Paul Theroux - Blinding Light

“Holding him with one hand, she devoured it and was still swallowing as he went limp and slipped out of her mouth. When she looked up at him with her smeared face and smudged eyes, she was still greedily gulping, licking droplets from her gleaming lips.”

She put the book down and moved her hand between his legs, and then he kissed her. Moments before he had sensed warmth, a glow of pleasure, but there was none on her lips. She was made of clay, going through the motions — he could taste her indifference, another low temperature. Her hands and arms were cold, her grip was perfunctory, as if coaxing a stubborn lever. She was placid, really; there was no thirst in her body.

But she said, “That feels nice.”

He smiled at her lie. He could easily discern her calculation, a different sort of scrutiny, like the squinting gaze of a bobble-headed passenger sitting across from him on a train, sizing him up. As a blind man he had become used to that stranger’s gaze — people staring at him in public. But in his own room it alerted him. She sniffed as she searched, and still her hand was closing on him.

Then she stood and slipped out of her dress, and when she sat again and was naked he sensed that he knew her absolutely. He reached behind her and turned off the lamp.

“Why did you come here?”

She let go of him. Her whole body contracted as though denying the implication behind his question.

“I have a feeling someone sent you here.”

Her reaction, which was not audible, not visible, not an odor, nothing except a suggestion of furious molecules, her stiffening and becoming a fraction smaller, told him it was true.

“You’re trying to find out if I’m really blind.”

Again the whir of molecules, a swallow of air, her knees together, her surprise. He sensed all this in the darkness as a liquefaction slipping slowly past him.

“There’s no story,” he said. “Put your clothes on. You don’t belong here.”

She said, protesting, “You wrote this sexy book and I want to give you head and you throw me out of your hotel room? Tell me that’s not a story.”

But she had started to dress, trying to be calm, like someone woken and startled by the smell of smoke, preparing to flee a dangerous room.

“It was in New York,” he said. “In the hotel. You asked me to sign your book when I was with Manfred.”

“No.”

“He sent you here to check on me.”

“No.”

“Tell Manfred to stay away from me.”

She was fumbling with her dress, hopping a little as she pulled it on and straightened it. “Please put the light on.”

“If you tell me the truth.”

“Manfred said you were a kind of mind reader. I didn’t believe him. But I believe him now.”

Steadman switched on the light and said, “You have a yeast infection.”

The woman began to cry, and her crying hindered her movements as she finished dressing, her sobbing slowing her and making her clumsy. When she was done and had put on her shoes, she stumbled slightly as she left, yanking the door, catching and straining the safety chain, and crying in frustration as she unfastened it and went out.

Steadman sat, a film of guilt like scum on his face. Needing to complain, he rubbed his eyes and dialed Ava. Just as quickly he hung up, realizing as he tapped the keypad how late it must be. He had not checked his watch — he unconsciously assumed that his watch face would be visible. It usually was at this hour. Touch was like sight: he stroked the hands of his watch — almost midnight. He cursed Manfred. And he imagined the phone call he had just aborted, Ava saying, You pushed your luck — what did you expect?

What happened next was odder than anything that had happened on that odd day. He was groping toward the bedroom when he remembered that he had not taken the drug since rising that morning in New York to catch the early train to Washington. He had been blind for more than eighteen hours — unprecedented, unexplainable. And the moment this disturbing thought occurred to him, he bumped into the bedroom wall.

HE WAS SHAKEN out of the soup of an obscure dream of interrogation by the ringing phone — a man’s overbright voice saying “Hi” and nothing else, one of those needling people who do not identify themselves, but instead make you guess, as though to unsettle you or test your friendship. Who at this hour was so alert for this sort of teasing? But Steadman was certain — still limp with sleep, even as his unpleasant dream faded — it was Jerry, the escort from yesterday, saying in a more tentative way, “Are you there?”

“Right here.”

“What train do you want to catch?” He seemed chastened by Steadman’s abruptness. “I can meet you anytime.”

“Don’t bother. I’ll take a cab to the station.” And Steadman hung up before Jerry could reply. He was still annoyed by “They ask really great questions,” implying that — blind, standing in front of the bookstore crowd, speaking without notes for a full hour — Steadman had made no impression. All that Jerry could commend was the brilliance of the audience. But it was a strategy, his belittling, like not giving his name on the phone.

Steadman’s indignation was twofold. I am a writer, he thought, and I am blind. Bastard!

He had to put the phone down to concentrate. It was bad enough to be woken by an idiot call, but, much worse, he was not sure at that moment whether he was blind or sighted. In his confusion his mind was scoured of all thought. He sat up in bed stupefied. Feeling vulnerable, his memory impaired, he felt an animal compulsion to flee the hotel and the city.

He needed to leave, to return to New York; needed people to observe him in order that he could function. He felt lost when he was alone and blind, but the physicality of other people, their glances and gestures, the way they breathed and swallowed, all their human responses, their smells, their skin, their very nerves, helped guide him on his way.

He needed friends, Ava especially, a woman whose intelligence would match his, whose eager flesh was like a torch to bring the foreground into focus and make the wider world visible. That was nothing new; he had always wanted a woman near, someone to challenge him, to comfort him, a sexual friend, a listener, the ideal companion Ava had been throughout the writing of his book. The paradox was that while he had loved her for her independence, he had also wanted to possess her, so they could be sexual, wise and foolish together. He loved her for being so reckless and so bright, for often being the aggressor, for lighting his way, for her risks and her dares. Even now, though she seemed out of sympathy, she was necessary to him.

Alone, he saw the future as a grainy monochrome of days, indistinct and worrisome. He wanted color and perspective, the stabilizing echoes of human voices. He needed to be witnessed. This he realized anew as he moved through his hotel room, gathering his clothes and filling his bag. The young woman’s perfume clung to the sofa where she had sat and read to him from his book.

He finished shaving and was about to take a measure of the drug when, mixing it in a glass of water, he faltered and batted the air and put the glass down untasted. He was already blind. He felt for the mirror, fingertips on the glass, saw nothing, felt nothing, except the hot lights framing the mirror on his face. I’m losing it, he thought.

Often he had gone to bed blind, but when had he ever woken blind? The effects of the drug had always worn off while he slept. Now his heavy eyes made him clumsier as he stuffed his suitcase. And at last he went back to the bathroom and drank the drug hurriedly, splashing his chin. And he stood, unsteady, as if he had swallowed a syrup of light. The warmth spread from his stomach and whipped through his blood until the nerves throbbed behind his eyes and crackled, a phosphorescence that was electric.