“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.
Beaulah 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 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 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
backseat 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 wish 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 one 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 bit 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 though 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 the 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 the
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. Swear 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 a 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 her 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. “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 this 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 he robe had 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 robe open again.
“You say you 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 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 painting, 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 difference
in the Portugese 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 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 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 hose. 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 the
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.
The End