‘Well, I don’t know, there’s got to be a good reason for wanting to, hasn’t there? Of course, when I hear a pretty young girl go by, there are times when it gets me down a bit — but there aren’t all that many things that are worth the trouble, indeed there aren’t.’
A middle-aged woman came up and bought a paper. The man felt the coin and dropped it, with a clink of metal, into an old tin can beside him. Then he resumed his motionless vigil, head held very straight, hands thrust into the pockets of his lumberjacket.
‘What’s your name?’ Besson asked.
‘Bayard,’ the man said, and then, after a momentary hesitation: ‘What’s yours?’
‘Besson,’ said Besson.
There was another silence. Besson fished a packet of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket.
‘Do you smoke?’ he asked.
‘Are they dark tobacco?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I’d be very glad of one.’
Besson held out the packet: the man’s hand reached up, groped, found the cigarette-packet and clutched hold of it. The fingers of his other hand fumbled in the aperture and extracted a cigarette.
‘I’ll light it for you,’ Besson said.
‘No, give me the matches.’
The man struck a match, and held the flame under the tip of the cigarette.
‘I prefer to do that for myself,’ he said. He blew out a cloud of smoke, and returned cigarettes and matches to Besson.
‘It must be difficult,’ Besson said.
‘What? Lighting a cigarette?’
‘Not just that — everything. The slightest action. Even the slightest action must be difficult when you can’t see what you’re doing.’ Besson lit his own cigarette.
‘All right,’ the man went on, ‘eyes are useful things, I’ll give you that. But you can get along without them. There’s a whole heap of things people should be able to do blindfold. I find out where objects are by touching them. I only need to come up against any obstacle twice, and after that I’ve got it taped. I know where it is, and what sort of thing it is. I don’t forget it. Living in darkness sharpens your memory, and that’s the truth.’
‘Don’t you have a stick, for walking?’
‘Yes, in the street. But today I know my wife’s coming for me in an hour’s time, so — no need of the stick.’
‘How do you tell the time?’
‘Oh, that’s easy. Look.’ He held out his wrist. ‘You see? I had a watch specially fitted up. My own idea. They’ve removed the glass and replaced it with a hinged lid. When I want to know the time, I just lift the lid and touch the hands. Good idea, don’t you think?’
‘Very much so.’
‘I used not to have a watch at first. It was so annoying. I had to ask people the time when they bought a paper. Or else I turned on the radio, and made a guess at it from the programme that was on at the time. But the watch is far more reliable.’
‘And it — it doesn’t worry you not being able to tell when it’s night?’
The man inhaled. ‘When it’s night?’
‘Yes. It’s all the same to you. You never know whether it’s night or day.’
‘That’s true enough, I’ve no way of telling. But I don’t bother about it. To begin with, my wife knows even if I don’t. She always tells me what the weather’s like, if it’s sunny or overcast. But I don’t really care all that much, come to think of it. When I get home in the evening I’m tired. I go to bed and sleep. I wake up when it’s morning. So in the last resort it makes no difference to me whether it’s day or night.’
‘And you—’
‘Actually, the thing I honestly miss most is not being able to watch the telly. My wife watches in the evening, and I listen. But there are times when I’d really like to see what’s going on.’
‘Do you have any children?’
‘Yes, I’ve got two children, both boys. They’re married now, so I don’t see them all that often. They’re working. I miss reading the paper rather, too — funny thing, me selling them, isn’t it? My wife reads me all the news after lunch, but it’s not the same thing.’
‘Have you never tried learning Braille?’
‘You mean the set-up with all those raised dots?’
‘That’s it.’
‘No. They tried to teach me in hospital. Too damned complicated.’
‘Yes. It must be complicated.’
‘Besides, the papers they do that way aren’t the interesting ones.’
A car went by, very fast, its engine roaring. The blind man jerked a thumb after it and said: ‘Hey, that was a Lancia. I know the sound of its engine. Right?’
‘I don’t know,’ Besson said. ‘It was a red car—’
‘Low-slung?’
‘Yes.’
‘It was a Lancia, I know it was. I can recognize them all now. Just from the sound of their engines.’
‘Do you practise spotting them?’
‘All day long. I very seldom make a mistake.’
He flipped the ash off his cigarette on to the pavement.
‘I listen all day long,’ he said. ‘That’s how I find things out. Look, I bet I can tell you all about yourself, just from your voice.’
‘Really?’
‘That’s right, just by listening to you talk. I can tell you how old you are. Twenty-six, I’d say. Well?’
‘Twenty-seven,’ said Besson.
‘Fair enough, twenty-seven. You’re tall and thin, and you’ve got black hair.’
‘Absolutely right.’
‘You don’t do any kind of manual labour, that’s for sure. Yet you have a loud voice. You must be a lawyer or a teacher, something like that. Am I wrong?’
‘I’m a student,’ Besson said. ‘But you’re right, I have been a teacher.’
‘You see? It’s easy. I listen to people talking, and work out what they’re like just for the fun of it.’
Besson glanced at a group of people approaching them on the pavement.
‘I can go a bit further, too,’ the blind man said. ‘You’re not married, are you? If you were, you wouldn’t waste your time chatting me up like this.’
‘Quite true,’ Besson said.
The man began to laugh. ‘I enjoy trying to work out what people are like,’ he said. ‘It’s all there in the voice. They don’t know how much their voices give them away.’
‘You’re a philosopher,’ Besson said.
At this the blind man gave another laugh. ‘Me? Well, I don’t know, maybe you’re right. I haven’t read any of those old books, though—’
‘It isn’t worth while reading them, you know,’ Besson said.
‘I’d have liked to have an education. But my parents couldn’t afford it. I had to go out to work as soon as I could.’
‘Education isn’t worth all that much.’
The man pondered this for a moment. ‘You shouldn’t say that. It’s not true, you know — education is worth something. It’s good to acquire knowledge. I wish I could have done it.’
‘What would you like to have known?’
‘Oh, everything. The lot. How to write well, and figure, and think properly. That’s what I’d have liked. But the thing I really wanted was to be a doctor. Understand how to heal people, find out all about drugs, know all the diseases. That’s what I’d have found really interesting. Doctors are good people. Well, not all of them, I know that, but some of them are really decent. When I had my operations, the doctor who looked after me explained the whole business. Of course, I didn’t understand some bits of it. But it interested me just the same. And the doctor saw I was interested, that’s why he told me all about it.’
‘You remind me of someone,’ Besson said.
‘Oh yes?’ said the blind man, ‘and who might that be?’
‘A man who lived a long time ago. He was rather like you.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Nothing, really. He was a philosopher. He lived in a barrel and listened to what was going on around him.’