These days he could have avoided all that guilt; from the symptoms he describes so well it is possible to infer that he suffered from opto-chiasmatic arachnoiditis, the result of a tumour on the pituitary gland. His blindness, like yours, Víctor, was white, something he found astonishing. I don’t know why everyone always assumes the blind see nothing but blackness. White is just as blinding. The tumour would also account for his vitriolic temperament, the spitefulness attributed to him.
He was treated by a quack in Paris. The cure, if it can be called that, was to be achieved through a superficial but excruciatingly painful operation, involving cauterising the skin on his temples and on his forehead just above the eyebrows. Cauterising at that time was an exact synonym for burning. Afterwards, threads dipped in egg white were inserted under the skin. I hardly need tell you the treatment was utterly useless.
Blindness conditioned Milton’s life so completely that it even changed the way he dreamed. Milton was already blind by the time he met his second wife, Katherine, something which did not prevent her from quickly falling pregnant. It was a difficult labour and Katherine died soon after. The poet insisted that her coffin should be closed ‘with twelve several locks, that had twelve several keys’, which he distributed among his friends on the day of her funeral. This had nothing to do with his blindness but arose from the fact that Milton, in spite of his quarrels with the Almighty, still believed in eternal life. It is possible that he was surprised when he arrived in the gallery, since he must have imagined her very differently. The fact is, when Katherine died, scarcely more than a year after they met, he had never seen her face. Shortly before the funeral, he wrote his most important sonnet, which begins ‘Methought I saw my late espousèd saint’. He goes on to say that she appeared to him ‘Rescu’d from death by force, though pale and faint’. But the true miracle of the dream is not this, but that he can finally see her ‘vested all in white, pure as her mind’. Poor Milton, if that was the only time he ever saw her, you’d think she might have appeared nude. Or at least dressed in a different colour. In the dream he does not even see her face, as it is hidden by a veil. This does not prevent him from detecting the sweetness and the goodness she radiates. He ends the sonnet: ‘But Oh! as to embrace me she inclin’d, I wak’d, she fled, and day brought back my night.’
Incredible, isn’t it? I don’t really know what it means, so don’t expect me to draw some moral from it. But it does seem cruel to me that he couldn’t see her face. I don’t know, if perhaps the dream left him with hope, a yearning to see her again, a feeling that on some other night, in some other dream, he might finally see her face. Or perhaps the meaning is more subtle. The dream could imply that it’s not really her, because back then a person’s identity was inextricably linked to their face, to their eyes in particular. Or worse still, perhaps it means that dreams are capricious; imagine that he lifts the veil and finds a monstrous nose, or skin scarred by the pox. In not seeing her face, he is spared all this. Of course, it’s possible to go for his favourite explanation for everything: divine punishment.
Milton was buried in a place which was, back then, on the outskirts of London, but even in death he got no rest because, a hundred years later, a bunch of savages desecrated the grave and didn’t even leave his bones. Apparently it was a mob of hoodlums on a drinking binge, though it could just as easily have been relic hunters. In the gallery, he doesn’t need his bones. What is most surprising is that Milton hardly ever complains: he likes to eat well, and as long as he can do that, he doesn’t care about anything else.
Sorry, I’m going off on a tangent. I started telling you about this so you’d forget about the meeting with Galván. Obviously, I set it up, you know that now. But it doesn’t matter. There’s no such thing as a chance encounter. If they’re not engineered by a third person, then life contrives to arrange them. Who cares? History is fully of brief, dazzling, unrepeatable meetings, moments when fate or self-interest or connivance brings together two minds destined to meet for some reason. My favourite such incident is Milton’s encounter with Galileo. They met in Italy under difficult circumstances. The astronomer was a very old man by then, and had only five or six years left to live. The Inquisition had turned a deaf ear to his pronouncement Eppur si muove and spared his life but kept him under house arrest in Arcetri. He was a broken man: they had refused him treatment for a painful hernia, his daughter had died three years earlier and he could no longer even take comfort in playing the lute because his fingers were gnarled with arthritis. Milton noticed the dusty instrument lying abandoned in a corner. The most interesting thing about the meeting, from our point of view, is that Galileo was blind. The myth that Galileo lost his sight from staring at the sun through his telescope is rubbish. He suffered from cataracts and glaucoma which, by 1637, had left him completely without sight. We know it happened then because there is a letter written by a Father Castelli, one of his favourite pupils, which confirms the fact: ‘The noblest eye is darkened which nature ever made, an eye so privileged and so gifted with rare qualities that it may with truth be said to have seen more than the eyes of all those who are gone, and to have opened the eyes of all those who are to come.’ Just like Galván, don’t you think? A noble eye that opens other eyes. It’s like some cruel joke. Milton was so moved by the encounter, so incensed by the conditions in which the scientist was forced to live, that he made freedom of belief the central tenet of his life. Despite the fact that his writings are filled with religious dogma, he was distressed at the very idea that anyone could be imprisoned because of his ideas. We don’t know what they talked about. We don’t know whether anyone made any predictions. But Milton never forgot the encounter.
The Last Step before the Last Step
I don’t want you to go all melodramatic on me, Viviana warns them. It is a happy moment and a sad one, but it’s not a tragedy. I have asked you to take the last step, but none of you is going to die in the process. I want you to imagine that you’ve spent your whole life walking towards a goal, OK? Walk, that’s all I’m asking, I don’t want you dancing. And make sure every step you take is the last. Then take another step. Do you know why? Because your goal walks with you. Every step we take moves the world. Do you understand? OK, start moving. What are you waiting for? Music? There’s no music today. You move towards a goal in silence.
Alicia finds it difficult to start. She chatted a little to Vivi the other day, told her that Víctor is taking his drops, that he’s even started using the cane, but he’s not really making any progress. Or rather, he is progressing, but he doesn’t know where. Viviana didn’t have any magic advice to give her. Just a little comfort, a hug. And now she is devoting the class, the session, whatever this is called, to her. The others have no reason to know this, but it seems obvious that today’s theme was chosen for her, it has her name on it.
She puts one foot forward. Then the other. Not like that, Alicia. She stops. She feels she is going to disappoint Vivi, that she won’t be able to make the most of this gift. Five years of biodance, and this is the best you can come up with? You know from experience that the trick is not to think. Viviana says it every Tuesday: you don’t come here to think, you come here to move. Don’t think about what you’re going to do; just do it. Try to make your mind a blank, an empty space that can only be filled with movement, where day-to-day thoughts slip away. There is a noise in her brain. An unbearable noise, like the sound when you turn the radio dial looking for a song to listen to. She tries to imagine a moving goal, an end that is a starting point, because unless she misunderstood, that’s what this is all about, about taking a step that is not only the last, but the first. Maybe if she moves in circles, if she revolves without moving forward … A circle is eternal, infinite, a step that spins the whole body, a single step that leaves her exactly as she was before, yet she is utterly transformed by the mere fact of having taken it. Víctor, ants, amber, amber, Víctor, wasps. Get out of my head, Víctor, you’re getting tangled up in here.
> If only Vivi would come over and give her a push. But Vivi is not even looking at her. Or is pretending not to see her. Alicia watches everyone else, trying to see whether anyone has come up with a pattern worth copying, a movement, a trend, an evolution; that’s it, that’s why they talk about a dancer evolving onstage, because they move here and there and with every step they change. One of the other dancers moves past her, eyes closed, and Alicia reaches out her arm, places a hand on her shoulder so that they don’t collide. She begins to walk behind her, with her, adapts to her rhythm, becomes her shadow, confining herself to following the woman’s steps, the mute instructions of her movements, finally free of the need to think. They walk slowly until they reach the far wall and then, when they turn, it is her fellow dancer who leans against her, not with her hand but with her whole body, so that Alicia has no choice but to walk, to go on walking, otherwise they would both fall. She speeds up and now she is not thinking, guiding and being guided, it’s impossible to tell who is pushing who, but Alicia does not stop moving, she is in a hurry to walk, to get somewhere. To the other end of the room, to the end of the lesson, to the goal that moves with her. She smiles and glances over at Viviana, who is looking at her now, almost nodding in approval. She puts her arms round her companion, lifts her off the ground and begins to run. She crosses the room, once, twice, a third time, although she knows she does not have the strength, that soon she will have to stop, to set her partner down and rest her arms, and perhaps when that happens the spell will be broken and her mind will go back to the amber, the insect, but that doesn’t matter now because she has a plan. I have a plan, she thinks as she catches her breath, her heart hammering in her chest. I have a plan for you, Víctor. I’ve finally found the Trojan Horse that will infiltrate your fortress. Because a man alone ain’t got no chance, remember?
Your First Egg
It’s a good thing he’s blind, Alicia thinks with a laconic smile. If he could see me here he’d have a heart attack. She is standing in a doorway opposite Víctor’s building. It is five o’clock on a cold November morning. She feels stupid playing detective, but this is the only way she can think of to approach Irina. Yesterday, taking advantage of a moment when Víctor was in the bathroom, her fingers trembling, she pressed the speed dial number for the agency. The girl on the other end politely, though a little warily, informed her that Irina did not offer lesbian services. While Alicia hesitated, wondering whether it might not be easier just to tell the truth, she heard the toilet flush and had to hang up. Since she doesn’t know where Irina lives, she has no choice but to wait for her here. In fact, she knows nothing about her other than the fact that she is a Romanian prostitute with a sweet face and a two-year-old son. She asked Víctor about Irina only once and he simply told her that they usually spent Saturday afternoons together. Irina would drop by with Darius to pick Víctor up and they’d go down to the park for a while. Nobody mentions sex. Alicia doesn’t pry into other people’s personal lives, but she has eyes. And a nose. More than anything she can smell it. She reckons that Irina comes over about twice a week.
She can’t even be sure that Irina is in Víctor’s apartment right now. There is a light on in one of the rooms on the top floor, but that doesn’t mean anything. But if it doesn’t happen today, it’ll happen tomorrow. Or the day after. She’s in no hurry. Well, she is, but she’s patient. She makes the most of the time by going over her plan. She needs to take every possible precaution because the stakes are high. She has decided not to ask her superiors at ONCE for permission, because they would only say no, it’s too risky. How is she going to gain Irina’s trust? Money? If only it were that easy. She would happily spend her life savings if she thought it would convince her. But how could she possibly even suggest such a thing: I have a plan and I need you to rent me out your son for a couple of hours. No, all she can do is appeal to her good nature, to her compassion. And minimise the risks. Although, thinking about it, what is the worst that could happen? Darius throws a tantrum? He needs his nappy changed and Víctor can’t work out how to do it? He falls and bumps his head? Kids bounce back, they’re like rubber.
It is after six by the time the light in the stairwell comes on. Alicia crosses the street, stands in the doorway, mentally counting the steps, come on, Irina, it’s not like you’re blind, get a move on. She sees her as she starts down the last flight of stairs, prepares her best smile and realises that although she has memorised everything she is going to say, she hasn’t thought about her first line, the most important one, something that will win her over immediately. Irina opens the door and Alicia rattles out words like a machine gun.
‘I need to talk to you. It’s about Víctor. I need your help.’
Irina folds her arms across her chest, adopting a defensive posture when she hears the first sentence, frowns at the second, and opens her arms at the third.
‘OK. But I need hurry for my son.’
She is still standing in the doorway. Still holding the door open. Not like this, Alicia thinks.
‘I’ll walk with you so we can talk,’ she suggests. ‘Where do you live?’
‘Near to zoo,’ Irina says somewhat ambiguously.
‘Do you fancy some breakfast?’ Alicia says, ‘There’s a kiosk near the zoo, in the park. Doughnuts and hot chocolate? My treat,’ she hastens to add. ‘I’ll be quick, Irina, I promise.’
She stops the first taxi they see. During the ride they talk about the weather, the cold, about the fact the sun will be up soon. Sometimes they sink into silences so long that Alicia tenses her toes in sheer dread. When they get to the Parque de la Ciudadela, she sees the lights are on in the kiosk and heaves a sigh of relief. It was a blind guess. When she was at university, she used to come here when she’d studied all night, but she hasn’t been back since.
Irina does not talk much. Alicia cannot stop. She struggles to find examples to explain her case, Víctor’s mental block, his unwillingness to change, his enormous potential wasted. Knowing that Irina’s Spanish is limited, she avoids metaphorical lumps of amber, complicated theories and images, and tries to find concrete examples of what she means. When breakfast arrives, Alicia says nothing for a minute or two. She notices Irina can stuff herself with doughnuts and still look elegant – no mean feat. Perhaps it is this, her innate poise, this artlessness so like elegance, which means she does not have to work the streets as most of her compatriots do. She wants to ask her what she did before, before she came to Spain, but decides not to. This is where you come in, she says finally. Or rather not you, but Darius. Irina drops her doughnut when she hears her son’s name, but she does not object, does not end the conversation. There is no anger on her face, just an almost comic astonishment which Alicia quickly attempts to assuage with promises: it won’t be for long, she’ll be right there ready to intervene if necessary, nothing is going to happen. Well, she concedes, nothing much. Irina is a pragmatic woman. She does not question the possible outcome of the plan or ask Alicia to explain its theoretical basis, she asks only for specific details: what day, what time, for how long, what’s her own excuse. Alicia begins to see light at the end of the tunnel, because she has rehearsed this part a thousand times. Perhaps it is the convincing way she explains every detail, her confidence, which persuades Irina to accept with only one condition: she has to be present too. If not, there’s nothing more to discuss. I am there too, she says again before finishing her hot chocolate and setting down her cup. I am there too.
The first twittering of the birds in the park announces the imminent arrival of sunrise. They hug as they say goodbye, an embrace in which there is a space left for Víctor, because he is the one they are protecting as their cheeks brush against each other. Alicia takes a taxi home, has a quick shower, and, utterly exhausted, sets off on her bicycle to Víctor’s place. Fortunately, he won’t be able to see the bags under her eyes, but his hearing is keen enough to detect the slightest stress or tiredness in her voice. So the first thing she does, as casually as she can, is a
sk him for his keys so she can have copies made. She is about to tell him that she needs a key only to the door downstairs, that she was in the area last night and couldn’t find a safe place to park her bike, but didn’t want to disturb him because it was late. But before she can say a word, Víctor puts his hand in his trouser pocket, takes out his keys and hands them over. He doesn’t give a damn that she has keys to his apartment, that she knows where he keeps his money. He doesn’t give a damn about anything. Alicia puts the keys in her bag and tells him she will bring them back later today as soon as she’s made a copy.
This is the final piece she needs in order to set her plan in motion. If it were up to her, she would go home straight away, sleep all morning and spend the rest of the day preparing for Saturday. But she is going to stay and act as though this were a day like any other. Which is to say that, although she cannot look at Víctor without the tender pity reserved for victims of a well-intentioned con, she will be stern with him, push him, refuse to be swayed by his lack of enthusiasm, force him to do things. Practical things.