Peering round the edge of the partition, I watched intently as he stripped his nightshirt off and let it fall to the stone floor. He stood stark naked for a moment, listening. Then he reached out with both hands. He looked like a ghost — his arms horizontal, his fingers tickling the air. At last he found a tap. He turned it on, began to soap himself. His hands sucked and belched in the fleshy pockets of his armpits. The hair that grew there was matted, long and lank, identical to the hair you might pull from the plughole of a bath. It was like seeing a human being for the first time. We’re ugly, aren’t we? It’s extraordinary how ugly we are. For a moment I was afraid I might vomit. (I hoped I wouldn’t; apart from anything else, I didn’t want Smulders knowing I was there.) I sank down, behind the partition. As I fought the nausea I had a curious thought: what a blessing blindness could be, what a respite from the frightful squalor of the world!
At last I turned back.
There he was, still soaping himself, his breath issuing in ragged gusts and the occasional grunt of satisfaction. I let my eyes course his ample contours. It looked as though handfuls of fat had been attached to him at random. There were creases and folds all over his body, places where one parcel of obesity had collided with another. And what would happen if you opened out those creases? You’d find a sort of melted butter there, mottled and rancid. The smell would be enough to burn out whole banks of olfactory cells. And then there was the ultimate crease, the most elaborate of folds: his foreskin. I balked at the idea of that.
Just then the panes in the outer door rattled for a second time. Smulders jumped, his flesh reverberating — a kind of visual echo. I shrank back into the corner of the toilet stall, between the cistern and the wall, and waited.
‘That’s enough, Smulders.’
It was Visser. His voice gentle but firm, with just a trace of amusement.
‘Come on now. Back to bed.’
Smulders lumbered through the open doorway, his armpit hair still dripping. Visser followed. I saw him for a moment, over the top of the partition. All I got was an impression of his profile — his forehead, nose and chin — and a glimpse of a moustache.
As I lay in bed that night I had one further thought: among the blind there is no tact, no modesty; there doesn’t need to be. It followed that, so long as I stayed in the clinic, I would constantly be assaulted by the most hideous visions. I didn’t belong among the blind. I was in the wrong place. The sooner I got myself discharged, the better. The last image that appeared before I fell asleep was that of Smulders’ penis, apprehensive, cowering beneath his belly, as if terrified that, at any moment, it might be crushed by the great burden of flesh that hung above it.
I sat on a bench outside Visser’s office, waiting for someone to call my name. It was early evening; through the open window I could hear birds settling in the trees. Just before dawn, two of the night-staff had found me hiding (their word) in the broom cupboard. They assumed I was having another of my depressive episodes. They even suspected that I might be harbouring suicidal thoughts, that I might have been about to swallow bleach or some other convenient domestic poison.
The fools!
Almost a week had passed since the revelation in the gardens. I’d spent the time constructively, exploring my condition. In the wash-room first, then in the broom cupboard. There were no windows in the broom cupboard. There was no gap at the bottom of the door. It was here, in absolute darkness, that I was able properly to test my theories. (I also believed — mistakenly, as it turned out — that I might have more privacy.) I would wait until everyone was asleep, then I’d tiptoe down the ward, out through the swing-doors, along the corridor and left, into the broom cupboard. Once inside, I carried out a series of simple experiments. I read the labels on bottles of disinfectant. I counted the strands on a mop. I tracked the progress of a spider as it crossed the cracked concrete floor and climbed the wall. It didn’t take me long to reach a conclusion: night was my ally and my vision was in some way linked to it. In other words, I could see — but only in the dark.
My name was called. I tapped my way into Visser’s office.
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘Martin.’
He was most curious to learn more about what he referred to as my ‘adventure in the cupboard’. He wanted to understand my motivation. What could I tell him, though? I couldn’t think of anything. Also, I was distracted by his physical appearance. My brief glimpse of him in the wash-room had not been misleading. He did have a moustache. Thick and brown, it was. Lustrous. And yet, when I asked him to describe himself, he hadn’t mentioned it. Why not? Could it be that he was sensitive about it? (Sometimes it hides a weak upper lip.) My God, a moustache — I’d never have guessed. I thought he looked a bit like a dictator. Not Hitler. It wasn’t that kind of moustache. More like Stalin.
‘Well?’ Visser was still waiting.
Sweat began to accumulate on the inside of my elbows. Then, out of nowhere, inspiration: ‘It must be something to do with not seeing anything.’ I was making it up, but it sounded plausible.
‘Yes?’
‘Maybe,’ I faltered, and then plunged on, ‘maybe I was putting myself in a place where nobody could see anything. The kind of place where it doesn’t matter who’s blind and who isn’t. I mean, in a broom cupboard everyone’s blind, right?’ I smiled. ‘Maybe that’s what I was after, the feeling of being the same as everybody else.’
‘That’s why you were in the broom cupboard?’
‘Well, it’s a thought.’
‘See how this sounds.’ Visser paused. ‘You’re finding it hard to deal with the world, to come to terms with it, so you turn your back on it. You isolate yourself. You hide.’
I leaned back. ‘Mmm,’ I said. ‘Interesting.’
The whole premise was a fabrication — and yet Visser had swallowed it. How could I respect the man when I could so effortlessly steer him away from the truth?
And what is the truth? I asked myself later, as I walked out of his office. Each time the sun sets, I begin to see. Each sunrise I go blind.
As yet, I had no explanation for this.
Since becoming nocturnal, I’d learned something else about Smulders: he talked in his sleep. I stayed awake for hours, listening to his monologues. They were exactly like the announcements you hear on station platforms. This was Smulders being nostalgic, I decided. Smulders returning to happier days, when he still worked for the railways. He was particularly keen on departures and arrivals, the times, as always, strangely fastidious, almost neurotic: the 5.44 to somewhere, the 21.16 to somewhere else. And, every now and then, there were warnings, prevarications, excuses — especially excuses. A train had derailed. Points had failed. There was a cow on the line, or a child. Or a leaf.
I became addicted. Smulders sent me on journeys I had never thought of (once I even left the country!). Smulders offered me rail passes. Smulders marooned me on the platforms of obscure provincial stations, then told me that the next train wasn’t due for three hours. I ate terrible food at stainless-steel kiosks. I got indigestion. Chilblains. Flu. Smulders apologised and I forgave him. His announcements took me out of the closed world of the clinic and put me somewhere else, somewhere real. They could often have the same effect as lullabies, long lists of destinations taking the place of sheep.