Those thoughts, not quite overshadowed by doubt and pessimism, had become more insistent. Did I dare expose them to Arthur? His presence here in Buffalo was, after all, my foremost remaining link to college. My brief taste of Columbia and the city and all the great things they represented was a seed already planted, and it had the potential to grow. Seeds want to sprout and send out roots.
Putting my embarrassment aside, I related my recurrent fantasies of return to Arthur, and in one of those rare moments when he put aside the lyrical and romantic, his analytical side emerged. His speech became focused and intense as I struggled to explain my fantasy, and his voice descended to a lower octave. Sightless as I was, I could sense his blue eyes searching my face.
After a while, we turned from my predicament to discussing the university in general. It felt less awkward to focus the conversation on the subject of school itself than on my recent catastrophe and its effect on my educational career. Then, abruptly, Arthur asked me when I was going to return. When! It soon became clear that he was concerned merely about the great amount of coursework I had missed and would have to catch up on for the second half of junior year. As if it were that simple! I replied that, flights of fancy aside, I really did not know whether I was going to return at all. At that, he was silent for a while. Then he said that of course I was going to return, that it was his job to convince me to return: “There is no other way.”
I said the opposite was true—there was no way I could go back. I had already missed out on so much that I would certainly not be able to graduate with our class. At bottom, however, there was always the basic underlying issue: the coursework required to graduate as a member of any class would be unmanageable.
That conclusion, which I stated with impressive firmness, was not in fact rock-solid for me. I needed Arthur to tell me whether or not I was dreaming the impossible. The unspoken question was: Would he be willing to room with a blind man? Neither of us knew how much that was asking.
We continued strolling along quietly for a while. It had been a few months since the surgery, and my eyes no longer hurt. I could feel the warmth of the sun when we passed between breaks in the trees. Arthur told me he would help me if I returned.
I suddenly became aware of the sound of my sneakers against the pavement, and things moving all around me—birds and squirrels perking up and bees awakening from their winter. I could even sense crocuses poking up through the earth. It was good to have Arthur there, a living reminder of a life I used to have.
“Well, I think you have to come back,” Arthur said. “It just seems like the only reasonable thing to do.”
“What are you talking about? You’re crazy. I don’t want to discuss it.”
“Well, you’re going to have to discuss it at some point. I’m going to make you discuss it.”
“Well, I don’t want to.”
“Sanford. Stop.” He repeated that he would help me if I returned.
I believed in his sincerity, but while I comprehended how much effort it would be for me to resume college, I was not sure he did. Just getting around my own house in Buffalo was a tremendous effort. The idea of going back to college, in frenetic Manhattan, seemed foolhardy. There were a few serious specific hurdles: the tight schedule of classes, the campus to navigate, and the competitive fellow students, probably scornful of a blind student. Not to mention the heavy reading load. Still, I had already been considering the idea of using audiotapes. I could tape-record the classes and lectures to review later and get people to read the associated assignments to me.
“Just how are you going to help me, Arthur?”
“Well, I could get all your class notes, all your assignments. I could quiz you for your exams. I could walk you to your classes and then pick you up.”
“How are you going to do that and still handle your own classes and reading?”
“We can figure something out. I think you’re dodging the main question, though.”
“Which is what?”
“Which is whether or not you’ll return.”
Arthur then laid out his underlying premise: everything else would fall into line once I made that decision. His tone of voice suddenly changed. He began to sing: “Oh Sanford, Sanford, Sanford…I made you out of clay, and now you’re dry and ready. So, Sanford, we must play.” With that, his intensity vanished; we both laughed and put our arms on each other’s shoulders.
With his simple nonsense, he had succeeded in dispelling my uneasiness, which enabled us to continue our discussion in the same dispassionate manner in which we had discussed so many other things in the past. It felt as though we were back at Columbia, relishing our good fortune as we sauntered down College Walk. Arthur seemed comfortable, speaking as though nothing had transpired since he had seen me last. The attitude, the patter, the humor were familiar. He had made a sudden decision to help me. Was it preceded by an epiphany about the meaning of life? I don’t know.
For a moment, my tension eased. I told him about that first poem I had ever written, on the horror of cancer and blindness, and the fear that either might afflict me. In 1945, cancer meant certain death, and since I had for some reason linked it with blindness back then, I told him that I now felt a nearness to death—at the “bottom of life’s barrel,” as
