The Crossing(99)

When he left he wore on his feet a pair of old patched huaraches and he carried over his shoulder a thin serape. In the pocket of his ragged breeches a few copper coins. Men talking in the street fell silent at his approach and spoke again when he had passed. As if it might be that he were some deputy of darkness sent to spy among them. As if words carried away by a blind man might thereby come to have a life unreckoned with and be met with elsewhere in the world bearing a meaning never intended by those who’d uttered them. He turned in the road and held his cane aloft. Ustedes no saben nada de mí, he shouted. They fell silent and he turned and went on and after a while he could hear them talking again.

That night he heard the sounds of battle far distant on the plain and he stood in the dark and listened. He tested the wind for the smell of cordite and listened for sounds of men and horses but all he could hear was the faint rattle of riflefire and the periodic heavy dull report of a howitzer firing cannister shot and after a while nothing.

The next morning early his cane clattered before him on the boards of a bridge. He stopped. He reached and tapped forward. He stepped carefully onto the boards and stood and listened. He could hear much muted beneath him the sound of water running.

He made his way down along the small river bank and pushed through the rushes till he came to the water. He reached out and touched it with his cane. He slashed at the water and then he stopped. He raised his head to listen.

Quién está? he called.

No one answered back.

He laid aside his serape and stripped out of his rags and took up his cane again and thin and naked and filthy he waded into the river.

He waded out wondering if the water might perhaps be deep enough to bear him away. He imagined that in his estate of eternal night he might somehow have already halved the distance to death. That the transition for him could not be so great for the world was already at some certain distance and if it were not death’s terrain he encroached upon in his darkness then whose?

The water came but to his knees. He stood in the river, he steadied himself with his staff. Then he sat. The water was cool, it moved slowly about him. He lowered his face to take its odor, to taste it. He sat for a long time. In the distance he heard a bell that tolled slowly three times and ceased. He got to his knees and then leaned forward and lay facedown in the water. He placed the staff yokewise across his neck and held it in his two hands. He held his breath. He gripped his staff and he held it for a long time. When he could hold it no longer he breathed out and then tried to breathe the water in but he could not and the next thing he was kneeling in the river gasping and coughing. He’d let go his cane and it had drifted away and he rose and floundered about coughing and sucking in air and flailing at the river surface with the flat of his hand. To the man standing on the bridge he must have seemed deranged. Must have seemed to be attempting to calm the river, or something in the river. Until he saw those barren eyecups.

A la izquierda, he called.

The blind man stopped. He crouched with his arms crossed before him.

A su izquierda, called the man.

The blind man patted the water to his left.

A tres metros, called the man. Pronto. Se va.

He lurched forward. He groped about. The man on the bridge called out coordinates and finally his hand closed upon his staff and he sat down in the river for modesty and clutched the cane to him.

Qué hace, ciego? the man called.

Nada. No me molesta.

Yo? Le molesto? Ciego, ciego.

He said that he had thought the blind man was drowning and was on the point of coming to his rescue when he saw him raise up sputtering.

The blind man sat with his back turned to the bridge and the road. He could smell tobacco smoke and after a while he asked the man if he could have a cigarette.

Por supuesto.

He rose and waded ashore. Dónde está mi ropa? he called.

The man directed him to his clothes. When he had dressed he made his way up to the road and he and the man sat on the bridge smoking. The sun felt good on his back. The man said that there was not enough water in the river to drown oneself and the blind man nodded. He said that in any case there was not enough privacy.

The blind man said that there was a church nearby, no? His friend told him that there was no church. That there was nothing at all anywhere in sight. The blind man said that he had heard a bell and the man said that he had had an uncle who was blind and he too often heard things which were not.

The blind man shrugged. He said he was only newly blinded. The man asked him why he thought the sound of bells must be from a church but the blind man only shrugged again and smoked. He asked what other sound a church would make.

The man asked him why he wished to die but the blind man said that it was not important. The man asked if it was because he could not see and he said that it was a reason among reasons. They smoked. Finally the blind man told him about his conjecture that the blind had already partly quit the world anyway. He said that he had become but a voice to speak in a darkness incommensurable with the motives of life. He said that the world and all in it had become to him but a rumor. A suspicion. He shrugged. He said that he did not wish to be blind. That he had outlived his estate.