Blinding Light (67 page)

Authors: Paul Theroux

BOOK: Blinding Light

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He was turned inside outâanother old feeling. This time the song was within him, the lowest notes in his belly, the chorus like colors in his eyes, not simple colors but the familiar mass of pixels. He was so small that when he fell he sped like a dropped pebble and kept falling fast, past the snakes and the moon men, until he came to rest in a tangle of filaments like a collapsed web.

There he stayed, vibrant, atomized, yet tranquil. Nothing else mattered. In a ritual of presentation, the shaman approached him with a brimming cup. He was shown his reflection in the liquid, and he took this to be the meaning of life. He did not recognize his face. He had an insect's head, bulbous eyes and mandibles like a pair of sickles. He did not know whether he had woken from a dream or had gone under again, reentering a dream.

The cup of mirroring liquid was offered amid swirling smoke. Words came; he was not sure whether he or someone else was speaking, or they might have been thoughts floated from his mind.

“What is it?”

“Cura.”

“The cure?”

“It is poison,” the old man said in his dusty voice.

Steadman did not hesitate. A commanding instinct within him told him it was a cup brimming with death. And that he must drink it all, that he must die. He raised the cup to his lips to empty it.

His drinking of the bitter poison was a renunciation, a long kiss of farewell, and in this close embrace, the cup against his lips, he saw the passing of his life, the reminder of all his hopes, all the promises he had made, the miles he had traveled, the betrayals, the consolation of friends, the years of work and waitingâanger, fear, nights of desire, laughter, all his escapes and stratagems, meaningless memories of invention, all in that long swallow that ceased to be bitter, that grew sweeter and sadder as he gulped the last of it.

Then the cup was empty of poison. Night had fallen, burying him. He was so used to seeing nothing he merely stared with blank eyes when the torch became visible. He was staring into the hollow, at his fingers on the rim of the cup, holding the cracked thing nearer his face. With its ragged lurid flames and its unreliable promise of light, the torch was like the morning sun. He had surrendered. He was no one. His journey was over.

In the smoky pavilion he raised himself and looked into the bottom of the cup he had emptied. He saw active light among the droplets, something aliveâa spider, glittering, lifting itself on its crooked legs, working its jaws. Steadman smiled as at the face of an old friend on waking from a bad dream.

Books by Paul Theroux
FICTION

Blinding Light
“A bravura performance ... enjoyable and worldly.
"â
New York Times Book Review

In this novel of manners and mind expansion, a writer sets out for Ecuador's jungle in search of a rare hallucinogenic drg and the cure for his writer's block.
ISBN
-13: 978-0-618-71196-3 /
ISBN
-10: 0-618-71196-1

Hotel Honolulu
“Extravagantly entertaining.”
âNew York Times

In this wickedly satiric novel, a down-on-his-luck writer escapes to Waikiki and finds himself managing a low-rent hotel.
ISBN
-13: 978-0-618-21915-5 /
ISBN
-10: 0-618-21915-3

Kowloon Tong
: A Novel of Hong Kong

“A cleverly, tightly constructed, fast-paced book.
"
âNew York Times Book Review

One of many caught up in the hand-over of Hong Kong from Britain to China, Neville “Bunt” Mullard is forced finally to make decisions that matter.
ISBN
-13: 978-0-395-90141-0 /
ISBN
-10: 0-395-90141-3

The Mosquito Coast
“A work of fiendish energy and ingenuity.
"
âNewsweek

In this magnificent novel, the paranoid, brilliant, and self-destructive Allie Fox takes his family to live in the Honduran jungle, determined to build a better civilization.
ISBN
-13: 978-0-618-65896-1 /
ISBN
-10: 0-618-65896-3

My Other Life
“A seriously funny novel.
”
âTime

This wry, worldly, and deeply moving novel spans almost thirty years in the life of a fictional “Paul Theroux,” who moves through Africa and between continents.
ISBN
-13: 978-0-395-87752-4 /
ISBN
-10: 0-395-87752-0

The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro and Other Stories
"
Masterly.
"
âVogue

The intensely erotic story of an unlikely love affair leads Theroux's collection of compelling tales of memory and desire,
ISBN
-13: 978-0-618-48533-8 /
ISBN
-10: 0-618-48533-3

AND DON'T MISS THEROUX'S ACCLAIMED NONFICTION: