‘And what happens when the money runs out?’
He doesn’t answer. Leaning against the door frame, ready to close the door as soon as she leaves, he shrugs his shoulders and sighs.
‘Look, Víctor …’
She knows she shouldn’t push him. She does not want her words to force him to retreat even a millimetre farther into his lair. Quite the reverse, she wants to lure him out, to tempt him with something that might make him want to poke his snout outside. She tells him of genuine wonders: a French photographer who lost his sight in an accident but still managed to go on working, specialising in night-time scenes, spectacular full moons that now hang in galleries; a woman who spent months crying because she would never see her newborn son’s smile again, until the baby chuckled next to her ear, a giggle so contagious she laughed and laughed, tracing the child’s lips with her fingers: her rehabilitation began the following day. The last case she was involved with was that of a sous-chef whose blindness was caused by macular degeneration. He went through hell, but now is about to open his own restaurant. There are many cases. If he is prepared to come to the group sessions at ONCE, he can meet these people himself.
He shouldn’t worry, she tells him. He has all the time in the world. Nobody is expecting miracles, or even radical changes. Just a series of small steps. A gradual evolution.
She is careful not to reproach him. On the contrary, she congratulates him on the extraordinary progress he has managed to make with no help. Tells him he deserves a lot of credit for being able to feed and dress himself. It’s an important step. In fact … Alicia pauses as though she needs to catch her breath, because she has been talking non-stop for several minutes now. She makes the most of this short silence to consider him again. Even if he genuinely wants to carry on as he is, never going out, never speaking to anyone, there are still things she can help him with. She decides not to mention the deplorable state of his beard, or his toenails, which are so long they would pose a serious problem if Víctor did decide to put on his shoes. But there are lots of things, she tells him, there’s a whole world within his grasp. Damn it, there’s pretty much nothing he can’t do if he is prepared to accept her help. That’s what she’s here for, to put herself in his place, to grope with him through the darkness and guide him back to the light. At this point Alicia recites a long list of of activities, including going to the cinema, to the beach, the theatre, to restaurants, hobbies of every kind, holidays, social events. But Víctor’s posture is telling: he is still standing with one hand on the door as though waiting for a pause so he can say goodbye and close it. It is obvious that, if he seems attentive, if he appears to be listening to her, it is only out of politeness, the way he might put up with some idiot selling encyclopaedias. Alicia realises this and hurries on, she knows she doesn’t have much time.
‘It’s up to you,’ she sums up. ‘But you have only two options. You can either take control of your life, or you can hole up here and disappear from the world, like Houdini.’
What a brilliant example. She feels proud of herself.
‘You’re right.’ Víctor cuts her short. ‘We’re both exhausted.’
And he gently closes the door. Alicia starts down the stairs, but after only a few steps, she gives in to the weakness in her legs and sits down. She needs a few minutes to take stock. Her blouse is soaked with sweat. She wraps her arms around herself as though she might console herself with a hug. She feels awkward. If she were not sitting alone in the dark, she would swear there was someone behind her.
If she felt ‘al dente’ when she arrived, she is definitely overcooked by now. She finds it difficult to pinpoint why she feels she has failed. After all, for a first day, she could say that Víctor has made some progress. And she did not even have to fight. Perhaps that is the problem. She arrived armed for battle, with a whole army of gambits ready to be deployed, ready to lay siege to Víctor’s fortress, only to find the city burned to the ground and the sole surviving inhabitant, a ghost, entrenched behind a wall.
She sighs, grabs the banister and hauls herself to her feet, then glances back up the stairs and says: ‘That bastard isn’t going to make it easy for me.’ She hears a slight crack, as though Víctor has been standing behind the door all this time and has only now decided to close it. Alicia pictures him, his ear pressed to the door, motionless, silent. Sniffing the air. By the time she gets down to the entrance, she barely has the strength to lug her bicycle out through the front door. Her lips pressed tight, she shakes her head as she leaves.
Upstairs, Víctor rushes down the hall with astonishing speed, gets to the telephone, lifts the receiver and presses ‘1’.
The Wellspring
Alicia stands in front of the bookshelf, head tilted to one side so she can read the spines. The idea of going back through her university books, reading up on theory, is something she can hardly bring herself to think about right now. But her indignation is stronger than her weariness. She cannot be so naive. She cannot show up at Víctor’s apartment tomorrow the way she did today, with nothing to protect her but her conviction that everything will turn out for the best. She needs to be better prepared. Someone, somewhere, must have described the place where this man is holed up, and how to reach him. Because no man is an island. And anyone who tries to be is forgetting that, at best, he is part of an archipelago. There is an established itinerary for reaching all the places men will hide. If Alicia did not believe that, she would give up her job today.
The blinking of the answering machine catches her attention. She’s been out of the house for only two hours and has six missed calls. Strange. She sits down, presses play and immediately recognises Víctor’s voice.
‘Look … [A sigh, a long pause then, in a single breath] Look, Alicia. I’m not stupid, I know everyone says “look” when they mean “listen”, but let’s see if you get this. I don’t like it when you say “look, Víctor”. I don’t know, it’s like shaking the stump of a one-armed man. It’s in poor taste, if you want to know the truth. But that’s not why I’m calling you. I’m phoning to ask you not to make predictions. It’s a long story and, since you’re so keen for us to sit down and talk, maybe I’ll even tell it to you one day. The thing is, I don’t like predictions. It messes me up when they come true. Maybe I am a bastard, but at least I have an excuse. And all right, maybe I’m not making things easy for you. You’d know, you said it. And while we’re at it [The voice, which sounded perfectly calm in spite of the complaints, breaks here], while we’re at it, I’d like you to know that I don’t give a fuck about all the smiling babies in the world … or about full moons, especially full moons, because I had a couple in my eyes, full moons blinded me, and beaches, I don’t care about beaches, sunsets and sea horizons. I can’t remember what else you mentioned, but it doesn’t matter, because I don’t give a toss about all that picture-postcard bullshit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m really glad about all the progress your poor little blind people have made, honestly. I’m really happy for them. [A beep indicates that the minute available for a message has elapsed. Alicia slumps back against the chair. She now suspects all six calls are from Víctor, whose voice rings out again] Like I was saying, I’m happy for them. I hope your photographer gets to show his moon shots in every gallery on earth and your chef manages to prepare the menu every day without cutting off his fingers, but the truth is I just don’t give a shit. With all due respect, of course. There you are telling me about all the things I can do, when the only thing I want to do is see. I don’t know if you get the distinction, Alicia. See, Alicia. Ask your little chef to open a pod of fresh peas. Ask him, and watch his face as he’s doing it. I’m sure he’s capable of doing it, and of shelling the peas. I’m sure he could boil them or fry them or do whatever it is you’ve taught him to do. But what I want to do is see them. I assume you’ve shelled peas at some point in your life. There they are, inside, protected, then suddenly, along you come and crack, you squeeze the pod with your fingers and the peas exist. It’
s a fucking miracle! A miracle of light, which until that very moment had never entered that place, but the moment your fingers split the pod, the light pours in and the peas start to quiver if you move your hand, even a little, they tremble as though their lives depend on the filament on which they are suspended, a minuscule thread almost impossible to see, but you can see it, you can fucking see it … [These last words are rushed, as though Víctor has been counting the seconds, and doesn’t want the beep to cut him off in mid-sentence] Where was I? Oh yes, peas. And eyes. Well, the brain actually. The neurologist explained the whole thing to me. It’s the brain that actually sees the light, sees the peas, sees the quivering. The only problem is that in the middle there’s a nerve, get it? Looking is a nervous tic. And it’s one I’ve lost. [A few seconds of silence, three deep breaths as though Víctor is doing his utmost not to lose control] Anyway. Let me give you another example of the verb to see. You’re in a car, and you see a hand. There’s a man on the pavement, he has his back to you, he’s talking on the telephone, you rush past and all you see is the hand holding his mobile phone to his ear. What am I saying? Not even the whole hand, you see his knuckles and you keep on driving and you imagine the hand lighting a cigarette and days later or years later, that hand is beating eggs to make an omelette in your imagination, or in your brain to be precise, it points to tell you where to look or holds a gun and aims it at you, or takes a thorn out of your back, because it’s your lover’s hand, or your enemy’s hand, light, light made it possible for it to exist in your brain with absolute freedom. Your gaze, Alicia. A completely involuntary action that illuminates life. When that doesn’t happen, when an atrophied nerve turns out that light, all you have are memories. Nostalgia, which kills imagination. Oh, don’t tell me, things can evolve. One little step, then another. Everyone loves to think that we evolve towards a perfect state. But that’s bullshit. What we call evolution is decay. Latin decayed to become Spanish which decayed to become the thing we speak today, which doesn’t even have a name. Things that are perfect are born perfect, they don’t need to evolve. Like a spoon. [Another beep. Message number four. Alicia is counting them] Just so you know, I don’t care that I get cut off every minute. Make yourself comfortable, because what I’ve got to say to you I’m going to say however many messages it takes. You tell me I shouldn’t give up, I should be strong, I should face adversity head on, all that kind of thing. I get the impression you’re keen on films. Speaking of films, I suggest you get a DVD of To Have and Have Not. You’re probably too young to have seen it. Put it on, then close your eyes. When Lauren Bacall asks “Anybody got a match?” open them and watch. And think about … Don’t bother, it doesn’t matter. You won’t get it. You know what I really miss? Sorry for changing the subject but anyway … You know what I would pay anything to see again? A shadow. A fucking shadow! I bet that didn’t occur to you, did it? It’s the light you don’t see. And the brain understands that! Straight off! In a millionth of a second. That stretch of wall you can’t see, your brain immediately tells you, that patch of negative light, that dark area in the shape of a tree when you can’t see a tree anywhere, means that the wall is here and the light is coming from behind it, it means the tree is there too. All that from a shadow! [Penultimate beep. Alicia is sitting rigid in her chair. If Víctor was trying to insult her, he’s made a mistake. Because she is going to rewind this tape and play it over and over, listen to it until the words start to sketch out the map she has been searching for. Right now, she knows where she needs to start: enthusiasm. She has to find some way of focusing all the power, the energy that Víctor is spitting and sputtering into his calls and turn it to his advantage] OK, that’s it. There’s just one more thing. Don’t ever ask me to have faith again. Faith in you, faith in rehabilitation. Jesus Christ, what an awful word. Just hearing it pisses me off. Faith is people believing without having seen. I’ve seen lots of things and I believe in them. And don’t tell me there’s hope. Hope takes up a lot of space and my world is small and fragile. It’s pathetic and bitter. It’s wretched, if you prefer. I just need you to know that, since you’re so determined to be a part of it. A world so narrow that the minute you try to turn round you trip over something. Oh, and if you ever say you only want to put yourself in my place again, I’ll staple your eyelids shut. That is my place. [Abruptly the line goes dead and Alicia, surprised that Víctor didn’t use up the whole minute, gets up and goes over to the machine. As she does so, there is another beep and she hears the same voice, much calmer now] I forgot one thing. Never mention Houdini again. Or if you have to, do your homework first. Houdini didn’t disappear. I’m sure you’ve heard all the stories. Drowned in the Hudson river, suffocated in a trunk … None of that, please. He was crude, flashy, always boasting about how he could take a punch to the stomach. And his abs must have been strong because, after every show, he’d try to get members of the audience to punch him, made a fortune on bets that no one could knock him down. But one day, he was caught unawares. It was after a performance, people were having drinks in the dressing room and some bastard punched him right in the stomach when he wasn’t expecting it. Bye, bye, Houdini. Oh, and I’m sorry for that thing about stapling your eyes shut. I know it sounded aggressive. Maybe your prediction is coming true after all. Anyway, I’m sorry. See you tomorrow.’
The silence that follows is a relief, like someone shutting off an engine. Well, at least now she knows what she’s up against. Don’t say this, don’t mention that … She’s clearly landed herself a grouch. History is full of whining blind people, some of them famous. It’s one of the many possible reactions described by psychologists. What can you do?
All her efforts to come up with a theory, an inference from her notes, something that might help her deal with this situation, now crystallize in one name: Frijda. N. H. Frijda. She can’t remember what the initials stand for. She goes back and stands in front of her books, racking her brains for the title of a book she hasn’t read since she was at university. It was The Laws of Emotion or something like that. And there was a chapter in it called ‘The law of hedonic asymmetry’. A horrible phrase, she thinks. Alicia smiles. She is trying to remember Frijda’s exact words. ‘Pleasure is always contingent upon change and disappears with continuous satisfaction. Pain may persist under persisting adverse conditions.’ Something like that. She remembers how the idea fascinated her when she first read it. If the waters of perpetual happiness flowed from a wellspring, we would quickly stop drinking from it. On the other hand, we can bathe our wounds for all eternity in the fetid wellspring of pain. Time heals no wounds; it only makes them deeper, darker.
It is not much of a step forward. She can hardly show up tomorrow morning and say to Víctor: ‘I know what’s happening to you. You’re a victim of the law of hedonic asymmetry as set out by someone named Frijda.’ Now that she has witnessed his predilection for irony, she can easily imagine what he would say: ‘No, dear, no. What’s happening to me is that I’ve gone blind.’ But to put a name to a thing helps a little. No matter how horrible the name. Or the thing. This is what Alicia believes.
The Gallery of Famous Blind People: I
Claude Monet is one of the most prominent figures in the Gallery of Famous Blind People; a small, exclusive gallery in the afterlife to which, down the centuries, a number of great men have been admitted to receive eternal restitution for their blindness. It hardly matters in which period they lived, because here, a place that exists only in Alicia’s mind, everyone wears timeless clothing and recounts, without the least trace of bitterness, the details of their agonies in this world.
However, although no one ever mentions it, Monet’s presence here makes many of them uneasy. First and foremost because of his habit (unconscious, it must be said in his defence) of squinting as he paints, as though he still can’t see properly, or is irritated by the lighting conditions. No one here likes to be reminded that they are blind, or rather that they used to be. Because one of the advantages of the Gallery of Famous
Blind People is that, simply by stepping inside, a person automatically recovers his sight. This, incidentally, leads to a number of people comparing grievances, a case in point being Ella Fitzgerald, who goes around in a wheelchair, legs amputated, bitching (not unreasonably): ‘All things considered, I’d rather they’d left me blind and given me back my legs. Or cured my diabetes, since that’s what caused the problem in the first place.’
This tic Monet has of constantly squinting irritates a lot of people. There is abundant light in the gallery. This is why Ray Charles always wears his sunglasses. Furthermore, there’s always more than one volunteer who would be happy to remind Monet that, technically, he doesn’t qualify as being blind. Or at least not completely blind. The artist grumpily defends himself: ‘So you’re saying three operations aren’t enough for you? Well?’ And he goes on painting. If they really think he doesn’t belong here, let them throw him out. Maybe he wasn’t completely blind but there is more than enough proof of the catastrophic effects the loss of sight had on his life. In letters to friends, he always reserved a paragraph to describe his constant dread that he would no longer be able to paint. And he finds it funny that it is always the musicians who complain about whether or not he should be allowed in. What do they know? They can bitch all they like – their blindness didn’t do them any harm. On the contrary, a lot of them wouldn’t even have become musicians if it weren’t for their parents desperately trying to compensate for their blindness by giving them special favours. Private music teachers, for example. Now if Beethoven wanted to chuck him out, or criticise him, that might be different. But … blind musicians? They should get on with their playing and leave him in peace. He has got more right to be in this gallery than any of them: you can dictate a score, you can’t dictate a painting.
The Manual of Darkness Page 27