Blinding Light

by Paul Theroux

  Even with a severe headache, Steadman was joyous with power and importance, translating the welcome in the vision of light, instantly knowing this language coming out of the cat face, its clucks and labials.

  The growly voice said: Find the heart of the flower.

  The solemn message was specific to him, spoken in a tone that implied that it knew everything about him—his few successes, all his failures, his anxieties, his weaknesses, his whole secret history. He was exposed. He was naked before this intelligence; and naked, humbled, known, he felt very small, less than childlike. He was a wisp of spirit—all his substance, the meat of his being, the coat of flesh that had always slowed him, had long since slipped away. He knew he was in two places.

  In a green shadow, big pale bells tolled soundlessly, swinging softly on the limit of a low branch. One huge horn grew larger and began to emit white fuzzy notes of sloshing water, which Steadman recognized as the sound of the sea, breaking waves and surf growing louder, and the round bell-like mouth beckoning, a dark welcome that drew him on, for the bell resolved itself into a dainty flower, one he knew but could not name. The flower lifted to toll again, and he saw that the dark was pierced by a pinprick of light.

  The risk in entering was that he would be swallowed and suffocated. Yet he never stopped staring at the tiny eyelet of brightness, like a single star of hope in the middle of all the murk, staring back at him from across a swamp of live rippling slime.

  Find the heart. He knew he needed to enter the throat of the flower. He gave himself to the risk, remembering an odd phrase from somewhere in Borges, the unanimous night, and put his head forward and instantly knew he had penetrated a passage through the blossom of the angel’s trumpet.

  He was first blinded and then bathed and reborn in light, rejoicing in a vision of glory that was all the more powerful for being enacted over a dark pit, surrounded by a head-high fence, of wet snorting pigs and knotted snakes. The pit was striped in a slickness of oil that oozed through smooth punctures, and when he looked back it was impossible for Steadman to tell the snakes from the oil trails.

  But by thrusting his tormented head into a familiar flower blossom he had saved himself.

  The triumphant revelation of the light and the color and the warning and the wings was that they could be trusted; they were all true. And now he could discern great smoking oil pits where the swamp had been, and he could smell scorched flesh, charred bone, burned hair—the smoldering stink of burned human hair was unmistakable. But this was the whole smoking world, where he was known and small and ruled over by a blind heavy-breasted lioness. This truth entered his consciousness and, remembering the specific injunction to go forward, that time was short, he felt pity for that pile of frail flesh beneath him that looked like a corpse, and he began to cry, sorrowing for himself, for the little time left to him.

  His sobbing was indistinguishable from his nausea. He gagged and wept and woke with drool on his cheek, hearing Ava say, “You’re all right. Slade, can you hear me?”

  Yes, he could hear, but he could not say so. He imagined speaking, he dreamed an articulate reply in which he described what he had seen. But obviously Ava could not understand, because she was still asking him whether he could hear her. All this happened in his vision, but when he managed to open his eyes to the dim light of the jungle day under all the discolored trees, and when he saw Ava’s face, her fear, he knew he had touched down and reentered his body again. After that, his body felt leaden and half alive, a corpse rising from the dead, more zombie than human.

  “The others are over there,” Ava was saying. “That woman Janey freaked out, Wood is detoxing, Hack didn’t take any but he’s acting weird. Manfred wants to do it again.”

  Steadman could not say anything. The vision was still within him, slowly slipping away, the light leaking.

  “I decided not to take any,” Ava said. “I thought I might come in handy if anyone seriously choked. This is pretty heavy stuff.”

  The old man and Nestor crept over to Steadman. And Steadman saw from the mottled sky behind the pavilion that it was now early morning.

  “Good?” Nestor said. “You okay? You see some things?”

  Steadman smiled and said, “A lion, a big cat. Beautiful, powerful, with”—and he made a plumping gesture with his hands to indicate a pair of breasts.

  Nestor spoke to the old man, who all this time was staring into the middle distance with his damaged eyes.

  “So, let’s boogie,” Hack said.

  “Maybe better we stay here another day,” Nestor said. “The people who took the yajé are tired. This is a good village—good people, and safe. We go back tomorrow to Lago Agrio.”

  “That’s going to muck up our schedule,” Janey said. But she spoke wearily, for the effects of the drug and the nausea were still evident in the slurring way she spoke.

  “Shed-jewel,” Nestor said, imitating the woman’s way of saying the word.

  “We’re supposed to be flying to the Galápagos the day after tomorrow,” Wood said.

  “Oh, Jesus, it’s Kenya all over again,” Hack said. “Look, let them rest now and we can leave later—tonight.”

  Hernán said, “Even the Secoya, they no go about in the night.”

  Nestor said, “In the night here in Oriente, snakes sometimes drop down from the branches of the trees into the boat, and they don’t say ‘Excuse me.’”

  There was no dispute after that, though there was more complaining, especially from Hack, who had not taken any ayahuasca and seemed stronger, and also from Sabra, who had been excluded and was angry. Wood and Janey looked weak; they were pale, they were quieter, as if convalescing.

  Hernán said, “The Secoya say it is better not to take a bath today. If you do, you wash away the nice things you see and the pinta”

  On the way back to the center of the village Nestor fell in with Steadman. He said, “The old man, Don Pablo, I told him what you said. He wants me to tell you that you did not see a lion. It was a puma, a tiger. Your dream was true. He knows—he had the same dream.”

  9

  THEY WERE NOT used to failure. They took it badly, as though it suggested the weakness and defeat of character flaws, so they denied it. They were not ashamed but angry and blaming. “It’s all Nestor’s fault,” Hack said. “What a loser.” And Janey chimed in, “It’s a bloody shambles”—she the one Steadman remembered looking at the village huts and saying, “Isn’t that fun, the way they gather and finish those good strong reeds in the roofs? I could use that in my arbors and garden thatch.” She was now saying, “We should never have come. The whole rotten thing’s a dog’s breakfast.”

  The others agreed: Nestor, hired to provide the ayahuasca experience, had let them down. The trip had been uncomfortable, the blindfolds had been unnecessary and disorienting, the village hideous, the people objectionable and unfriendly, the shaman an impostor in a ragged feather crown and elf’s smock, never mind all his trinkets. Wood had almost been poisoned. Janey was still nauseated: “I’m feeling ever so precious.” Sabra was frightened by everything she heard, and Hack, who had been appalled at the memory of his having been terrified, kept saying how shocked he was. “You could have suffered liver damage! Kidney failure!” he shouted to Wood. “And this food is crap.”

  “What’s in this stew?” Sabra asked.

  “Probably the same as before. Turkey. Yuca.”

  “Why not fish? There must be lots of fish in the river.”

  “Mudfish. Eels. Manta rays. Snakes. You want snakes?”

  Nestor was impassive, smoking with one hand, picking at his food with the other. He said, “Not pavo today. It is cuy. Guinea pig.”

  The four Americans stopped eating. They dropped their spoons onto the food-splashed mat. They seemed beaten, their expensive jungle adventure clothes the more deranged and dirty-looking because they were so stylish, making the wearers like parodies of travel gone wrong. And the labels mocked them: Hack’s crumpled North Face cap bore the
legend Never Stop Exploring, the back patches on Sabra’s jeans and Janey’s fanny pack and Wood’s windbreaker said, Trespassing Overland Gear.

  “This isn’t what we were expecting,” Hack said. “My wife might be ill, and we’ve still got the Galapagos to do.”

  “You expect us to sleep another night in this village?” Wood said.

  “There is such an incredible pong here,” Janey said. “Even some of these flowers smell like stinky feet.”

  “Maybe you could try holding your nose,” Nestor said. “You’ll be in a hotel room in Quito tomorrow.”

  “I’m not talking tomorrow!” Wood howled. “I am talking now!” Instead of being alarmed by the shout, the villagers smiled and crept closer to look at the big red-faced man in short pants waving his arms and stamping, his knees dirty, his chin dripping, sweat patches darkening his shirt.

  With the morning sunshine slanting through the trees the clearing was full of luminous silvery smoke from the cooking fires and seemed haunted rather than miserable, the people more spectral than destitute. Stepping off the canoe two days before, the visitors had seen the place as filthy yet picturesque. But that was when they had believed they were just passing through. Now they were mocked by their first impressions: picturesque meant grubby. The prospect of spending another night there made the village seem dangerous, without privacy, and as Janey Hackler pointed out, there was nowhere to sit.

  “I just want to wash my face,” Sabra said. Then she walked a little way off, as though she might find a washbasin, towel, and soap dish, and after a few steps she screamed. “It’s a spider! Get it away!”

  Wood hurried to help her—“Get back, Beetle!”—but when he raised his stick to beat the spider out of its hanging web, Steadman stepped behind him and deftly snatched the stick, whipping it out of his hand.

  “Don’t kill it,” he said.

  “What’s your fucking problem, man!”

  “Just keep walking,” Steadman said, staring him down.

  With a low chuckle of approval, Manfred said, “Yah. Is not necessary to kill.”

  But the outburst soured the atmosphere further. The others were so humiliated they did not talk about their fear or their nausea from the ayahuasca. They blamed the village for being dirty and Nestor for not caring and said that they would be faxing the agency. That they wanted a refund. That they would ask for a meeting with the tourist board in Quito.

  “I will make sure you get to Quito,” Nestor said, and they hated his insolence the more for its being enigmatic.

  In all this Manfred Steiger, who might have been expected to complain, had only seemed more enthusiastic. Steadman admired the man’s animation and his pounce, the way he could fasten his attention on the minutest pedantic details of the plants and the ceremony. He was inexhaustibly nosy, as cheap people often are, and his parsimony made him impatient and a nagger; but when he did complain, his complaints were unconventional, and he never whined. He was boring, but in Manfred this was like a virtue, his dullness and his ponderous industry making him seem indestructible. He made notes, he consulted his plant book, he interrogated the Secoya boys—and was not deterred even when they smiled at him, not understanding a word he said.

  He boasted that he never tipped anyone—didn’t believe in it, did not pay his way if he could avoid it. He always took second helpings of food, and sometimes thirds. Steadman had noticed that he had asked for a third helping of ayahuasca. Manfred often stuffed food in his pockets—an extra orange, the hard-boiled eggs, sugar cubes, bananas. After wolfing down noodles at Papallacta, he had snatched fritters and wrapped them and sneaked them into his pockets. When something was offered, Manfred’s empty hand was the first extended, and he always took more than his share, as though counting on the fact that everyone else would be too genteel to object. He was a successful predator, whose success depended on everyone else’s being unwary or hesitant or polite.

  His eyes were always working; his fingers, too—always flexing. He had a scavenger’s restlessness. And now, while Steadman and Ava were listening to the objections of the others, who were shocked at the prospect of spending another night in the Secoya village, Manfred was making a circuit of the settlement, looking hungry and moving swiftly, his greedy eyes twitching busily in his jerking head.

  On his return he nodded to Steadman. He gestured to him, indicating that he wanted to speak to him alone.

  “You want to try something else?”

  Ava said, “What did you find?”

  But Manfred, who had shown no interest in Ava, did not turn to her. He kept his attention on Steadman, in the confiding and familiar way that unsettled him, as though Manfred assumed that Steadman was a friend, or if not an ally, then at least pliable. He walked a little distance, where a torn web dangled like a rag, and beckoned to Steadman.

  “This is not yimsonweed,” he said when Steadman wandered over to him. Manfred was pinching a twig still bearing leaves and thin ragged flowers. He sniffed it and held it close to Steadman’s face. “Is a clone of Brugmansia. You see the leaves so shredded? The flowers—just strings? Its name is Methysticodendron. This is so rare, no one sees this but just a few lucky botanists. And maybe it did not exist before.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means datura—highly atrophied.”

  “What happens with it?”

  “I know a man, one German from Koblenz, who came through here. He was a chemist. He wanted to synthesize the alkaloids in this clone. They said, ‘Try it first.’ It was a scopolamine crystal. It blitzed him.”

  “Ayahuasca blitzed me,” Steadman. “I’ve had all the visions I can handle.”

  “No visions,” Manfred said. “I know a little about this one. They make tea from the leaves and stems. I read it in my book. Take the scrapings in an aqueous maceration.” Steadman suppressed the urge to smile at the way Manfred sucked at his saliva as he said this. “It is great. It change your head, it give you experiences. Only the question of money, but you have money.”

  Steadman glanced at Nestor, who was implacable, picking his teeth. “So what’s the point?”

  Manfred said to Nestor, “He wants to know,” but Nestor just shrugged—knowing yet noncommittal.

  Steadman said, “Why are you telling me this, Manfred?”

  “Don’t you see?” Ava said. She had walked over to listen with Nestor. “It’s something that costs money. He doesn’t want to pay.”

  Even then, Manfred did not look at her. Instead, he shortened his neck and clenched his jaw, making it as compact as a clutch of mandibles. All his teeth bunched in his mouth, bulging against his lips.

  Nestor smiled at Steadman, but his smile meant nothing except a challenge or a contradiction. He said, “In the Oriente you find out about these drinks after you drink them.”

  “Experience,” Manfred said. “He knows.”

  “Knowledge,” Nestor said. “Some people call that borrachero. Or toé. Ask Señor Perito. Mr. Hexpert.”

  “What about the others?” Steadman asked.

  He indicated the two couples, who, a little distance away, just out of earshot, were squatting on logs near the covered platform, looking disconsolate, wanting to leave, hating the smoke and the smells, dreading the night they would have to endure in the village.

  “Rich tourists,” Manfred said.

  The same casual belittling thought was in Steadman’s mind, and it so annoyed him to hear this irritating man put it in words, he told himself that the description might be wrong. One of them appeared to be enjoying his book. And, after all, these people were doing the same thing he was. Like them, hoping for an adventure, he had hooked up with Nestor for the ayahuasca. The truth was that they were all on the same drug tour.

  “You are not like them. You are an intelligent man—a wise man. Also brave.” He tapped the side of his nose. “I know this. If you want to try it, we must do it now.”

  Steadman said, “Nestor, who else has done this?”

  “Not man
y people. No one lately. It doesn’t work on everyone, and it costs more. Five hundred each.”

  Without saying yes, Steadman said, “Five is doable.”

  “The Secoya don’t take credit cards,” Nestor said.

  “Maybe you can loan me some money,” Manfred said.

  Ava jarred him with a laugh. She said, “‘Loan’ never means loan.”

  “I researched the information,” Manfred said, nagging again. “What about the time factor? I negotiated with the Indian. I am facilitating.”

  Nestor said, “I’ll just let you guys argue it out.”

  “See? I told you,” Ava said. “He doesn’t want to pay.”

  As though to put an end to the argument, she walked away with Nestor, back to where the others were standing, looking futile.

  “I know who you are,” Manfred said, putting his face into Steadman’s. “Ever since Lago Agrio.”

  “You saw a passport at the hotel.”

  “Yes, but even if I never see it, I know,” Manfred said. “You are different from those people. In the van I think, There is something about this man. And I see you writing notes.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want your story for my book.”

  “I’m not who you think I am, and I don’t have a story,” Steadman said, defying him and at the same time impressed that all this time Manfred knew who he was. “But even if I was and I had a story, why should I give it to you?”

  He was not amazed by Manfred’s presumption—writers he regarded as headhunters. This was typical, the arrogant conceit of the writer who took everything and used what he wanted; the same presumption was often in his own mind. And Steadman was annoyed again, because the German was giving voice to one of his own ideas, an ambition that was still unfulfilled, and his saying it aloud—like “rich tourists”—made it seem oversimple but valid. Steadman did not know what he wanted to write, but whatever it was, he wanted it to be his own, original, unexpected story, not something a stranger could guess at. And that was precisely what Manfred had guessed.