Paul Theroux - Blinding Light

“Never mind Arnulf. He is a fanatic for the pictures.”

But slashing at the man had eased Steadman’s anxiety and reassured him that he was never more alert than when he was on the drug: no one could deceive him when he was blind.

“It was so fantastic to see you in Washington,” Manfred said. “I tell my friends, ‘I know this man!’ In Ecuador, I think, ‘I will never see this man again.’ But here you are, crazy man. Fantastic.”

“Manfred, what do you want?”

“Cup of coffee. Little talk.”

“Skip the coffee.”

The leather sleeves of Manfred’s jacket rubbed the table, the leather elbows skidded: the coat was still an animal to Steadman, its skin peeled from living flesh.

“You sound not so friendly.”

“I didn’t like what you said in Washington.”

With a laugh-snort that wasn’t mirth, Manfred said, “I forget what I said to you.”

“You said, ‘I know your secret.’”

“Everyone has secrets. Even Mr. President.” He began to laugh again, but as though becoming conscious of Steadman’s silence, he added, “Good memory you have.”

“I don’t forget insults.”

“Yah! And me — I don’t forget.”

Steadman had reached across the table, his knuckles forward, and brushed what he suspected was a tape recorder.

“Nice machine.”

Manfred covered the small tape recorder with his hands, as if to conceal it. But still Steadman heard it working, the obscure tick of its timer that was hardly audible, more like a change in temperature, like a pointed flashing light, a flickering flame of altering numerals that repeated as a low pulse.

“Digital. Swiss. Teuer”

“That’s a brand?”

“No. Teuer — costive.”

Steadman seized the thing with his reaching hand, then quickly turned aside and dropped it to the floor. He crushed it with his shoe, feeling it go silent and die in pieces under his heel.

“No.” Manfred wailed, stooping.

“That’s for not asking permission.”

“You make me in a bad situation.”

Hearing the noise, a waiter had approached. He said, “Everything okay over here? Can I get you anything to drink?”

Coffee for Manfred, a glass of water for Steadman, and when the waiter had gone Manfred leaned across the table, put his face close to Steadman’s, and said in a punished voice, “I have no other recorder.”

“That’s what I was counting on.”

Manfred was still snorting. “You insult me in Ecuador. You say how my father is a Nazi. You call me a thief. And those people…”

Steadman was smiling at fazzer and Nay-zee and seef and said, “I described what I knew to be true.”

“…and those people,” Manfred repeated, “they tell Nestor to telephone the police. They make big trouble for me. The police they write a report. They threaten me. They insist for a heavy bribe, which I must pay.”

“I think you made out fine.”

“You tried to hurt me with the lies, despite I help you.”

All that seemed so long ago, in the dream forest, in the rising tide of color and light, like fresh blood eddying in his head, the splash of it sounding in his ears, the detailed loop and retrieval of memory. It was his first experience of the drug’s logic, the way his blindness had sorted and returned so much to him, the ordered images that helped him fit irregular fragments and overheard phrases and stray glimpses into whole smooth narratives, so seamless as to be absolute truths. The facts were so clear he had wanted to speak them aloud for their simplicity. Uttered, they sounded like accusations. He had marveled at the effects of the drug, its limpid truths, the purest consolations of blindness. Everything made sense with the datura; he was hopeful for more.

“My boss in America, he found out from the gringos. Those people on the trip were important business guys! I lose my job. No salary for almost a year. I write a little on my drug book. Now I am just doing a few stories for the Frankfurt paper. Did you lose your job?”

The mention of the job made Steadman smile: Manfred’s outrage seemed almost comical. The news that he had been fired had no effect on Steadman, who regarded jobs as burdens that were eventually lost as you moved on, the better for having been rejected. In Steadman’s experience the boss was always the worker’s inferior.

Into Steadman’s silence Manfred said, “Fuck you.”

The two men were quietly brooding when the waiter returned with his tray, the clatter of coffee cup and saucer, the clink of tumbler and water jug. Steadman was aware of the waiter’s abruptness, his resenting them for their paltry order that was like an intrusion. He fussed, yammering to himself, and then left.

“I hardly knew what I was saying,” Steadman said, recalling the scene in the hotel room in Quito. “I was just repeating what was in my head.”

Manfred was examining the smashed tape recorder, pushing buttons that didn’t work, weighing it like a stone, frowning at its useless weight.

“Now you make the more trouble for me.”

“It was the truth.”

The way Manfred breathed through the gaps in his teeth showed Steadman how the man had seized on the word, as though holding it and shaking it in his jaws.

“The truth, yah,” he said, his saliva sounding like juice in his mouth. “I think the same thing when I see you at the White House.”

In his disgusted impatience he lapsed into Teutonic consonants and became confused, saying sink and thame sing, sounding furious and vindictive and simple-minded in the accented present tense.

“I see you with the dark eyeglasses and the shtick. I see the president viz his arm around you, all the press corps so impressed. This is the truth? I don’t think so.”

Subtlety had not been a quality that Steadman associated with Manfred: he was bullheaded and self-absorbed in Ecuador, always reaching for another helping, searching for an advantage, querying, looking for more — his journalist’s traits, of which presumption was the most apparent. But his confident aggression was something new to Steadman, and it threw him, for he had become used to the gentle coddling of strangers confronted by blindness, feeling helpless, wishing only to propitiate him with their insistent “What can I do for you?” as they eased him forward and tried to make him comfortable.

Manfred was in his face, bristling, shaking his finger as though Steadman were not blind at all. And so Steadman exaggerated his calmness, so as not to rouse Manfred further.

“You pronounce that my father made a suicide.” He was shaking, stiffening, as he bore down on Steadman. “This is something painful for me. So you say, ‘Is the truth — too bad.’”

“I don’t know how I knew, but I knew.” And Steadman thought, Like I know now that you’ve just eaten, you are sour with the smell of meat and mustard and beer.

“Maybe I say something when I am taking the yaje. Or maybe asleep. Maybe you hear me. Okay.” He hammered the air with his head as he went on. “Is a secret for me. But you repeat it to the others. This I cannot stand.”

Steadman wanted to say, It was spoken somehow, it must have been true, and so what? Manfred seemed to go limp with loathing, and there was a sneer in his breathing, a kind of clammy heat that bothered Steadman more than the butting head.

“One thing I find curious.”

He said sing, he said koorios. His voice was shrill. There was no arguing with Manfred, who had become much angrier. But when he spoke again he seemed to be smiling, as if he had just thought of something, addressing Steadman in the halting tone a person uses to tease someone with a contradiction.