by Paul Theroux
He groped his way to the dining room and praised it to himself in a murmur: the flowers, the candles, the chair pulled out from the table, the serving dishes steaming, everything arranged so that it was within his reach—the food, the wine, the single place setting at the head of the table.
While he sat there eating he knew that Ava was preparing herself in her room. He had tried every combination at mealtime. Earlier on in his experiments in blindness they had eaten together, but after the meal and all their familiar talk he felt sated and weary. They talked, they drank, they were friendly. But Steadman found that such congeniality killed his desire. Besides, Ava said, she needed to be away from him, too; to be on her own a bit after being with him all day alone, taking dictation.
The soup tonight had been freshly made in town, pureed tomato soup with herbs, the tomatoes simmered in wine and basil and this red pulp with a pink froth and a mass of golden seeds bubbling on top, and blended, then pushed through a sieve, becoming crimson. That was one of the pleasures of the Vineyard, fresh food from gardens and greenhouses, the soft ripe tomatoes, the tender eggplant, the crisp green peppers, whole baskets of deep green basil.
After the soup, he found another dish and lifted the lid. A braised lamb shank lay on a bed of risotto on the thick platter, the tender meat resting on the thick buttery rice, with florets of broccoli. Steadman served himself and ate slowly, chewing the tender sinews of lamb, licking his lips. The whole meal stimulated him, the bite of garlic, the citrus notes of the wine. He brushed flecks of food from his cheeks. He felt big and warm and pink, slightly tipsy and content. From this mood to sex seemed a simple transition.
He loved eating and drinking alone in a dining room of flower-scented air. It was like celebrating his own sort of mass in which a sexual surprise was the final part of the ritual: meeting a willing stranger. After a day of food and talk he needed solitude, the bath, being touched, the promise of sex, the seclusion of his own large house with the high perimeter wall.
In the beginning there had always been dessert, usually chocolate mousse or ice cream, something sweet to counter the heat of the meal. But an ingredient in it, perhaps something as simple as its fat or sugar content, reacted with the datura and nauseated him, producing cramps with violent vomiting. If the portions were small, the food did not alter the effects of the drug. He searched impatiently for the cup of datura. Usually he made it himself, brewing it before breakfast. Ava had become expert at making it too, stewing the scrapings of the twigs broken from the framework of the Indian basket, then straining the liquid and letting it cool. Not much of the drug was needed to make an effective drink. The strength of it lay in the reduction, the simmering that thickened it to an earthy darkness. A jug stewed on Monday lasted most of the week. Steadman could see that if he was careful in cutting the basket and cooking the datura he would have a year’s supply of the drug, enough to finish the book.
He had been blind since morning, but in the evening his blindness seemed to lift, as though there were slashes in the fluttery veil before his eyes. Holding the cup in both hands, making a formal gesture of drinking the drug, he lifted the cup to his lips and swallowed it all. The taste was something he knew he would never get used to. It was the taste of the jungle—birds, vines, dark blossoms, the clammy scales of snakes, the sour tang of insects, the iridescence of beetles’ wings—and it enclosed him in a tight and luminous bandage, as if he had been caught in a subtle web and wrapped in a spider’s glowing spittle.
Tapping the finger pad of his cell phone, he sensed the heat of the number in its memory showing on the screen. He tapped again, and almost at once he heard a ring in the far end of the house, Ava’s wing. No one else used that line; the number was like an endearment.
“I am waiting for you,” she said in a summoning tone, authoritative, insistent, a doctor’s order.
Getting to his feet, Steadman had to grip the table to steady himself, and he realized how impatient he was. He staggered slightly.
He shuffled through the corridors, growing warmer, sensing the flesh around his eyes getting puffy, his breathing becoming labored, his nose partly blocked, his scalp tightening as though a cap were shrinking on his head. Becoming sexually aroused affected his whole body with a kind of jitters, giving him hot spots, making him stumble, thickening his fingers and toes, filling him with blood and light, while a dark curtain twitched across his brain, leaving him pleasantly semiconscious. The druggy confusions of lust, the numbed muscles and quickened nerves, which were so pleasurable.
Going to see the doctor—
Nothing to him was more exciting than being in this heightened state and moving forward, through the shadows of these back corridors to Ava’s suite. That was the best of it, the foreknowledge—assured of the general plan and seeking out the doctor to learn the specifics.
The doctor was waiting for him, naked beneath her white doctor’s coat—
He became excited, seeing the door ajar, the dim light, the glimpse of the woman’s long naked leg. She was standing at the far side of the dim candlelit room, not lying on the bed as she sometimes did. She held a glass of wine, and she had posed herself before a mirror, so he could see the back of her head. Tonight her hair was short, like a boy’s. She had a shapely head and slender neck.
She had transformed herself and become androgynous—another of her surprises. She looked so different he did not even try to make a connection between her and the woman who had been taking dictation all day. The white doctor’s coat was only superficially clinical, for it was raw silk, a fluttery robe, and underneath, easily visible when she lifted her leg and placed her black high-heeled shoe on a chair seat, the black panties.
“Doctor,” he said.
“Lock the door.”
The mirror caught the light. He preferred seeing her in the mirror; he knew her better, desired her most, from her reflection.
Even from the few words she spoke he could tell that she had been drinking. That too made her less familiar. It was important that she be a stranger. Ava taking dictation had no body, no allure, no perfume; but the boyish doctor in this room, with red lips and bright eyes, was primarily sensual.
“I need you to lie down,” she said.
Just before he obeyed, he pretended to resist, a second of delay that made Ava insistent, almost scolding, and he surrendered to her at once.
“Over here—none of that.”
Seeing that she held some straps she called restraints, he lay on the bed and allowed her to tie his hands to the uprights of the bedstead. He smelled the wine and saw her glazed and greedy eyes. He was pleased knowing that she had been drinking, for when drunk, she was impulsive. Their encounters worked best when she was enigmatic and unpredictable.
Ava unclasped the heavy buckle of his belt and eased it out of the loops of his pants. With a chafing sound, stiff cloth against skin, she slipped his blue jeans off, giving his swelling penis a little slap, affection and severity in a single gesture.
“This is a swap,” Ava said.
Knowing he was watching, his whole body alert, she used her thumbs to push down her panties, then let them slip to her ankles and stepped out of them, just a wisp of silk on the floor. Watching, he was overwhelmed, for what she had just done was an expression of power, not submission. She wrapped his leather belt around her waist and cinched it, jerking the end with one hand, against the buckle.
She climbed onto the bed and sat on him, facing away, and got the panties over his feet and up his legs.
“What are you doing?”
“You’re my dolly,” and she laughed, as if she were dressing a doll and did not have to answer back. And she gave him to understand that he was not any doll but an imposing one, a doll to cherish and play with, made to represent fantasies of her own. As soon as the panties were tightened on him he became aroused, and though she stroked him and he pleaded for more and tugged against his restraints, she would not touch him except through the silk, teasing him with her fingers.
“I’m going to give you a new face,” Ava said. “A pretty one.”
She placed a tray of bottles and jars on the bed and powdered his face, talking all the while, describing what she was doing. She rouged his cheeks, painted his lips with a small brush—lip gloss, she told him.
What had begun as play now seemed like a serious ritual, a sacrificial ceremony, for the body on the bed was like one on an operating table, and he was being worked on and transformed. He tried to imagine how he must look, terror in his eyes, a girl’s face, a clown’s mouth, a painted doll with bulging panties.
“You’re in my power. I can do whatever I want with you,” Ava said. “I am your doctor. Do exactly as I say.”
It occurred to Steadman that this was what brutes dictated to their victims when they had murder in mind, yet she also sounded like a physician, reminding him of his weakness, making him submit to a medical procedure. Only as her victim did he realize how badly he needed her, for she was at that moment the only other person on earth.
The more feminized he became, the more he belonged to her; she took possession of him by making him her dolly, creating the image of someone she wanted. The more completely he was made submissive, the clearer he saw her desire, and the more powerful he felt.
“Why are you smiling?” she said, but lightly, as though she knew the answer.
She wheeled the full-length mirror on its stand nearer the bed, and in the long oval of cheval glass she studied him, moved his head a little and contemplated it, touched his lips with the brush again, dabbed at his cheeks, fluffed his hair.
“You’ve never done this before,” she said, “but you’ve fantasized about it.”
Steadman lay helpless, still like a doll, a bit awkward because of his tied hands, excited under her confident gaze. He had needed her to dominate him tonight, so he could see her charged with desire.
She kissed his lips slowly, licking his mouth, licking his face and neck, then painting him again—painted his nipples then kissed and sucked them, painted his belly and licked it, rubbed her face against him. She put her mouth on his ear and, breathing warmth into it, whispered that she was wet between her legs.
She lay beside him on the bed, tracing her fingers over his body, down from his face and chest to his stomach, moving them to where the panties were binding him, scratched the texture of the panties, and the stiffness beneath them, his engorged cock, like a snake thickening in a silken purse.
She toyed with him, saying nothing, so single-minded and meticulous that it was ritual, not play. He found the pressure, the tracings of her fingers, unbearable, he wanted more, he pleaded for it, but she did not reply. At one crucial moment she stood up, slid off the bed, walked across the room, and watched him, sipping from her wineglass. She had positioned herself so he could see only her reflection in the mirror. She peered back at him from the glass, lowering one hand, touching herself, and he strained to see better as he murmured and sighed.
“Look at you.”
Her legs parted, she stroked herself with two fingers, watching his face. The room was hot, his face was damp, he could hardly breathe, now he was truly captive. After a while, teasing him from a little distance, she went nearer and put her damp fingers on his lips, ordered him to taste them, and then placed her hands on the panties, enclosing him, then clutching.
“Do you like it?”
“Please don’t ask me that,” he said.
He was fully aroused, his cock trapped in the tightened silk. And he had the sense that it was not his body she wanted. What she loved was touching her own panties on him, as though making love to herself again.
She lowered her face, nuzzled his thighs, pressed her lips and cheeks to the panties, groaning against him, speaking to his stiffness, murmuring into his crotch with a vibration that made him harder.
“Please,” he said, half lost in delirium.
She knew what he wanted. She was still moaning, her face against him, telling him a long, incoherent story, like a fable of regret, her lips working, making him moan.
“Please.” He could barely speak, his tongue was so heavy.
He longed for relief, he pleaded for her mouth. She delayed some more and then gave him what he wanted, and when she was on him she freed his cock from the panties and sucked it, holding it with her lips. Her mouth was hot, her fingers were stroking him through the silk.
But that was not the height of Steadman’s pleasure. Just before he came in her mouth he felt her two hands throttle him, pumping hard, making him cry out. She was eager, sighing and swallowing with pleasure.
He sank into sleep just afterward. He dreamed, tumbling into dark depths, and just before he drowned he woke, gasping and helpless, but unbound, his hands untied, and he was canted sideways, like a man washed ashore, dumped on a beach, almost lost, regaining consciousness, remembering. He could see Ava seated next to him, seeming demure, her legs crossed.
“It’s late. Work tomorrow.”
She was being stern again, but distant and prim. Her primness aroused him as much as her sensuality.
“Time for bed,” she said, and helped him to his feet.
As she propped him up, he muttered helplessly. All his vitality was gone, and drained of it he could hardly see anything at all—he never could in this state. Ava led him to his room. Again he slept. He hardly dreamed. He woke to a dimmer light, a different sunrise, another kind of wakefulness.
He had been blind. He had chosen to be blind. Now, on waking, he could see clearly, but was dissatisfied and impatient with the washed-out colors, the ugliness beyond the window, hideous midsummer with wind-tortured leaves, a sky like cat fur—the old world.
At breakfast, averting his eyes from the sickly light, he found the jug of datura tea. As he gagged—the concoction was clammy and cool, like a jungle in its darkest dripping hours—the day telescoped, all the sunlight flattened into shadow in just under a minute. He waited, knowing what was coming. Still at breakfast, his eyes dimmed, twilight fell, and he was ready for dictation, a blind man again.
2
FOR ALMOST EIGHT MONTHS he had prepared himself with the datura, the controlled blinding, a mask as exquisite as a falcon’s hood, keeping to his secluded house. That had been a typical day: a whole day, including night. Darkness was a zone Steadman entered in order to know his mind and advance the narrative of his book. Daylight was unhelpful and ambiguous for seeming to be true, yet it was shabby and misleading. He spent his days dictating the revelation of his nights, which were bright and long and Active. Engrossed in both sides of the day, dark and light, and both sides of his life, work and sex, he at last felt complete.
On this island he wanted no interruptions. He had never encouraged visitors to his house on the Vineyard. And few people came here in the bleak off-season months. For most mainlanders the island did not exist in the winter, nor even in the spring, which like the past one could be sleety and cold, the raw northwest wind scooping across Vineyard Sound and along the ponds and banks, flattening daffodils, tearing through his trees to claw at his windows. For Steadman it was writing weather.
In summer the island was full—more than full, spilling over, people clinging, harbors crammed with jostling boats, the roads dense with big slow cars. So in summer especially he had hid himself in his up-island house. And he had reflected that the Vineyard had not always been like this. He had fled to the island for solitude in the first years of his fame, when he had felt the need to hide, crouching like a hunter in a blind.
Time had passed and made the better places busier, and sometimes destroyed them. The Vineyard suffered, its beauties trampled for the very fact that they were beautiful—crowded and pawed by too many admirers. Even Steadman was sought out, like any other Vineyard curiosity. On his arrival he had announced that he was withdrawing, and the announcement had been like a challenge to the people who had pestered him. But the Vineyard was full of hiding places. He had found one in the green heart of the island, down a country road,
behind a perimeter stone wall and high hedges.
Because he had bought the large estate with the merchandising and TV profits from Trespassing, the purchase was classified as celebrity news and reported in the newspaper columns listing hot properties. His scheme backfired. His very wish to be left alone made him a target. His taste for seclusion had singled him out, made him specific, a greater prize. It seemed the press was not interested in anyone who was accessible. A person who cooperated in publicity or agreed to be interviewed was regarded as a self-promoter and an easy mark. So reporters looking for a story tried to sniff him out because he was unwilling, a recluse.
To be first with the Steadman story would be a coup. No one succeeded, but that failure was a greater goad. Isolated, unwritten about, Steadman was more obvious, and was talked about more, speculated on, the subject of gossip. For some years his desire to remain out of the public eye became as much the basis of his fame as his book had, but the title Trespassing was like a dare to readers who wanted to know more about him. He was mentioned constantly, conspicuous by his absence, his name still attached to that one book.
Steadman did not in the least resemble the author of Trespassing. This was odd, for that person was falsely fixed in readers’ minds as only a one-book author can be, a monochrome in one dimension. This man, the trespasser, was his book. The book was all that was known. The mentions of him in the press described someone Steadman scarcely recognized, which was another reason that for years he had stayed at home.
