Blinding Light (20 page)

While Ava went to check the back door, Steadman touched the face of his watch, examined the hands, and turning he felt the warmth of a fierce sunset reddening the side of his face, the back of his hand. Great hot quilts of cloud spread across the sky, a broth of blue growing pinkish in a vast band of color, then quickening to fiery tatters, molten and purple—five seconds of that before sudden tumbled lambs appeared and gathered, were whipped into peaks to become a mountain range of gilded summits, subsiding slowly, pink again, just an orange stripe low in the distance. The whole stripe was simplified to a speckled egg, but a crimson one, and ultimately a blind eye.

He almost smiled to think that something might be wrong, that there might be an intruder. So much else had gone his way these past months that he was prepared to be thrown.

The glow was still in the sky, still on his cheek, and though the trees were cooling fast, the shade thickening in their boughs, some light and warmth remained in the western quadrant beyond the cove, like a lamp in the corner of a room, fading from pink to yellow-blue, the way embers go cold.

Ava entered the room holding something against her body—a package, a dense parcel, which she placed on the table. The way it settled told him the thing was heavy for its size.

“A woman,” Steadman said.

“Right.”

“Told you.” He was the assertive man again, speaking in his own voice.

Instead of answering that, she said, “FedEx. The latest transcript of the book.”

He saw it as Book. The manuscript was always capitalized in his mind, for he thought of it as
The Book of Revelation.

That news pleased him—to think, after so many years, that he was embarked on a new book and was making progress. Even if he was just a name to some people, he had a large and appreciative public, eager for this book, and he was glad. For almost two decades he had struggled with this second book. And, writing steadily since his return from his trip downriver in Ecuador, he had finished perhaps a third of it. That trip had changed his view of almost everything in his life and in his writing, and had given him a sense of power.

“Shall we continue?”

Ava sat heavily in the chair. The way she dropped herself, making the cushion gasp, was emphatic, a whole blaming statement in the sound of her sitting down:
You are putting me in the wrong for hesitating to go to the door.

Steadman felt her gaze as a shimmering light, as heat and reassurance, which said to him,
You have never been safer.

“Yes, Doctor.”

He did not mind that she was annoyed. He was glad that his instincts had guided him: the foot-crunch in his gravel driveway spoke to him more clearly than a watchman or a sentry. Delivery people were also intruders, and the more familiar they tried to be (“Nice place you got here”), the worse their intrusion. But seeing his suspicions confirmed made Steadman calm enough to resume the dictation—or, rather, not resume but find fluency in a digression.

All he could think of was the woman waiting for him after the meal,
Ava wrote, at Steadman's talking speed, while watching the jumping columns of light indicating the stresses in his voice on the tape recorder.
Waiting in the candlelit conservatory, wearing the black lingerie he had bought for her. As he entered the room, saying softly
—

And he smiled, because this improvised collaboration was the best part of the day. He never wanted it to be spoiled by someone blundering in. When he came to the end of the day's work he changed his tone; it became intimate, and a full day of fictional inspiration became a halting description of how he wanted the evening to end.

Helping him, Ava said in a muted voice, “Over here.”

Saying softly, “Over here.”

“And he obeyed,” Steadman said.

“Because he was in her power.”

Because he found pleasure in submitting to her will, obeying her demands.

Steadman loved Ava for the intensity of her confident suggestions, for her knowing how to dictate to him.
I am yours. If you don't tell me explicitly what to do, I'll take charge,
she had said in the beginning. Her assertiveness had surprised him. Their sexuality was based on trust, on invention, on surprise; making it fictional excited him.

Because he was in her power,
Steadman repeated,
and was helpless to do more than obey her. He faced her in the candlelight. The lingerie—
“Loose panties of black silk that she had been saving for him,” Ava said, speaking slowly, watching him closely for a reaction.

Dictating his novel to Ava, Steadman was always reminded of the consolations of storytelling, and how it had never been much different from this, the people in ornate halls, and little huts, and around the fires at cave entrances, relating stories of desire and its consequences, whole tales for a single occasion, bright eyes fixed on the narrator, the storytelling explicit and simple, tales of travel and discovery, of startling encounters, of adultery and deceit, the satisfactions of revenge, the reverses of fantasy.

He was afraid of them, the clothes,
Steadman dictated,
for the way they transformed the body, like a mask or a blindfold or makeup. Afraid, too, because they excited him—the danger of that.

She picked this up, continuing,
She realized that she had bought them for him, not herself, knowing that he wanted secretly to submit. Wearing them, she would tie his hands and slip off the black panties. She said firmly, “Put them on.” But he was helpless and so she did it for him, slowly, complimenting him on his prettiness. Then the lipstick. He would protest but be so aroused, she knew
—

“That's enough,” he said.

“Just as you were getting interested.”

“Whose book is this?”

His face was serene, for she had thought of something new—she was expert, she was full of suggestions. He was reminded of how he would have failed in Ecuador without her: she had made all the difference then in her doctoring; she was making all the difference now as his listener and his lover. They had approached this fantasy before but had never ventured further into its details, the mention of lingerie and makeup. Thinking out loud was one of the pleasures of dictation: you could say anything, you could rewind it and erase it; it was just a story, it was vapor.

But Ava was much more than someone taking notes as he talked into the tape recorder. She was truly the doctor, watching over the man in a drug trance. Steadman, the writer, more confident than he had ever been, was reassured by her presumption. His success had begun with his dictation. He had used a typewriter and his travel notes to write
Trespassing,
but that was the distant past. Now he never wrote. He drugged himself and talked instead, and his novel,
The Book of Revelation,
was lengthening, engrossing him, a truer expression of the world he knew than
Trespassing
had ever been. Though the words were his, he never touched a pen or a keyboard, never made a note—that was Ava's work. He spoke his books in the dark, in his trance state. In the dark, words mattered so much more.

 

“How about a drink?” he asked.

There was no reply. Had Ava left the room? Their routine was such a fixed sequence he could not remember whether she had excused herself or announced the fact of her leaving. But it was the same most days, that break between the end of his writing day and the onset of night. The idea was that they would have something to think about before meeting again. Reflecting on the last of the dictation, he found it supremely pleasurable to sit in this twilit part of the day alone. Ava's elusiveness excited him and made him curious.

Deftly searching the coffee table where they kept the tape recorder, and using his hands like feelers, he discovered a cold bucket with a bottle of wine in it. Next to it was an empty glass on a tray.

He needed variation, for the day was so orderly. There was his work, and then the end of his work, this teasing incomplete fantasy, Ava taking notes and repeating them back to him. Ava's vanishing and the appearance of the wine signaled the end of dictation. The glass of wine meant the suspension of all work, the day at an end. At daybreak or earlier—for he could see in the dark—work would start again.

In this solitude he sipped his wine, liking the solidity of the house, the smell of books and carpets, the whiff of wood smoke from the fire, the aromas from the kitchen, always lamb or fish stews and chowders, and bags of fresh salads sent up every morning from a restaurant in Vineyard Haven, grateful for the off-season business.

The pale yellow Chablis in his glass was so rich that when he tipped his glass to sip, and righted it, he saw it was viscous, showing its legs sliding on the side of the glass. He tasted its sunshine on his tongue, in his throat, and its warmth relaxed him.

Some evenings Ava helped him off with his clothes, like a mother undressing a child, her clothes brushing his nakedness, her sleeves against his bare skin, nannying him with expert hands.

“I like that.”

He could tell that she liked it, too, and though at these times there was no sexual pressure in her fingers, he could feel that she enjoyed touching him, her hands familiar and warm. This was especially so when she methodically shaved him, bringing a pinkness to his cheeks with the shaving brush and scented soap, lathering his stubble, sliding the razor and making a satisfying burr as the hairs were scraped away. And every two weeks she gave him a haircut, with clippers and a straight razor, standing quite close to him, leaning her slender thighs against him, her breasts brushing him. She was not just deft hands but a whole confident body, somewhat off balance.

Some nights she would wash his hair with a light touch, so gentle and yet with assured finger pressure. And then she would give Steadman a towel and help him into his robe. But tonight he bathed alone. The tub was full, the bathroom was fragrant with a scented candle. He could not eat until he had bathed and changed his clothes and had a drink or two. In clean clothes he was preparing himself for the next part of the day, and was a new man. It was all as deliberate as the ritual of dictating his book. He could not rush from his day of writing in his studio to Ava's suite. It was important that he pause and savor the interval. He needed to think deeply about what was to follow.

He groped his way to the dining room and praised it to himself in a murmur: the flowers, the candles, the chair pulled out from the table, the serving dishes steaming, everything arranged so that it was within his reach—the food, the wine, the single place setting at the head of the table.

While he sat there eating he knew that Ava was preparing herself in her room. He had tried every combination at mealtime. Earlier on in his experiments in blindness they had eaten together, but after the meal and all their familiar talk he felt sated and weary. They talked, they drank, they were friendly. But Steadman found that such congeniality killed his desire. Besides, Ava said, she needed to be away from him, too; to be on her own a bit after being with him all day alone, taking dictation.

The soup tonight had been freshly made in town, pureed tomato soup with herbs, the tomatoes simmered in wine and basil and this red pulp with a pink froth and a mass of golden seeds bubbling on top, and blended, then pushed through a sieve, becoming crimson. That was one of the pleasures of the Vineyard, fresh food from gardens and greenhouses, the soft ripe tomatoes, the tender eggplant, the crisp green peppers, whole baskets of deep green basil.

After the soup, he found another dish and lifted the lid. A braised lamb shank lay on a bed of risotto on the thick platter, the tender meat resting on the thick buttery rice, with florets of broccoli. Steadman served himself and ate slowly, chewing the tender sinews of lamb, licking his lips. The whole meal stimulated him, the bite of garlic, the citrus notes of the wine. He brushed flecks of food from his cheeks. He felt big and warm and pink, slightly tipsy and content. From this mood to sex seemed a simple transition.

He loved eating and drinking alone in a dining room of flower-scented air. It was like celebrating his own sort of mass in which a sexual surprise was the final part of the ritual: meeting a willing stranger. After a day of food and talk he needed solitude, the bath, being touched, the promise of sex, the seclusion of his own large house with the high perimeter wall.

In the beginning there had always been dessert, usually chocolate mousse or ice cream, something sweet to counter the heat of the meal. But an ingredient in it, perhaps something as simple as its fat or sugar content, reacted with the datura and nauseated him, producing cramps with violent vomiting. If the portions were small, the food did not alter the effects of the drug. He searched impatiently for the cup of datura. Usually he made it himself, brewing it before breakfast. Ava had become expert at making it too, stewing the scrapings of the twigs broken from the framework of the Indian basket, then straining the liquid and letting it cool. Not much of the drug was needed to make an effective drink. The strength of it lay in the reduction, the simmering that thickened it to an earthy darkness. A jug stewed on Monday lasted most of the week. Steadman could see that if he was careful in cutting the basket and cooking the datura he would have a year's supply of the drug, enough to finish the book.

He had been blind since morning, but in the evening his blindness seemed to lift, as though there were slashes in the fluttery veil before his eyes. Holding the cup in both hands, making a formal gesture of drinking the drug, he lifted the cup to his lips and swallowed it all. The taste was something he knew he would never get used to. It was the taste of the jungle—birds, vines, dark blossoms, the clammy scales of snakes, the sour tang of insects, the iridescence of beetles' wings—and it enclosed him in a tight and luminous bandage, as if he had been caught in a subtle web and wrapped in a spider's glowing spittle.