by Daša Drndic
Andreas Ban used to call his son Blue eye of mine as an endearment. He will never say anything so lame to him again, he can’t anyway, Leo’s left. He won’t mutter endearments to anyone anymore.
I have particularly sensitive eyes. The eye is the most sensitive organ. It is very easy to pluck out an eye.
Who are you?
Gombrowicz. One day, strolling astern, on the boards of the deck I noticed a human eye. I asked the helmsman, Whose eye is that? Did it fall out, or was it removed? I didn’t see, Sir, said the helmsman. It’s been lying here since morning. I’d have picked it up and put it in a box, but I’m not allowed to leave the helm.
Martin has a little box for his eye too. Round and blue, because that’s what his new eye is like, round and blue, like the old one.
I continued my interrupted walk, debating whether to tell the captain and Smith — the latter had appeared on the steps of the forward hatch. There’s a human eye on the deck over there, I tell him, do you think that it fell out, or that it was removed from someone?
Gombrowicz, an eye can’t fall out just like that.
Of course it can. In the waters of the southern Pacific, while we were becalmed we lost three quarters of the eyes of the entire crew. The eye is a flimsily attached organ, a sphere inserted into a socket in a person, nothing more.
Before he goes to bed, Martin places the eye in the little box, to rest, to close, then lowers his eyelid to cover the socket so that it does not gape wide, empty, so that during the night nothing accidentally falls into it, a fly, for instance. At the end of the day, the eye that was not removed is tired, and at night it too is left alone, lonely, it turns and rolls and cannot fall asleep. I have problems with this new eye, says Martin, it will not obey. And it sees nothing.
But Martin is alive. He has lost depth perception, the third dimension has gone and he walks on his toes, he has become agile and cautious, but he is alive. That man Granero died the instant the bull in the corrida pierced his eye and head with its horn, and people watched his right eye hanging and swinging like a puppet on a string as he was carried out of the arena.
Throughout history people have often gouged out each other’s eyes, they still do, only in secret. Through history the plucking out of eyes moves from life into literature and painting, where it still lives. As with Dante’s harpies, those winged monsters with the head and torso of a woman, and the tail and talons of a bird of prey, that feed on the leaves of oak trees where suicides crouch, where one such tree preserves the body of the jurist and diplomat Pietro della Vigno (1190–1249), who did kill himself by beating his head against the walls of his prison, but only after the Emperor Frederick II had ordered, Gouge out his eyes.
All right, an eye can fall out or someone can pluck it out, but there are cases of gouging out one’s own eye, or eyes. This happens in delusional states, particularly religious. In 1876, Gastone Galetti works as a waiter in Vienna and Trieste, and, when he does not work, he visits churches to which he invites friends and acquaintances and interprets the Bible for them. In July of that same year, 1876, Gastone Galetti is on his way to Herzegovina to fight the Turks, but is arrested and interned. One morning the warden is startled by an unusually loud prayer coming from Gastone Galetti’s room. On opening the door he sees the unfortunate man covered in blood, his right eye lying on the floor and the left one hanging down his cheek. Gastone Galetti is immediately taken to the Trieste mental hospital, where it appears he remained until his death many years later. This unfortunate episode took place on July 25, 1876. By the end of September, Gastone Galetti’s eye sockets heal and Gastone assures the doctors that God had ordered him to do what he did and that he does not at all regret having obeyed God and that he hopes he will soon be able to see again.
Another known case is that of Albina Krota, who believed literally in the gospel according to Mark or Matthew, it does not matter which, because they both reel off the same horrors, And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and if thy hand offend thee, cut it off, and if thy foot offend thee, cut it off (Mark 9: 43, 45, 47), and if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee (Matthew 18: 9), so Albina Krota gouged out both her eyes. Albina Krota’s wounds also heal quickly, but unlike Gastone Galetti, she is released from the madhouse as cured and as such, cured, she carries on roaming the world for a long time, interpreting the New Testament to people. It is interesting that both Gastone Galetti and Albina Krota, in a state of exaltation, often repeated, Oh, nothing hurts, nothing hurts at all.
For years Andreas Ban regularly assesses his eye pressure (the doctors warn him, Take it seriously, you could go blind), now there is also redness. Your eyes are red, why are your eyes red? You’ve got very red eyes, do they sting? Do they itch? people ask wherever he goes. Andreas Ban looks at himself, he looks at his eyes and concludes, Yes, my eyes are red.
I’m allergic to the antiglaucoma drops, Andreas maintains, but the doctors do not listen to what Andreas Ban is saying, they imagine the worst, they walk him from department to department, from allergists to epidemiologists, from one laboratory to the other, setting up additional examinations with additional waiting and hanging around in dark overcrowded clinics.
An eye swab is taken by scraping the lower eyelid on the inside.
Now, this is going to hurt, says the nurse and starts scraping both Andreas’s eyes. Then she observes, You aren’t groaning, then she asks, Are you all right?
Andreas says: I’ve got a high pain threshold.
Two weeks later Andreas Ban learns that his eyes are bacteria-free, although redder than ever.
The doctors order: Allergy tests.
At the allergy testing (12 subcutaneous pricks in each forearm) the allergist concludes, You are allergic to fur and to animal hair in general, but that has no connection to the redness of your eyes. Do you smoke?
What is this swelling under my eye, this little pillow? asks Andreas Ban.
Your face has drooped, says the specialist, with age.
All right, says Andreas Ban.
Do you smoke? My dad smokes and has pulmonary emphysema, says the specialist. The problem with your eyes could come from contact lenses, stop wearing lenses. Go and see your ophthalmologist.
Andreas Ban hurries off to his ophthalmologist (in a different building).
Could this redness come from contact lenses? Andreas Ban (after two or three hours of waiting) asks his ophthalmologist. I’ve worn lenses for forty years, he says, should I switch to glasses?
No, says the specialist. This young woman doctor is tall and good-looking, very good-looking. She moves swiftly, as though flying, and her hair billows. You’re better-looking without glasses, she says.
And this swelling under my eye, is that from old age?
No, says the specialist, it’s from sleeping.
Why are my eyes red?
You’re allergic to the eye drops, concludes the specialist. That conclusion was reached six months after Andreas Ban had said: I’m allergic to the eye drops.
For a year after that Andreas Ban and the good-looking doctor try out antiglaucoma drops in many different combinations, and finally the specialist says, The redness has gone. Your whites are clear.
Your eyes are lovely. Open them wide.
I can’t, says Andreas Ban. My lids have drooped.
Then, one night, Andreas Ban rushes into the emergency clinic, the emergency eye ward, and when (after three or four hours of waiting) he is in front of the doctor, he says:
I can’t see out of my right eye. Everything’s cloudy. And he asks, Could it be a tumor?
Andreas Ban knows that the games the eye plays are deceptive. There was another woman, Amalia Tanzabella, who had an operation on one eye and lay for a long time in hospital with a bandage over the treated eye. This treated eye itches terribly, Amalia Tanzabella tells the doctors, but the doctors, of course, pay no attention. Amalia
complains so much, every day, ever more, not only of an itch but of unbearable pain, so the doctors finally decide to remove the bandage and examine her eye. When they uncovered that woman’s eye, they saw that the eye had become a completely dead and unusable eye, because in it a colony of ants had made a large hole, and from that hole the colony was moving back and forth, swarming all over Amalia’s face.
Another woman, Anita Frascati, complained for months of terrible headaches but the doctors could not find any irregularities in her health. Finally she has her eyes tested. The medical experts discover a twenty-centimeter-long worm that had wrapped itself around Anita Frascati’s eye and was about to penetrate it. The doctors spend hours removing the worm from Anita’s eye, cautiously, not to damage it, but the eye was already dead. Whether it was by chance that the victims of these attackers that do not ordinarily attack the eyes, but are benign, tame and quiet creatures, in tune with their natural surroundings, integrated into nature, close to the soil, whether it was by chance that the victims were women, Amalia and Anita, in other words female eyes, has not been investigated. Perhaps those horrors could have happened to two male eyes, yes, probably, but that was not the case.
While the woman doctor looks deep into Andreas’s eyes, so close their noses almost touch, scenes from his life appear beneath their lids and flicker in many colors as if he were watching a film. Recently he had read that, before they disintegrate, some animals’ eyes, say those of cattle, like photographic plates retain the images of the beings and objects that were in their line of sight at the moment they expired. Which images will dance in Andreas Ban’s eyes if he goes blind?
It’s not a tumor, says the specialist. It’s a cataract with pseudoexfoliation syndrome, you have glaucoma, don’t you?
Yes.
Andreas Ban then studies texts about possible complications from surgically removing the lens in the event of high eye pressure, which is when the inside of the eye flakes, or rather does not flake, but false scales build up, falling softly like dry snow by night, like powder snow. In the course of the operation the eye can burst — pow! — break and dissolve, leaving a hole in his head where there had once been his lively green eye, so that, like Martin, he would get a green glass eye which would look directly and sternly at nothing.
You have nice long eyelashes, says the specialist.
That’s because of the glaucoma drops, says Andreas Ban. My original eyelashes are short, he says.
Andreas Ban’s turn for the operation comes six months later, when he can no longer see anything out of that eye. As with his limping, it is only then that Andreas Ban discovers that many people cannot see out of one eye, or even out of either, that they stumble half-blind, sometimes totally blind, without complaint, just feeling the restricted world that surrounds them, treading carefully, with small steps, gently and anxiously. Anton, Nino, Fiona, Cecillia, Rikardo, Edita, they all say, We won’t have the operation, we’re fine as we are.
They almost did not accept him at the ward. He had not brought new, fresh results of numerous examinations, he had brought a pile of three-month-old results, and they want patients to go again and again for tests, they want to know their current situation. His ECG was no longer valid, the internist’s findings were not valid, his blood count was not valid, the pulmonologist’s findings were not valid. Nothing was valid. And this little eye procedure is conducted under local anesthetic which no longer consists even of an injection in the temple: the eye is wiped over with a deadening gel, so the patient hears everything and if he wishes he can even converse with the doctor carrying out the procedure, which Andreas Ban does. There was soft music playing, some light Mozart, and he asked, Are you now sucking out my lens? Is my eye now empty? and the doctor said: Yes, I’m about to fit the new, clean lens, through which you will see clearly and sharply.
OK, they had given him a tablet to bring his eye pressure down, to prevent his eye from exploding, but that was all. They took him in without fresh results, because the doctor is a clever and excellent doctor who, like Andreas, cannot bear filling in forms with little boxes, and what’s more, she is good-looking and entirely normal, she does not always manage to put on her white coat because her patients keep flowing in so she examines them in her day clothes, and her day clothes are feminine, even provocative, and that small disobedience appeals to Andreas Ban, and he has an urge to embrace her.
In general, Andreas feels best around doctors. With them he has topics to discuss. He asks questions and gets answers, they try to solve his issues. They take care of him. They alone in this town.
Admission to the hospital takes much too long, first waiting one’s turn, because some fifty frightened people wait outside, in the hall, then in the office within, where slow motion prevails, submerged in the irritation of the administrative women. At reception they still use inkjet printers, so it takes five minutes to print out a page, and admission documents consist of five pages or more. Besides, the scowling administrators ask a series of questions such as father’s name?, mother’s name?, which is completely absurd with older patients whose parents have probably been dead for a long, long time. When he told Victor about this, Victor said, Your story is a joke compared to mine. Once they asked me: “Sex? Male or female?” The administrator assigned to Andreas Ban also asked, Do you have any disabilities? At which he was faced with the dilemma of listing all of them, or picking out just one, so he said, I’ve got no left tit, at which the woman turned on him, Mind your language! she hissed, rolling her eyes.
Before the procedure, Andreas Ban dreams about gloves. I’ve lost my gloves, he says to the person in the bed next to him who lies back on his pillow, in his pajamas (his operation is scheduled for the following day, so why is he in pajamas?), with his arms crossed, looking straight ahead.
You’ve lost your gloves? I don’t know anything about gloves, I’m a confectioner, says the one who is otherwise silent.
Someone said, we dream in order to forget, Andreas Ban tells the tongue-tied, half-blind confectioner.
I never dream, says the confectioner.
In Hans Christian Andersen there is a playful little dwarf by the name of Ole Lukøje who sends children to sleep and into cheerful dreams. Ole Lukøje approaches the little ones on tiptoe and scatters grains of fine sand into their eyes, which blinds them so they bow their heads and sink into slumber. Under each arm Ole Lukøje carries an umbrella, whose underside is splendidly illustrated, which he opens over the heads of the good children, so they enter into miraculous stories in which the world crackles with color, and another umbrella, black on the inside, with no illustrations, which Ole Lukøje uses to deprive naughty children of nocturnal excursions so they wake with difficulty, scared and empty. Ole Lukøje is an old dwarf, resembling a little Morpheus, perhaps even Morpheus himself, preparing for his final leap out of dreams into death. For Ole Lukøje has a brother also called Ole Lukøje and that brother visits people only once, closes their eyes, lifts them onto his horse and while telling them stories, carries them to the other side of reality. My brother Ole Lukøje knows only two stories, says Ole Lukøje on his seventh visit to a small boy called Hjalmar. One of his stories is so magical that I can’t describe it, while the other is so appalling that I have no words for it. Then Ole Lukøje lifts Hjalmar up to the window and says, Look, that’s my brother Ole Lukøje on his horse. His other name is Death. You see, he doesn’t look as terrible as he does in picture books, like a skeleton. Look, his coat is sewn with silver threads and he is dressed like a hussar, while behind him flutters a cape of black velvet that covers the back and the hooves of his horse. See them speed by!
That is what Andreas Ban wanted to tell the confectioner who does not dream, but the confectioner was snoring and farting in his sleep.
That night, before his procedure, Andreas Ban listens to music on a little transistor he has brought with him. If I go blind, this is what I’ll do, I’ll listen to music, he says.
Come to Skopje, Ljiljana writes, I’ll take you to the Matka Canyon, Matka is a tonic for the eyes. And I’ll make you little Chinese nibbles.
When he leaves the hospital (with a bandage over his eye), Andreas Ban is given a card for organ transplants, in case the new lens becomes detached. No matter where he is, with that card he can run into any clinic and there they will know at once how to repair it, what to put into that dead eye to bring it back to life. The card, in the name of Andreas Ban, is called a Patient Lens Identification Implant Card, it contains: the name of the specialist, the date of the operation, all the dimensions of his right eye and all the dimensions and the make of the implanted lens. The card also contains the addresses and telephone numbers of the manufacturers of those lenses, in case, heaven forbid, of any blunder. So, as far as his eye is concerned, Andreas Ban is calm for a while. When he feels like excluding himself completely, blacking out his consciousness, obliterating it, turning his eyes into empty, blind eyes, into white eyes behind which there will not be any images or memories or vibrations, he will step into those белые ночи* (which are also called black days), he will step into the twilight, both the civic and the astronomical twilight when the Sun sinks.
There is another person who throws sand into eyes, an evil man who visits children who do not want to go to bed — Mr. Sandman. Children often do not want to go to bed, for children days are short, because they like to look, because they are discovering the world. But the Sandman says no. The Sandman determines how much of the world and what kind of world children may look at to remain obedient. So, when the Sandman throws a handful of sand into the eyes of disobedient children, their bloody eyes jump out of their heads and the Sandman collects them, tosses them into a sack and during the crescent moon feeds them to his young who sit in a nest and, like owls, have hooked beaks they peck with at the disobedient eyes of the disobedient children. And so, as time goes on, increasing numbers of tiny blind people of uncertain step roam the world, mysteriously quiet and like automata, like that beautiful Olympia, the great seductress, whose face had black hole instead of eyes.