Blinding Light

by Paul Theroux

  He missed his datura, he missed its pleasures, he missed its benign guidance, the way it had helped him in new directions; he missed the way it had led him upward to a vantage point where he saw himself so clearly he could concentrate on his wholeness, like a man in front of a mirror sketching his self-portrait. He missed the complexities of color, the way one color appeared as separated layers, like leaves of innocent light given meaning when they were arrayed together. The drug had given him access, and now he was just a man on the outside.

  The drug had allowed him to range widely in time and space, to peel experience from his body and mind, and now without it he was smaller and shallower, with an obscure sense of loss, like someone so stunned by the death of a loved one, he suffered all the more from the trauma because—so deranged by the loss—he could not recall the loved one’s name or face. Under the spell of the drug, the future that had once been full of suggestion and promise was now unreadable. The past was distant and inaccessible. He was a small figure on the parapet of the present, feeling very little except the obvious and violent compulsion to jump.

  He was sighted now, returned to the gray daylight and misleading surfaces of the visible world.

  With nothing to keep her at home, and as if atoning for all the time she had taken off, Ava worked long hours, odd hours, spending arduous days at the hospital. She was like a missionary doctor on a remote Third World island, where everyone expected favors, every patient was hopeless and desperate, every case an emergency, and failure was common. Ava knew all the Vineyard families. “I have to do it. If I didn’t, who would?” The sort of thing Steadman had seen in places like New Guinea and Haiti. Sometimes Ava worked twenty-four hours without sleep; she was often on call all night.

  Cursing the pager, dreading the phone, the three a.m. emergencies, the midnight births, Steadman was reminded of the early days of their love affair. He had forgotten that she had a life of her own.

  “This is normal,” she said when he complained. “Look, we were writing all day and fucking all night.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “It’s nice, but let’s say it’s less usual,” she said. “I’m a doctor. I think the difficulties of doctoring made me a reckless lover. But now I’m back to work. Get used to it.”

  She stopped using makeup. Her choice of clothes, even when she was not at the hospital, seemed clinical, even dowdy. Usually she wore green scrubs around the house.

  “You got what you wanted,” she said. “Your book.”

  “It wasn’t only that.”

  “Okay. You got your reputation back. Your manhood.”

  But he resisted simplifying it. He said, “Are you going to make it all my trip and deny that there was some pleasure in it for you?”

  “It was like a year of insanity. Yes, I found it exciting, but I am so glad it’s over.”

  He stared at her, and seeing she was unmoved, he said, “Don’t you see what’s beginning?”

  “I can do without excitements. We have enough of those at the hospital.” She saw that he was still staring defiantly at her. “People die there. They give birth. They come in with bone splinters sticking out of their flesh. You should see a motorcycle victim sometime. These people are scared, they’re in pain. Some of them do nothing but cry. And we have a psychiatric unit, too, you know. They need me more than you do.”

  He turned his back on her. He said, “It’s like you’ve forgotten everything we did those days.”

  “When I start to miss it I’ll read your book.”

  He wondered if he would ever feel as lost again as he had before he met her, but he told himself no, he had his book, he had no fear of solitude. Blindness was the ultimate in solitude, yet blindness had made him bold and filled him with courage.

  “Listen to this,” he said one day, on her return from work. He read from a sheet of paper, a rare example of his handwriting. “After I drank, the most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution to the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul—”

  “How can you write that arrogant shit?” she said, interrupting him, and when he began to laugh at her, she hissed at him.

  “I didn’t write it,” he said slyly. “A doctor wrote that.”

  “Some quack,” she said.

  “Dr. Jekyll,” he said. “He would have agreed with you!”

  Without telling Ava—he wanted her to feel neglectful—he admitted to himself that his life was still full. He would have objected more loudly to being left on his own except that around the time Ava had returned to the hospital he began again to be in demand. He started to receive messages from intermediaries—Axelrod, the publisher’s publicity department, helpful friends—telling him there were people who wanted to meet him. He got calls nearly every day—people tipped off that he was writing again, that the author of Trespassing had a new book.

  One of the requests came from the television show 60 Minutes. Would Steadman agree to an interview? He guessed how this had come about: Mike and Mary Wallace had been at Wolfbein’s most recent party. The hook would be: famous recluse, stricken blind, produces a new book in his enforced darkness. The title of the segment would be something like “Edge of Night.”

  Axelrod had relayed the message. “They want to follow you around at home on the Vineyard and do an in-depth interview.”

  Other messages, nearly all from TV shows and photographers, implored him to return their calls to discuss what they might do together. There was no ambiguity in the requests: he was to be seen close up by a camera, to be observed at work and at home—they put it in a kindly way. He was at first flattered but easily saw the renewed interest as intrusive journalism, the voyeuristic wish to film him walking into walls, stumbling, and perhaps falling on his face in picturesque Vineyard settings. Steadman knew that they wanted to see his sideways gait, his faltering gestures, his groping fingers, his big blank face and swiveling head. Great TV, they were thinking—and what a surprise they would get when they saw that he walked headlong with a strut and a slashing cane, with well-aimed gestures and an animated gaze.

  “Out of the question,” he told Axelrod.

  Someone from the New York Times called to schedule “At Home with Slade Steadman,” and again he suspected an eagerness to see him bumping his head and knocking things to the floor, crumbs on his shirt, mismatched socks. People magazine suggested something similar, but insisted on an exclusive. The Boston Globe reminded him that he was a native son, but it was the travel editor who called. Would Steadman consider an interview on the sailing ship Shenandoah? Freelance photographers asked for sittings and portraits. There was no letup. And when the book was announced in the publisher’s catalogue the number of requests multiplied. Bookstores urged him to visit, universities asked him to speak, and would he please be the keynote speaker at a seminar on travel writing “for seniors with disabilities”?

  In almost every inquiry there was an allusion to his blindness: offers of assistance, a limo, a ticket, an escort, “anything we can do to make this as painless as possible for you.” “We have many visually impaired students in our institution,” one letter said. “I did Borges,” one photographer claimed, adding, “I’d show you the contact sheets, but I guess you’ll have to take my word for it.” Subtler suggestions patronized him: “Lots of people ought to have the chance to share your story.” And one of the universities, offering a large fee and promising a good audience, wrote, “We have a full range of handicapped access.”

  “They think I’m a cripple,” he told Axel
rod.

  But seeing an advantage in creating buzz—his editor’s expression—Axelrod advocated early publicity for the book. The New York Times Magazine had put in a request.

  “They’re not promising you the cover—they never do that—but there’s an excellent possibility of it. Think of the sales.”

  The thought No one knows me —his sense of being a wraith, a phantom, an anonymous presence—had always driven his writing and made him content. But now Steadman laughed, because his book was done and his life and work, once so hidden, so widely speculated on, would soon belong to the world. There would be nothing else to tell.

  “I’m differently abled,” he told Axelrod. “If only they knew how differently abled I am.”

  All that was known of him was his blindness and his new book. He liked that, because the truth of his blindness—its gifts—was so startling. To the imploring journalists and askers after his appearance, he was a casualty, an object lesson, a freak, a moral parable, tabloid fodder; not a writer but a survivor. They wanted to hear about his pain. And he smiled because there was no pain, only joy—a bigger story but an unexpected one, and perhaps of more limited appeal, for people wanted to share his suffering.

  So the word was out that he had a book. He suspected he would be marketed as a miracle, a survivor who had managed to tell his tale, batting the air with one hand and whirling his white cane with the other. He was eyeless and enigmatic, but also valiant and pathetic, a licensed bore, someone who made you shut up and listen so that he could be sententious, always managing to succeed against the odds.

  All lies. He had never been more clear-sighted than when, drugged, he had blinded himself and entered the mind and heart of the small hopeful thirteen-year-old he had once been. Nothing was more important than finding that child and rewarding him. In that simple wish the book was born.

  “I am not a cripple,” he wanted to say to the prospective interviewers and TV people. “Blindness has been an asset. I could never have completed this book without it.”

  He said this to Ava, told her how he had valued the trip to Ecuador, learning the uses of datura. Blindness had changed him, living with her had changed him, the book had meant everything.

  She was smiling as he spoke. She controlled her voice, holding her emotion in her mouth, and said, “So much for you. But what do you think all this did to me?”

  Steadman scowled at her. Because she so seldom talked about herself, this question seemed irrelevant.

  “I don’t want to make you feel guilty,” she said, “but can you imagine what your behavior did to my head?”

  He still scowled and looked deaf. He was niggled by the word “behavior.”

  “I have a past, too,” she said.

  “That’s for you to deal with,” he said in a tone of Who wants to know? He had become grim and uninterested. He wanted to turn away from her, for all this time, in her arms, lusting for her, he had seen her as every woman he had ever loved, and she had seen him as—who?—someone else, certainly.

  “Your story,” she said, “is not to be confused with mine.”

  Of course, another narrative had been unspooling in her mind, utterly different from his own, one he could not share.

  “Be a doctor,” he said. “Help me. Heal me. Don’t tell me about your medical history.”

  Still, he was puzzled by the parallel life she must have led while collaborating on his book. Sexuality was so private, so fantasy driven, so dependent on the past. He knew what role she played for him in his blissful reveries of childhood, but what part did he play in her simultaneous recollections and rehearsals? Better not ask.

  “What does it all lead to?” she said. “People will wonder.”

  “Happiness,” he said. “Anyone reading my book will see that all they need to know is in their own head. That’s my message. ‘You are the source of all wisdom. Of all pleasure.’”

  So he told himself he was content. He took no notice of the invitations and requests, for he kept thinking of that morning of the phone call forewarning him—a “save the date” call for November. The invitation from the White House was sent by mail, the state dinner for the German chancellor. And a handwritten note on an enclosed card: The president is looking forward to seeing you.

  One night in the first week of November, Steadman was at the chessboard, waiting for Ava to come home from the hospital. She hated eating late, regarded it as unhealthy; she had stopped drinking alcohol, since she might be summoned to the emergency room; she was always too weary these days for sex. Even chess was a labor for her, a single game might take days, but at least they were able to converse over the board.

  He sat lightly, studying the chess pieces in a posture of patience and concentration. He was like a diner about to finish a meal, some scraps still on his plate, a man who was rested and alert and not very hungry, perhaps saving some of his food for his friend, who was about to turn up.

  Ava entered without speaking, and it was only when she sat down that she spoke. “Your move.”

  “Let’s play rapid transit,” he said. “I want to finish this tonight.”

  As she made her move, she said, “You’re going drugged?” resuming the conversation that had ended the previous day when they had stood up from the chessboard.

  “I’m at my best when I’m blind.” He took his turn without hesitating.

  “It’s the White House. Everyone will see you. They’ll know.”

  “Your move.”

  After her move he swiftly took her rook, swooping with his knight.

  “I want everyone to know.”

  She let out a howl of agony, a surrendering cry of despair, not recognizable words but a dark lament that filled Steadman with horror for its sound of suffering. It was as though a knife had been plunged into her body, but she was not a victim, she was a witness, being given a long, hideous look at certain death—his death. He was fading as she looked helplessly on, and her howl at what he said was how she would feel at the sight of him dying. He saw that for her, with his certainty about being blind, he had died in her eyes.

  Just afterward her voice changed to a gasp as she spoke with a scorched throat. “How can you?”

  “I have to.”

  “It’s a lie. It’s a mask,” she said, her voice catching.

  “Blind Slade wrote that book,” he said. “To go any other way would be deceitful.”

  “What if they found out the truth?”

  “That is the truth. Please move.”

  She moved, she was bent backward, as though wishing for words. She said, “To pretend to be afflicted.”

  “I’m not afflicted,” he said, and struck again with his knight. “That’s the first thing people have to know.”

  “It is such bullshit,” she said.

  “Your move.”

  She poked at a bishop, and in the next move lost him, and began to cry, the same lament but softer, more sorrowful, rubbing her eyes. With wet fingers she moved a pawn.

  “I help sick people,” she said. “And you pretend to be sick. It makes a mockery of everything I do.”

  “I became blind. I lost my sight. You know that.”

  “People with brain tumors lose their sight. Diabetics lose their sight. People with detached retinas. Burn victims. Infected corneas. Serious head trauma. You should be ashamed.”

  “I never said I was a victim. I never whined.”

  “You’re worse. You boasted.”

  He folded his hands and waited for her to move.

  But she said, mimicking his voice, “I can write in the dark!”

  “I can write in the dark. I am blinder than Borges when he wrote his essay ‘On Blindness.’ I wrote my book in the dark.” He had not looked up at her. He added, “If you don’t want to play, just say so.”

  Ava stared at the board for a long while, then made a move, another fatal one. As Steadman plucked at her chess piece, Ava said, “I’m not going to help you. I won’t be part of it. Go to the White House blin
d if you like. What a mockery!”

  He said, “It’s the truth. It’s who I am. Me at my best.”

  Then he moved. She glanced down to see the trap. He said, “Checkmate,” and only then did he raise his eyes to her.

  She recognized the bloodshot and glassy stare of his blindness as he sat triumphant over the chessboard. She put her hands in her lap and looked old and prim and distant.

  He knew she would not howl again. No one could do that twice, with such a cry of horror. But she didn’t have to. He still heard it within himself. The sorrowing sound had deranged something in him—no longer a sound, but a pain lodged deep inside him, something torn, an ache that had displaced all his desire.

  2

  EVEN WITH THE invitation propped on the mantelpiece and the decision to go settled, Steadman kept receiving phone calls and faxes to verify additional details: his and Ava’s Social Security numbers, ages, birthplaces, home address, and—though Steadman had been explicit about his not needing help—a “Special Needs” form to be filled out and faxed back. Another form in the invitation package indicated that because rooms were unavailable, they were not being invited to stay the night in the White House. Attached to this was a list of hotels that offered special rates to White House dinner guests, with parking instructions, and “handicapped accessible” was mentioned here, too.

  “‘Special needs’ describes me perfectly.”

  “Why do you insist on doing this?”

  He had to think a moment before he realized she didn’t mean the decision to accept the invitation but rather his insistence on attending the dinner blind. But he said nothing. His mind was made up.

  Black tie had also been stressed—everything that was stated was stressed—and it was repeated that the chancellor of Germany was the guest of honor. Nothing was left to chance.

  The morning of their departure, Steadman called Wolfbein to tell him the news and to ask for advice. Wolfbein was a friend of the president and a frequent overnighter at the White House.