by Paul Theroux
And as Steadman raised his stick to strike once more, he was bumped again but softly, and sensed that the man was pushing past him, shaking the wooden stairs with his stamping feet, climbing up toward the road, hauling himself with desperate pulls on the handrail.
The angry energy of the confrontation still shivered in his muscles. He was exhilarated by his sudden aggression. And when he collected himself and resumed his descent, picking his way down, he thought, I can use that. It was why he had come, to collect such asides for his story, to verify impressions. He wanted to prove to himself that he could find his own way.
He wondered whether there was anyone else on the beach. He had been down here only a few times. He knew it was a narrow pocket beach, bouldery, with patches of sand, at the foot of a high vertical bluff, north-facing, of crumbled stone and loose gravel. The secluded spot was approachable only by the long wooden stairway that was like an old-fashioned fire escape at the rear of a tall tenement.
The water crashed and collapsed, the continuous slosh of Vineyard Sound, small lumpy waves that nagged at the shore. Steadman listened for voices and almost tripped when he got to the bottom of the stairs and stepped onto a pillow shape of soft sand. Then he let go of the rail and tapped his cane, whacking rock, poking pebbles, making his way along the wall of the bluff.
“Hello?”
Hearing no reply, he turned to the right, where he knew the widest beach was, but even so, after a few steps he strayed into the water and wet his shoes and trouser cuffs. He stopped again to listen for voices and thought he heard the stairs creak, trodden by weight from high up at the cliff face. He concentrated hard: nothing.
Seeing a blind man, a stranger would say, as all the others had done, “Want a hand?” and would encumber him with insincere assistance. He hated being asked, hated being noticed, being visibly crippled, with a perpetual frown of consternation. He smiled remembering his fury: Get the fuck out of my way! _
“Who is it?” he called out, because the wash of the sea at the shore obscured all other sounds,
He was alone. He had to be, or what was the point? He crawled onward like a dog, using his hands on a stretch of sand, and soon found himself bumping his way through waist-high boulders. They were set in a slope, like a revetment against the bluff. Touching them he was able to trace veins and cracks in the granite, and moving slowly he noticed with his slick fingers that many of them had bunches of kelp pinched between them, or swags of sea-rotted rope.
One slab of ramp-like rock was lying aslant the beach. It was so smooth, so warmed by the sun, he crept onto it and braced himself, and then he lay with his back against it. Its hardness and its heat penetrated his spine and soothed him.
In the rise and fall of the breaking chop just offshore he replayed his story of the blind man’s wife, moving through its current—the narrative seemed to him like moving water—reminding himself of its progress. The reclusive, unsuspicious man of some accomplishment was content until the younger woman tempted him. As though drugged and bewitched he fell in love with her, became possessed, then disenchanted, and finally blinded. Only when he was blind did he see the truth. He had been greedy, he had succumbed to temptation, he had wanted too much.
He liked it for having the rough splintery elements of a folktale. Was this a short story or an episode in a larger narrative of temptation and possession? He posed this question in a dark room—as dark as where he lay now—where two temptresses were teasing each other and tormenting him. He drowsed as these swaggering and tumbled waves, topped with mermaid’s hair, shouldered their way toward shore.
Then he was asleep, and the sound of the water washed away his story and imposed on his receptive mind a dream in which he lay canted on a raft like the black castaway in the Winslow Homer painting that showed sharks’ fins in the water. He was that castaway, and the raft was sliding down the deep and rounded face of a swell as he struggled to stay on board, the wind twitching at one side of his face and his palms and fingers pressing the barnacled edges of the raft. He sensed he was sliding to his death.
Spatters of sea spray reached his eyes, and the tearing sound of the sea became louder until, startled, he awoke as a wave washed across his feet and lower legs. He stood and stumbled in water up to his knees. Instinctively he scrambled, but the wrong way, into the sea, then fell and foundered in the cold water and believed he was drowning. He was too alarmed to cry out. He lost his cane in his fall but felt for a handhold on a rock and gripped it, raising himself for air.
Listening for the shore and slapping the water around him, he found some boulders and braced himself more securely. When he got his breath he hauled himself to the larger boulders that he guessed were part of the sea wall at the base of the cliff. He was soaked, he was in darkness, the sea was loud, and he was trembling. But he was alive.
The water had risen while he had napped. He had forgotten the unforgiving tide. This was to have been a brief foray down the steep stairs below the jaw of West Chop, a search for color, a literary outing, something to give him confidence. Now he was in sodden clothes and heavy water-soaked shoes, and he was gripping a rock, slashing his fingers on the sharp crust of button-like barnacles and periwinkles. The important thing was to remain calm, but he knew he had to find the stairs and climb out of this place, for there was more of the tide to come. High tide took away the beach, washed over the rocks; high tide was a flood of deepening water, way over his head.
“Anyone here?” he called out. Then, reluctantly, in a timid, testing way, “Help!”
He hated his small tentative voice. But he knew he had to call out. He tried again, louder, like a hoarse boy trying to be brave. If anyone had been there and heard him, they would have come to his aid. No one replied.
He moved as quickly as he could across the boulders, but after a few steps he lost his footing and became frantic and fell. Toppling, he went stupid, and he thrashed, twisted his arm, grazed his ear, banged his head like someone at the mercy of a bully. The physical pain made him more fearful. Still he scrabbled forward, crabwise on the boulders. They were slippery now with wet thickened seaweed.
Where were the stairs? The markers he had mentally noted—the boulders, the pebbly patches, the cushions of sand—were underwater, sunken by the tide.
All that was left of the shrunken beach were the boulders massed at the foot of the cliff, a vertical eminence that was the island’s wall. And he kept being assaulted. The brimming tide slammed his back with clouts of cold water.
Hanging on to the biggest boulder he could find, he felt for the steps, gasping all the while—frenzied breaths, gulps of air, salt water in his mouth. The sound of his own breathing was like the harsh wheeze of desperate fear, and it terrified him further. The splash of the water was loutish, indifferent, brutal—rising, falling; and though his head was teeming, the water was like a muscle without a mind, pushing him, pulling him. He would be separated, he would float free of the island, to be dragged down to choke to death in the sea.
As he lifted his face to the bluff, seeing only darkness, something plopped against his forehead. It just missed his right eye, and he knew when it fell farther, dropping to his shoulder, that it was a pebble. Had it been loosened from the cliff wall? He ducked, afraid there might be more, then looked up again, and again was staring into darkness.
Another pebble hit him, striking the top of his ear, hard enough to sting. And before he could react, another. He snatched at that last one and pressed it in his fingers. A pebble sucked smooth as a bead by the rolling water.
“Hey!” he called out.
And like a reply, something blunt and deliberate, another pebble struck his sore ear.
7
THE WELL-AIMED PEBBLES proved that someone was watching him and gave him hope of being saved. Yet there was no answer to his cries except more pebbles. Pock! He was popped on the shoulder with another one as this thought occurred to him. So it seemed like a game, a child’s game, a wicked child’s game of torment—and he was hit again, h
e called out again. What heartless bastard would torment a helpless blind man struggling in a swirling shore break?
Yet he had felt safer as soon as he guessed that the thrown pebbles were deliberate. He hugged the slippery boulder, his legs dragging in the push of the sea, the waves strengthening on the flooding tide. He called out again with thinning breath, his throat narrow with fear, and turned his hopeful face to the cliff. There came another targeted and bigger pebble. It stung one of his dead eyes and he thought, I’m lost.
The pebbles that had reassured him now threatened him, convincing him that whoever was watching him struggle wanted him to suffer.
“Who are you?”
A heavier hostile stone hit him on the head. Steadman clawed his hair and panicked at the thought of more of them, of being stoned to death.
“That hurt!” he called out in a child’s pleading voice.
The force of that last stone told him that whoever was chucking the stones was not far away. But while the first one had struck him lightly, as if lobbed, this one punished him with a painful lump.
A demented person was doing this, someone enjoying the sight of his being shoved by the rising tide and bullied by the slap of waves.
“Why are you doing that?”
Another pebble struck him. Reacting to it, he twisted his head and got a mouthful of seawater from a reaching wave. He gagged, and as he spewed he was hit again. He was quick enough to drag it off his shoulder as it landed and fling it back. His throw was so awkward he thought he heard a mocking laugh, though the sound of mockery could also have been the sound of the rough water around him.
“Please help me,” he called out.
A mass of small jeering pebbles smashed against his wet head.
“Can you hear me? I don’t know how much longer I can hold on.”
A single pebble struck his cheek like an insult.
“If it’s you, I’m sorry I hit you,” he called, remembering the man he had thrashed on the stairs. “Mister!” There was no response. He called again, “Ava?”
This time there was laughter, a low cough, the mirthless vindictive laugh of a man unused to laughing. It came again, a dry bark of unimpressed surprise.
In saying Ava’s name Steadman knew he had given himself away. “You think your girlfriend hates you like this?”
He heard sink, he heard zis, and he said, “Manfred.”
The two pebbles that hit him after that were the equivalent of “Of course.”
“Help me,” Steadman said, glad again but scarcely audible, splashed by the rising slop of the surf as he spoke. He felt foolish, his whole head dripping as he tested the boulders beneath him. He attempted a firmer footing, bracing his heel.
“Stay in the place where you are.”
The truculent voice was nearer and it, too, suggested the wavering sound of a man dodging waves and trying to keep his balance.
“How did you find me?”
“I never lost you.”
“The car in the driveway?”
“I was ever following you.”
Steadman remembered: the car that had been tailgating them when Wolfbein took him out, and the person that the old man Cubbage had mentioned.
“Ever since New York!”
“Why?”
“So to see.”
Hearing him, having this conversation, Steadman was giddy. Manfred! Moments ago he had felt lost, and now he was sure he would live.
“What do you want? I’ll give it to you. Just help me.”
Manfred’s low cough was a laugh of defiance that seemed to say “Never.”
“What I want? Maybe I want to see you die.”
“Manfred, please.”
“You make me a jackass in Ecuador, on the river. And in Quito. After I helped you find that amazing datura, all those lies. And I lose my job and my credibility because of you. I try to talk to you and you smash my tape recorder. You try to punish me. So, maybe I punish you.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know why.”
“I know why. Because you felt strong.”
“Maybe.” And as he spoke the water bellied under him and lifted him and almost tore his fingers from the rock. “Give me a hand. Where are the stairs?”
“You are not strong now. I could let you die. I could just watch you.” “I’ll give you whatever you want.”
“You are nothing now.” And nossing said it all.
“Please,” he said with a piteous catch in his voice.
“But I am sorry—yah—you are really blind.”
With a shriek that was so assertive it sounded like a boast, Steadman cried, “I can’t see a thing!”
“That is so incredible, yah.” Manfred was unmoved. “It spoils my story, my exposé, to get my job back. I want to unmask you.”
“I have no mask. I’m blind. Manfred, I can’t hang on.”
Steadman wanted to say more when another wave hit him hard and thrust him against the embankment. Before he could recover the water plucked him and dragged him down, rolling him underwater. He surfaced with pleading hands.
“Take this.”
A piece of cloth slapped Steadman’s arm. He grabbed it, the sleeve of a wet sweatshirt.
“Just hold it. Don’t touch me. I don’t trust people in the water. You keep one side of the shirt, I keep the other side. Do as I say or I let go and you drown.”
“Where are the stairs?”
“So incredible to see your desperateness. You are weak now.”
“Manfred, if you don’t help me I’ll drown.”
“A big scoop for me. Maybe I can find your body.”
“You wouldn’t do that. You’re joking.”
After a pause there came a growling chuckle. “Did you ever hear me make a joke?”
The wind had picked up, the sky went dark. Steadman felt the chill of the building clouds on his face. The cold salt spray soaked his head. Now he realized that because Manfred was implacable he had no hope. Manfred seemed glad to see him trapped. Steadman thought he might weep, dissolving in his darkness at this noisy edge of the ocean, pressed against the West Chop cliff, dying so near home.
“What is it you want from me?”
“I want my job back.”
“I can make that happen.”
“And for my researches I want you to describe the drugs and the blindness. Some people it works on, others it has no effect. It is useless for me, just makes me sick. But for you it is effective.”
“I’ll tell you everything,” he said with a kind of timid gratitude.
“And the skull. You talked about it. You must say you are a liar and a cheat.”
“I promise. I swear to you, I’ll let you tape-record it.”
Another dry bark of laughter and “Sank you!” With a click like a thrown switch came a whir, and another click, and “let you tape-record it.
“Please don’t let go,” Steadman said, because in concentrating on his tape recorder Manfred had loosened his grip on his end of the shirt.
“You were taking drugs for your book. And you lied. Not a poor unlucky man with an accident, but a liar and an arrogant.”
“I admit it.”
Steadman felt the sleeve of the sweatshirt go slack.
“Maybe I just let go and leave you here.”
Steadman was chest-deep in swirling seawater, treading the submerged rocks. The loud tide slapped the diffside. He was reaching with his free hand, snatching at the soaked shirt with the other, when he heard a commotion above him, a rackety agitated voice.
“That’s him. That’s the man!”
In a different, denying tone, Manfred said, “I do nossing.”
“The one in the water, Officer. He tried to knock my son down the stairs. He assaulted me. Don’t cry, Brett, it’s going to be all right.” “What’s going on here?” A different voice.
“It’s okay, Officer,” Manfred said. With that he pulled on the shirt and brought Steadman nearer. “I am helping my friend.”
�
��Not that one—the other one!” said the angry man.
“This man is blind,” Manfred said.
“He threatened me!”
“Hold on, sir.”
“He hit me! That’s assault with a weapon! A stick. A shod foot.”
“Back off, sir. Give them room.”
“Officer, I am an attorney!” the man screeched, but his voice was receding, as though he were being led up the stairs.
Feeling the wet sleeve tighten further, Steadman lowered his head. He steadied himself in the water with his free hand and gripped harder and let himself be tugged to the foot of the stairs.
“Easy,” Manfred said, and helped Steadman up, placing his hand on the rail.
He was soaked, trembling with fatigue and panic as if tumbled in a black barrel of water, and still in darkness. He groped on the stairs, pulling himself onward, aware that Manfred was bumping along beside him. He sobbed and laughed and said, “Thank you!”
At the top of the stairs he fell to his knees and breathed deeply. Out of the wind, away from the water, he was hot, as though he had crawled up the cliff into a different day. In that moment his blindness didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except that he was alive.
Then he heard from a little distance, “Aren’t you going to do anything, Officer?”
“Step away, sir. This man is in shock.”
Manfred said, “I take him home.” He guided Steadman to his car and helped him in. As soon as he shut the door, he wrapped Steadman in a blanket and said, “I would not let you drown but I like to see you in trouble. That was nice.”
Feeling tearful, Steadman did not reply.
“You thought I was your girlfriend throwing things at you. That is very funny.”
Steadman wondered why he had called her name. Perhaps an effect of “The Blind Man’s Wife,” his belief that their love affair was over. He said, “I’ve been desperate. She found me a doctor—for my eyes. Nothing works.” He fell silent. “I’ve had a hard time.”
“Too much of cars on this island,” Manfred said, braking. Then the familiar cough and bark—he was amused. “You went to a doctor! Ha!” “A specialist.”