Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

by Sanford D. Greenberg

That secure world took a nosedive on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world’s first man-made satellite. It’s difficult for an American not of age then to comprehend the impact of that event upon the people and the leadership of the United States. The Cold War nuclear arms race was unsettling enough, but now our most bitter enemy seemed to have the capacity to wage war on us from outer space. I spent more than one sleepless night thinking about all the challenges our nation faced. Finally, I decided to get involved.

  During my sophomore year, as a member of the national executive committee of the United States National Student Association (NSA), I would meet with other members representing colleges across the country. Month after month, we ardently debated policy matters deep into the night, as though our ideas about the complex and daunting issues facing the nation would be taken seriously by the decision-makers in Washington. A fellow member was Harvard sophomore Tim Zagat, a tall, athletic young man with brown hair, his voice deep and resonant. Tim was forthright and passionate about ideas, the country, and its political process, not to mention food. Despite some heated arguments on controversial issues, we forged a friendship. The NSA was later found to be working closely with the CIA, but we were innocent of such encumbrances, and under the NSA’s auspices, Tim and I traveled together to other campuses around the country, working with those who shared our passion in an effort to affect the direction of our country.

  I was on my way—of that I was certain.

  6

  Shots Across the Bow

  College-level literature and history were filled with vivid warnings of the sharp turns and reverses that can happen in life. Like most of my classmates, I regarded those warnings, when I gave close attention to them at all, as merely “interesting.” The fate of characters in great literature had nothing to do with me personally. Like most people, especially young ones full of themselves, I gave little thought to contingencies. Empirical reality—that was the thing. Facts and logic. Or so I thought.

  The summer after my sophomore year, I was back home in Buffalo, pitching in the seventh inning of a baseball game, when my vision became cloudy. As I was winding up, the forms around me—people, trees, blades of grass, backstop, red thread on the baseball, hair on the back of my hands—became unhinged and began to vibrate. Vapor seemed to appear in front of me. It was like being in the middle of an intense, steamy shower. I didn’t know what to do. After one of my pitches almost hit the batter, I stumbled to the sidelines and dropped to the ground.

  I lay there, my eyes closed in an effort to control the sensation. I felt Sue elevating my head and placing it on her lap. She asked me what was wrong. I said I didn’t know. Something with my eyes. They were blurry, I said. And steamy.

  Within a few hours, my eyesight returned to normal. The following day, however, my eyes began to itch, so I went to see a local ophthalmologist. He told me I had allergic conjunctivitis and gave me some drops to apply—Neo-hydeltrasol. But the itching went on, and so a few days later I went to see another ophthalmologist—Dr. Mortson, I will call him—who had been recommended by a friend of the family. He prescribed Neodecadron, a corticosteroid. I was to put two drops in each eye daily. Dr. Mortson saw me regularly during the summer.

  Sometime later I began having a particularly disquieting dream. I had seen a 1952 biopic about major-league pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander (played by Ronald Reagan). In the movie, Alexander’s vision blurs while he is on the mound pitching a game. My dreams replayed the emotion of shock and empathy I must have retained from seeing the film.

  When I returned to Columbia in September 1960 to begin my junior year, Arthur quickly noticed that I was having difficulty seeing, and especially reading, but to me it was more nuisance than threat. Too much was going on for me to be bothered with a minor inconvenience. For one thing, the presidential campaign was in full throttle. While Richard Nixon insisted on appearing in all fifty states, John Kennedy was selective. One of my professors, Richard Neustadt, had suggested that I volunteer to campaign for Kennedy on various college campuses. So I did.

  Senator George Norris of Nebraska, one of the figures in Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage, was once introduced by Franklin D. Roosevelt with these words: “History asks, ‘Did the man have integrity? Did the man have unselfishness? Did the man have courage? Did the man have consistency?’” In each speech I gave, I applied this same standard to Kennedy, and my fellow college students would roar their affirmation.

  Those adrenaline-soaked days diverted my attention from my ever-increasing vision difficulties, but reality could be put off only so long. A few weeks after the start of school, I attended Yom Kippur services at the Jewish Theological Seminary, just as the High Holidays were beginning. I knew no one at the service, and no one seemed to know me. While I sat in the pew, my vision again dismantled, and I began to feel as if I were in a movie, the cantor and the angels singing the “Kol Nidre.” Everything surrounding me seemed to come undone and unhinged. The lines that separated one thing from another—for instance, the pew in front of me from the altar beyond it—blurred and became steamy. Or, rather, it all blurred and became nothing. Everyone was singing and praying. I was supposed to be doing the same, but there was nothing to sing or pray about. Instead, I sat there and let the service end, feeling half of me torn away.

  Despite my efforts to shake it off, the cloudiness remained. I dared not move. The fog intensified, and soon I could see almost nothing. I was terror-stricken. By now the other congregants had left; the synagogue was empty and I sat alone, my head buried in my hands. Finally, a janitor came and escorted me out of the building. His hands were like leather, his voice like breaking rocks.

  What was supposed to be a beautiful, peaceful, and revelatory evening was only revelatory, and not in a good way. I was led into the street but could not see which way to go. I stumbled my way back to campus, knocking into metal trash baskets and a lamppost, the light of which looked like the halo of a launching rocket. It was as if I could hear steam filtering around my eyeballs. On the walk home, New York City was laughing at me.

  Soon, I began to weep. The ten days of repentance after Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, were about to conclude. At that time, we would each be inscribed in the “Book of Life.” Our futures would be determined. As I breathed in the night air, I thought of the final decrees: “Who shall live and who shall die; who will die at his predestined time and who before his time.…Who will enjoy tranquility and who will suffer; who will be impoverished and who will be enriched. Who will be degraded and who will be exalted.” Not until I returned to my room did my eyes finally clear.

  Late that November, I returned to Buffalo to attend my cousin Edith’s wedding. As the master of ceremonies, I was expected to read the telegrams that had been sent for the occasion. Waiting behind a drape that curtained off the kitchen from the dining hall, I had to squint painfully to memorize the messages so that when I appeared to read them to the group I could do so faultlessly.

  Happily, my discomfort on that occasion was barely noticed. Not only was Edy’s wedding a joyous one in its own right; it was also the occasion for a special family event. For five long years during World War II, a Catholic family in the Netherlands had hidden Edy’s parents, Bertha and Alfred, from the German occupiers under a windmill. Aunt Bertha never told us the exact dimensions. It was simply a sort of crevice in the earth. And there they survived.

  As a surprise for Edy, her parents brought the Dutch family’s patriarch, Cornelius “Pa” Deijle, to America for the wedding. He turned out to be a tall ninety-year-old man in a black suit, wearing a black hat, who spoke no English. Here before us stood a man who, if Edith’s parents had been discovered, would’ve been shot to death, and possibly his family as well. What was his reward for the risk? Nothing material, certainly. So why did he do it? I don’t really know. I can only attest that, when he was introduced, all of us at the wedding felt a swelling in our chests, and more than a few tears were shed.

&n
bsp; A few days later, during that same visit home, Sue and I set out early in the evening, in a gentle snow, for a night on the town. We had borrowed her father’s Ford Falcon. Sue was well aware by then of the uncertain condition of my eyes, but I felt invigorated by the cold air and excited about the prospect of dining alone with her and managed to persuade her I should drive, despite my eroded night vision.

  Within a few blocks of starting out, I lost control of the car. Stamping furiously on the brakes, I could hear metal grinding on metal as I hit a parked car, caving in its door. Sue and I were thrust forward in our seats. Panic-stricken, I turned the steering wheel rapidly, hand over hand, the other way. Too late. The side of her father’s car slid into another car door, then careened diagonally again, gliding across the snow and hammering yet another car before veering toward the center of the street, where it spun around and stopped. Sue said she would take the blame, and I let her. I didn’t need any more trouble. I still had to muddle through, which was trouble enough.

  I never drove again.

  After that episode, I went to see Dr. Mortson once again about my continuing vision problems. Once again, he told me to keep using the eye drops he had prescribed, and I did, regularly.

  As my vision continued to deteriorate, Arthur decided, in his typical smart-ass fashion, that we ought to calibrate the progression of the changes. He created a chart, which he labeled “Sanford’s Decline in Vision Week by Week,” and posted it on the wall of our room. I would stand at a set distance from the sign, and Arthur would ask me whether I could read the letters, which I frequently could not. Each week he saw the problems increase, as did I, but I still refused to pay serious attention to the obvious. So long as I could function, I made myself believe, either doctors or my strong constitution would resolve the issue in due course. Eventually, however, I had to stand closer than the set distance to read the letters. For a while that worked, but soon even when I stood very close, I could hardly make out the letters at all. Furthermore, I was getting headaches from my heavy course reading.

  To relate these moments of decline is to describe torture. Many of the incidents took place in the presence of my family when my younger siblings inadvertently witnessed my being cut open as a person. It was embarrassing, but worse was that there was no way to hide it or make it appear less brutal than it was, and it was extremely brutal.

  Sue and Arthur saw the worst of it. As my condition deteriorated, they never suggested that I was the origin of what was troubling me, nor did I think that, either. The source was always treated as if somewhere outside of our presence, on the periphery, very much like an aura, something on which we could not focus specifically. In other words, we did not speak seriously of the decline because to do so would have been to acknowledge it. I wanted none of that, and neither did they. Even after it reached its climax, there was very little talking about it. That winter, everyone, with the partial exception of Arthur, treated me gingerly, as if I were a thin-shelled egg.

  Eventually, of course, the egg would have to break, but only by degrees.

  There was, for example, the executive committee meeting of the National Student Association, convened that year at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I went. Tim Zagat, my friend from Harvard, was there as well. Tim, who went on to found the Zagat Survey of restaurants and other venues, recalled the episode later: “We were both sitting in at these very, very long meetings, talking about all kinds of things [on] very heady subjects. Sandy and I were sitting next to each other, mainly because we liked to joke around and share our views about things we were being asked to vote on. It was around two or three…in the morning that Sandy put his hand on my left arm and said: ‘Tim, I can’t see.’ Then he said, ‘Please, if you could take me back to the dormitory’ where we were staying, ‘I’m sure I’ll feel better in the morning.’ And so I led him back to the dormitory. The next morning when he woke up, he said he still couldn’t see.”

  My vision did return that time, at least enough of it to take a flight back to New York well before the executive committee adjourned. I could not bear to expose myself further to Tim and the others in Michigan.

  There was also the visit in early December to Arthur’s home in Queens. He could see my growing distress and thought a change of venue might help. We had spent many sunny spring weekends there playing basketball on a court at his old high school. He was the king of the foul shot; I was prince of the jump shot. This time, though, things were different.

  Arthur’s mother fed me my Mallomars, but I was uncomfortable with my condition and showed it. I gobbled up the cookies, drained the accompanying glass of milk, and stood up to escape to the bedroom. She hugged and kissed me as I stumbled off to bed. It was only around four in the afternoon, but I was soon nestled comfortably in my friend’s room. The sleep I was always seeking swept me into dizzying nightmares. Final exams were quickly coming upon me in reality, but now in dreams as well. I dreamt that I was flying—first around Arthur’s room, then around our room at college, and finally around the exam room. I dreamt that I feverishly wrote exam answers but failed at them all. I dreamt of crystal chandeliers, sparkling rainbows crushing my head, shards of shiny glass sticking into my body. I dreamt that my blood poured onto the floor. I awoke some twenty-two hours later.

  Then there were the actual exams themselves—what cracked the egg wide open.

  Not surprisingly, I couldn’t sleep the night before the first of the term’s final exams, even though I was exhausted from weeks of reading. At nine o’clock on the morning of the first exam, Arthur guided me into a large gymnasium and placed me in a seat in the center of the room. On my desk were a blank blue book and a list of essay questions.

  The test began, and once I captured the essence of each question, I wrote furiously. I could not see well enough to make my pen follow the blue lines, so I disregarded them. I continued to write like this until an hour or so later when I glanced at my watch. I saw absolutely nothing.

  I shook my head. I blinked. I rolled my eyes. I rubbed them. Nothing helped. I sat still, trying to figure out what to do. Finally, I picked up my blue book and found my way to the front of the room, where I handed it to the proctor and attempted to explain my predicament.

  He took the book from me and laughed. “Son, I have heard a lot of excuses, but this tops them all. I want you to know that you will be graded on what you just handed in.” I repeated that I could not see. As he obviously did not believe me, I started to leave. Watching me stumble back to my chair to get my coat, he seemed to finally comprehend the situation. He took my arm and pointed me toward the dean’s office. There an associate dean, sitting sternly across the desk, asked me unsympathetically whether I would care to dictate the remainder of my exam. I told him that all I wanted to do was go back to my room, pack my bags, and return to Buffalo to see my doctor. He suggested again that I dictate the remainder of my exam to him; otherwise my grade would be adversely affected. I declined and asked whether he would please take me to my room. He grudgingly agreed.

  I called my mother and told her that, as a surprise for her, I had finished my exams early so I could come home and have a longer vacation. I packed my clothes and, without thinking, gathered up my books. Arthur, quite distressed, accompanied me to Grand Central Station, which was then the terminus of the New York Central Railroad line that connected with Buffalo.

  In my leaden gut, I knew I had crossed some sort of awful Rubicon. I had walked out in the middle of an important Columbia University final exam. No one does that! Not even, I imagined, Allen Ginsberg, howling at Moloch. He was expelled from Columbia twice—but not, I think, for walking out of final exams. An irredeemable transgression…and I had done it.

  7

  “Son, You Are Going

  to Be Blind Tomorrow”

  The long, strange train ride I describe at the front of this book ensued, each mile taking me further from myself, further into a country I did not recognize, a place I had never sought.

 
; And, yet, I was in fact going home. When I arrived at the Buffalo station, Sue was there, waiting to pick me up. I don’t remember what we said. In a few minutes, we arrived at my house.

  My mother came to the door and gave me a big hug. Before I could remove my coat, my sisters Brenda and Ruth, then six and fourteen years old, attacked me. Brenda jumped into my arms; Ruth gave me a bear hug. Even Joel got in on the action, running down the stairs to welcome me with a big embrace. Brenda had been in the middle of a piano lesson, while Ruth and Joel had happily interrupted doing their homework. On previous visits, I would scoop Brenda into my arms, open my suitcase, and place her in it, the others laughing uproariously. Not this time.

  After the hugs, I was able, largely from memory, to place my luggage out of the way by the door and hang up my coat. Entering the kitchen, I quickly sat down, and my mother placed a glass of milk in front of me. When I reached for it, my hand went wide and missed. Her voice tight, she expressed concern, and I could no longer maintain the pretense. It was simply too tiring. I told her everything that had happened and said that we needed to see Dr. Mortson again as soon as possible.

  Dr. Mortson was considered the best in Buffalo, so back to him we went. He had a temperate nature and spoke in an even, reassuring voice. All along he had told me to “muddle through” and continue with the corticosteroid drops. It was finally becoming clear to both of us that his therapy had been gradually poisoning my eyes. Now he decided to consult with other specialists.

  As a result, I was admitted to Meyer Memorial Hospital in Buffalo, where I stayed until a different kind of doctor was sent to my room. A psychiatrist. Even in my vulnerable state, I knew this was an act of desperation by Dr. Mortson. I more or less threw the psychiatrist out of my room and left the hospital.