The Blindman

The blind man has a fever. You can tell by his flushed cheeks, glazed forehead, by his parched and thickening lips. A high fever, you can tell by how he grips the gatepost for balance. Up the slate path behind him is his shuttered cottage, neat and trim, with flowers in the window boxes. Somehow the blind man has been lured outside, out of his sick bed probably, and he stands wavering and disoriented in front of the crowd.

The only woman among us steps up and tries to take his arm.

“No,” he shouts, springing back from her hand. “I won’t be touched by something I’ve never seen before.”

Everyone laughs. The woman’s beautiful and it’s hard to imagine any man but a blind one not wanting to be touched by her.

“All right,” she says sharply. “Find it yourself!”

It seems there’s something broken in the area, something important, something the blind man’s been hired or called out to repair. Maybe he’s a craftsman still good with his hands or maybe it has something to do with keen hearing. I don’t know. I had wandered up on my way back to my own country, attracted by the commotion. I watch the blind man walk with unsure steps through the gate toward the hill.

“Look at him,” someone shouts. “Stumbling around like a drunk.”

Again, everyone laughs. Strange they should laugh, I think, at the one who’s supposed to help them. Strange are the ways of the world when you travel.

“Left foot, right foot,” another man mocks, to more laughter. “That’s it, that’s it.”

“Look out!” yells a boy, conjuring an imaginary obstacle. Unsure if he has done well, he looks around for approval from the others.

Staying close behind, the crowd jeers when the blind man stumbles. They tell him to hurry, to turn for no apparent reason, to retrace his steps and begin again.

“I don’t know how to talk,” the blind man screams.

“I don’t know what I’m doing anymore,” he yells out.

“I’m unconscious,” he cries. “I’m liable to go over at any moment.”

“You don’t have to shout. We can hear you. We’re right here,” the man next to me says.

As the crowd erupts with laughter, this man turns to me, his face very close to mine.

“Ever notice how these blind men all talk so loud?” he says, sour breath hitting my face.

“That’s just how people talk in the dark,” I say.

“Shut up,” the man snaps. “We know what we’re doing.”

Someone shoves me hard from behind.

“Duck!” I shout at the blind man after regaining my balance, wanting to fit in.

There’s a single tree, a broken fence, paths crisscrossing up the hill toward the setting sun. Shadows lengthen as if reaching for each other to tie the world in a web of darkness. The blind man, hands up like a criminal, feels his way along the underside of the cooling air.

At the top of a small rise, the blind man steps over the rim of a very deep hole and tumbles to the bottom. We throw clumps of dirt as he lies on the dark soil, a pale larva curling in defense. He rises to all fours and lifts his head: His silent mouth open, his useless eyes turned up white and blind with hopeless appeal.

Like an ancient beast who knows only struggle, the blind man crawls silently through the dirt. Finally he reaches one side of the hole where many cut roots have been exposed like the shredded wires of a broken machine, like the damaged nerves of the nearby river. He rises and stands facing the dirt wall, as if face to face with blindness itself.

The crowd quiets. One by one, people start to describe the sunset: The spreading bruise of purple, the red god-flesh, the confusions of orange, the blue sky like metal darkening with cold above our heads. The blind man touches the exposed roots, adjusting them precisely according to the descriptions, repairing the unknown damage according to the words.

Later, after we have cooked and eaten the blind man, a wonderful serenity falls over us. The danger passed, no longer threatened, we can occupy the world again as our ancient home. We are telling stories. There is no light, only voices. I realize I have become blind.