Paul Theroux - Blinding Light

“That’s what addicts always say. Sorry, I’m being paged.” And she hung up.

To Manfred it was his secret. Yet it had never occurred to Steadman that he had a secret. His blindness was something he had discovered as a cure for his silence, which was also his impotence, his frustrated attempts to write a novel. The accident of the drug he had exploited with effort, finding a reward in it when he might have found pain or obstruction or greater impotence. The drug was his virility, yet because of Manfred he found himself reacting defensively, behaving like a sneak, with a secret he went on swallowing, and always on guard against a leading question.

A day and a night in Washington, D.C., followed New York. Steadman took the train and was met at Union Station by the escort, “Everyone calls me Jerry,” an obliquely attentive man who used his deferential butler-like manner to be bossy, evasively insisting that it might be a good idea for Steadman to sign books in Rockville, Maryland. When that was done, they visited a radio station in Chevy Chase, seeming to surprise the interviewer.

“Your life must be so different now,” the interviewer said.

They never used the words “blind” or “blindness.” Were the words so shocking? Yet it was all that anyone wanted to talk about.

Ask me about my book, he thought. Steadman’s reputation as a difficult, at times forbidding interviewee prevented him from attacking the tone of the question. Everyone patronized, no one inquired. Yet he tried to be helpful; he wanted to seem strong. Stifling his rage, he deflected even the crassest questions. And all he could think of was Manfred, who doubted him, showing up like a vindictive gnome in a folktale to undo the hero’s magic. I know your secret.

By the time they got to the bookstore event at Politics and Prose, Steadman was hoarse with fatigue. Feeling frail, he spoke about his blindness, his overcoming almost twenty years of silence with this novel, to revisit the sexual life of his alter ego in The Book of Revelation. “I am a traveler, yet I discovered that the antipodes are within us, in the far continents of the mind,” he said, paraphrasing Aldous Huxley in The Doors of Perception. He chanted some lines from Thoreau:

I hearing get, who had but ears,

And sight, who had but eyes before.

He commanded the attention of the crowd by describing the inner journey of his novel, so different from the stunt that Trespassing now seemed. And then he signed a hundred copies of his book.

Afterward, breaking the silence in the car, Jerry said, “They ask really great questions.”

Regarding this as a dig, Steadman said nothing for a while, and then, “What do people in D.C. make of the president’s problems?”

“What do they ‘make’ of them? They make jokes,” Jerry said. “Notice how he’s playing the victim? First he denies everything, and then he gets other people to attack the press. He brought it all on himself and he’s blaming people for being interested. Hel-lo! Mr. Winkie is hanging out and you wonder why everyone’s staring.”

The man seemed triumphant and even drove his car that way, his head crooked in defiance.

“Power here is a zero-sum game,” he said, because Steadman had not replied. “A lot of people are glad to see the president diminished by all his pretense. More power for them.”

“How does his private life figure as pretense?”

“He lied,” Jerry said. “He pretended to be someone he’s not. People won’t forget that.” His lips were twisted in irony, and it seemed as though he were tasting it deeply, because he giggled a little and said, “I mean, Lordy, have you seen her?”

Steadman felt a surge of glee. He said, “How could I?”

It seemed so unreasonable for Steadman to say it — the woman’s face was everywhere — the man took his eyes off the road and turned to look at him.

“I’m blind, pal.”

“I keep forgetting,” the man said, fussing rather than apologizing. “You are so damned on the ball.”

The president was undergoing the sort of scrutiny Steadman dreaded being turned upon him for his blindness. Manfred’s questions seemed like intimations of this intrusion. Under pressure, the president had begun to appear tricky and defensive, his denials hollow. It was obvious that he had dispatched his aides to attack his accusers. They had spoken of a campaign to discredit the president — it was all a right-wing conspiracy. Yet the president seemed guilty and hunted and sleepless, more and more like a man under a strong light of scrutiny, looking pale and insubstantial.

As the days and weeks passed, Steadman had watched closely the man who had appeared to him, when they first met, not a paragon of suavity and power, but a sheepish and needy boy, craving listeners, wishing to be a big brother, nursing old grievances, and hiding his secret life.

A ringing startled Steadman from his reverie. Jerry handed him a cell phone. “For you.”

Axelrod again: “I just spoke with the manager of Politics and Prose. She was really pleased with the turnout. I hear the interviews went well, too.”

“All they want to talk about is my blindness.”

“The book’s selling. We are going back for another printing.”

“I’m being treated like a cripple.”

“They don’t like to think they’re advertising your book.”

“And some of them treat me like a freak.”

“Slade, don’t you see they’re looking for a headline?”

Steadman hung up. He was tired, and Jerry wore him out just sitting there attitudinizing, doubting him, jeering at the president. The president had become the butt of all jokes and now wore a shamed cringing look, like someone brutally mocked and still trying to maintain his dignity.

“I feel for him,” Steadman said.

“The smart money says he’ll resign.”

“Why should he?”

“For disgracing the office of president. For being a chubby-chaser. Listen, toots, I was in the service. If a senior officer was caught doing that, he’d have to resign.”

Steadman said, “Would you like someone checking up on what you do in your spare time?” and felt he had struck a nerve.

Then they were rolling up the driveway of the Ritz-Carlton. Jerry stopped the car and got out quickly to dash to the passenger side and help Steadman. But Steadman had already gotten out, provoked by the man’s fussy certainty. Wishing to be away from him, he swept with his cane, found the curb, and moved on.

“Can I help you?” A strange voice in his face.

“Yes, get out of my way.”

As soon as Steadman entered the hotel lobby he felt lonely, his feet unsteady, as though the floor were aslant, for loneliness was also a sorry flutter in his inner ear, a loss of balance.

He went to the bar and eased his way through the drinkers, who cleared a path for him. Feeling for a stool (“Right here,” someone said), he found one that had just been vacated, the cushion still warm. The acute perception of temperature had also become part of his blindness.

“What’ll it be?”

He ordered a glass of wine. It was put into his hand. He was careful to sip without spilling: people were watching.

A warm body next to him kept him wondering at its softness. He knew women by their obscure sounds, of chafing silks, tightening undergarments, the clatter of bangles as they slipped to a narrow wrist. This woman’s body spoke, and her breath, that fragrance. She stayed at his elbow, and she too was drinking wine — he knew by her sips and sighs.

He was thinking: Then don’t come home. I don’t want to see you in this mood.

“What’s your name?”

“Dewy Fourier.”

“That's an interesting name.”