Blinding Light by Paul Theroux Read Free Book Online Page B

was a capable driver, but Steadman disliked being driven except by Ava, who was efficient at the wheel, using her bossy doctor’s manner in traffic, but she drove with caution, never speeded. The other passengers in the van were seated in silence, their heads down. Steadman had assumed, based on the high price they had paid up front, that he and Ava would be alone. But this was like a group trip for budget travelers.
    Steadman reminded himself that he would not have been able to accomplish this drug tour single-handedly. They needed Nestor, and Hernán too, probably, for though he had been in Ecuador before, this was different. Even if Steadman had managed to find the village in the jungle, he would not have been able to negotiate the drug ceremony with the Secoya. He needed Nestor as a guide and go-between, but he also resented needing him.
    Outside the city, the road widened into what seemed a highway, and after a short distance—though it was impossible to be precise in this darkness—it dropped down to a narrower, winding road. The van swayed on the curves; Hernán drove with his forearms on the wheel. In the deeper valleys it seemed that dawn was receding and night falling all over again. All that was visible was a short stretch of road ahead, rising and falling in the lights of the van, and at the margin of the road deep green sides of a forested valley.
    â€œLike that road in Uganda,” came the bolt-cutter voice from the back, faintly English. “On the way to that gorilla place.”
    â€œBhutan,” a man said with more certainty. “Bhutan’s got roads like this. To the monastery. That burned down after we saw it.”
    â€œThis could be Yucatán,” a woman said.
    â€œYou been to Uganda?” Nestor called out. “Supposed to be awesome.”
    There were murmurs from the back, though Steadman was thinking that “awesome” was just the sort of word such an Ecuadorian hustler would know. A woman, not the harsh-voiced one, said, “Africa’s finished. We’re never going back. Some people feel sorry for the Africans and their AIDS epidemic, but I despise them for it. I hate them for being so irresponsible.”
    Beside him, Ava took a deep breath and released it as a sigh, a slow, barely audible whinny of exasperation.
    â€œBillions of stars,” a man said.
    And ghostly moon-glow patches on the dark earth where there were thick, squat huts, with stones weighting the corrugated squares of their rusted roofs. To the south, the eerie brightness of a snowcapped peak, like a bed sheet crumpled on a black rock, just a glimpse that came and went. Strands of clouds, like torn spider webs, fluttered up from the snowfield and then were crushed by the darkness that poured from the depth of the valley.
    â€œDark matter,” the softer-voiced woman said.
    â€œI don’t get that,” the other woman said.
    â€œParticles,” a man said. “It’s dark energy. What do you think is holding the universe together? Not the stars, that’s for sure. They are, like, this tiny proportion of what’s out there.”
    â€œWhat else is out there?”
    â€œDark energy. Quintessence. Gravity mass. It’s a kind of invisible cosmic broth that keeps galaxies in place,” the woman said. She was eating trail mix, stirring it in a bag with her fingers and chewing loudly as she spoke. “Or maybe not particles but overfolded space-time, like a new dimension. A whole different plane of being.”
    â€œYou guys must be teachers,” Nestor said.
    â€œNo teachers here,” a man said in a weary voice.
    â€œHow many kilometers to Papallacta?” a new voice piped up in the darkness. Because the man was agitated, his German accent was more distinct than if he’d been calm, and he chewed it and turned it into a gargling speech impediment.
    Nestor laughed and muttered something to Hernán, and at that moment a cell phone