Cathedral
By: Raymond Carver
This blind man, an old friend of my wife's, he
was on his way to spend the night. His wife had died. So he was visiting the
dead wife's relatives in Connecticut. He called my wife from his in-laws'.
Arrangements were made. He would come by train, a five-hour trip, and my wife
would meet him at the station. She hadn't seen him since she worked for him one
summer in Seattle ten years ago. But she and the blind man had kept in touch.
They made tapes and mailed them back and forth. I wasn't enthusiastic about his
visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me. My idea of
blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never
laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs. A blind man in my house was
not something I looked forward to.
That summer in Seattle she had needed
a job. She didn't have any money. The man she was going to marry at the end of
the summer was in officers' training school. He didn't have any money, either.
But she was in love with the guy, and he was in love with her, etc. She'd seen
something in the paper: HELP WANTED--Reading to Blind Man, and a telephone
number. She phoned and went over, was hired on the spot. She'd worked with this
blind man all summer. She read stuff to him, case studies, reports, that sort of
thing. She helped him organize his little office in the county social-service
department. They'd become good friends, my wife and the blind man. How do I know
these things? She told me. And she told me something else. On her last day in
the office, the blind man asked if he could touch her face. She agreed to this.
She told me he touched his fingers to every part of her face, her nose--even her
neck! She never forgot it. She even tried to write a poem about it. She was
always trying to write a poem. She wrote a poem or two every year, usually after
something really important had happened to her.
When we first started going out together, she showed me the poem. In the poem, she recalled his
fingers and the way they had moved around over her face. In the poem, she talked
about what she had felt at the time, about what went through her mind when the
blind man touched her nose and lips. I can remember I didn't think much of the
poem. Of course, I didn't tell her that. Maybe I just don't understand poetry. I
admit it's not the first thing I reach for when I pick up something to read.
Anyway, this man who'd first enjoyed her favors, the officer-to-be, he'd
been her childhood sweetheart. So okay. I'm saying that at the end of the summer
she let the blind man run his hands over her face, said goodbye to him, married
her childhood etc., who was now a commissioned officer, and she moved away from
Seattle. But they'd kept in touch, she and the blind man. She made the first
contact after a year or so. She called him up one night from an Air Force base
in Alabama. She wanted to talk. They talked. He asked her to send him a tape and
tell him about her life. She did this. She sent the tape. On the tape, she told
the blind man about her husband and about their life together in the military.
She told the blind man she loved her husband but she didn't like it where they
lived and she didn't like it that he was a part of the military-industrial
thing. She told the blind man she'd written a poem and he was in it. She told
him that she was writing a poem about what it was like to be an Air Force
officer's wife. The poem wasn't finished yet. She was still writing it. The
blind man made a tape. He sent her the tape. She made a tape. This went on for
years. My wife's officer was posted to one base and then another. She sent
tapes from Moody AFB, McGuire, McConnell, and finally Travis, near Sacramento,
where one night she got to feeling lonely and cut off from people she kept
losing in that moving-around life. She got to feeling she couldn't go it
another step. She went in and swallowed all the pills and capsules in the
medicine chest and washed them down with a bottle of gin. Then she got into a
hot bath and passed out.
But instead of dying, she got sick. She threw
up. Her officer--why should he have a name? he was the childhood sweetheart, and
what more does he want?--came home from somewhere, found her, and called the
ambulance. In time, she put it all on a tape and sent the tape to the blind man.
Over the years, she put all kinds of stuff on tapes and sent the tapes off
lickety-split. Next to writing a poem every year, I think it was her chief means
of recreation. On one tape, she told the blind man she'd decided to live away
from her officer for a time. On another tape, she told him about her divorce.
She and I began going out, and of course she told her blind man about it. She
told him everything, or so it seemed to me. Once she asked me if I'd like to
hear the latest tape from the blind man. This was a year ago. I was on the tape,
she said. So I said okay, I'd listen to it. I got us drinks and we settled down
in the living room. We made ready to listen. First she inserted the tape into
the player and adjusted a couple of dials. Then she pushed a lever. The tape
squeaked and someone began to talk in this loud voice. She lowered the volume.
After a few minutes of harmless chitchat, I heard my own name in the mouth of
this stranger, this blind man I didn't even know! And then this: "From all
you've said about him, I can only conclude--" But we were interrupted, a knock
at the door, something, and we didn't ever get back to the tape. Maybe it was
just as well. I'd heard all I wanted to.
Now this same blind man was coming to sleep in my house.
"Maybe I could take him bowling," I said to
my wife. She was at the draining board doing scalloped potatoes. She put down
the knife she was using and turned around.
"If you love me," she said,
"you can do this for me. If you don't love me, okay. But if you had a friend,
any friend, and the friend came to visit, I'd make him feel comfortable." She
wiped her hands with the dish towel.
"I don't have any blind friends," I
said.
"You don't have any friends," she said. "Period. Besides," she
said, "goddamn it, his wife's just died! Don't you understand that? The man's
lost his wife!"
I didn't answer. She'd told me a little about the blind
man's wife. Her name was Beulah. Beulah! That's a name for a colored woman.
"Was his wife a Negro?" I asked.
"Are you crazy?" my wife said. "Have
you just flipped or something?" She picked up a potato. I saw it hit the floor,
then roll under the stove. "What's wrong with you?" she said. "Are you
drunk?"
"I'm just asking," I said.
Right then my wife filled me in with more detail than I cared to know. I made a drink and sat at the kitchen
table to listen. Pieces of the story began to fall into place.
Beulah had gone to work for the blind man the summer after my wife had stopped working for
him. Pretty soon Beulah and the blind man had themselves a church wedding. It
was a little wedding--who'd want to go to such a wedding in the first
place?--just the two of them, plus the minister and the minister's wife. But it
was a church wedding just the same. It was what Beulah had wanted, he'd said.
But even then Beulah must have been carrying the cancer in her glands. After
they had been inseparable for eight years--my wife's word, inseparable--Beulah's
health went into a rapid decline. She died in a Seattle hospital room, the blind
man sitting beside the bed and holding on to her hand. They'd married, lived and
worked together, slept together--had sex, sure--and then the blind man had to
bury her. All this without his having ever seen what the goddamned woman looked
like. It was beyond my understanding. Hearing this, I felt sorry for the blind
man for a little bit. And then I found myself thinking what a pitiful life this
woman must have led. Imagine a woman who could never see herself as she was seen
in the eyes of her loved one. A woman who could go on day after day and never
receive the smallest compliment from her beloved. A woman whose husband could
never read the expression on her face, be it misery or something better. Someone
who could wear makeup or not--what difference to him? She could, if she wanted,
wear green eye-shadow around one eye, a straight pin in her nostril, yellow
slacks, and purple shoes, no matter. And then to slip off into death, the blind
man's hand on her hand, his blind eyes streaming tears--I'm imagining now--her
last thought maybe this: that he never even knew what she looked like, and she
on an express to the grave. Robert was left with a small insurance policy and a
half of a twenty-peso Mexican coin. The other half of the coin went into the box
with her. Pathetic.
So when the time rolled around, my wife went to the
depot to pick him up. With nothing to do but wait--sure, I blamed him for
that--I was having a drink and watching the TV when I heard the car pull into
the drive. I got up from the sofa with my drink and went to the window to have a
look.
I saw my wife laughing as she parked the car. I saw her get out of
the car and shut the odor. She was still wearing a smile. Just amazing. She went
around to the other side of the car to where the blind man was already starting
to get out. This blind man, feature this, he was wearing a full beard! A beard
on a blind man! Too much, I say. The blind man reached into the back seat and
dragged out a suitcase. My wife took his arm, shut the car door, and, talking
all the way, moved him down the drive and then up the steps to the front porch.
I turned off the TV. I finished my drink, rinsed the glass, dried my hands. Then
I went to the door.
My wife said, "I want you to meet Robert. Robert,
this is my husband. I've told you all about him." She was beaming. She had this
blind man by his coat sleeve.
The blind man let go of his suitcase and up came his hand.
I took it. He squeezed hard, held my hand, and then he let it go.
"I feel like we've already met," he boomed.
"Likewise," I
said. I didn't know what else to say. Then I said, "Welcome. I've heard a lot
about you." We began to move then, a little group, from the porch into the
living room, my wife guiding him by the arm. The blind man was carrying his
suitcase in his other hand. My wife said things like, "To your left here,
Robert. That's right. Now watch it, there's a chair. That's it. Sit down right
here. This is the sofa. We just bought this sofa two weeks ago."
I started to say something about the old sofa. I'd liked that old sofa. But I
didn't say anything. Then I wanted to say something else, small-talk, about the
scenic ride along the Hudson. How going to New York, you should sit on the
right-hand side of the train, and coming from New York, the left-hand side.
"Did you have a good train ride?" I said. "Which side of the train did you
sit on, by the way?"
"What a question, which side!" my wife said. "What's
it matter which side?" she said.
"I just asked," I said.
"Right
side," the blind man said. "I hadn't been on a train in nearly forty years. Not
since I was a kid. With my folks. That's been a long time. I'd nearly forgotten
the sensation. I have winter in my beard now," he said. "So I've been told,
anyway. Do I look distinguished, my dear?" the blind man said to my wife.
"You look distinguished, Robert," she said. "Robert," she said. "Robert,
it's just so good to see you."
My wife finally took her eyes off the
blind man and looked at me. I had the feeling she didn't like what she saw. I
shrugged.
I've never met, or personally known, anyone who was blind. This
blind man was late forties, a heavy-set, balding man with stooped shoulders, as
if he carried a great weight there. He wore brown slacks, brown shoes, a
light-brown shirt, a tie, a sports coat. Spiffy. He also had this full beard.
But he didn't use a cane and he didn't wear dark glasses. I'd always thought
dark glasses were a must for the blind. Fact was, I wished he had a pair. At
first glance, his eyes looked like anyone else's eyes. But if you looked close,
there was something different about them. Too much white in the iris, for one
thing, and the pupils seemed to move around in the sockets without his knowing
it or being able to stop it. Creepy. As I stared at his face, I saw the left
pupil turn in toward his nose while the other made an effort to keep in one
place. But it was only an effort, for that eye was on the roam without his
knowing it or wanting it to be.
I said, "Let me get you a drink. What's
your pleasure? We have a little of everything. It's one of our pastimes."
"Bub, I'm a Scotch man myself," he said fast enough in this big voice.
"Right," I said. Bub! "Sure you are. I knew it."
He let his fingers touch his suitcase, which was sitting alongside the sofa. He was taking his
bearings. I didn't blame him for that.
"I'll move that up to your room," my wife said.
"No, that's fine," the blind man said loudly. "It can go up
when I go up."
"A little water with the Scotch?" I said.
"Very little," he said.
"I knew it," I said.
He said, "Just a tad. The Irish actor, Barry Fitzgerald? I'm like that fellow. When I drink water,
Fitzgerald said, I drink water. When I drink whiskey, I drink whiskey." My wife
laughed. The blind man brought his hand up under his beard. He lifted his beard
slowly and let it drop.
I did the drinks, three big glasses of Scotch
with a splash of water in each. Then we made ourselves comfortable and talked
about Robert's travels. First the long flight from the West Coast to
Connecticut, we covered that. Then from Connecticut up here by train. We had
another drink concerning that leg of the trip.
I remembered having read
somewhere that the blind didn't smoke because, as speculation had it, they
couldn't see the smoke they exhaled. I thought I knew that much and that much
only about blind people. But this blind man smoked his cigarette down to the
nubbin and then lit another one. This blind man filled his ashtray and my wife
emptied it.
When we sat down at the table for dinner, we had another
drink. My wife heaped Robert's plate with cube steak, scalloped potatoes, green
beans. I buttered him up two slices of bread. I said, "Here's bread and butter
for you." I swallowed some of my drink. "Now let us pray," I said, and the blind
man lowered his head. My wife looked at me, her mouth agape. "Pray the phone
won't ring and the food doesn't get cold," I said.
We dug in. We ate
everything there was to eat on the table. We ate like there was no tomorrow. We
didn't talk. We ate. We scarfed. We grazed that table. We were into serious
eating. The blind man had right away located his foods, he knew just where
everything was on his plate. I watched with admiration as he used his knife and
fork on the meat. He'd cut two pieces of meat, fork the meat into his mouth, and
then go all out for the scalloped potatoes, the beans next, and then he'd tear
off a hunk of buttered bread and eat that. He'd follow this up with a big drink
of milk. It didn't seem to bother him to use his fingers once in a while,
either.
We finished everything, including half a strawberry pie. For a
few moments, we sat as if stunned. Sweat beaded on our faces. Finally, we got up
from the table and left the dirty places. We didn't look back. We took ourselves
into the living room and sank into our places again. Robert and my wife sat on
the sofa. I took the big chair. We had us two or three more drinks while they
talked about the major things that had come to pass for them in the past ten
years. For the most part, I just listened. Now and then I joined in. I didn't
want him to think I'd left the room, and I didn't want her to think I was
feeling left out. They talked of things that had happened to them--to
them!--these past ten years. I waited in vain to hear my name on my wife's sweet
lips: "And then my dear husband came into my life"--something like that. But I
heard nothing of the sort. More talk of Robert. Robert had done a little of
everything, it seemed, a regular blind jack-of-all-trades. But most recently he
and his wife had had an Amway distributorship, from which, I gathered, they'd
earned their living, such as it was. The blind man was also a ham radio
operator. He talked in his loud voice about conversations he'd had with fellow
operators in Guam, in the Philippines, in Alaska, and even in Tahiti. He said
he'd have a lot of friends there if he ever wanted to go visit those places.
From time to time, he'd turn his blind face toward me, put his hand under his
beard, ask me something. How long had I been in my present position? (Three
years.) Did I like my work? (I didn't.) Was I going to stay with it? (What were
the options?) Finally, when I thought he was beginning to run down, I got up
and turned on the TV.
My wife looked at me with irritation. She was
heading toward a boil. Then she looked at the blind man and said, "Robert, do
you have a TV?"
The blind man said, "My dear, I have two TVs. I have a
color set and a black-and-white thing, an old relic. It's funny, but if I turn
the TV on, and I'm always turning it on, I turn on the color set. It's funny,
don't you think?"
I didn't know what to say to that. I had absolutely
nothing to say to that. No opinion. So I watched the news program and tried to
listen to what the announcer was saying.
"This is a color TV," the blind
man said. "Don't ask me how, but I can tell."
"We traded up a while ago," I said.
The blind man had another taste of his drink. He lifted his
beard, sniffed it, and let it fall. He leaned forward on the sofa. He positioned
his ashtray on the coffee table, then put the lighter to his cigarette. He
leaned back on the sofa and crossed his legs at the ankles.
My wife
covered her mouth, and then she yawned. She stretched. She said, "I think I'll
go upstairs and put on my robe. I think I'll change into something else. Robert,
you make yourself comfortable," she said.
"I'm comfortable," the blind man said.
"I want you to feel comfortable in this house," she said.
"I am comfortable," the blind man said.
After she'd left the room, he and I listened to the weather report and then to the sports roundup. By
that time, she'd been gone so long I didn't know if she was going to come back.
I thought she might have gone to bed. I wished she'd come back downstairs. I
didn't want to be left alone with a blind man. I asked him if he wanted another
drink, and he said sure. Then I asked if he wanted to smoke some dope with me. I
said I'd just rolled a number. I hadn't, but I planned to do so in about two
shakes.
"I'll try some with you," he said.
"Damn right," I said. "That's the stuff."
I got our drinks and sat down on the sofa with him.
Then I rolled us two fat numbers. I lit one and passed it. I brought it to his
fingers. He took it and inhaled.
"Hold it as long as you can," I said. I could tell he didn't know the first thing.
My wife came back downstairs wearing her pink robe and her pink slippers.
"What do I smell?" she said.
"We thought we'd have us some cannabis," I said.
My wife gave me a savage look. Then she looked at the blind man and said, "Robert, I
didn't know you smoked."
He said, "I do now, my dear. There's a first
time for everything. But I don't feel anything yet."
"This stuff is pretty mellow," I said. "This stuff is mild. It's dope you can reason with," I
said. "I t doesn't mess you up."
"Not much it doesn't, bub," he said, and
laughed.
My wife sat on the sofa between the blind man and me. I passed
her the number. She took it and toked and then passed it back to me. "Which way
is this going?" she said. Then she said, "I shouldn't be smoking this. I can
hardly keep my eyes open as it is. That dinner did me in. I shouldn't have
eaten so much."
"It was the strawberry pie," the blind man said. "That's
what did it," he said, and he laughed his big laugh. Then he shook his head.
"There's more strawberry pie," I said.
"Do you want some more, Robert?" my wife said.
"Maybe in a little while," he said.
We gave our attention to the TV. My wife yawned again. She said, "Your bed is made up
when you feel like going to bed, Robert. I know you must have had a long day.
When you're ready to go to bed, say so." She pulled his arm. "Robert?"
He came to and said, "I've had a real nice time. This beats tapes doesn't it?"
I said, "Coming at you," and I put the number between his fingers. He
inhaled, held the smoke, and then let it go. It was like he'd been doing it
since he was nine years old.
"Thanks, bub," he said. "But I think this
is all for me. I think I'm beginning to feel it," he said. He held the burning
roach out for my wife.
"Same here," she said. "Ditto. Me, too." She took
the roach and passed it to me. "I may just sit here for a while between you two
guys with my eyes closed. But don't let me bother you, okay? Either one of you.
If it bothers you, say so. Otherwise, I may just sit here with my eyes closed
until you're ready to go to bed," she said. "Your bed's made up, Robert, when
you're ready. It's right next to our room at the top of the stairs. We'll show
you up when you're ready. You wake me up now, you guys, if I fall asleep." She
said that and then she closed her eyes and went to sleep.
The news
program ended. I got up and changed the channel. I sat back down on the sofa. I
wished my wife hadn't pooped out. Her head lay across the back of the sofa, her
mouth open. She'd turned so that her robe slipped away from her legs, exposing a
juicy thigh. I reached to draw her robe back over her, and it was then that I
glanced at the blind man. What the hell! I flipped the rope open again.
"You say when you want some strawberry pie," I said.
"I will," he
said.
I said, "Are you tired? Do you want me to take you up to your bed?
Are you ready to hit the hay?"
"Not yet," he said. "No, I'll stay up with
you, bub. If that's all right. I'll stay up until you're ready to turn in. We
haven't had a chance to talk. Know what I mean? I feel like me and her
monopolized the evening." He lifted his beard and he let it fall. He picked up
his cigarettes and his lighter.
"That's all right," I said. Then I said,
"I'm glad for the company."
And I guess I was. Every night I smoked dope
and stayed up as long as I could before I fell asleep. My wife and I hardly ever
went to bed at the same time. When I did go to sleep, I had these dreams.
Sometimes I'd wake up from one of them, my heart going crazy.
Something about the church and the Middle Ages was on the TV. Not your run-of-the-mill TV
fare. I wanted to watch something else. I turned to the other channels. But
there was nothing on them, either. So I turned back to the first channel and
apologized.
"Bub, it's all right," the blind man said. "It's fine with
me. Whatever you want to watch is okay. I'm always learning something. Learning
never ends. It won't hurt me to learn something tonight, I got ears," he
said.
We didn't say anything for a time. He was leaning forward with
his head turned at me, his right ear aimed in the direction of the set. Very
disconcerting. Now and then his eyelids drooped and then they snapped open
again. Now and then he put his fingers into his beard and tugged, like he was
thinking about something he was hearing on the television.
On the screen, a group of men wearing cowls was being set upon and tormented by men dressed in
skeleton costumes and men dressed as devils. The men dressed as devils wore
devil masks, horns, and long tails. This pageant was part of a procession. The
Englishman who was narrating the thing said it took place in Spain once a year.
I tried to explain to the blind man what was happening.
"Skeletons," he said. "I know about skeletons," he said, and he nodded.
The TV showed this one cathedral. Then there was a long, slow look at another one. Finally,
the picture switched to the famous one in Paris, with its flying buttresses and
its spires reaching up to the clouds. The camera pulled away to show the whole
of the cathedral rising above the skyline.
There were times when the
Englishman who was telling the thing would shut up, would simply let the camera
move around the cathedrals. Or else the camera would tour the countryside, men
in fields walking behind oxen. I waited as long as I could. Then I felt I had to
say something. I said, "They're showing the outside of this cathedral now.
Gargoyles. Little statues carved to look like monsters. Now I guess they're in
Italy. Yeah, they're in Italy. There's paintings on the walls of this one
church."
"Are those fresco paintings, bub?" he asked, and he sipped from his drink.
I reached for my glass. But it was empty. I tried to remember
what I could remember. "You're asking me are those frescoes?" I said. "That's a
good question. I don't know."
The camera moved to a cathedral outside
Lisbon. The differences in the Portuguese cathedral compared with the French and
Italian were not that great. But they were there. Mostly the interior stuff.
Then something occurred to me, and I said, "Something has occurred to me. Do you
have any idea what a cathedral is? What they look like, that is? Do you follow
me? If somebody says cathedral to you, do you have any notion what they're
talking about? Do you know the difference between that and a Baptist church,
say?"
He let the smoke dribble from his mouth. "I know they took hundreds
of workers fifty or a hundred years to build," he said. "I just heard the man
say that, of course. I know generations of the same families worked on a
cathedral. I heard him say that, too. The men who began their life's work on
them, they never lived to see the completion of their work. In that wise, bub,
they're no different from the rest of us, right?" He laughed. Then his eyelids
drooped again. His head nodded. He seemed to be snoozing. Maybe he was imagining
himself in Portugal. The TV was showing another cathedral now. This one was in
Germany. The Englishman's voice droned on. "Cathedrals," the blind man said. He
sat up and rolled his head back and forth. "If you want the truth, bub, that's
about all I know. What I just said. What I heard him say. But maybe you could
describe one to me? I wish you'd do it. I'd like that. If you want to know, I
really don't have a good idea."
I stared hard at the shot of the
cathedral on the TV. How could I even begin to describe it? But say my life
depended on it. Say my life was being threatened by an insane guy who said I had
to do it or else.
I stared some more at the cathedral before the picture
flipped off into the countryside. There was no use. I turned to the blind man
and said, "To begin with, they're very tall." I was looking around the room for
clues. "They reach way up. Up and up. Toward the sky. They're so big, some of
them, they have to have these supports. To help hold them up, so to speak.
These supports are called buttresses. They remind me of viaducts, for some
reason. But maybe you don't know viaducts, either? Sometimes the cathedrals
have devils and such carved into the front. Sometimes lords and ladies. Don't
ask me why this is," I said.
He was nodding. The whole upper part of his body seemed to be moving back and forth.
"I'm not doing so good, am I?" I said.
He stopped nodding and leaned forward on the edge of the sofa. As
he listened to me, he was running his fingers through his beard. I wasn't
getting through to him, I could see that. But he waited for me to go on just the
same. He nodded, like he was trying to encourage me. I tried to think what else
to say. "They're really big," I said. "They're massive. They're built of stone.
Marble, too, sometimes. In those olden days, when they built cathedrals, men
wanted to be close to God. In those olden days, God was an important part of
everyone's life. You could tell this from their cathedral-building. I'm sorry,"
I said, "but it looks like that's the best I can do for you. I'm just no good at
it."
"That's all right, bub," the blind man said. "Hey, listen. I hope
you don't mind my asking you. Can I ask you something? Let me ask you a simple
question, yes or no. I'm just curious and there's no offense. You're my host.
But let me ask if you are in any way religious? You don't mind my asking?"
I shook my head. He couldn't see that, though. A wink is the same as a nod
to a blind man. "I guess I don't believe in it. In anything. Sometimes It's
hard. You know what I'm saying?"
"Sure, I do," he said.
"Right," I said.
The Englishman was still holding forth. My wife sighed in her
sleep. She drew a long breath and went on with her sleeping.
"You'll have to forgive me," I said. "But I can't tell you what a cathedral looks like. It
just isn't in me to do it. I can't do any more than I've done."
The blind man sat very still, his head down, as he listened to me.
I said, "The truth is, cathedrals don't mean anything special to me. Nothing. Cathedrals.
They're something to look at on late-night TV. That's all they are."
It was then that the blind man cleared his throat. He brought something up. He took
a handkerchief from his back pocket. Then he said, "I get it, bub. It's okay. It
happens. Don't worry about it," he said. "Hey, listen to me. Will you do me a
favor? I got an idea. Why don't you find us some heavy paper? and a pen. We'll
do something. We'll draw one together. Get us a pen and some heavy paper. Go on,
bub, get the stuff," he said.
So I went upstairs. My legs felt like they
didn't have any strength in them. They felt like they did after I'd done some
running. In my wife's room, I looked around. I found some ballpoints in a little
basket on her table. And then I tried to think where to look for the kind of
paper he was talking about.
Downstairs, in the kitchen, I found a
shopping bag with onion skins in the bottom of the bag. I emptied the bag and
shook it. I brought it into the living room and sat down with it near his legs.
I moved some things, smoothed the wrinkles from the bag, spread it out on the
coffee table.
The blind man got down from the sofa and sat next to me on
the carpet.
He ran his fingers over the paper. He went up and down the
sides of the paper. The edges, even the edges. He fingered the corners.
"All right," he said. "All right, let's do her."
He found my hand, the
hand with the pen. He closed his hand over my hand. "Go ahead, bub, draw," he
said. "Draw. You'll see. I'll follow along with you. It'll be okay. Just begin
now like I'm telling you. You'll see. Draw," the blind man said.
So I began. First I drew a box that looked like a house. It could have been the house
I lived in. Then I put a roof on it. At either end of the roof, I drew spires.
Crazy.
"Swell," he said. "Terrific. You're doing fine," he said. "Never
thought anything like this could happen in your lifetime, did you, bub? Well,
it's a strange life, we all know that. Go on now. Keep it up."
I put in windows with arches. I drew flying buttresses. I hung great doors. I couldn't
stop. The TV station went off the air. I put down the pen and closed and opened
my fingers. The blind man felt around over the paper. He moved the tips of his
fingers over the paper, all over what I had drawn, and he nodded.
"Doing fine," the blind man said.
I took up the pen again, and he found my hand.
I kept at it. I'm no artist. But I kept drawing just the same.
My wife opened up her eyes and gazed at us. She sat up on the sofa, her robe hanging
open. She said, "What are you doing? Tell me, I want to know."
I didn't answer her.
The blind man said, "We're drawing a cathedral. Me and him
are working on it. Press hard," he said to me. "That's right. That's good," he
said. "Sure. You got it, bub, I can tell. You didn't think you could. But you
can, can't you? You're cooking with gas now. You know what I'm saying? We're
going to really have us something here in a minute. How's the old arm?" he said.
"Put some people in there now. What's a cathedral without people?"
My wife said, "What's going on? Robert, what are you doing? What's going on?"
"It's all right," he said to her. "Close your eyes now," the blind man said
to me.
I did it. I closed them just like he said.
"Are they closed?" he said. "Don't fudge."
"They're closed," I said.
"Keep
them that way," he said. He said, "Don't stop now. Draw."
So we kept on
with it. His fingers rode my fingers as my hand went over the paper. It was like
nothing else in my life up to now.
Then he said, "I think that's it. I
think you got it," he said. "Take a look. What do you think?"
But I had my eyes closed. I thought I'd keep them that way for a little longer. I thought
it was something I ought to do.
"Well?" he said. "Are you looking?"
My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn't feel
like I was inside anything.
"It's really something," I said.
1983
By: Raymond Carver
This blind man, an old friend of my wife's, he
was on his way to spend the night. His wife had died. So he was visiting the
dead wife's relatives in Connecticut. He called my wife from his in-laws'.
Arrangements were made. He would come by train, a five-hour trip, and my wife
would meet him at the station. She hadn't seen him since she worked for him one
summer in Seattle ten years ago. But she and the blind man had kept in touch.
They made tapes and mailed them back and forth. I wasn't enthusiastic about his
visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me. My idea of
blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never
laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs. A blind man in my house was
not something I looked forward to.
That summer in Seattle she had needed
a job. She didn't have any money. The man she was going to marry at the end of
the summer was in officers' training school. He didn't have any money, either.
But she was in love with the guy, and he was in love with her, etc. She'd seen
something in the paper: HELP WANTED--Reading to Blind Man, and a telephone
number. She phoned and went over, was hired on the spot. She'd worked with this
blind man all summer. She read stuff to him, case studies, reports, that sort of
thing. She helped him organize his little office in the county social-service
department. They'd become good friends, my wife and the blind man. How do I know
these things? She told me. And she told me something else. On her last day in
the office, the blind man asked if he could touch her face. She agreed to this.
She told me he touched his fingers to every part of her face, her nose--even her
neck! She never forgot it. She even tried to write a poem about it. She was
always trying to write a poem. She wrote a poem or two every year, usually after
something really important had happened to her.
When we first started going out together, she showed me the poem. In the poem, she recalled his
fingers and the way they had moved around over her face. In the poem, she talked
about what she had felt at the time, about what went through her mind when the
blind man touched her nose and lips. I can remember I didn't think much of the
poem. Of course, I didn't tell her that. Maybe I just don't understand poetry. I
admit it's not the first thing I reach for when I pick up something to read.
Anyway, this man who'd first enjoyed her favors, the officer-to-be, he'd
been her childhood sweetheart. So okay. I'm saying that at the end of the summer
she let the blind man run his hands over her face, said goodbye to him, married
her childhood etc., who was now a commissioned officer, and she moved away from
Seattle. But they'd kept in touch, she and the blind man. She made the first
contact after a year or so. She called him up one night from an Air Force base
in Alabama. She wanted to talk. They talked. He asked her to send him a tape and
tell him about her life. She did this. She sent the tape. On the tape, she told
the blind man about her husband and about their life together in the military.
She told the blind man she loved her husband but she didn't like it where they
lived and she didn't like it that he was a part of the military-industrial
thing. She told the blind man she'd written a poem and he was in it. She told
him that she was writing a poem about what it was like to be an Air Force
officer's wife. The poem wasn't finished yet. She was still writing it. The
blind man made a tape. He sent her the tape. She made a tape. This went on for
years. My wife's officer was posted to one base and then another. She sent
tapes from Moody AFB, McGuire, McConnell, and finally Travis, near Sacramento,
where one night she got to feeling lonely and cut off from people she kept
losing in that moving-around life. She got to feeling she couldn't go it
another step. She went in and swallowed all the pills and capsules in the
medicine chest and washed them down with a bottle of gin. Then she got into a
hot bath and passed out.
But instead of dying, she got sick. She threw
up. Her officer--why should he have a name? he was the childhood sweetheart, and
what more does he want?--came home from somewhere, found her, and called the
ambulance. In time, she put it all on a tape and sent the tape to the blind man.
Over the years, she put all kinds of stuff on tapes and sent the tapes off
lickety-split. Next to writing a poem every year, I think it was her chief means
of recreation. On one tape, she told the blind man she'd decided to live away
from her officer for a time. On another tape, she told him about her divorce.
She and I began going out, and of course she told her blind man about it. She
told him everything, or so it seemed to me. Once she asked me if I'd like to
hear the latest tape from the blind man. This was a year ago. I was on the tape,
she said. So I said okay, I'd listen to it. I got us drinks and we settled down
in the living room. We made ready to listen. First she inserted the tape into
the player and adjusted a couple of dials. Then she pushed a lever. The tape
squeaked and someone began to talk in this loud voice. She lowered the volume.
After a few minutes of harmless chitchat, I heard my own name in the mouth of
this stranger, this blind man I didn't even know! And then this: "From all
you've said about him, I can only conclude--" But we were interrupted, a knock
at the door, something, and we didn't ever get back to the tape. Maybe it was
just as well. I'd heard all I wanted to.
Now this same blind man was coming to sleep in my house.
"Maybe I could take him bowling," I said to
my wife. She was at the draining board doing scalloped potatoes. She put down
the knife she was using and turned around.
"If you love me," she said,
"you can do this for me. If you don't love me, okay. But if you had a friend,
any friend, and the friend came to visit, I'd make him feel comfortable." She
wiped her hands with the dish towel.
"I don't have any blind friends," I
said.
"You don't have any friends," she said. "Period. Besides," she
said, "goddamn it, his wife's just died! Don't you understand that? The man's
lost his wife!"
I didn't answer. She'd told me a little about the blind
man's wife. Her name was Beulah. Beulah! That's a name for a colored woman.
"Was his wife a Negro?" I asked.
"Are you crazy?" my wife said. "Have
you just flipped or something?" She picked up a potato. I saw it hit the floor,
then roll under the stove. "What's wrong with you?" she said. "Are you
drunk?"
"I'm just asking," I said.
Right then my wife filled me in with more detail than I cared to know. I made a drink and sat at the kitchen
table to listen. Pieces of the story began to fall into place.
Beulah had gone to work for the blind man the summer after my wife had stopped working for
him. Pretty soon Beulah and the blind man had themselves a church wedding. It
was a little wedding--who'd want to go to such a wedding in the first
place?--just the two of them, plus the minister and the minister's wife. But it
was a church wedding just the same. It was what Beulah had wanted, he'd said.
But even then Beulah must have been carrying the cancer in her glands. After
they had been inseparable for eight years--my wife's word, inseparable--Beulah's
health went into a rapid decline. She died in a Seattle hospital room, the blind
man sitting beside the bed and holding on to her hand. They'd married, lived and
worked together, slept together--had sex, sure--and then the blind man had to
bury her. All this without his having ever seen what the goddamned woman looked
like. It was beyond my understanding. Hearing this, I felt sorry for the blind
man for a little bit. And then I found myself thinking what a pitiful life this
woman must have led. Imagine a woman who could never see herself as she was seen
in the eyes of her loved one. A woman who could go on day after day and never
receive the smallest compliment from her beloved. A woman whose husband could
never read the expression on her face, be it misery or something better. Someone
who could wear makeup or not--what difference to him? She could, if she wanted,
wear green eye-shadow around one eye, a straight pin in her nostril, yellow
slacks, and purple shoes, no matter. And then to slip off into death, the blind
man's hand on her hand, his blind eyes streaming tears--I'm imagining now--her
last thought maybe this: that he never even knew what she looked like, and she
on an express to the grave. Robert was left with a small insurance policy and a
half of a twenty-peso Mexican coin. The other half of the coin went into the box
with her. Pathetic.
So when the time rolled around, my wife went to the
depot to pick him up. With nothing to do but wait--sure, I blamed him for
that--I was having a drink and watching the TV when I heard the car pull into
the drive. I got up from the sofa with my drink and went to the window to have a
look.
I saw my wife laughing as she parked the car. I saw her get out of
the car and shut the odor. She was still wearing a smile. Just amazing. She went
around to the other side of the car to where the blind man was already starting
to get out. This blind man, feature this, he was wearing a full beard! A beard
on a blind man! Too much, I say. The blind man reached into the back seat and
dragged out a suitcase. My wife took his arm, shut the car door, and, talking
all the way, moved him down the drive and then up the steps to the front porch.
I turned off the TV. I finished my drink, rinsed the glass, dried my hands. Then
I went to the door.
My wife said, "I want you to meet Robert. Robert,
this is my husband. I've told you all about him." She was beaming. She had this
blind man by his coat sleeve.
The blind man let go of his suitcase and up came his hand.
I took it. He squeezed hard, held my hand, and then he let it go.
"I feel like we've already met," he boomed.
"Likewise," I
said. I didn't know what else to say. Then I said, "Welcome. I've heard a lot
about you." We began to move then, a little group, from the porch into the
living room, my wife guiding him by the arm. The blind man was carrying his
suitcase in his other hand. My wife said things like, "To your left here,
Robert. That's right. Now watch it, there's a chair. That's it. Sit down right
here. This is the sofa. We just bought this sofa two weeks ago."
I started to say something about the old sofa. I'd liked that old sofa. But I
didn't say anything. Then I wanted to say something else, small-talk, about the
scenic ride along the Hudson. How going to New York, you should sit on the
right-hand side of the train, and coming from New York, the left-hand side.
"Did you have a good train ride?" I said. "Which side of the train did you
sit on, by the way?"
"What a question, which side!" my wife said. "What's
it matter which side?" she said.
"I just asked," I said.
"Right
side," the blind man said. "I hadn't been on a train in nearly forty years. Not
since I was a kid. With my folks. That's been a long time. I'd nearly forgotten
the sensation. I have winter in my beard now," he said. "So I've been told,
anyway. Do I look distinguished, my dear?" the blind man said to my wife.
"You look distinguished, Robert," she said. "Robert," she said. "Robert,
it's just so good to see you."
My wife finally took her eyes off the
blind man and looked at me. I had the feeling she didn't like what she saw. I
shrugged.
I've never met, or personally known, anyone who was blind. This
blind man was late forties, a heavy-set, balding man with stooped shoulders, as
if he carried a great weight there. He wore brown slacks, brown shoes, a
light-brown shirt, a tie, a sports coat. Spiffy. He also had this full beard.
But he didn't use a cane and he didn't wear dark glasses. I'd always thought
dark glasses were a must for the blind. Fact was, I wished he had a pair. At
first glance, his eyes looked like anyone else's eyes. But if you looked close,
there was something different about them. Too much white in the iris, for one
thing, and the pupils seemed to move around in the sockets without his knowing
it or being able to stop it. Creepy. As I stared at his face, I saw the left
pupil turn in toward his nose while the other made an effort to keep in one
place. But it was only an effort, for that eye was on the roam without his
knowing it or wanting it to be.
I said, "Let me get you a drink. What's
your pleasure? We have a little of everything. It's one of our pastimes."
"Bub, I'm a Scotch man myself," he said fast enough in this big voice.
"Right," I said. Bub! "Sure you are. I knew it."
He let his fingers touch his suitcase, which was sitting alongside the sofa. He was taking his
bearings. I didn't blame him for that.
"I'll move that up to your room," my wife said.
"No, that's fine," the blind man said loudly. "It can go up
when I go up."
"A little water with the Scotch?" I said.
"Very little," he said.
"I knew it," I said.
He said, "Just a tad. The Irish actor, Barry Fitzgerald? I'm like that fellow. When I drink water,
Fitzgerald said, I drink water. When I drink whiskey, I drink whiskey." My wife
laughed. The blind man brought his hand up under his beard. He lifted his beard
slowly and let it drop.
I did the drinks, three big glasses of Scotch
with a splash of water in each. Then we made ourselves comfortable and talked
about Robert's travels. First the long flight from the West Coast to
Connecticut, we covered that. Then from Connecticut up here by train. We had
another drink concerning that leg of the trip.
I remembered having read
somewhere that the blind didn't smoke because, as speculation had it, they
couldn't see the smoke they exhaled. I thought I knew that much and that much
only about blind people. But this blind man smoked his cigarette down to the
nubbin and then lit another one. This blind man filled his ashtray and my wife
emptied it.
When we sat down at the table for dinner, we had another
drink. My wife heaped Robert's plate with cube steak, scalloped potatoes, green
beans. I buttered him up two slices of bread. I said, "Here's bread and butter
for you." I swallowed some of my drink. "Now let us pray," I said, and the blind
man lowered his head. My wife looked at me, her mouth agape. "Pray the phone
won't ring and the food doesn't get cold," I said.
We dug in. We ate
everything there was to eat on the table. We ate like there was no tomorrow. We
didn't talk. We ate. We scarfed. We grazed that table. We were into serious
eating. The blind man had right away located his foods, he knew just where
everything was on his plate. I watched with admiration as he used his knife and
fork on the meat. He'd cut two pieces of meat, fork the meat into his mouth, and
then go all out for the scalloped potatoes, the beans next, and then he'd tear
off a hunk of buttered bread and eat that. He'd follow this up with a big drink
of milk. It didn't seem to bother him to use his fingers once in a while,
either.
We finished everything, including half a strawberry pie. For a
few moments, we sat as if stunned. Sweat beaded on our faces. Finally, we got up
from the table and left the dirty places. We didn't look back. We took ourselves
into the living room and sank into our places again. Robert and my wife sat on
the sofa. I took the big chair. We had us two or three more drinks while they
talked about the major things that had come to pass for them in the past ten
years. For the most part, I just listened. Now and then I joined in. I didn't
want him to think I'd left the room, and I didn't want her to think I was
feeling left out. They talked of things that had happened to them--to
them!--these past ten years. I waited in vain to hear my name on my wife's sweet
lips: "And then my dear husband came into my life"--something like that. But I
heard nothing of the sort. More talk of Robert. Robert had done a little of
everything, it seemed, a regular blind jack-of-all-trades. But most recently he
and his wife had had an Amway distributorship, from which, I gathered, they'd
earned their living, such as it was. The blind man was also a ham radio
operator. He talked in his loud voice about conversations he'd had with fellow
operators in Guam, in the Philippines, in Alaska, and even in Tahiti. He said
he'd have a lot of friends there if he ever wanted to go visit those places.
From time to time, he'd turn his blind face toward me, put his hand under his
beard, ask me something. How long had I been in my present position? (Three
years.) Did I like my work? (I didn't.) Was I going to stay with it? (What were
the options?) Finally, when I thought he was beginning to run down, I got up
and turned on the TV.
My wife looked at me with irritation. She was
heading toward a boil. Then she looked at the blind man and said, "Robert, do
you have a TV?"
The blind man said, "My dear, I have two TVs. I have a
color set and a black-and-white thing, an old relic. It's funny, but if I turn
the TV on, and I'm always turning it on, I turn on the color set. It's funny,
don't you think?"
I didn't know what to say to that. I had absolutely
nothing to say to that. No opinion. So I watched the news program and tried to
listen to what the announcer was saying.
"This is a color TV," the blind
man said. "Don't ask me how, but I can tell."
"We traded up a while ago," I said.
The blind man had another taste of his drink. He lifted his
beard, sniffed it, and let it fall. He leaned forward on the sofa. He positioned
his ashtray on the coffee table, then put the lighter to his cigarette. He
leaned back on the sofa and crossed his legs at the ankles.
My wife
covered her mouth, and then she yawned. She stretched. She said, "I think I'll
go upstairs and put on my robe. I think I'll change into something else. Robert,
you make yourself comfortable," she said.
"I'm comfortable," the blind man said.
"I want you to feel comfortable in this house," she said.
"I am comfortable," the blind man said.
After she'd left the room, he and I listened to the weather report and then to the sports roundup. By
that time, she'd been gone so long I didn't know if she was going to come back.
I thought she might have gone to bed. I wished she'd come back downstairs. I
didn't want to be left alone with a blind man. I asked him if he wanted another
drink, and he said sure. Then I asked if he wanted to smoke some dope with me. I
said I'd just rolled a number. I hadn't, but I planned to do so in about two
shakes.
"I'll try some with you," he said.
"Damn right," I said. "That's the stuff."
I got our drinks and sat down on the sofa with him.
Then I rolled us two fat numbers. I lit one and passed it. I brought it to his
fingers. He took it and inhaled.
"Hold it as long as you can," I said. I could tell he didn't know the first thing.
My wife came back downstairs wearing her pink robe and her pink slippers.
"What do I smell?" she said.
"We thought we'd have us some cannabis," I said.
My wife gave me a savage look. Then she looked at the blind man and said, "Robert, I
didn't know you smoked."
He said, "I do now, my dear. There's a first
time for everything. But I don't feel anything yet."
"This stuff is pretty mellow," I said. "This stuff is mild. It's dope you can reason with," I
said. "I t doesn't mess you up."
"Not much it doesn't, bub," he said, and
laughed.
My wife sat on the sofa between the blind man and me. I passed
her the number. She took it and toked and then passed it back to me. "Which way
is this going?" she said. Then she said, "I shouldn't be smoking this. I can
hardly keep my eyes open as it is. That dinner did me in. I shouldn't have
eaten so much."
"It was the strawberry pie," the blind man said. "That's
what did it," he said, and he laughed his big laugh. Then he shook his head.
"There's more strawberry pie," I said.
"Do you want some more, Robert?" my wife said.
"Maybe in a little while," he said.
We gave our attention to the TV. My wife yawned again. She said, "Your bed is made up
when you feel like going to bed, Robert. I know you must have had a long day.
When you're ready to go to bed, say so." She pulled his arm. "Robert?"
He came to and said, "I've had a real nice time. This beats tapes doesn't it?"
I said, "Coming at you," and I put the number between his fingers. He
inhaled, held the smoke, and then let it go. It was like he'd been doing it
since he was nine years old.
"Thanks, bub," he said. "But I think this
is all for me. I think I'm beginning to feel it," he said. He held the burning
roach out for my wife.
"Same here," she said. "Ditto. Me, too." She took
the roach and passed it to me. "I may just sit here for a while between you two
guys with my eyes closed. But don't let me bother you, okay? Either one of you.
If it bothers you, say so. Otherwise, I may just sit here with my eyes closed
until you're ready to go to bed," she said. "Your bed's made up, Robert, when
you're ready. It's right next to our room at the top of the stairs. We'll show
you up when you're ready. You wake me up now, you guys, if I fall asleep." She
said that and then she closed her eyes and went to sleep.
The news
program ended. I got up and changed the channel. I sat back down on the sofa. I
wished my wife hadn't pooped out. Her head lay across the back of the sofa, her
mouth open. She'd turned so that her robe slipped away from her legs, exposing a
juicy thigh. I reached to draw her robe back over her, and it was then that I
glanced at the blind man. What the hell! I flipped the rope open again.
"You say when you want some strawberry pie," I said.
"I will," he
said.
I said, "Are you tired? Do you want me to take you up to your bed?
Are you ready to hit the hay?"
"Not yet," he said. "No, I'll stay up with
you, bub. If that's all right. I'll stay up until you're ready to turn in. We
haven't had a chance to talk. Know what I mean? I feel like me and her
monopolized the evening." He lifted his beard and he let it fall. He picked up
his cigarettes and his lighter.
"That's all right," I said. Then I said,
"I'm glad for the company."
And I guess I was. Every night I smoked dope
and stayed up as long as I could before I fell asleep. My wife and I hardly ever
went to bed at the same time. When I did go to sleep, I had these dreams.
Sometimes I'd wake up from one of them, my heart going crazy.
Something about the church and the Middle Ages was on the TV. Not your run-of-the-mill TV
fare. I wanted to watch something else. I turned to the other channels. But
there was nothing on them, either. So I turned back to the first channel and
apologized.
"Bub, it's all right," the blind man said. "It's fine with
me. Whatever you want to watch is okay. I'm always learning something. Learning
never ends. It won't hurt me to learn something tonight, I got ears," he
said.
We didn't say anything for a time. He was leaning forward with
his head turned at me, his right ear aimed in the direction of the set. Very
disconcerting. Now and then his eyelids drooped and then they snapped open
again. Now and then he put his fingers into his beard and tugged, like he was
thinking about something he was hearing on the television.
On the screen, a group of men wearing cowls was being set upon and tormented by men dressed in
skeleton costumes and men dressed as devils. The men dressed as devils wore
devil masks, horns, and long tails. This pageant was part of a procession. The
Englishman who was narrating the thing said it took place in Spain once a year.
I tried to explain to the blind man what was happening.
"Skeletons," he said. "I know about skeletons," he said, and he nodded.
The TV showed this one cathedral. Then there was a long, slow look at another one. Finally,
the picture switched to the famous one in Paris, with its flying buttresses and
its spires reaching up to the clouds. The camera pulled away to show the whole
of the cathedral rising above the skyline.
There were times when the
Englishman who was telling the thing would shut up, would simply let the camera
move around the cathedrals. Or else the camera would tour the countryside, men
in fields walking behind oxen. I waited as long as I could. Then I felt I had to
say something. I said, "They're showing the outside of this cathedral now.
Gargoyles. Little statues carved to look like monsters. Now I guess they're in
Italy. Yeah, they're in Italy. There's paintings on the walls of this one
church."
"Are those fresco paintings, bub?" he asked, and he sipped from his drink.
I reached for my glass. But it was empty. I tried to remember
what I could remember. "You're asking me are those frescoes?" I said. "That's a
good question. I don't know."
The camera moved to a cathedral outside
Lisbon. The differences in the Portuguese cathedral compared with the French and
Italian were not that great. But they were there. Mostly the interior stuff.
Then something occurred to me, and I said, "Something has occurred to me. Do you
have any idea what a cathedral is? What they look like, that is? Do you follow
me? If somebody says cathedral to you, do you have any notion what they're
talking about? Do you know the difference between that and a Baptist church,
say?"
He let the smoke dribble from his mouth. "I know they took hundreds
of workers fifty or a hundred years to build," he said. "I just heard the man
say that, of course. I know generations of the same families worked on a
cathedral. I heard him say that, too. The men who began their life's work on
them, they never lived to see the completion of their work. In that wise, bub,
they're no different from the rest of us, right?" He laughed. Then his eyelids
drooped again. His head nodded. He seemed to be snoozing. Maybe he was imagining
himself in Portugal. The TV was showing another cathedral now. This one was in
Germany. The Englishman's voice droned on. "Cathedrals," the blind man said. He
sat up and rolled his head back and forth. "If you want the truth, bub, that's
about all I know. What I just said. What I heard him say. But maybe you could
describe one to me? I wish you'd do it. I'd like that. If you want to know, I
really don't have a good idea."
I stared hard at the shot of the
cathedral on the TV. How could I even begin to describe it? But say my life
depended on it. Say my life was being threatened by an insane guy who said I had
to do it or else.
I stared some more at the cathedral before the picture
flipped off into the countryside. There was no use. I turned to the blind man
and said, "To begin with, they're very tall." I was looking around the room for
clues. "They reach way up. Up and up. Toward the sky. They're so big, some of
them, they have to have these supports. To help hold them up, so to speak.
These supports are called buttresses. They remind me of viaducts, for some
reason. But maybe you don't know viaducts, either? Sometimes the cathedrals
have devils and such carved into the front. Sometimes lords and ladies. Don't
ask me why this is," I said.
He was nodding. The whole upper part of his body seemed to be moving back and forth.
"I'm not doing so good, am I?" I said.
He stopped nodding and leaned forward on the edge of the sofa. As
he listened to me, he was running his fingers through his beard. I wasn't
getting through to him, I could see that. But he waited for me to go on just the
same. He nodded, like he was trying to encourage me. I tried to think what else
to say. "They're really big," I said. "They're massive. They're built of stone.
Marble, too, sometimes. In those olden days, when they built cathedrals, men
wanted to be close to God. In those olden days, God was an important part of
everyone's life. You could tell this from their cathedral-building. I'm sorry,"
I said, "but it looks like that's the best I can do for you. I'm just no good at
it."
"That's all right, bub," the blind man said. "Hey, listen. I hope
you don't mind my asking you. Can I ask you something? Let me ask you a simple
question, yes or no. I'm just curious and there's no offense. You're my host.
But let me ask if you are in any way religious? You don't mind my asking?"
I shook my head. He couldn't see that, though. A wink is the same as a nod
to a blind man. "I guess I don't believe in it. In anything. Sometimes It's
hard. You know what I'm saying?"
"Sure, I do," he said.
"Right," I said.
The Englishman was still holding forth. My wife sighed in her
sleep. She drew a long breath and went on with her sleeping.
"You'll have to forgive me," I said. "But I can't tell you what a cathedral looks like. It
just isn't in me to do it. I can't do any more than I've done."
The blind man sat very still, his head down, as he listened to me.
I said, "The truth is, cathedrals don't mean anything special to me. Nothing. Cathedrals.
They're something to look at on late-night TV. That's all they are."
It was then that the blind man cleared his throat. He brought something up. He took
a handkerchief from his back pocket. Then he said, "I get it, bub. It's okay. It
happens. Don't worry about it," he said. "Hey, listen to me. Will you do me a
favor? I got an idea. Why don't you find us some heavy paper? and a pen. We'll
do something. We'll draw one together. Get us a pen and some heavy paper. Go on,
bub, get the stuff," he said.
So I went upstairs. My legs felt like they
didn't have any strength in them. They felt like they did after I'd done some
running. In my wife's room, I looked around. I found some ballpoints in a little
basket on her table. And then I tried to think where to look for the kind of
paper he was talking about.
Downstairs, in the kitchen, I found a
shopping bag with onion skins in the bottom of the bag. I emptied the bag and
shook it. I brought it into the living room and sat down with it near his legs.
I moved some things, smoothed the wrinkles from the bag, spread it out on the
coffee table.
The blind man got down from the sofa and sat next to me on
the carpet.
He ran his fingers over the paper. He went up and down the
sides of the paper. The edges, even the edges. He fingered the corners.
"All right," he said. "All right, let's do her."
He found my hand, the
hand with the pen. He closed his hand over my hand. "Go ahead, bub, draw," he
said. "Draw. You'll see. I'll follow along with you. It'll be okay. Just begin
now like I'm telling you. You'll see. Draw," the blind man said.
So I began. First I drew a box that looked like a house. It could have been the house
I lived in. Then I put a roof on it. At either end of the roof, I drew spires.
Crazy.
"Swell," he said. "Terrific. You're doing fine," he said. "Never
thought anything like this could happen in your lifetime, did you, bub? Well,
it's a strange life, we all know that. Go on now. Keep it up."
I put in windows with arches. I drew flying buttresses. I hung great doors. I couldn't
stop. The TV station went off the air. I put down the pen and closed and opened
my fingers. The blind man felt around over the paper. He moved the tips of his
fingers over the paper, all over what I had drawn, and he nodded.
"Doing fine," the blind man said.
I took up the pen again, and he found my hand.
I kept at it. I'm no artist. But I kept drawing just the same.
My wife opened up her eyes and gazed at us. She sat up on the sofa, her robe hanging
open. She said, "What are you doing? Tell me, I want to know."
I didn't answer her.
The blind man said, "We're drawing a cathedral. Me and him
are working on it. Press hard," he said to me. "That's right. That's good," he
said. "Sure. You got it, bub, I can tell. You didn't think you could. But you
can, can't you? You're cooking with gas now. You know what I'm saying? We're
going to really have us something here in a minute. How's the old arm?" he said.
"Put some people in there now. What's a cathedral without people?"
My wife said, "What's going on? Robert, what are you doing? What's going on?"
"It's all right," he said to her. "Close your eyes now," the blind man said
to me.
I did it. I closed them just like he said.
"Are they closed?" he said. "Don't fudge."
"They're closed," I said.
"Keep
them that way," he said. He said, "Don't stop now. Draw."
So we kept on
with it. His fingers rode my fingers as my hand went over the paper. It was like
nothing else in my life up to now.
Then he said, "I think that's it. I
think you got it," he said. "Take a look. What do you think?"
But I had my eyes closed. I thought I'd keep them that way for a little longer. I thought
it was something I ought to do.
"Well?" he said. "Are you looking?"
My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn't feel
like I was inside anything.
"It's really something," I said.
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