convinced, even as they stepped outside to await their ride. He had to remind himself that he was facing the world from the North Portico of the White House. Ava was glum; she brought her dismay and her shame back to their room at the Willard, where she lay bluish and disapproving at the far edge of the big bed. They lay apart, miserable, another unhappy couple, one angry, the other ashamed. And lying there, he could not help but think of the president in his bedroom, equally disturbed by his own fictions, his own secrets.

In the morning, Steadman drank datura with his breakfast, then said, “I’m going to the joint press conference.”

Mortified, but claiming she had to pack, Ava said she would stay behind.

Steadman took a taxi to the White House. He showed his pass, and as he was escorted to the Rose Garden a man fell in step next to him.

“I’m from the Post. I’d love to do a piece about you.”

“Maybe some other time.”

He heard the murmur of the press corps some distance off. His escort said, “We’ve got a seat for you down front.”

The chair was at the end of the front row. He took his seat just as the president and the German chancellor emerged from the White House. Seeing him, the president approached and put his arm around him and said, “Great to see you here, Slade.”

Steadman heard the sound of cameras, the hubbub surrounding his being singled out. He sensed this watching as a pressure on his physical being, and knew, as he had the night before, that he was being observed, the object of curiosity, with his white cane and dark glasses and Panama hat. That was his image now, no longer affectations but part of his public identity.

He was considering this — I am a new man — when a stranger knelt next to him. But perhaps not a stranger. There was something familiar in the way the man crouched, the odors of his skin and stale hair. Steadman recognized people from a particular memory of what they ate, as though the residue of their diet seeped through their skin. This man represented familiar food, and the unseasonal warmth of this November day offered an exhalation of his sour shirt.

“I know you,” the man said, and his accent gave the rest away.

“Manfred.”

“And I know your secret.”

Steadman spoke again and then he was noticed, for he was addressing empty space. Manfred had crept away. Steadman reached out with a grasping, inquiring hand and said, “Wait.”

“Did you lose something?” an urgent voice behind him said.

“No, I’m fine.”

But he had to admit — and it was a revelation — that though he felt anything but impaired, he had a blind spot, and Manfred had vanished there, dissolving into that crack. Concentrating hard, Steadman was deaf to the press conference: until that moment he had forgotten the existence of Manfred.

In the taxi on the way to the airport, Ava said, “Did I miss anything?”

He said no. He did not mention Manfred — how to explain? Ava had never liked the man, and from his tone — Steadman kept replaying And I know your secret — Steadman could not discern the man’s motive, if indeed he had a deeper one than simply teasing him.

Steadman felt low and limited. The existence of a blind spot bothered him, like a previously undiagnosed ailment. And he had expected more from his visit to the White House. It was theater, with a large cast, on a vast stage, but his role was undemanding: just show up and be polite. Yet for him, singled out for being blind, it meant everything, a kind of dramatic debut. In his mind the president kept saying, I want to say a special word of thanks to my good friend and a great American writer, Slade Steadman— and as he rose, leaning on his cane, his dark glasses flashing, the loud applause that declared, as it continued with a sustained humility and praise, We see you. We approve. You are brave.

Yet he was discontented — not undermined but made insecure by a wisp of shadow, a doubter, as though at the periphery of all this praise he had sensed a spider descending on a long thin thread of its own gray spittle, preparing to spin a web.

HE HAD GONE to Washington to step out of his seclusion and to present himself to the world as a blind man. The president himself had vouched for him. Yet his keenest memory of the White House visit, the detail that he went on suffering, was not the president’s praise but rather the needling accusation breathed into his ear by Manfred. And I know your secret. The statement grew more sinister in implication as the weeks passed. The heavily accented voice made the words clumsier, more hurtful, like a cut from someone using a crude knife, requiring the idiot force of a vicious thrust because the thing was so blunt. And those few words were all Steadman had. He wanted more. He needed to deal with the man.

He had no help at home anymore. As if out of spite, Ava opted for odd hours at the hospital. That was the trouble with doctors: at their most selfish they could claim to be unselfish. I have to do this! My patients need me! I have someone in labor! Get out of my way! Dr. Ava Katsina, anyway.

“I’m going,” she’d say, and without another word would leave the house, trailing the settling dust of self-satisfied finality, as in the days before Ecuador when they had made the decision to split up. And here they were, facing another winter on the island.

“I need you as much as ever,” he said.

“Who will be my pouting chatelaine?” she mocked. “Listen, there are really sick people at the hospital, who need me much more.”

Her bossy doctor’s voice was her most clinical and severe, always an order, like Take your medicine. No backtalk. Where was the compliant, agreeable sensualist of the past year who had aided him in his book? Here she was in baggy green scrubs, back at work, hoisting a sightless squalling baby that was dripping with womb slime.

With her help he could easily have corrected his book, she reading the galley proofs while he lay drugged and insightful, suggesting improvements or deletions. But he was alone and undrugged, reduced to the menial condition of sober sighted scrutinizer, certain that he was missing something as he read, mumbling, his fretful finger poking at the lines.

And yet in the task of publishing — all the minutiae of preparation, the discussions with Axelrod, weeks of it, choosing the jacket, planning the book tour — none of it distracted him from what had been hissed at him in the Rose Garden, Manfred Steiger reappearing from nowhere like an ugly-faced gnome in a folktale, accusing him of treachery, as if preparing to exact his price.

This memory nagged at Steadman. Over the year he had worked on his book, he had not thought once of Manfred, nor even remembered the man’s association with the drug. He recalled the letter he had received; he was glad he had torn it up. Then, reentering the world, he had been confronted by Manfred, as though the man had been lying in wait all that time: the only other person in the world who had shared that secret experience of datura in the Ecuadorian rain forest. What did he want?