Blinding Light (15 page)

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 many 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.

“I want your story” was the sort of thing a dwarf with an evil insect's face might say, bargaining with the harassed hero of a folktale.

Manfred was still holding the unusual plant with the strange torn-looking leaves and the even stranger blossoms. He dangled it, his eyes blazing, and said, “I have made the arrangement. Without me you cannot do it.” He breathed harshly through his mouth. “And this is something incredible.”

Whenever it became obvious that someone was brazenly trying to fob something off on him, Steadman felt his attention slacken and he lost interest. The more forceful and creative the sales pitch, the more Steadman resisted, seeing the salesman as an obvious buffoon. A persuasive sales pitch was no pitch at all, but rather something like a tremor that caused a distinct throb of aversion. The odd thing was that, knowing all this, seeing Manfred's motive as transparent, and even sensing resistance rising in himself as Manfred grew shriller, he still wanted to know more. And he was fascinated by his own reaction—that he was allowing this grubby wheedling man to tempt him with the misshapen blossom on the twisted twig.

Ava seemed to understand that Steadman was listening. She walked from where Nestor was crouching and said, “If you give this German any money, you're nuts.

Manfred said, “Yah, I am just a German,” but his accent so overwhelmed him, his protest was a Teutonic yawp, which almost gagged him on the word
Chermin.
“When you see me, you see a German. Do you see a Jew when you see the woman Sabra? Oh, we are bad people. We persecuted the Jews. So we made our fate. We are the Jews now. You can say anything about a German and no one will
schrei
at you.”

Nestor was squatting on his haunches a little distance away, smoking a cigarette, listening to the rant and watching the negotiation. Several Secoya men with him were similarly squatting, hugging their knees, puffing pipes.

As though anticipating a probing question, Nestor called out, “It is not part of the tour package.” They looked at him and Nestor seemed to see another question in their faces, which he addressed. “So I am not responsible.”

This hint of risk attracted Steadman and, raising his eyes past Nestor, he saw the others, the ones who called themselves the Gang of Four, looking disconsolate on their log, like monkeys in the rain.

Steadman was indifferent to the bargain that Manfred was trying to strike. Instead, he saw a chance to rescue something from this trip—something to write about, something new, which would be part of his own story. And the fact that Ava was against it was another reason for him to go ahead with it. They were at an end. This decision to try the rarer drug was something final that would demonstrate this. It was more than a gesture; it was like a new aspect of separation, an act of defiance.

“Don't listen to this cheeseball,” Ava said. “He comes down here with his big fat plant book and puts himself in charge, and you're buying it?”

“Yup,” Steadman said, and gave Manfred two hundred and fifty dollars, counting the bills into his hand. Manfred objected with a movement of his mouth. Steadman added, “You get the rest when it's over. But you can't have my story.”

Ava said, “He's the devil!”

But Steadman smiled. He was amused by Manfred's meanness and manipulation, the transparency of it, especially when compared to the self-satisfied spending of the Americans and all their high-end gear—the contrast of Manfred's beat-up Mephistos and rotting socks with the Americans' expensive Trespassing Treads. Manfred's shorts and all-purpose black sweater had tears and pills; Wood's Trespassing jacket had seventeen pockets—so he kept saying—and Manfred had a greasy sack into which he stuffed everything, including the hard-boiled eggs he routinely sneaked.

Manfred's sunglasses were misshapen; the Americans wore titanium TOGs and peaked caps with neck flaps, like Foreign Legionnaires. When there was a brief flutter of rain the Americans took out their Trespassing rain jackets and Trespassing ponchos and crouched in the drizzle and waited it out. Manfred was the picture of discomfort, with muddy legs, bruised fingers, dirty nails, clawed sweaty hair, and a mud-streaked cheek from his having rolled off his sleeping mat in a convulsion during his ayahuasca trance. And at his muddiest he was capable of insisting, “I have good connections in Washington and New York. I am working on a book. Many people know my name.”

“This watch is good for two hundred meters,” Hack had said.

“See this watch? I found it,” Manfred said.

Steadman liked Manfred's recklessness and saw him as a natural ally, the improvisational traveler that he had once been. That, too, made Ava insecure.

“Do you know anything about this business?” she asked Nestor.

“Only that it is done outside the village,” Nestor said. “It is a shaman's drink. Not like ayahuasca. This plant is new. It is rare. It is an accident. I saw a couple of people take it. Only one of them got a buzz.”

“What was the buzz?”

“That is the funny part. The guy just got quiet. He could not see. It was like we say,
una ceguera,
a blinding. Ugly to think about. But he knew everything that was going on—more than we knew.”

“What is it?”

“The one he showed you.”

“Angel's trumpet?”

“The
toé. Borrachero,”
he said.
“La venda de tigre
.”

Manfred tapped his plant book and said, “Datura. Methysticodendron.”

“The tiger's blindfold,” Nestor said. “He called it a crazy name. ‘A necessary poison.'”

 

“It is not very far,” the Secoya man said, pressing through the low bushes. His Spanish was as basic and approximate as Ava's—
“No muy lejo
.”

“ ‘Not far' always means it's far,” Ava said.

She followed Steadman, knowing she wouldn't take the drug—and certainly not on Manfred's terms—but she felt protective toward Steadman. Her sympathy and patience were an unexpected reaction to their breakup, as strange as the sudden irruption of sex. But the desire to make sure he would be out of danger had nothing to do with their future; there was no question of compensation or reward. She had at last realized that they were each of them alone, and after the infatuation, the romance, the attachment had ended, and they were indifferent to each other's power, underlying it all were frailty and friendship—mutual understanding.

But there was an awkwardness, too, the realization that they did not know each other completely. They had withheld something, they still had secrets. Those secrets exerted a subtle force, and their being blindfolded had made them unselfconscious enough to exploit the secrets, made them strangers again in the eyeless darkness of sensuality, less inhibited. For Ava eroticism was anonymous hunger—“I am stuffing myself,” she had told him with a greedy smile; never mind his pleasure.

She was free, no one's wife, no one's fiancee, no one's girlfriend; just his friend—she could do as she wished. Being with Steadman was her choice. She wished for the time when she would be certain that he would be safe. Then she would be finished with him.

The Indian had been accurate; it wasn't far. Beyond the bushes and split-bamboo stockade fence of the compound, another lashed-together pavilion stood a bit back from the riverbank and out of sight of the village.

“I guess we're on our own now,” Steadman said.

Nestor had wanted to join them, but the Hacklers and the Wilmutts had demanded that he stay close to them, with Hernán, in case there was a problem. Nestor had mumbled
“Niños
" and stalked toward them, as though wishing them ill. Then he stood and ignored them and smoked, because they hated smokers and had not allowed it in the van.