by Susan Sontag
Of course, he can’t get rid of his eyes. Not the right sort of guilt. Diddy’s is the harder task: with the fleshy globes—ninety percent water—still lodged in his skull and functioning normally. Must unlearn the old ways of seeing. If it’s not too late.
Immediately upon his return with Hester to New York, Diddy submitted his resignation to Watkins & Company. “Reasons of health.” The refund of what he’d paid into the company pension plan, proceeds from some stock, which the company was eager to buy back, and three years’ savings add up to enough to keep himself and Hester going for at least a year and maintain the payments to Joan. Diddy vaguely thinks of some kind of job he might do at home before the money starts to run out. Such as translating technical books; Diddy’s good at languages, knows German and Russian. Or free-lance editing for a publishing house that specializes in scientific and medical literature; he’s qualified for such work and through his former job has many contacts in the scientific-journal and book-publishing worlds. But hasn’t yet done anything toward lining up such a job. Or about going down to City Hall and getting a license. Or started looking for a new apartment.
In the opening days of an unseasonably warm December, Diddy and Hester spend most waking hours outdoors and, so far as the word applies, sightseeing. Hester, though made nervous by the roaring, screeching, and honking of heavy oncoming traffic, seems to crave variety and the sense of movement. At first Diddy conducts long excursions: the Bronx Zoo for the animals’ sounds and smells; the lake in Central Park to get away from cars; the Battery and the Staten Island ferry for the stench of the sea, tar, and creosote, and for the rocking and dipping of the boat. As they roam about Coney Island, Diddy conjures up with words the ravaged skeletons of last summer’s contraptions for amusement; after sneaking in to poke amid the rat-infested ruins of the World’s Fair, Diddy keeps up two hours of the same kind of animated verbal picturing. Diddy can be a lively talker when he wants to please someone. Then a silent day: wandering hand in hand along the wintry deserted beach at Montauk.
Piece by piece, reentering the world. But hasn’t Diddy mistaken this enterprise, and drawn the map of too big a world? Isn’t his reach too long? Remember who is his companion (now). Hester is not only blind but entirely unfamiliar with this city and its environs. But maybe being blind is all that counts. To her, all places and all distances must be virtually the same. Unable to surmise what relation one place has to another, how can she ever know, at any given moment, where she is?
While awaiting further insight into the topography of the blind, Diddy decides to rein in his explorations with Hester. Closer to home. Manhattan: where the distance is counted in blocks, and blocks can be measured in feet. But this doesn’t mean that Diddy will be bored or become restless. Though a resident for over a decade, Diddy is far from knowing his adopted city well. Even neighborhoods of downtown Manhattan, the locations of both his apartments, contain sights he finds fresh.
In the second week, then, a smaller scale. Forgoing public transportation; they venture only as far as they can walk. Diddy describes the buildings, the cars, the billboards, the people they pass on the street. While speaking, tries to sift the nightmare out of his vision, to disinfect his words of disgust. To be neutral, vivid, even humorous. The strange thing is that once Diddy has decided for Hester’s sake to suppress his morbid reactions and to cultivate his sense of humor, it’s not difficult at all. Everything just as funny (now) as before it was appalling. The signs on the stores and warehouses and trucks in the neighborhood, for instance. Haven’t they always been there? Diddy must have seen them before, hundreds of times, marketing or picking up his laundry or walking Xan or passing in a taxi. Then why, as he reads them off to Hester, do they seem so exotic and arbitrary (now)?
Congo Tire Company
Manhattan Auto Radio and Repair Company
Welcome Fulton Tenants Meat Market
Pena Pharmacy
Automated Flowers
Eagle Paper and Twine Company
L & S Dairy
Murtha’s Bar and Restaurant
Gothic Color Company, Inc.
Hercules Flooring Company
Brause & Brause Dog Training School
Eureka Stamps and Coins
Jacob Rice Glass Company
Troiano Trucking
Good Heart Restaurant
Universal Japanning Company, Inc.
Peper Painting Supplies
Reliable Coated Fabrics Company
Uneeda Printing
Mensch Mill & Lumber Company
Century Composition Service Inc.
Gallant-Roth Blouses
New Chelsea Reform Democratic Club
Adele Delivery Company
Johnny’s Hot & Cold Heros
Rentways, Inc.
Kaplan Rigid Set-Up Sales Packaging
Ecco Knives
Accurate Steel Partition Company, Inc.
Country Custom Cleaners
Ben Gentry & Son, Pork Butchers
Spectronic Plating Company
La Muralla China
Usually, after Diddy has called off several of the names, they both break into a paroxysm of giggling.
Squatting near the entrance to the West Side Highway is an old-fashioned diner, railroad-car style, with a long blue neon sign running almost the length of the roof: OLD DUTCH COFFEE. At the beginning of their daily walk Diddy and Hester usually stop here for a sandwich and coffee, play the jukebox, eavesdrop on the banter between the truck drivers and longshoremen and the waitresses. Most days during the second week, they continue on foot as far as the Forties, where they shop in the odorous Greek, Italian, and Spanish grocery stores; then, as laden with brown shopping bags as ever Aunt Jessie was, take a cab downtown. Xan is brought along on these expeditions at first. But the dog was an encumbrance, too much for Diddy to manage. Who didn’t want to divide his attention. And, to his surprise, Hester seemed entirely uninterested in the dog.
In the third week, the weather turns sharply. One day of light snow, several of rain, another of heavy snow and sleet. The daily walk gets shorter, and is usually confined to an area close to home. On the coldest days, they avoid the river, where the wind is stronger and crueler; walking east instead. A dreary part of the city, except for the flower market. On one walk, Diddy, not very hopefully, tries to evoke and bring to life for Hester the Christmas statues on the façade of Macy’s; after which they huddle for ten minutes in the store entrance to get warm, and are driven out by the crush of shoppers. Of the strolls Hester and Diddy take together (now), that was the longest. But it seems less necessary to walk about at all. Food, not as tasty or as varied as what they bought on Ninth Avenue, can be ordered by telephone from the nearest supermarket. Some days it’s only Diddy who goes out, three times, to walk the dog. Which he tries to do as quickly as possible, feeling apprehensive about leaving Hester for even a few minutes. Xan is becoming an absolute nuisance.
Cutting out the daily walk leaves that much more time for activities at home. Hester won’t hear of having a maid; insists on doing the cleaning herself. But first Diddy must bring Hester to every object in the apartment, so she can touch it and learn its location. While her hands are engaged in sensuous study of the object, Diddy usually relates where he bought it and anything memorable in his past connected with it. The home as museum, a meditation on one’s past, a miniature mausoleum. Diddy comes to tell Hester a good deal about his bleak passionate marriage in this way, though until recently he’d shied away from even referring to Joan. Assuming Hester would prove to be as possessive and pained over his past as he would have been, had she been married before.
Hester listens to Diddy’s anecdotes attentively, but always appears satisfied by as much or as little as he tells her. The truth, somewhat painful to Diddy, is that she seems barely curious about that former life of his. Perhaps it’s simply not real to her. The only point at which she sometimes questions Diddy closely is when the object, whether a roasting pan or a litho
graph or a lamp, is identified as something Joan herself had selected. But hadn’t taken with her when she left.
“Do you keep that for a reason? Does it remind you of her?”
It didn’t. Thank God, not any more. But Diddy savored this evidence that Hester, for all her ostensible calm on the subject of Joan, might be a shade jealous after all. Relished, too, Hester’s apparent freedom from any romance with objects. Was that freedom one of the dividends of blindness? No matter. Not for Diddy to know. Whatever the reason, an enviable trait. Diddy, all his life helplessly loyal to his past, however ungratifying, and plagued by useless attachments to souvenirs and vestiges of the past, found Hester’s indifference an inspiration.
For Diddy to feel liberated, disburdened, Hester needn’t insult or snub his objects. And didn’t. She simply has to turn on them the innocent neutrality of her sightless appraisal. It’s for Diddy, then, to scour his all-too-retentive vision. Which he does, with scarcely any sense of strain. In introducing Hester to each object, guiding her hand over its surface, relating its history, Diddy comes to see his possessions with a fresh eye. Sometimes discovers that he doesn’t at all like something he owns. For example, the pair of blue-green vases with a spider-web design in relief, circa 1900, he’d bought in the Flea Market in Paris two summers ago. At least, no longer likes them (now).
The eye as window;
The eye as lamp;
The eye as jewel.
But what is more discriminating and peremptory than the white hymen of the eyeball?
Thus, apart from the pleasure all intimacy between them affords, making an inventory of his world for Hester brings Diddy several minor, private pleasures. Among them, the pleasure of throwing out intact, handsome, satisfactorily functioning things. After putting the Art Nouveau vases out with the trash one Friday evening, Diddy’s impulse is not to mention it at all. Except that he must. Hester’s navigational chart must be kept scrupulously up to date. These are, or were, two less objects for her to steer clear of.
December is almost used up. Just before Christmas, a bitterly cold week. They discuss whether to get a tree. Even though Xan, who’s so refractory to discipline lately, will probably make a shambles of it, why not? Something good to smell. Hester smiles and puts her arms around Diddy in an unfamiliar way, almost shyly. Diddy has a fleeting glimpse of the little girl Hester once was or could have been, and rejoices. He bundles her up, fussing over her, insisting on ski socks and his windbreaker under her winter coat, as well as a muffler and mittens; then, perhaps unconsciously, under-dresses himself. They go down, the first time they’ve been out together that week. Giddy with happiness, Diddy decides to buy two bulky firs, each seven feet tall; one for the living room and one for the bedroom; and breathlessly—why does he get so easily out of breath?—lugs them, one at a time, up the four flights. Decides it’s hardly worthwhile to put up the bulbs, strings of lights, and tinsel for himself alone. The trees seem more vigorous for being nude. Their pungent odor is like a little spill of life into the quiet apartment. Smell this one! Now smell this one, darling! Isn’t there a slight difference? Yes? Can you tell? Now I want to smell you. And before Diddy sets to work installing the trees in the flimsy red and green stands purchased at Woolworth’s, he leads Hester to their bed to make love.
Love is beautiful and strong. So are the trees. And so is food.
Diddy had almost forgotten the less glamorous but no less rewarding satisfactions of marital domesticity. Having someone to eat all his meals with, for instance. Though currently supplied with only the canned and frozen fare delivered from the supermarket, their meals are attractive. Diddy, reasonably skilled in the kitchen, has been doing all the cooking throughout this first month. While Hester keeps him company in the small kitchen, perched on a skinny stool next to the refrigerator, and afterwards helps with the dishes. One evening, just as Diddy is rolling up his sleeves to begin dinner, she claims his job. “Please, Dalton!” Diddy afraid she’ll burn herself. But Hester assures him that she’s memorized the site and operation of every kitchen appliance; knows the contents of each cabinet; can put her hands in a moment on the canned goods, the dishes, the pots, the pot-holder, the spices, the silverware. To bolster her credentials, reminds Diddy that from the age of eighteen it was she who did most of the cooking for her aunt and herself. Of course, doting Diddy shrinks from refusing Hester anything she wants. But can a blind person be the best judge of her own safety? Diddy hears himself sounding much more like an anxious parent than a lover, and dreads Hester so interpreting his tone and resenting it. But she doesn’t seem to. Just laughingly orders him out of the kitchen while she goes to work. Diddy slumped in the bentwood rocker in the living room, sweating with apprehension. Gets up to pour himself a shot of rye; then another. Meanwhile, Hester opens a can of gazpacho, heats up a package of frozen spinach, fries two slices of liver in butter, and brews the coffee. Other than bringing in the soup can and package of vegetables for Diddy to verify that they’re what she thinks they are, manages everything without his aid. Not making a single mistake. Sugar is sugar, not salt. And, thank heaven, no burns or bruises.
Diddy insists, nervously, on at least setting the table in the dining area.
No, not that either.
Hester puts down a fresh linen tablecloth, and hands Diddy a bottle of sangría for him to uncork. They haven’t eaten so ceremoniously in several weeks. Most meals have been spread on the floor in the living room or taken into bed. And tonight’s food, Diddy has to admit, is as tasty as anything he’s prepared. Still, he finds it hard to eat. What’s happening to Diddy’s appetite?
“Let’s have some brandy,” Hester said, when they settled in the living room. Diddy, always a reluctant drinker—liquor usually made him feel dull and depressed; never, even initially, euphoric—agreed. Should have told Hester he’d had two shots while she was in the kitchen, but didn’t want to spoil the festive character of the evening. Maybe it was the sequence of whisky, wine, and brandy: more than Diddy could stomach without feeling done in. He went to bed early.
From then on, Hester cooked the dinner. The next night there was a new cloth on the table, and the wine was Pouilly-Fumé. The third night, the same cloth and a bottle of Pommard. On the fourth night, Diddy refuses to drink any wine. It couldn’t be only the wine, but he’s noticed that he gets drowsy (now) very early each evening. Wineless meals are good, too. Gradually, they took to eating more sloppily again. To accompany the meals on the living-room floor, Diddy usually builds a wood fire, even though the apartment is, if anything, overheated during the winter months. The fire smells so good; and these days he’s hearing more acutely, finding the sound of flames as vivid and satisfying as their turbulent color.
Diddy balks at putting music on during the dinner. Because he wants Hester’s attention all for himself. Whether or not they talk through the meal—often, long silences arise between them that Diddy finds either narcotically soothing or mortifying—he wants to leave untrammeled the possibility of talk. After eating, though, Diddy was content to let the time be furnished by something other than his love. By music then. And discovers a small lump of tension between them. Hester really likes only string trios, quartets, quintets, and their improbable enlargements. Diddy the Eclectic loves his Papa Haydn, too. But life proposes more than one set of loyalties. Undertakes with zeal to convert Hester to his fondness for blues, rock ’n roll, and folk rock. Tries out everything from Dylan to Billie Holiday to the Beatles, whom he eulogized, for Hester’s benefit, as the collective Mozart of recent pop music. Even attempted to teach her to frug, as Joan had taught him. But Hester remains unmoved. Diddy, by this time, has given up. No more struggling awake bleary-eyed at 8 a.m. to WOR. Goodbye Top Forty. Following dinner, Diddy is perfectly willing to stack the chamber music LP’s high on the long spindle of the hi-fi, or keep the dial roving among the FM classical-music stations until Hester hears what she likes.
Most evenings, soon after their meal, Diddy reads aloud. Almost done with
Sense and Sensibility. But Hester doesn’t seem to find Jane Austen as delightful as she did in the hospital. When he finishes this one, perhaps they shouldn’t pass on to Mansfield Park right away. Choose another writer. Or, in case it’s his reading she is tired of, not read at all.
Starting at the end of the second week, Diddy gets into the habit of not turning on the lights after sunset. Unless it’s decided he will read aloud. Man and wife, one flesh: Diddy doesn’t need electric light in the evening any more than Hester does. Finds he can manage quite as well in the dark. It’s never wholly dark anyway, thanks to the street lamps outside. But what Diddy wants doesn’t require even that dim light. He wants to touch.
* * *
Idling. Becalmed. Like a pair of moist happy ducks.
Partly undressed, entangled together, silent, in near darkness. Lying full-length on the living-room couch one evening after midnight, some four weeks after returning to New York. The flatulent buzzer that announces a visitor downstairs. A guilty commotion in Diddy’s heart. Paul? Incardona? No, take that back. Don’t be a fool.
What is Diddy to do? In a way, he’s safe. No one can just walk in on him; no one else has the key. If he doesn’t buzz back, Paul can’t ever know he wasn’t out. Or, if there, in the darkened apartment, so deeply asleep that he can’t hear the buzzer.
“It must be my brother.” No answer from Hester. Diddy sits up, pulls on his shirt. “Hester, are you asleep? Did you hear me before?”
“Yes, darling, I heard you. But you must do what you want.” She’s awake. But still prone; has made no move to dress herself.
What kind of reply is that? Who is Diddy the Indecisive that he should do what he wants? Presumptuous enterprise! But wait, think of it this way. Whatever he does (now), he won’t, strictly speaking, be doing what he wants. Since it’s Hester who has given the master order, instructing him to do-what-he-wants.