The movie continued, but my spirits were crushed. It was a reminder that the only time you can forget about being blind is during sleep. After about ten minutes of total awkwardness, I felt a cramping in my stomach. I knew that feeling. It is emergent, and I knew that if I did not find a men’s room within a few minutes there was going to be a different kind of unpleasantness. I waited, as I have waited my entire life, for a discreet exit, but this night it was not meant to be. I leaned over to Sue and told her I had to go to the bathroom. She was watching the movie, but I could tell that her attention was perfunctory. “Now?” she said. “Oh yes,” I said.
We both had to get up, Sue leading me by the hand down the row of furious moviegoers. You are not supposed to say or do anything when something about the Holocaust is being presented. But sometimes you have to go to the bathroom. The pressure was intense, almost painful. We brushed by boney knees and fat knees, everyone making noises of disgust at our rudeness.
We went around the left side of the theater, moved slowly down the stairs, and then we were out the door.
It was very quiet in the lobby. My wife led me to the men’s room, and from there I was able to continue on my own. I then went out to where my wife was waiting for me.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m perfectly fine. I’m terrific. Never been better. In fact, I feel like a million bucks.”
“Okay,” she said. She did not mention the cranky man in the movie theater. We headed back toward the theater, and the nervous young man who had shepherded the line said, “You guys left the movie?”
“Yes,” my wife said. “Is there something wrong with that?”
“No. But you guys are the first to leave. Would you believe that? People sit for three hours straight. It’s crazy, but they have been doing that since the show opened. I guess it’s supposed to be a very important movie.”
“Yes,” my wife said.
The smell of popcorn was all around us, heavy, as if the air itself were chewable. Candy, too.
“Are you guys going back in?” the boy asked.
I looked at my wife. I did not see her face, but I knew that she was looking at me. Perhaps there was another option.
“No,” I said, “we’re not going back in.”
“We’re not?” said Sue.
“I guess not,” said the young man, with a smile of empathy.
“Well,” I said to him. “Thanks.”
“Anytime,” he said.
Sometimes my blindness can crush even the people I love most in unexpected ways. There are few people to whom I have been able even to attempt to explain the phenomenon of my fascination with the trumpet, as it necessarily involves something beyond the reach of logical explication. My best friend the artist and singer is one such person. My wife, too. She surprised me on a recent birthday of mine when she flew my brother and sister-in-law in from Rochester, New York, for the occasion. My brother, a couple of years younger than I, is an optometrist—no coincidence. At the birthday party Sue produced a present for me. As I unwrapped it, I felt that it was a piece of luggage, a hard case, its texture rough and durable. We already had nice luggage, but I pretended to be excited. She told me to open the case. I found the two clasps and unhooked them. Inside the case I expected to find some small gift, perhaps a gadget for travel. Instead, what I touched was the bell of a trumpet.
I did not remove the instrument but instead ran my fingers along the tapers of its throat. I lifted it out and handled the mouthpiece. The brass felt cold, and the instrument seemed perfect, as in fact it was. Sue had purchased a Bach Stradivarius, an instrument so finely crafted that for anyone but a master to play it would be almost obscene, the way one would not play catch with a baseball signed by Lou Gehrig or Babe Ruth. It is an instrument so well balanced that only a professional would be able to appreciate it fully. In fact, she had asked the principal trumpeter in the National Symphony Orchestra which instrument was the very best. He told her, and she got one for me.
I removed the trumpet, slowly, from the velvet around it—even the housing in the case was so well made that I could practically hear a pop as I freed the instrument. As I ran my fingers around the rim of the bell, although no one else mentioned hearing it, a light tone began to sound, the way a good crystal wineglass would ring if one were to slide a dampened finger around its rim. I did not say it (I didn’t say anything at all, actually), but I thought, and would think later, that this would be sufficient, that I would never need to play it—my running my fingers around the rim, the sound resonating at a pitch that only I seemed able to hear, would be sufficient.
Then I heard the instrument itself singing, without my stroking it, as if in its very existence it was required to make music. Strange. I sensed that the others seated around me were still hearing nothing. I did not know whether I should tell them. Then I thought, no, I had better not. This feeling—the wanting to tell someone something and not being able to—is not uncommon for me. They would have laughed, even though we were in my own home. Company was all around, yet here I was holding an instrument that was making music on its own, as if it were inclined to do so. I withhold these kinds of secrets from people—the secret life of the blind.
I fitted the mouthpiece into the instrument
