Blinding Light

by Paul Theroux

  Steadman saw the self-mocking dumbfounded face and heard the grunt and the appreciative laughter. And then the president reached out and drew Steadman beside him, into the center of the circle of listeners.

  “Slade Steadman, Mr. President,” a wheezy man said, stepping forward, cutting Steadman off, trying to be helpful.

  This meddling was Steadman’s first experience of his blindness marking him out as a deaf lump of inert flesh, incapable of fending for himself.

  “I know who this guy is,” the president said. “How’re you doing?”

  “Changed a little but doing fine.”

  “Harry told me you might be coming. I am really glad you could make it.”

  Steadman replied to the president, but looked at the wheezy man as he said, “I see more than you might think.”

  “You are one brave guy,” the president said.

  “You mean these?” Steadman said, and tapped the black lenses of his glasses. “Like Ishmael says, darkness is indeed the proper element of our essences.”

  He was going to say more, but the president interrupted him. “I mean Trespassing. I can’t tell you how much I admire it.”

  “I know you’ve got taste, Mr. President. Friend of mine, Redmond O’Hanlon, was at Oxford with you and said you had a whole shelf of Graham Greene.”

  The president touched Steadman again, and like the others at the party kept touching him, as if to reassure him. It was a gesture Steadman had begun to hate in bystanders, for the insult of its pity, for its patronage, its distrust, its intrusive fuss. And yet the president’s touch was different—revealing—giving so much away, the man’s anxiety and weakness and secrecy in the uneven pressure of his fingers, as though he were steadying himself, drawing off energy and finding his balance by holding on to Steadman.

  “I had no idea your vision was impaired.”

  Another person who did not dare to use the word “blind.”

  “My vision is excellent,” Steadman said. “It’s my eyesight that’s a little faulty.”

  “It’s not getting you down. That’s just great.”

  “No, because, bad as it might be, it’s better than anyone else’s.”

  The president, Steadman saw, needed to be looked at. He was the embodiment of self-consciousness. Every word he said had conviction in it and a suggestion of, Remember this. He had a wonderful please-love-me laugh. He had a way of exaggerating his facial expressions, as though to indicate, I am laughing, I am touched, I am intently listening, I share your feelings.

  “I like that. You’ve got a real good attitude,” the president said.

  He was all calculation. But beneath the surface of his confident facial expression was a shaky heart and trembly attention, an insecurity, the fear that someone might see what he really felt, what he actually knew—his woe, his close-to-despairing feeling that he might be found out. Standing next to him, Steadman felt these vibrations—that the president needed to keep his secret even more than he needed to be loved for his candor. He was at the core a watchful anxious man who had spent his life being observed, who could not bear unsympathetic scrutiny, who hated to be alone. There was something explosive in him, too, that he was keeping in check. And not one secret but many.

  “I will get you the finest doctors,” the president said. “We can fix this thing.”

  How can I help you? was his mantra, because helping people was the key to earning their gratitude, their respect, their support. Steadman liked the man for understanding that power was something that you had to earn, that people gave you, not something you snatched and squeezed from the unwary. The president had been poor. The long climb from poverty, a history of favors asked for and repaid, had given him a sharp memory. He still had aspirations. Even in this easy group of rich well-wishers he was campaigning. Everything about his social posture—his smile, his banter, his kindness, his generous nature—said he wanted your vote.

  Someone—a woman, the same woman as before—took Steadman’s hand and placed a cold glass into it. Her perfume, the pressure of her fingers, the softness of her skin, the warmth of her hand, the way she brushed him, her soft skirt, her tight thigh—all this told Steadman she was slender and young and sure of herself. And she was aroused—so obvious to him now that he was blind—a hot humid tenderness to her skin, a sticky quality to her lips, and the close dampness of her breath that her perfume did not mask.

  “I mean it,” the president said, speaking of his offer to help.

  “That’s very gracious. Thank you, sir.”

  But the president, who missed nothing, had noticed the woman too, and he was attracted. Steadman realized how other people’s reactions were helpful, and now, in these past few minutes, feeling the heated gaze of many people, he had become the center of attention.

  Because Steadman had become the most conspicuous person in the room, the president hung on, began needing him—Steadman could sense that, for by being next to him, he was peculiarly visible. That vanity in the president was mingled in a paradox of conceit with sympathy and kindness.

  The others’ shock was apparent: no one had expected Steadman to show up blind. People who had found him arrogant or distant or offhand now pitied him, and faced him more squarely, emboldened by the strength, a swagger of wellbeing, that onlookers feel in the company of someone frail. For in their judgment Steadman was powerless and lame as a blind man, needing to be steered around by his elbow, no longer a threat or a source of sarcasm; he was impotent, he was pitiable, a cripple, and without help he would trip over chairs and bump into walls.

  Steadman smiled at the thought of this, for the truth these people did not know was that he was perhaps a greater threat to their privacy now. He could gain access to and probe any of their secrets, was nimbler and more acute and virile than ever. Nothing was hidden from him.

  Holding on to his arm, as much a new pal as a helper, restraining him a little, the president seemed to understand Steadman’s insightfulness. He introduced him to a few people—men and women whom Steadman already knew—and in doing so, the president was claiming him as his own, possessing him for his aura, his power to command attention.

  The blindness fascinated the president, like a peculiar gift, a unique asset, a signature trait. Which it is, Steadman thought, all of that and more.

  Still holding on to him, more tightly now, the president moved him through the party. Steadman understood the president as blind in a simple and old-fashioned way, fearing exposure. The poor man could not see himself at all. He was desperate in clinging to his secrets—secrets that to Steadman were obvious in his whole demeanor. Never mind what the secrets were—they smoldered like half-smothered fires in the president’s soul and shone in his fragile and easily readable face.

  The president wanted everything, but most of all he wanted to be needed. And so he took charge of Steadman, possessed him and seemed proud, as though he’d captured a country or successfully wooed a woman—he had what he wanted.

  He kept touching Steadman with deft slender fingers, and when Wolfbein appeared and introduced people to the president—“Mr. President, I want you to meet an old friend”—the president deflected him, and with Steadman on his arm said, “This is Slade Steadman. I’m sure you know his work.”

  Steadman had become his prop, his cause, and though the president had put himself in charge, and was big and busy on his behalf, Steadman could see how wounded he was. The man was next to him, holding him, kneading his shoulder. Steadman could feel the warmth, which was more than warmth—the scorching heat and life of his eagerness and something like shame. He was fully alive, but what had he done that had made him so hot with guilt?

  His pulse, his touch, told Steadman how appearances mattered to him, how surfaces meant everything, though he was the most watchful human imaginable. Perhaps he recognized this trait he shared with Steadman. He seemed like someone who was forever stalking, with an insatiable appetite, his hunger beyond the hunger of anyone else.

  Also, what
looked like guilt or shame was neither of those—they did not cut deep enough; it was undiluted embarrassment. He was brave in his secrets, not sorry for them but only fearful of being found out. His need to be fully visible was at odds with his need to conceal, and made him an active and distracting presence for his furtive alertness, and had given his smiling and much too reliable face a profound pinkness.

  So he latched on to Steadman, because it proved that he had sympathy and altruism and charity. He was here at a party, not carousing—he hardly seemed to drink anyway, had barely touched his glass—but propping up a blind man, though Steadman was aware that it was really the other way around.

  Ava joined them, was embraced by the president—“You’re a lucky gal”—and she took Steadman aside to say that she had been talking to the first lady.

  “She’s amazing—she’s lovely,” Ava said. “She looks straight at you and tells you exactly what she thinks.”

  “I saw her when they came in.”

  Whenever Steadman referred to his seeing something, Ava reacted, made a gesture, not quite doubting, but impatient.

  “And what did you notice about her?”

  “The snot in her nostril,” Steadman said.

  As though he had spoken the truth, Ava became defensive. “She’s beautiful. She’s strong. She really knows him. It’s a real team.”

  But another glance in the direction of the first lady told Steadman that there was almost nothing there except a chill between the husband and wife. She was much poorer at pretending than he was.

  “She’s his prisoner,” Steadman said.

  He walked outside, down the stone steps to the lawn. Many of the guests had gone out to enjoy the fragrance of the evening. They were drinking, laughing gently, reminding each other of what a lovely summer it was. “We’ve been on the island since July Fourth,” Wolfbein was saying. Through the slender scrub oaks the Sound was glowing in the last of the sunset.

  In the luminous half-dark of dusk on the lawn, a little apart from the other guests, he felt euphoric, seeing everything clearly while unseen and unknown himself. He was reminded of how, in this euphoria, he resembled the celebrated novelist he wished to become, a narrator among his characters. He was convinced of the purposeful insight of his blindness, his apparent blindness, and that at last his novel would be the book he had longed to write.

  Sensing someone behind him, Steadman tilted his head to listen. He was touched on the hand by soft, damp, imploring fingers, and his arm groped too, each touch an appeal, a plea, an invitation, the clutching of slender bones. The people who had touched him at the party believed they were unseen, unknown—and they were, except by Steadman, who saw each one, the big bold woman, the sidling blonde, the dark foxfaced woman with searching hands who had crept over and stroked him, announcing herself when he had arrived. She was small—smaller than Ava—and she had touched him without Ava’s knowing. And she was back, on the lawn, grazing him again with her hand, her heart beating like mad as she moved quickly away.

  Sunset had come fast, a deepening shadow in the sky, a dampness of light dew gathering on the grass. Being touched, in his memory, was like being brushed by the low boughs of leaning trees, by the leaves of bushes next to the path, tumbled thickets and groves growing at the edge of the bluff, its sea grass and sand still holding the dry hum of the day’s heat.

  And with the darkness, the smoke-stink of flares and torches was more apparent—orangy flames, flat and ragged, on head-high bamboo poles jammed into the ground.

  “Down this way!” Wolfbein called out. Looking like a cop in traffic, one arm raised, he directed the guests toward the narrow stony path where, in the flapping light of the kerosene torches, handsome young men in white shirts, employees of the catering company, as orderly and solemn as soldiers, escorted people along the path to the lip of the bluff, where a flight of steps led down to the beach.

  “I’m all right,” Steadman said when one of the young men reached for him.

  Steadman tapped his stick on the wooden treads and looked down, deliberately holding up the other guests, who paused and watched the blind man’s slow descent, talking as he stepped slowly.

  “Nobska lighthouse,” he said, waving his stick at the flickering light across the Sound. Then he looked down. “Checkered tablecloths. Lots of tables. Lanterns. Crimson lobsters stacked on seaweed. A washtub of steamed clams. Buckets of corn. A tureen of chowder. A basin of chopped salad greens. More torches. And the water lapping the table legs.”

  “That’s amazing,” someone said, hearing him, and there were supporting murmurs.

  “I was at this clambake a few years ago,” Steadman said.

  “It’s still amazing. I hadn’t recognized all that stuff until you started describing it.”

  “Memory is vision,” Steadman said, still descending the stairs, and as he spoke he heard Ava groan.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Ava said in a low scolding tone, “Why are you calling attention to yourself?”

  “That’s why I came.”

  “How can you be so fucking pompous? ‘Memory is vision.’ Jesus!”

  But he was smiling, feeling his way forward. He brushed the piece of paper Ava held in her hand.

  “What are you reading?”

  “The seating plan.”

  “Where am I sitting?” he asked.

  “You tell me,” she said, challenging him. “You can see in the dark, right?”

  All this in whispers.

  He knew Wolfbein as a friend who would have assured him a good seat—and everyone was extra-nice to the blind. He said, “I’m sitting with the president.”

  Containing her fury, Ava’s body convulsed: he had guessed right. And then he heard her shoes treading the stones on the foreshore as she stalked off to her own table.

  And a woman’s hand rested on his lower back, a woman unseen by Ava.

  Steadman said, “Who are you?”

  The woman touching him turned quickly and stumbled slightly on the shingly beach, leaving a wisp of fragrance at the level of his head.

  He was the first to sit, and so when the others joined him they spoke to Steadman, positioning themselves in front of his face to address him. Although they were friends, and he knew them as soon as they spoke, they said their names, as though he were feeble—Walter and Betsy Cronkite, Olga Hirshhorn, Bill Styron, Millie Wolfbein, and finally the president, who was finishing a conversation with Vernon Jordan.

  “You’re going to be fine, man,” Vernon said, looming over Steadman, bestowing his blessing before walking on.

  “Hello, girl,” the president said to Millie, and gave her a hug. Then he said, “Slade’s doing good. I think he sees more than we do.”

  It was true, and he knew it. The president was uncomfortable, Steadman could tell, which was another reason he wanted to possess the blind man and disarm him. He feared the blank stare behind the dark glasses, he feared Steadman guessing his secret. Steadman did not know the details of the secret, only that it was a woman, and because it was sexual the president was both embarrassed and eager. He was happy, he was pink with confusion, rendered younger and more readable—all the grinning traits of being smitten.

  So when the drinks were served and the talk turned to movies, the president reminisced about himself as a boy—the interrupted conversation he had begun earlier in the house, about The Barefoot Contessa.

  Styron said, “I went to high school with Ava Gardner. She was a lovely simple girl, just a farm girl. Came over the state line to Newport News from North Carolina. We called her a Tar Heel.”

  Steadman said, “You could have taken her to the prom.”

  “Well, she was a year behind me. But, yes, I could have,” Styron said, and he stroked his face as he did when he was self-conscious, and gave his deep appreciative laugh.

  The president said, “In that scene where she drops her dress and it just falls. Oh, my.”

  Everyone at the table was watching the president with pleasure.


  He said, “I couldn’t breathe!”

  The laughter exploded as soon as he spoke, but Steadman saw the truth of the revelation. It was distinctly confessional, and it was also a dream of yearning and power in a crowded movie theater in Hot Springs. Steadman saw a boy in a seat, wide-eyed and with his mouth open, wanting the world.

  As the clambake progressed and the food was distributed, the waiters bringing plates piled with corn and lobster and steamers, a group of young men lined up, a dozen or more in identical red shirts. They paid their respects to the president and greeted the diners. One of them, announcing that they were the Tiger Tones from Princeton, took out a pitch pipe and blew a note, and they began to sing. They sang one song after another, old tunes, “Chattanooga Choo Choo” and “Hey, There” and “What’ll I Do?”

  The president watched attentively, smiling appreciatively, and sang along. He was an unspontaneous man who knew that people were constantly looking at him, and he was at pains to demonstrate that he was just what he seemed, an open and benevolent person who had nothing to hide.

  The Tiger Tones’ spokesman came to the table and asked the president for his requests—any song he liked.

  “You go ahead. You’re doing just fine,” the president said, which was shrewd, because a request was also a giveaway.

  Steadman said, “Do you know Chuck Berry songs? How about ‘Maybelline’?”

  “Sorry,” the young man said, and repeated it more loudly when he noticed Steadman’s dark glasses and the white cane propped against the table.

  They sang “Up on the Roof.”

  The president said, “I had Chuck Berry at the White House.”

  “That’s great.”

  “I could get him for you.”

  Steadman was touched—not by the offer but by the spirit of it, the sense he had noticed earlier, that the president was saying not “love me” but “please need me.”

  He was mouthing the words of the songs, appearing to know that everyone was looking at him and he was doing the right thing for them. He would never want to be seen doing the wrong thing, which was why his secret was engrossing to him, and it had to be a forbidden woman, for what else could have made him so pink?