The Blind Man of Seville

he hated it. Pretentious and inaccurate. Tears came. Madre mia, what is this? Huge racking sobs lifted his shoulders off the bed.

He threw off the covers, staggered out of the room blinded by tears. He tried to pull himself together in the gallery, march it off. He held on to the balustrade and looked into the patio, saw the black pupil in the centre of the fountain staring up and thought he’d just hop over the ledge, dive on to the marble flagstones below, dash his brains out in a last cacophonous roar and then silence. Peace at last.

The idea was too compelling. He pushed himself away from it, stumbled down the stairs and into the study. He opened the drinks cabinet, which was full of whisky, his father’s preferred drink. He pulled the cork out of the first bottle that came to hand and drank heavily from the neck. It smelt and tasted like wet charcoal but had the burn of a glowing ember.

A full-length mirror gave him a terrible update on his appearance — naked, quivering, genitals shrivelled, tear- stained face, both hands locked round the bottle as if it was going to get him ashore. Because that’s where he felt himself to be, out in some mountainous sea with no hope of landfall. He drank more of the liquid asphalt and sank to his knees. He was still crying, if that was what it could be called, this huge retching of the body, as if it was trying to sick up something bigger than itself. He drank again from the bottle of molten tar until it was all gone. He fell back, the bottle toppled and rolled. The label flashed away from him. He belched an essence of bitumen and slithered into a glittering darkness as if he was being laid down in a new black road.

He came to steamrollered, all joints dislocated, bones crushed, face distorted. He was lying in a pool of his own urine, shivering with the cold. It was first light outside. His legs stung. He swabbed the floor and went upstairs and collapsed in the shower, grovelling in the tray. He was still drunk and his teeth seemed as large as cobblestones.

Still dripping, he made it to bed and scratched the covers over himself. He slept and dreamt the fish dream. It was nearly beautiful to be flashing through the blue-green water, but the freedom of perfect instinct was disturbed by the terrible wrench, the visceral tug that was pulling him inside out.

Tuesday, 17th April 2001, Falcon’s house, Calle Bailen, Seville

The savage light stepped into his head. Steel tips flashed and sparked in his dark cranium. His organs were as delicate as bone china. He gasped at the ecstatic pain of the drunk.

An hour and half later, scrubbed, shaved, dressed and combed through, he lowered himself into a chair in front of his doctor, hesitant as a man with elephant haemorrhoids that ran from nose to tail.

‘Javier …’ said the doctor, instantly running out of words.

‘I know Dr Fernando, I know,’ said Falcon.

Dr Fernando Valera was the son of his father’s doctor and was ten years older than Falcon although the last week seemed to have evened up their ages. The two men knew each other well, both were aficionados a los toros.

‘I saw you across a crowd of people at the Estacion de Santa Justa on Friday,’ said Dr Fernando. ‘You looked quite normal then. What’s been going on?’

The softness of the doctor’s voice made Falcon emotional and he had to fight back the silly tears at the thought that he’d finally arrived in a haven where somebody cared. He gave the doctor a rundown of his physical symptoms — the anxiety, the panic, the pounding heart, the sleeplessness. The doctor probed with questions about his work. The Raul Jimenez case was mentioned, which the doctor had read about. Falcon admitted it was at the sight of the man’s face that he’d noticed the chemical change.

‘I can’t tell you the details, but it had something to do with the man’s eyes.’

‘Ah, yes, you’re very sensitive about eyes … as your father was.’

‘Was he? I don’t remember that.’

‘I suppose it’s quite natural for an artist to worry about his eyes, but in the last ten years of his life your father became obsessed — yes, that’s the word: obsessed with blindness.’

‘The idea of it?’

‘No, no, becoming blind. He was certain it would happen to him.’

‘I didn’t know.’

‘My father tried to tease him out of it, told him if he wasn’t careful he’d go hysterically blind. Francisco was appalled at the idea,’ said Dr Fernando. ‘Anyway … Javier … we are here to talk about you. To me you are suffering the classic symptoms of stress.’

I’ don’t get stress. I’ve been at this job for twenty years and I never suffered from stress.’

‘You’re forty-five.’

‘I do remember that.’

‘This is when the body begins to realize its weaknesses. Body and mind. The pressures in the mind create symptoms in the body. I see it all the time.’

‘Even in Seville?’

‘Maybe more so in la maravillosa Sevilla. It’s quite a pressure to be happy all the time because … it’s expected of you. We’re not immune to modern life just because we live in the most beautiful city in Spain. We tell ourselves we should be happy … we have no excuse. We are surrounded by people who appear to be happy, people who clap their hands and dance in the streets, people who sing for the pure joy of singing … and you think they don’t suffer? You think that they are somehow excluded from the battle of the human condition — death, infirmity, lost love, poverty, crime and all the rest of it? We’re all half mad.’

Falcon wondered whether this was intended to make him feel better about being crazy.

‘I was beginning to think I was wholly mad,’ he said.

‘You are under very particular pressures. You face the momentary breakdowns in our civilization, when the condition has become intolerable and the wire has snapped. You face the consequences of that. This is not an easy job. Perhaps you should talk to somebody about this … somebody who has an understanding of the work.’