"Sorry," I said. It was a shabby, superfluous remark, but I didn't know how to express my sadness. It was the truth: I felt deeply sorry for her.
"Why?" she replied. "There are worse things in life! That's what they say, don't they? There's always something worse in life."
"That's probably true. But where's the limit?"
"Maybe there isn't one. One can put up with everything—except, maybe, having to live in a dog kennel."
Both of us broke into laughter. She bore her blindness with humor; that pleased me.
"Were you always like this, I mean, like …"
"You mean blind?" she said, helping me out of a tight corner with an amused smile. "Yes, from birth on. But it's strange. I do see images, images in my head."
"Images?"
"Yes. Naturally I have only a vague idea of what images are, but they pop up suddenly in my memories. And in my dreams. Again and again."
"What kind of images?"
Her face took on a strange, distant expression. She seemed to be concentrating with all her might on what she saw or believed she could see in her mind. You could almost see the hard work she had to do to imagine something the rest of us could see.
"Everything is so blurry, so unclear. I see people, many people gathered around me. They are so big, so distinct, so bright. Are they wearing that wonderful white color I've heard about so often? I don't know. They're talking all at once; they're laughing loudly. I'm scared stiff; I want to go back to my mother! One of them is bending down to me and smiling at me. But it's a phony smile, the smile of a liar. This man has piercing eyes. They have a strange glitter, as if they're about to skewer me like daggers. Suddenly, the man has something shiny in his hand; he moves it as fast as lightning. I feel pain, and I fall asleep. But this sleep is a frighteningly deep, black, leaden sleep I don't wake up from. In the blackness of this sleep I hear people's voices. They're furious now; they're screaming at one another; they're making mutual accusations. Something has gone wrong. I sleep on. It seems to me as if I have already spent a thousand years in this condition. Then something terrible happens. It is so terrible that it blots out my memory forever. But no, there's one more memory. I'm suddenly running outside with the others. Yes, there are others, many others, hundreds. But I can't see anymore. I'm blind. I'm so sad that I can't see anything anymore. Everything is so desolate and dead. I wander around for a while and then lay down somewhere. It's raining and I'm getting wet. I've lost all hope and know that I will die. But now it doesn't matter any longer whether I die. After this, the colors and contours of the images dissolve as if they had been dipped into a chemical solvent. They're disappearing forever. And then there are no more images. …"
She had tears in her eyes and was a little ashamed because of them. To hide them from me, she went back again to the window and turned her back to me. I remained where I was, following her thoughtfully with my eyes.
"You're harboring the images of your childhood in yourself," I said. "You weren't blind from birth. There's some terrible secret in your past. Some human did something to you. That's when you became blind."
"Shall I tell you something?" she asked, and I detected an ironic undercurrent in her voice. "The nicest creatures I know are people. Who else would care for a useless blind reject like me?"
She laughed again, and that did good. It did a world of good.
"Someday you should see what happens when our brothers and sisters stumble in here by accident. They act like psychopaths, like monsters, like beasts. They think the eternal struggle they're fighting out there goes on in here. And when they suddenly find out what manner of strange creature they're dealing with, they're irritated and react with even more anger and hatred. It's a weird scene. I've been sitting around here for a long time, and all that life passes me by without really affecting me. But maybe I haven't missed out on anything, what with that eternal struggle out there, I mean."
She became thoughtful again. I knew that she didn't believe what she had just told me. Yes, evil had passed her by like a fog driven away by the sun. But she had also missed the struggle, the great and wonderful struggle of life.
"May I ask you an unusual question, Miss—what was your name again?"
"Felicity," she said quickly.
"Felicity, although I haven't been living here for long, I know that for a fairly long time strange things have been happening in the district. And from what you just told me, I gather you do keep track of what's going on in the neighborhood by, let's say, acoustic means. I suppose that your hearing is better than that of all those brave fighters out there. That's why I'd like to ask you this: did you hear any peculiar sounds during the night last week?"
"You mean the death cries?"
My jaw dropped. I felt as if I had been struck by lightning, as if I would come apart at the seams if I moved a muscle. Now I had finally found my first witness. Admittedly she was only half a witness, but better than no witness at all. Even God didn't create the world in one day.
"Does that surprise you? You're right, my hearing is better than the others'. But it's no miracle, is it? My favorite sitting place is here at the window. So I get to know a lot
