Those adrenaline-soaked days diverted my attention from my ever-increasing vision difficulties, but reality could be put off only so long. A few weeks after the start of school, I attended Yom Kippur services at the Jewish Theological Seminary, just as the High Holidays were beginning. I knew no one at the service, and no one seemed to know me. While I sat in the pew, my vision again dismantled, and I began to feel as if I were in a movie, the cantor and the angels singing the “Kol Nidre.” Everything surrounding me seemed to come undone and unhinged. The lines that separated one thing from another—for instance, the pew in front of me from the altar beyond it—blurred and became steamy. Or, rather, it all blurred and became nothing. Everyone was singing and praying. I was supposed to be doing the same, but there was nothing to sing or pray about. Instead, I sat there and let the service end, feeling half of me torn away.
Despite my efforts to shake it off, the cloudiness remained. I dared not move. The fog intensified, and soon I could see almost nothing. I was terror-stricken. By now the other congregants had left; the synagogue was empty and I sat alone, my head buried in my hands. Finally, a janitor came and escorted me out of the building. His hands were like leather, his voice like breaking rocks.
What was supposed to be a beautiful, peaceful, and revelatory evening was only revelatory, and not in a good way. I was led into the street but could not see which way to go. I stumbled my way back to campus, knocking into metal trash baskets and a lamppost, the light of which looked like the halo of a launching rocket. It was as if I could hear steam filtering around my eyeballs. On the walk home, New York City was laughing at me.
Soon, I began to weep. The ten days of repentance after Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, were about to conclude. At that time, we would each be inscribed in the “Book of Life.” Our futures would be determined. As I breathed in the night air, I thought of the final decrees: “Who shall live and who shall die; who will die at his predestined time and who before his time.…Who will enjoy tranquility and who will suffer; who will be impoverished and who will be enriched. Who will be degraded and who will be exalted.” Not until I returned to my room did my eyes finally clear.
Late that November, I returned to Buffalo to attend my cousin Edith’s wedding. As the master of ceremonies, I was expected to read the telegrams that had been sent for the occasion. Waiting behind a drape that curtained off the kitchen from the dining hall, I had to squint painfully to memorize the messages so that when I appeared to read them to the group I could do so faultlessly.
Happily, my discomfort on that occasion was barely noticed. Not only was Edy’s wedding a joyous one in its own right; it was also the occasion for a special family event. For five long years during World War II, a Catholic family in the Netherlands had hidden Edy’s parents, Bertha and Alfred, from the German occupiers under a windmill. Aunt Bertha never told us the exact dimensions. It was simply a sort of crevice in the earth. And there they survived.
As a surprise for Edy, her parents brought the Dutch family’s patriarch, Cornelius “Pa” Deijle, to America for the wedding. He turned out to be a tall ninety-year-old man in a black suit, wearing a black hat, who spoke no English. Here before us stood a man who, if Edith’s parents had been discovered, would’ve been shot to death, and possibly his family as well. What was his reward for the risk? Nothing material, certainly. So why did he do it? I don’t really know. I can only attest that, when he was introduced, all of us at the wedding felt a swelling in our chests, and more than a few tears were shed.
A few days later, during that same visit home, Sue and I set out early in the evening, in a gentle snow, for a night on the town. We had borrowed her father’s Ford Falcon. Sue was well aware by then of the uncertain condition of my eyes, but I felt invigorated by the cold air and excited about the prospect of dining alone with her and managed to persuade her I should drive, despite my eroded night vision.
Within a few blocks of starting out, I lost control of the car. Stamping furiously on the brakes, I could hear metal grinding on metal as I hit a parked car, caving in its door. Sue and I were thrust forward in our seats. Panic-stricken, I turned the steering wheel rapidly, hand over hand, the other way. Too late. The side of her father’s car slid into another car door, then careened diagonally again, gliding across the snow and hammering yet another car before veering toward the center of the street, where it spun around and stopped. Sue said she would take the blame, and I let her. I didn’t need any more trouble. I still had to muddle through, which was trouble enough.
I never drove again.
After that episode, I went to see Dr. Mortson once again about my continuing vision problems. Once again, he told me to keep using the eye drops he had prescribed, and I did, regularly.
As my vision continued to deteriorate, Arthur decided, in his typical smart-ass fashion,
