“Do you remember when the big dhow came in and careened on the low tide?”
“Yes, I remember her and the crew coming ashore in her boats and coming up the path from the beach, and the geese were afraid of them and so were the women.”
“That was the day we caught so many fish but had to come in because it was rough.”
“I remember that.”
“You’re remembering well today,” she said. “Don’t do it too much.”
“I’m sorry you didn’t get to fly to Zanzibar,” he said. “That upper beach from where we were was a fine place to land. You could have landed and taken off from there quite easily.”
“We can always go to Zanzibar. Don’t try to remember too much today. Would you like me to read to you? There’s always something in the old New Yorkers that we missed.”
“No, please don’t read,” he said. “Just talk. Talk about the good days.”
“Do you want to hear about what it’s like outside?”
“It’s raining,” he said. “I know that.”
“It’s raining a big rain,” she told him. “There won’t be any tourists out with this weather. The wind is very wild and we can go down and sit by the fire.”
“We could anyway. I don’t care about them any more. I like to hear them talk.”
“Some of them are awful,” she said. “But some of them are quite nice. I think it’s really the nicest ones that go out to Torcello.”
“That’s quite true,” he said. “I hadn’t thought of that. There’s really nothing for them to see unless they are a bit too nice.”
“Can I make you a drink?” she asked. “You know how worthless a nurse I am. I wasn’t trained for it and I haven’t any talent. But I can make drinks.”
“Let’s have a drink.”
“What do you want?”
“Anything,” he said.
“I’ll make a surprise. I’ll make it downstairs.”
He heard the door open and close and her feet on the stairs and he thought, I must get her to go on a trip. I must figure out some way to do it. I have to think up something practical. I’ve got this now for the rest of my life and I must figure out ways not to destroy her life and ruin her with it. She has been so good and she was not built to be good. I mean this sort of good. I mean good every day and dull good.
He heard her coming up the stairs and noticed the difference in her tread when she was carrying two glasses and when she had walked down barehanded. He heard the rain on the windowpane and he smelled the beech logs burning in the fireplace. As she came into the room he put his hand out for the drink and closed his hand on it and felt her touch the glass with her own.
“It’s our old drink for out here,” she said. “Campari and Gordon’s with ice.”
“I’m certainly glad you’re not a girl who would say ‘on the rocks’”
“No,” she said. “I wouldn’t ever say that. We’ve been on the rocks.”
“On our own two feet when the chips were down and for keeps,” he remembered. “Do you remember when we barred those phrases?”
“That was in the time of my lion. Wasn’t he a wonderful lion? I can’t wait till we see him.”
“I can’t either,” he said.
“I’m sorry.”
“Do you remember when we barred that phrase?”
“I nearly said it again.”
“You know,” he told her, “we’re awfully lucky to have come here. I remember it so well that it is palpable. That’s a new word and we’ll bar it soon. But it really is wonderful. When I hear the rain I can see it on the stones and on the canal and on the lagoon, and I know the way the trees bend in every wind and how the church and the tower are in every sort of light. We couldn’t have come to a better place for me. It’s really perfect. We’ve got the good radio and a fine tape recorder and I’m going to write better than I ever could. If you take your time with the tape recorder you can get the words right. I can work slow and I can see the words when I say them. If they’re wrong I hear them wrong and I can do them over and work on them until I get them right. Honey, in lots of ways we couldn’t have it better.”
“Oh, Philip—”
“Shit,” he said. “The dark is just the dark. This isn’t like the real dark. I can see very well inside and now my head is better all the time and I can remember and I can make up well. You wait and see. Didn’t I remember better today?”
“You remember better all the time. And you’re getting strong.”
“I am strong,” he said. “Now if you—”
“If me what?”
“If you’d go away for a while and get a rest and a change from this.”
“Don’t you want me?”
“Of course I want you, darling.”
“Then why do we have to talk about me going away? I know I’m not good at looking after you but I can do things other people can’t do and we do love each other. You love me and you know it and we know things nobody else knows.”
“We do wonderful things in the dark,” he said.
“And we did wonderful things in the daytime too.”
“You know I rather like the dark. In some ways it is an improvement.”
“Don’t lie too much,” she said. “You don’t have to be so bloody noble.”
“Listen to it rain,” he said. “How is the tide now?”
“It’s way out and the wind has driven the water even further out. You could almost walk to Burano.”
“All except one place,” he said. “Are there many birds?”
“Mostly gulls and terns. They are down on the flats and when they get up the wind catches them.”
“Aren’t there any shore birds?”
“There are a few working on the part of the flats that only comes out when we have this wind and this tide.”
“Do you think it will ever be spring?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It certainly doesn’t act like it.”
“Have you drunk all your drink?”
“Just about. Why don’t you drink yours?”
“I was saving it.”
“Drink it up,” she said. “Wasn’t it awful when you couldn’t drink at all?”
“No, you see,” he said. “What I was thinking about when you went downstairs was that you could go to Paris and then to London and you’d see people and could have some fun and then you’d come back and it would have to be spring by then and you could tell me all about everything.”
“No,” she said.
“I think it would be intelligent to do,” he said. “You know this is a long sort of stupid business and we have to learn to pace ourselves. And I don’t want to wear you out. You know—”
“I wish you wouldn’t say ‘you know’ so much.”
“You see? That’s one of the things. I could learn to talk in a non-irritating way. You might be mad about me when you came back.”
“What would you do nights?”
“Nights are easy.”
“I’ll bet they are. I suppose you’ve learned how to sleep too.”
“I’m going to,” he told her and drank half the drink. “That’s part of The Plan. You know this is how it works. If you go away and have some fun then I have a good conscience. Then for the first time in my life with a good conscience I sleep automatically. I take a pillow which represents my good conscience and I put my arms around it and off I go to sleep. If I wake up by any odd chance I just think beautiful happy dirty thoughts. Or I make wonderful fine good resolutions. Or I remember things. You know I want you to have fun—”
“Please don’t say ‘you know’”
“I’ll concentrate on not saying it. It’s barred but I forget and let the bars down. Anyway I don’t want you just to be a seeing-eyed dog.”
“I’m not and you know it. Anyway it’s seeing-eye not seeing-eyed.”
“I knew that,” he told her. “Come and sit here, would you mind very much?”
She came and sat by him on the bed a
nd they both heard the rain hard against the pane of the window and he tried not to feel her head and her lovely face the way a blind man feels and there was no other way that he could touch her face except that way. He held her close and kissed the top of her head. I will have to try it another day, he thought. I must not be so stupid about it. She feels so lovely and I love her so much and have done her so much damage and I must learn to take good care of her in every way I can. If I think of her and of her only, everything will be all right.
“I won’t say ‘you know’ all the time any more,” he told her. “We can start with that.”
She shook her head and he could feel her tremble.
“You say it all you want,” she said and kissed him.
“Please don’t cry, my blessed,” he said.
“I don’t want you to sleep with any lousy pillow,” she said.
“I won’t. Not any lousy pillow.”
Stop it, he said to himself. Stop it right now.
“Look, tu,” he said. “We’ll go down now and have lunch in our old fine place by the fire and I’ll tell you what a wonderful kitten you are and what lucky kittens we are.”
“We really are.”
“We’ll work everything out fine.”
“I just don’t want to be sent away.”
“Nobody is ever going to send you away.”
But walking down the stairs feeling each stair carefully and holding to the banister he thought, I must get her away and get her away as soon as I can without hurting her. Because I am not doing too well at this. That I can promise you. But what else can you do? Nothing, he thought. There’s nothing you can do. But maybe, as you go along, you will get good at it.
A Man of the World
THE BLIND MAN KNEW THE SOUNDS OF all the different machines in the Saloon. I don’t know how long it took him to learn the sounds of the machines but it must have taken him quite a time because he only worked one saloon at a time. He worked two towns though and he would start out of The Flats along after it was good and dark on his way up to Jessup. He’d stop by the side of the road when he heard a car coming and their lights would pick him up and either they would stop and give him a ride or they wouldn’t and would go on by on the icy road. It would depend on how they were loaded and whether there were women in the car because the blind man smelled plenty strong and especially in winter. But someone would always stop for him because he was a blind man.
Everybody knew him and they called him Blindy which is a good name for a blind man in that part of the country, and the name of the saloon that he threw his trade to was The Pilot. Right next to it was another saloon, also with gambling and a dining room, that was called The Index. Both of these were the names of mountains and they were both good saloons with old-days bars and the gambling was about the same in one as in the other except you ate better in The Pilot probably, although you got a better sizzling steak at The Index. Then The Index was open all night long and got the early morning trade and from daylight until ten o’clock in the morning the drinks were on the house. They were the only saloons in Jessup and they did not have to do that kind of thing. But that was the way they were.
Blindy probably preferred The Pilot because the machines were right along the left-hand wall as you came in and faced the bar. This gave him better control over them than he would have had at The Index where they were scattered on account it was a bigger place with more room. On this night it was really cold outside and he came in with icicles on his mustache and small pus icicles out of both eyes and he didn’t look really very good. Even his smell was froze but that wasn’t for very long and he started to put out almost as soon as the door was shut. It was always hard for me to look at him but I was looking at him carefully because I knew he always rode and I didn’t see how he would be frozen up so bad. Finally I asked him.
“Where you walk from, Blindy?”
“Willie Sawyer put me out of his car down below the railway bridge. There weren’t no more cars come and I walked in.”
“What did he put you afoot for?” somebody asked.
“Said I smelled too bad.”
Someone had pulled the handle on a machine and Blindy started listening to the whirr. It came up nothing. “Any dudes playing?” he asked me.
“Can’t you hear?”
“Not yet.”
“No dudes, Blindy, and it’s a Wednesday.”
“I know what night it is. Don’t start telling me what night it is.”
Blindy went down the line of machines feeling in all of them to see if anything had been left in the cups by mistake. Naturally there wasn’t anything, but that was the first part of his pitch. He came back to the bar where we were and Al Chaney asked him to have a drink.
“No,” Blindy said. “I got to be careful on those roads.”
“What you mean those roads?” somebody asked him. “You only go on one road. Between here and The Flats.”
“I been on lots of roads,” Blindy said. “And any time I may have to take off and go on more.”
Somebody hit on a machine but it wasn’t any heavy hit. Blindy moved on it just the same. It was a quarter machine and the young fellow who was playing it gave him a quarter sort of reluctantly. Blindy felt it before he put it in his pocket.
“Thank you,” he said. “You’ll never miss it.”
The young fellow said, “Nice to know that,” and put a quarter back in the machine and pulled down again.
He hit again but this time pretty good and he scooped in the quarters and gave a quarter to Blindy.”
“Thanks,” Blindy said. “You’re doing fine.”
“Tonight’s my night,” the young fellow who was playing said.
“Your night is my night,” Blindy said and the young fellow went on playing but he wasn’t doing any good any more and Blindy was so strong standing by him and he looked so awful and finally the fellow quit playing and came over to the bar. Blindy had run him out but he had no way of noticing it because the fellow didn’t say anything, so Blindy just checked the machines again with his hand and stood there waiting for someone else to come in and make a play.
There wasn’t any play at the wheel nor at the crap table and at the poker game there were just gamblers sitting there and cutting each other up. It was a quiet evening on a week night in town and there wasn’t any excitement. The place was not making a nickel except at the bar. But at the bar it was pleasant and the place had been nice until Blindy had come in. Now everybody was figuring they might as well go next door to The Index or else cut out and go home.
“What will yours be, Tom?” Frank the bartender asked me. “This is on the house.”
“I was figuring on shoving.”
“Have one first then.”
“The same with ditch,” I said. Frank asked the young fellow, who was wearing heavy Oregon Cities and a black hat and was shaved clean and had a snow-burned face, what he would drink and the young fellow took the same. The whisky was Old Forester.
I nodded to him and raised my drink and we both sipped at the drinks. Blindy was down at the far end of the machines. I think he figured maybe no one would come in if they saw him at the door. Not that he was self-conscious.
“How did that man lose his sight?” the young fellow asked me.
“In a fight,” Frank told him.
“I wouldn’t know,” I told him.
“Him fight?” the stranger said. He shook his head.
“Yeah,” Frank said. “He got that high voice out of the same fight. Tell him, Tom.”
“I never heard of it.”
“No. You wouldn’t of,” Frank said. “Of course not. You wasn’t here, I suppose. Mister, it was a night about as cold as tonight. Maybe colder. It was a quick fight too. I didn’t see the start of it. Then they come fighting out of the door of The Index. Blackie, him that’s Blindy now, and this other boy Willie Sawyer, and they were slugging and kneeing and gouging and biting and I see one of Blackie’s eyes hanging down on his cheek. They
were fighting on the ice of the road with the snow all banked up and the light from this door and The Index door, and Hollis Sands was right behind Willie Sawyer who was gouging for the eye and Hollis kept hollering, ‘Bite it off! Bite it off just like it was a grape!” Blackie was biting onto Willie Sawyer’s face and he had a good holt and it give way with a jerk and then he had another good holt and they were down on the ice now and Willie Sawyer was gouging him to make him let go and then Blackie gave a yell like you’ve never heard. Worse than when they cut a boar.”
Blindy had come up opposite us and we smelled him and turned around.
“‘Bite it off just like it was a grape,’” he said in his high-pitched voice and looked at us, moving his head up and down. “That was the left eye. He got the other one without no advice. Then he stomped me when I couldn’t see. That was the bad part.” He patted himself.
“I could fight good then,” he said. “But he got the eye before I knew even what was happening. He got it with a lucky gouge. Well,” Blindy said without any rancor, “that put a stop to my fighting days.”
“Give Blackie a drink,” I said to Frank.
“Blindy’s the name, Tom. I earned that name. You seen me earn it. That’s the same fellow who put me adrift down the road tonight. Fellow bit the eye. We ain’t never made friends.”
“What did you do to him?” the stranger asked.
“Oh, you’ll see him around,” Blindy said. “You’ll recognize him any time you see him. I’ll let it come as a surprise.”
“You don’t want to see him,” I told the stranger.
“You know that’s one of the reasons I’d like to see sometimes,” Blindy said. “I’d like to just have one good look at him.”
“You know what he looks like,” Frank told him. “You went up and put your hands on his face once.”
“Did it again tonight too,” Blindy said happily. “That’s why he put me out of the car. He ain’t got no sense of humor at all. I told him on a cold night like this he’d ought to bundle up so the whole inside of his face wouldn’t catch cold. He didn’t even think that was funny. You know that Willie Sawyer he’ll never be a man of the world.”