He was considering this — I am a new man — when a stranger knelt next to him. But perhaps not a stranger. There was something familiar in the way the man crouched, the odors of his skin and stale hair. Steadman recognized people from a particular memory of what they ate, as though the residue of their diet seeped through their skin. This man represented familiar food, and the unseasonal warmth of this November day offered an exhalation of his sour shirt.
“I know you,” the man said, and his accent gave the rest away.
“Manfred.”
“And I know your secret.”
Steadman spoke again and then he was noticed, for he was addressing empty space. Manfred had crept away. Steadman reached out with a grasping, inquiring hand and said, “Wait.”
“Did you lose something?” an urgent voice behind him said.
“No, I’m fine.”
But he had to admit — and it was a revelation — that though he felt anything but impaired, he had a blind spot, and Manfred had vanished there, dissolving into that crack. Concentrating hard, Steadman was deaf to the press conference: until that moment he had forgotten the existence of Manfred.
In the taxi on the way to the airport, Ava said, “Did I miss anything?”
He said no. He did not mention Manfred — how to explain? Ava had never liked the man, and from his tone — Steadman kept replaying And I know your secret — Steadman could not discern the man’s motive, if indeed he had a deeper one than simply teasing him.
Steadman felt low and limited. The existence of a blind spot bothered him, like a previously undiagnosed ailment. And he had expected more from his visit to the White House. It was theater, with a large cast, on a vast stage, but his role was undemanding: just show up and be polite. Yet for him, singled out for being blind, it meant everything, a kind of dramatic debut. In his mind the president kept saying, I want to say a special word of thanks to my good friend and a great American writer, Slade Steadman— and as he rose, leaning on his cane, his dark glasses flashing, the loud applause that declared, as it continued with a sustained humility and praise, We see you. We approve. You are brave.
Yet he was discontented — not undermined but made insecure by a wisp of shadow, a doubter, as though at the periphery of all this praise he had sensed a spider descending on a long thin thread of its own gray spittle, preparing to spin a web.
3
HE HAD GONE to Washington to step out of his seclusion and to present himself to the world as a blind man. The president himself had vouched for him. Yet his keenest memory of the White House visit, the detail that he went on suffering, was not the president’s praise but rather the needling accusation breathed into his ear by Manfred. And I know your secret. The statement grew more sinister in implication as the weeks passed. The heavily accented voice made the words clumsier, more hurtful, like a cut from someone using a crude knife, requiring the idiot force of a vicious thrust because the thing was so blunt. And those few words were all Steadman had. He wanted more. He needed to deal with the man.
He had no help at home anymore. As if out of spite, Ava opted for odd hours at the hospital. That was the trouble with doctors: at their most selfish they could claim to be unselfish. I have to do this! My patients need me! I have someone in labor! Get out of my way! Dr. Ava Katsina, anyway.
“I’m going,” she’d say, and without another word would leave the house, trailing the settling dust of self-satisfied finality, as in the days before Ecuador when they had made the decision to split up. And here they were, facing another winter on the island.
“I need you as much as ever,” he said.
“Who will be my pouting chatelaine?” she mocked. “Listen, there are really sick people at the hospital, who need me much more.”
Her bossy doctor’s voice was her most clinical and severe, always an order, like Take your medicine. No backtalk. Where was the compliant, agreeable sensualist of the past year who had aided him in his book? Here she was in baggy green scrubs, back at work, hoisting a sightless squalling baby that was dripping with womb slime.
With her help he could easily have corrected his book, she reading the galley proofs while he lay drugged and insightful, suggesting improvements or deletions. But he was alone and undrugged, reduced to the menial condition of sober sighted scrutinizer, certain that he was missing something as he read, mumbling, his fretful finger poking at the lines.
And yet in the task of publishing — all the minutiae of preparation, the discussions with Axelrod, weeks of it, choosing the jacket, planning the book tour — none of it distracted him from what had been hissed at him in the Rose Garden, Manfred Steiger reappearing from nowhere like an ugly-faced gnome in a folktale, accusing him of treachery, as if preparing to exact his price.
This memory nagged at Steadman. Over the year he had worked on his book, he had not thought once of Manfred, nor even remembered the man’s association with the drug. He recalled the letter he had received; he was glad he had torn it up. Then, reentering the world, he had been confronted by Manfred, as though the man had been lying in wait all that time: the only other person in the world who had shared that secret experience of datura in the Ecuadorian rain forest. What did he want?
Exasperated, needing relief at the end of the day, Steadman drank a measure of the drug, blinding himself so he could stare white-eyed at Ava when she got home, scowl at her and say, “You’re mad at me. You’ve had an awful day. You’ve been operating on someone. Eight hours of invasive surgery! Massive trauma to the brain! Insult to the cerebral cortex!”
“You’re thinking of yourself and that stuff,” she said — he was still holding the cup he had emptied of the datura. “I was suturing a scalp wound.”
“I can smell the blood.”
“No blood on me.”
“Buzzing molecules of blood.”
He grumbled and accused her this way because he did not know how to tell her about Manfred. He guessed that she would say, “Your friend. Your fault.”
Manfred had made no secret of being a writer. He had told Steadman he was a journalist. But so what? Steadman assumed he was based in the United States, maybe in Washington, but more likely in New York City. Steadman wanted to talk to him, find out his intentions. And I know your secret. Why had he put it that way? Sometimes it sounded coy, at other times a threat. Steadman was not afraid; he was insulted at being blindsided by the whisper. He imagined his phone call, or even better his confronting Manfred again, saying, as he had wanted to say in the Rose Garden, “Obviously it’s not a secret!”
He had called the White House press office and announced who he was. The woman at the other end did not recognize his name. At an earlier time he would have said, “Trespassing? That book, that TV show, that movie? I’m the person responsible.”
But he said, “I was a guest at the White House dinner a month ago.” “Do you know how many dinners we have?” was her putdown.
Who hired these people? But he knew: grovelers and climbers who dealt with rich meddling businessmen demanding personal repayment for their campaign contributions.
“The dinner for the chancellor of Germany,” Steadman said. “I doubt you were invited.”
He had silenced her, though he heard what sounded like steam coming out of her ears.
“I need the address of a reporter who was at the press conference.” “We can’t disclose personal information.”