|
|
That summer in Seattle she had 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 the blind man all summer. She read stuff to
him, case studies, reports, that sort of thing. She helped him organize
his little office in the county 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 about it.
She was always trying to write a poem. She wrote 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 favors,
the officer-to-be, he'd been her childhood sweetheart. So okay. I'm saying
that at the end of the 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 the Air Force base in Alabama.
She wanted to talk. They talked. He asked her to send 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 one 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 the 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 a tape and sent the tape to the
blind man. Over the years, she put all kinds of stuff on 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 everything, 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. Then 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 blind friends," I said.
"You 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 colored
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. But even then Beulah
must have been carrying the cancer in her glands. After they had 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 death, the blind man's hand
on her hand, his blind eyes streaming tears--I'm imagining 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 a half of a twenty-peso Mexican coin. The other half of the coin went
into 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 the car
pull into the drive. I got up from the sofa with my drink and went to the
window to have a look.
I saw my wife laughing as she parked the car. I
saw her get out of the car and shut the odor. 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 go of his suitcase and up came
his hand. I took it. He squeezed hard, held my hand, and then he let it
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 right. Now
watch it, there's a chair. That's it. Sit down right here. This is the
sofa. We just bought this sofa two weeks 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, 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
forty 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 feeling she didn't like what she saw. I shrugged.
I've never met, or personally known, anyone who
was blind. This blind man was late forties, a heavy-set, balding man with
stooped 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 stared at his face, I saw the left pupil turn in toward
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 his knowing 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 his ashtray and my wife emptied
it.
When we sat down at 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
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 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 places. 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 visit
those places. From time to time, he'd turn his blind face toward 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 color 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 color
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 program and tried
to listen to what the announcer was saying.
"This is a color 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, 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. "I t 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 she closed her
eyes and went to sleep.
The news program 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 robe slipped away from her legs, exposing a juicy thigh. I
reached to draw her robe back over her, and it was then that I glanced
at the blind man. What the hell! I flipped the rope 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? Are 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 he 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 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 and tormented 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 who was
narrating the thing 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 picture 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 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 are those frescoes?"
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 any 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 a good idea."
I stared hard at the shot of the cathedral on the
TV. How could I even begin to describe it? But say my life depended on
it. Say my life was 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 for clues. "They reach way up. Up and up. Toward 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 viaducts, 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 to 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 my 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
offense. You're my host. But let me ask if you are in any way religious?
You don't mind my 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 favor? 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 been 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 was 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.
[1983]