This blind man, an old friend of my wife’s, he was on his way to spend the night. His wife had died. So he was visiting the dead wife’s relatives in Connecticut. He called my wife from his in-laws’. Arrangements were made. He would come by train, a five-hour trip, and my wife would meet him at the station. She hadn’t seen him since she worked for him one summer in Seattle ten years ago. But she and the blind man had kept in touch. They made tapes and mailed them back and forth. I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me. My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing eye dogs. Blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to.
That summer in Seattle she needed
a job. She didn’t have any money. The man she was going to marry at the end of
the summer was in officers’ training school. He didn’t have any money, either.
But she was in love with the guy, and he was in love with her, etc. She’d seen
something in the paper: HELP WANTED – Reading to Blind Man, and a telephone
number. She phoned and went over, was hired on the spot. She’d worked with this
blind man all summer. she read stuff to him, case studies, reports, that sort
of thing. She helped him organise his little office in the country
social-service department. They’d become good friends, my wife and the blind
man. How do I know these things? She told me. And she told me something else.
On her last day in the office, the blind man asked if he could touch her face.
She agreed to this. she told me he touched his fingers to every part of her
face, her nose – even her neck! She never forgot it. She even tried to write a
poem or two every year, usually after something really important had happened
to her.
When we first started going out
together, she showed me the poem. In the poem, she recalled his fingers and the
way they had moved around over her face. In the poem, she talked about what she
had felt at the time, about what went through her mind when the blind man
touched her nose and lips. I can remember I didn’t think much of the poem. Of
course, I didn’t tell her that. Maybe I just don’t understand poetry. I admit
it’s not the first thing I reach for when I pick up something to read.
Anyway, this man who’d first
enjoyed her favours, the officer-to-be, he’d been her childhood sweetheart. So
okay. I’m saying that at the end of summer she let the blind man run his hands
over her face, said goodbye to him, married her childhood etc, who was now a
commissioned officer, and she moved away from Seattle. But they’d kept in
touch, she and the blind man. She made the first contact after a year or so.
She called him up one night from an Air Force base in Alabama. She wanted to
talk. They talked. He asked her to send him a tape and tell him about her life.
She did this. She sent the tape. On the tape, she told the blind man about her
husband and about their life together in the military. She told the blind man
she loved her husband but she didn’t like it where they lived and she didn’t
like it that he was part of the military-industrial thing. She told the blind
man she’d written a poem and he was in it. She told him that she was writing a
poem about what it was like to be an Air Force officer’s wife. The poem wasn’t
finished yet. She was still writing it. The blind man made a tape. He sent her
the tape. She made a tape. This went on for years. My wife’s officer was posted
to on base and then another. She sent tapes from Moody AFB, McGuire, McConnell,
and finally Travis, near Sacramento, where one night she got to feeling lonely
and cut off from people she kept losing in that moving-around life. She got to
feeling she couldn’t go it another step. She went in and swallowed all the
pills and capsules in then medicine chest and washed them down with a bottle of
gin. Then she got into a hot bath and passed out.
But instead of dying, she got
sick. She threw up. Her officer – Why should he have a name? He was the
childhood sweetheart, and what more does he want? – came home from somewhere,
found her, and called the ambulance. In time, she put it all on tape and sent
the tape to the blind man. Over the years, she put all kinds of stuff on the
tapes and sent the tapes off lickety-split. Next to writing a poem every year,
I think it was her chief means of recreation. On one tape, she told the blind
man she’d decided to live away from her officer for a time. On another tape, she
told him about her divorce. She and I began going out, and of course she told
her blind man about it. She told him every-thing, or so it seemed to me. Once
she asked me if I’d like to hear the latest tape from the blind man. This was a
year ago. I was on the tape, she said. So I said okay, I’d listen to it. I got
us drinks and we settled down in the living room. We made ready to listen.
First she inserted the tape into the player and adjusted a couple of dials. The
she pushed a lever. The tape squeaked and someone began to talk in this loud
voice. She lowered the volume. After a few minutes of harmless chitchat, I
heard my own name in the mouth of this stranger, this blind man I didn’t even
know! And then this: ‘From all you’ve said about him, I can only conclude – ’
But we were interrupted, a knock at the door, something, and we didn’t ever get
back to the tape. Maybe it was just as well. I’d heard all I wanted to.
Now this same blind man was
coming to sleep in my house.
‘Maybe I could take him bowling,’
I said to my wife. She was at the draining board doing scalloped potatoes. She
put down the knife she was using and turned around.
‘If you love me,’ she said ‘you
can do this for me. If you don’t love me, okay. But if you had a friend, any
friend, and the friend came to visit. I’d make him feel comfortable.’ She wiped
her hands with the dish towel.
‘I don’t have any friends,’ she
said. ‘Period. Besides,’ she said, ‘goddamn it, his wife’s just died! Don’t you
understand that? The man’s lost his wife!’
I didn’t answer. She’d told me a
little about the blind man’s wife. Her name was Beulah. Beulah! That’s a name
for a coloured woman.
‘Was his wife a negro?’ I asked.
‘Are you crazy?’ my wife said.
‘Have you just flipped or something?’
She picked up a potato. I saw it
hit the floor, then roll under the stove.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ she
said. ‘Are you drunk?’
‘I’m just asking,’ I said.
Right then my wife filled me in
with more detail than I cared to know. I made a drink and sat at the kitchen
table to listen. Pieces of the story began to fall into place.
Beulah had gone to work for the
blind man the summer after my wife had stopped working for him. Pretty soon
Beulah and the blind man had themselves a church wedding. It was a little
wedding – who’d want to go to such a wedding in the first place? – Just the two
of them, plus the minister and the minister’s wife. But it was a church wedding
just the same. It was what Beulah had wanted, he’d said. Bu even then Beulah
must have been carrying cancer in her glands. After they has been inseparable
for eight years – my wife’s word, ‘inseparable’ – Beulah’s health went into a
rapid decline. She died in a Seattle hospital room, the blind man sitting
beside the bed and holding on to her hand. They’d married, lived and worked
together, slept together – had sex, sure – and then the blind man had to bury
her. All this without his having ever seen what the goddamned woman looked
like. It was beyond my understanding. Hearing this, I felt sorry for the blind
man for a little bit. And then I found myself thinking what a pitiful life this
woman must have led. Imagine a woman who could never see herself as she was
seen in the eyes of her loved one. A woman who could go on day after day and
never receive the smallest compliment from her beloved. A woman whose husband
could never read the expression on her face, be it misery or something better.
Someone who could wear makeup or not – what difference to him? She could, if
she wanted, wear green eye-shadow around one eye, a straight pin in her
nostril, yellow slacks and purple shoes, no matter. And then to slip off into
the death, the blind man’s hand on her hand, his blind eyes streaming tears –
I’m imagining it now – her last thought maybe this: that he never even knew
what she looked like, and she on an express to the grave. Robert was left with
a small insurance policy and half of a twenty-peso Mexican coin. The other half
went into the the box with her. Pathetic.
So when the time rolled around,
my wife went to the depot to pick him up. With nothing to do but wait – sure, I
blamed him for that – I was having a drink and watching the TV when I heard a
car pull up into the drive. I got up from the soda with my drink and went to
the window to have a look.
I saw my wife laughing as she
packed the car. I saw her get out of the car and shut the door. She was still
wearing a smile. Just amazing. She went around to the other side of the car to
where the blind man was already starting to get out. This blind man, feature
this, he was wearing a full beard! A beard on a blind man! Too much, I say. The
blind man reached into the back seat and dragged out a suitcase. My wife took his
arm, shut the car door, and, talking all the way, moved him down the drive and
then up the steps to the front porch. I turned off the TV. I finished my drink,
rinsed the glass, dried my hands. Then I went to the door.
My wife said, ‘I want you to meet
Robert. Robert, this is my husband. I’ve told you all about him.’ She was
beaming. She had this blind man by his coat sleeve.
The blind man let of of his
suitcase and up came his hand.
I took it. He squeezed it hard,
held my hand, and then he let go.
‘I feel like we’ve already met,’
he boomed.
‘Likewise,’ I said. I didn’t know
what else to say. Then I said, ‘Welcome. I’ve heard a lot about you. We began
to move then, a little group, from the porch into the living room, my wife
guiding him by the arm. The blind man was carrying his suitcase in his other
hand. My wife said things like, ‘To your left here, Robert. That’s it. Sit down
right here. The is the sofa. We just bought this sofa two week ago.’
I started to say something about
the old sofa. I;d liked that old sofa. But I didn’t say anything. Then I wanted
to say something else, small-talk, about the scenic ride along the Hudson. How
going to New York, you should sit on the right-hand side of the train, and
coming from New York, on the left-hand side.
‘Did you have a good train ride?’
I said. ‘Which side of the train did you sit on, by the way?’
‘What a question, which side?’ my
wife said. ‘What’s it matter which side?’ she said.
‘I just asked,’ I said.
‘Right side,’ the blind man said.
‘I hadn’t been on a train in nearly 40 years. Not since I was a kid. With my
folks. That’s been a long time. I’d nearly forgotten the sensation. I have
winter in my beard now,’ he said. ‘So I’ve been told, anyway. Do I look
distinguished, my dear?’ the blind man said to my wife.
‘You look distinguished, Robert,’
she said. ‘Robert,’ she said. ‘Robert, it’s just so good to see you.’
My wife finally took her eyes off
the blind man and looked at me. I had the feeing she didn’t like what she saw.
I shrugged.
I’ve never met, or personally
known, anyone who was blind. This blind man was in his late forties, a
heavy-set, balding man with stopped shoulders, as if he carried a great weight
there. He wore brown slacks, brown shoes, a light-brown shirt, a tie, a sports
coat. Spiffy. He also had this full beard. But he didn’t use a cane and he
didn’t wear dark glasses. I’d always thought dark glasses were a must for the
blind. Fact was, I wished he had a pair. At first glance, his eyes looked like
anyone else’s eyes. But if you looked close, there was something different
about them. Too much white in the iris, for one thing, and the pupils seemed to
move around in the sockets without his knowing it or being able to stop it.
Creepy. As I started at his face, I saw the left pupil turn in towards his nose
while the other made an effort to keep in one place. But it was only an effort,
for that eye was on the roam without it or wanting it to be.
I said, ‘Let me get you a drink.
What’s your pleasure? We have a little of everything. It’s one of our pastimes.’
‘Bub, I’m a Scotch man myself,’
he said fast enough in this big voice.
‘Right,’ I said. Bub! ‘Sure you
are. I knew it.’
He let his fingers touch his
suitcase, which was sitting alongside the sofa. He was taking his bearings. I
didn’t blame him for that.
‘I’ll move that up to your room,’
my wife said.
‘No, that’s fine,’ the blind man
said loudly. ‘It can go up when I go up.’
‘A little water with the Scotch?’
I said.
‘Very little,’ he said.
‘I knew it,’ I said.
He said, ‘Just a tad. The Irish
actor, Barry Fitzgerald? I’m like that fellow. When I drink water, Fitzgerald
said, I drink water. When I drink whiskey, I drink whiskey.’My wife laughed.
The blind man brought his hand up under his beard. He lifted his beard slowly
and let it drop.
I did the drinks, three big
glasses of Scotch with a splash of water in each. Then we made ourselves
comfortable and talked about Robert’s travels. First the long flight from the
West Coast to Connecticut, we covered that. Then from Connecticut up here by
train. We had another drink concerning that leg of the trip.
I remembered having read
somewhere that the blind didn’t smoke because, as speculation had it, they
couldn’t see the smoke they exhaled. I thought I knew that much and that much
only about blind people. But this blind man smoked his cigarette down to the
nubbin and then lit another one. This blind man filled the ashtray and my wife
emptied it.
When we sat down to the table for
dinner, we had another drink. My wife heaped Robert’s plate with cube steak,
scalloped potatoes, green beans. I buttered him up two slices of bread. I said,
‘Here’s the bread and butter for you.’ I swallowed some of my drink. ‘Now let
us pray,’ I said, and the blind man lowered his head. My wife looked at me, her
mouth agape. ‘Pray the phone won’t ring and the food doesn’t get cold,’ I said.
We dug in. We ate everything
there was to eat on the table. We ate like there was no tomorrow. We didn’t
talk. We ate. We scarfed. We grazed that table. We were into serious eating.
The blind man had right away located his foods, he knew just where everything
was on his plate. I watched him with admiration as he used his knife and fork
on the meat. He’d cut two pieces of meat, fork the meat into his mouth, and then
go all out for the scalloped potatoes, the beans next, and then he’d tear off a
hunk of buttered bread and eat that. He’d follow this up with a big drink of
milk. It didn’t seem to bother him to use his fingers once in a while, either.
We finished everything, including
half a strawberry pie.
For a few moments, we sat as if
stunned. Sweat beaded on our faces. Finally we got up from the table and left
the dirty plates. We didn’t look back. We took ourselves into the living room
and sank into our places again. Robert and my wife sat on the sofa. I took the
big chair. We had us two or three more drinks while they talked about the major
things that had come to pass for them in the past ten years. For the most part,
I just listened. Now and then I joined in. I didn’t want him to think I’d left
the room, and I didn’t want her to think I was feeling left out. They talked of
things that had happened to them – to them! – these past ten years. I waited in
vain to hear my name on my wife’s sweet lips: ‘And then my dear husband came
into my life’ – something like that. But I heard nothing of the sort. More talk
of Robert. Robert had done a little of everything, it seemed, a regular blind
jack-of-all-trades. But most recently he and his wife had had an Amway
distributorship, from which, I gathered, they’d earned their living, such as it
was. The blind man was also a ham radio operator. He talked in his loud voice
about conversations he’d had with fellow operators in Guam, in the Philippines,
in Alaska, and even in Tahiti. He said he’d have a lot of friends there if he
ever wanted to go to visit those places. From time to time, he’d turn his blind
face towards me, put his hand under his beard, ask me something. How long had I
been in my present position? (Three years.) Did I like my work? (I didn’t.) Was
I going to stay with it? (What were the options?) Finally, when I thought he
was beginning to run down, I got up and turned on the TV.
My wife looked at me with
irritation. She was heading toward a boil. Then she looked at the blind man and
said, ‘Robert, do you have a TV?’
The blind man said, ‘My dear, I
have two TVs. I have a colour set and a black-and-white thing, an old relic.
It’s funny, but if I turn the TV on, and I’m always turning it on, I turn on
the colour set. It’s funny, don’t you think?’
I didn’t know what to say to
that. I had absolutely nothing to say to that. No opinion. So I watched the
news programme and tried to listen to what the announcer was saying.
‘This is a colour TV,’ the blind
man said. ‘Don’t ask me how, but I can tell.’
‘We traded up a while ago,’ I
said.
The blind man had another taste
of his drink. He lifted his beard, sniffed it, and let it fall. He leaned
forward on the sofa. He positioned his ashtray on the coffee table, and then
put the lighter to his cigarette. He leaned back on the sofa and crossed his
legs at the ankles.
My wife covered her mouth, and
then she yawned. She stretched. She said, ‘I think I’ll go upstairs and put on
my robe. I think I’ll change into something else. Robert, you make yourself
comfortable,’ she said.
‘I’m comfortable,’ the blind man
said.
‘I want you to feel comfortable
in this house,’ she said.
‘I am comfortable,’ the blind man
said.
After she’d left the room, he and
I listened to the weather report and then to the sports roundup. By that time,
she’d been gone so long I didn’t know if she was going to come back. I thought
she might have gone to bed. I wished she’d come back downstairs. I didn’t want
to be left alone with a blind man. I asked him if he wanted another drink, and
he said sure. Then I asked if he wanted to smoke some dope with me. I said I’d
just rolled a number. I hadn’t, but I planned to do so in about two shakes.
‘I’ll try some with you,’ he
said.
‘Damn right,’ I said. ‘That’s the
stuff.’
I got our drinks and sat down on
the sofa with him. Then I rolled us two fat numbers. I lit one and passed it. I
brought it to his fingers. He took it and inhaled.
‘Hold it as long as you can,’ I
said. I could tell he didn’t know the first thing.
My wife came back downstairs
wearing her pink robe and her pink slippers.
‘What do I smell?’ she said.
‘We thought we’d have us some
cannabis,’ I said.
My wife gave me a savage look.
Then she looked at the blind man and said, ‘Robert, I didn’t know you smoked.’
He said, ‘I do now, my dear.
There’s a first time for everything. But I don’t feel anything yet.’
‘This stuff is pretty mellow,’ I
said. ‘This stuff is mild. It’s dope you can reason with,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t
mess you up.’
‘Not much it doesn’t, bub,’ he
said, and laughed.
My wife sat on the sofa between
the blind man and me. I passed her the number. She took it and toked and then
passed it back to me. ‘Which way is this going?’ she said. Then she said, ‘I
shouldn’t be smoking this. I can hardly keep my eyes open as it is. That dinner
did me in. I shouldn’t have eaten so much.’
‘It was the strawberry pie,’ the
blind man said. ‘That’s what did it,’ he said, and he laughed his big laugh.
Then he shook his head.
‘There’s more strawberry pie,’ I
said.
‘Do you want some more, Robert?’
my wife said.
‘Maybe in a little while,’ he
said.
We gave our attention to the TV.
My wife yawned again. She said, ‘Your bed is made up when you feel like going
to bed, Robert. I know you must have had a long day. When you’re ready to go to
bed, say so.’ She pulled his arm. ‘Robert?’
He came to and said, ‘I’ve had a
real nice time. This beats tapes, doesn’t it?’
I said ‘Coming at you,’ and I put
the number between his fingers. He inhaled, held the smoke, and then let it go.
It was like he’d been doing it since he was nine years old.
‘Thanks, bub,’ he said. ‘But I
think this is all for me. I think I’m beginning to feel it,’ he said. He held
the burning roach out for my wife.
‘Same here,’ she said. ‘Ditto.
Me, too.’ ‘She took the roach and passed it to me. ‘I may just sit here for a
while between you two guys with my eyes closed. But don’t let me bother you,
okay? Either one of you. If it bothers you, say so. Otherwise, I may just sit
here with my eyes closed until you’re ready to go to bed,’ she said. ‘Your
bed’s made up, Robert, when you’re ready. It’s right next to our room at the
top of the stairs. We’ll show you up when you’re ready. You wake me up now, you
guys, if I fall asleep.’ She said that and then closed her eyes and went to
sleep.
The news programme ended. I got
up and changed the channel. I sat back down on the sofa. I wished my wife
hadn’t pooped out. Her head lay across the back of the sofa, her mouth open.
She’d turned so that her rope had slipped away from her legs, exposing a juicy
thigh. I reached to draw her robe back over her, and it was then I glanced at
the blind man. What the hell! I flipped the robe open again.
‘You say when you want some
strawberry pie,’ I said.
‘I will,’ he said.
I said, ‘Are you tired? Do you
want me to take you up to your bed? You ready to hit the hay?’
‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘No, I’ll
stay up with you, bub. If that’s all right. I’ll stay up until you’re ready to
turn in. We haven’t had a chance to talk. Know what I mean? I feel like me and
her monopolized the evening.’ He lifted his beard and let it fall. He picked up
his cigarettes and his lighter.
‘That’s all right,’ I said. Then
I said, ‘I’m glad for the company.’
And I guess I was. Every night I
smoked dope and stayed up as long as I could before I fell asleep. My wife and
I hardly ever went to bed at the same time. When I did go to sleep, I had these
dreams. Sometimes I’d wake up from one of them, my heart going crazy.
Something about the Church and
the Middle Ages was on the TV. Not your run-of-the-mill TV fare. I wanted to
watch something else. I turned back to the other channels. But there was
nothing on them, either. So I turned back to the first channel and apologized.
‘Bub, it’s all right,’ the blind
man said. ‘It’s fine with me. Whatever you want to watch is okay. I’m always
learning something. Learning never ends. It won’t hurt me to learn something
tonight. I got ears,’ he said.
We didn’t say anything for a
time. He was leaning forward with his head turned at me, his right ear aimed in
the direction of the set, very disconcerting. Now and then his eyelids drooped
and then they snapped open again. Now and then he put his fingers into his
beard and tugged, like he was thinking about something he was hearing on the
television.
On the screen, a group of men
wearing cowls was being set upon by men dressed in skeleton costumes and men
dressed as devils. The men dressed as devils wore devil masks, horns, and long
tails. This pageant was part of a procession. The Englishman said it took place
in Spain once a year. I tried to explain to the blind man what was happening.
‘Skeletons,’ he said. ‘I know
about skeletons,’ he said, and he nodded.
The TV showed this one cathedral.
Then there was a long, slow look at another one. Finally, the pictures switched
to the famous one in Paris, with its flying buttresses and its spires reaching
up to the clouds. The camera pulled away to show the whole of the cathedral
rising above the skyline.
There were times when the
Englishman who was telling the thing would shut up, would simply let the camera
move around over the cathedrals. Or else the camera would tour the countryside,
men in fields walking behind oxen. I waited as long as I could. Then I felt I
had to say something. I said, ‘They’re showing the outside of this cathedral
now. Gargoyles. Little statues carved to look like monsters. Now I guess
they’re in Italy. Yeah, they’re in Italy. There’s paintings on the walls of
this one church.’
‘Are those fresco paintings,
bub?’ he asked, and he sipped from his drink.
I reached for my glass. But it
was empty. I tried to remember what I could remember. ‘You’re asking me what
are frescos?’ I said. ‘That’s a good question. I don’t know.’
The camera moved to a cathedral
outside Lisbon. The differences in the Portuguese cathedral compared with the
French and Italian were not that great. But they were there. Mostly the
interior stuff. Then something occurred to me, and I said, ‘Something has
occurred to me. Do you have an idea what a cathedral is? What they look like,
that is? Do you follow me? If somebody says cathedral to you, do you have any
notion what they’re talking about? Do you know the difference between that and
a Baptist church, say?’
He let the smoke dribble from his
mouth. ‘I know they took hundreds of workers fifty or a hundred years to
build,’ he said. ‘I just heard the man say that, of course. I know generations
of the same families worked on a cathedral. I heard him say that, too. The men
who began their life’s work on them, they never lived to see the completion of
their work. In that wise, bub, they’re no different from the rest of us,
right?’ He laughed. Then his eyelids drooped again. His head nodded. He seemed
to be snoozing. Maybe he was imagining himself in Portugal. The TV was showing
another cathedral now. This one was in Germany. The Englishman’s voice droned
on. ‘Cathedrals,’ the blind man said. He sat up and rolled his head back and
forth. ‘If you want the truth, bub, that’s about all I know. What I just said.
What I heard him say. But maybe you could describe one to me? I wish you’d do
it. I’d like that. If you want to know, I really don’t have good idea.’
I stared hard at the shot of the
cathedral on the TV. How could I begin to describe it? But say my life depended
on it. Say my life being threatened by an insane guy who said I had to do it or
else.
I stared some more at the
cathedral before the picture flipped off into the countryside. There was no
use. I turned to the blind man and said, ‘to begin with, they’re very tall.’ I
was looking around the room ‘They reach way up. Up and up. Towards the sky.
They’re so big, some of them, they have to have these supports. To help hold
them up, so to speak. These supports are called buttresses. They remind me of
viaducts, for some reason. But maybe you don’t know either? Sometimes the
cathedrals have devils and such carved into the front. Sometimes lords and
ladies. Don’t ask me why this is,’ I said.
He was nodding. The whole upper
part of his body seemed to be moving back and forth.
‘I’m not doing so good, am I?’ I
said.
He stopped nodding and leaned
forward on the edge of the sofa. As he listened to me, he was running his
fingers through his beard. I wasn’t getting through to him, I could see that.
But he waited for me go on just the same. He nodded, like he was trying to
encourage me. I tried to think what else to say. ‘They’re really big,’ I said.
‘They’re massive. They’re built of stone. Marble, too, sometimes. In those
olden days, when they built cathedrals, men wanted to be close to God. In those
olden days, God was an important part of everyone’s life. You could tell this
from their cathedral-building. I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but it looks like that’s
the best I can do for you. I’m just no good at it.’
‘That’s all right, bub,’ the
blind man said. ‘Hey, listen. I hope you don’t mind me asking you. Can I ask
you something? Let me ask you a simple question, yes or no. I’m just curious
and there’s no offence. You’re my host. But let me ask if you are in any way
religious? You don’t mind me asking?’
I shook my head. He couldn’t see
that, though. A wink is the same as a nod to a blind man. ‘I guess I don’t
believe in it. In anything. Sometimes it’s hard. You know what I’m saying?’
Sure, I do,’ he said.
‘Right,’ I said.
The Englishman was still holding
forth. My wife sighed in her sleep. She drew a long breath and went on with her
sleeping.
‘You’ll have to forgive me,’ I
said. ‘But I can’t tell you what a cathedral looks like. It just isn’t in me to
do it. I can’t do any more than I’ve done.’
The blind man sat very still, his
head down, as he listened to me.
I said, ‘The truth is, cathedrals
don’t mean anything special to me. Nothing. Cathedrals. They’re something to
look at on late-night TV. That’s all they are.’
It was then that the blind man
cleared his throat. He brought something up. He took a handkerchief from his
back pocket. Then he said, ‘I get it, bub. It’s okay. It happens. Don’t worry
about it,’ he said. ‘Hey, listen to me. Will you do me a favour? I got an idea.
Why don’t you find us some heavy paper? And a pen. We’ll do something. We’ll
draw one together. Get us a pen and some heavy paper. Go on, bub, get the
stuff,’ he said.
So I went upstairs. My legs felt
like they didn’t have any strength in them. They felt like they did after I’d
done some running. In my wife’s room, I looked around. I found some ballpoints
in a little basket on her table. And then I tried to think where to look for
the kind of paper he was talking about.
Downstairs, in the kitchen, I
found a shopping bag with onion skins in the bottom of the bag. I emptied the
bag and shook it. I brought it into the living room and sat down with it near
his legs. I moved some things, smoothed the wrinkles from the bag, spread it
out on the coffee table.
The blind man got down from the
sofa and sat next to me on the carpet.
He ran his fingers over the
paper. He went up and down the sides of the paper. The edges, even the edges.
He fingered the corners.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right,
let’s do her.’
He found my hand, the hand with
the pen. He closed his hand over my hand. ‘Go ahead, bub, draw,’ he said.
‘Draw. You’ll see. I’ll follow along with you. It’ll be okay. Just begin now
like I’m telling you. You’ll see. Draw,’ the blind man said.
So I began. First I drew a box
that looked like a house. It could have the house I lived in. Then I put a roof
on it. At either end of the roof I drew spires. Crazy.
‘Swell,’ he said. ‘Terrific.
You’re doing fine,’ he said. ‘Never thought anything like this could happen in
your lifetime, did you, bub? Well, it’s a strange life, we all know that. Go on
now. Keep it up.’
I put in windows with arches. I
drew flying buttresses. I hung great doors, I couldn’t stop. The TV station
went off the air. I put down the pen and closed and opened my fingers. The
blind man felt around over the paper. He moved the tips of his fingers over the
paper, all over what I had drawn, and he nodded.
‘Doing fine,’ the blind man said.
I took up the pen again, and he
found my hand. I kept at it. I’m no artist. But I kept drawing just the same.
My wife opened up her eyes and
gazed at us. She sat up on the sofa, her robe hanging open. She said, ‘What are
you doing? Tell me, I want to know.’
I didn’t answer her.
The blind man said, ‘We’re
drawing a cathedral. Me and him are working on it. Press hard,’ he said to me.
‘That’s right. That’s good,’ he said. ‘Sure. You got it, bub. I can tell. You
didn’t think you could. But you can, can’t you? You’re cooking with gas now.
You know what I’m saying? We’re going to really have us something here in a
minute. How’s the old arm?’ he said. ‘Put some people in there now. What’s a
cathedral without people?’
My wife said, ‘What’s going on?
Robert, what are you doing? What’s going on?
‘It’s all right,’ he said to her.
‘Close your eyes now,’ the blind man said to me.
I did it. I closed them just like
he said.
‘Are they closed?’ he said.
‘Don’t fudge.’
‘They’re closed,’ I said.
‘Keep them that way,’ he said. He
said, ‘Don’t stop now. Draw.’
So we kept on with it. His
fingers rode my fingers as my hand went over the paper. It was like nothing
else in my life up to now.
Then he said, ‘I think that’s it.
I think you got it,’ he said. ‘Take a look. What do you think?’
But I had my eyes closed. I
thought I’d keep them that way for a little longer. I thought it something I ought
to do.
‘Well?’ he said. ‘Are you
looking?’
My eyes were still closed. I was
in my house. I knew that. But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything.
‘It’s really something,’ I said.
_