VI

The Blind Woman

WHEN THE OWNER AND THE MAN HAD finished picking over his possessions, and taking back the rather remarkably few things that he said he would like to keep, the owner returned to clear away the rest of the contents of the bag. As he was bent over sweeping some of the detritus into a dustpan, a woman walked right into him.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" she exclaimed, looking straight in front of her. My cane didn't touch anything, and I thought . . ." She reached down, still looking straight before her, and put her hand on the owner's back. "Did I knock you over? Are you hurt?"

"No, not at all," said the owner. "I was only stooped over, and I suppose I had inadvertently dodged your cane. May I help you?"

"Well, I was looking for the mansion. I was told that I should speak to the owner."

"As a matter of fact," he answered, "you are only two steps away from the entrance, and I happen to be the one you were to speak to. Are you looking for a room?"

"Don't you know? I thought you would know."

"Well, I do, actually. It was just a formality. Here, let me take your hand."

"I can manage by myself, thank you," she said. "I always have. I've had to."

"Whatever you please," said the owner. The woman, waving her cane before her, walked up to the steps and was about to ascend; but the step was higher than she had anticipated, and she stumbled and nearly fell to her knees.

"Don't you have an access ramp to this building?" she asked indignantly.

"No, actually, we don't. We--"

"But you should! You have to! It's against the law not to!"

"That law doesn't apply in this country, Madame," said the owner. We--"

"I thought in this place of all places, you wouldn't put obstacles in people's way! How are people in wheel chairs supposed to get up these steps?" She felt the height of the steps carefully with her cane.

"We carry them up, generally, though some find that when they come this far, they don't need the wheel chair any more. And no one inside uses one. So we thought it an unnecessary expense to make a ramp that actually would almost never be used."

"But then you're depriving the ones who don't want to be carried of their independence--not to mention people like me, who can't see the stairs and are apt to trip over them."

"I did offer to take your hand, you know."

"But that's what I mean! You degrade me into someone who needs another person's help just to do the simplest thing like climbing stairs, when I'm perfectly capable of doing things for myself if I'm given the chance."

"Well, if you want to know the truth," returned the owner. "absolutely no one can get up those stairs without my help--and the help of quite a few other people, if it comes to that."

"Are you trying to tell me," she said, "that everyone has to have his hand held and be guided along just as if he were a child--or blind? I don't believe it."

"More or less. Of course, some people need more help than others."

"Well that's what I resent. Even if nobody's completely independent, I don't see why I can't be as independent as everyone else is. Why do I have to be singled out for special pity and condescension?"

"Well, because you're blind, for one thing."

"Why should that put me in a special class that's looked down on?"

"No one is looking down on you."

"Oh no? You're just like everyone else. 'May I help you, Madame?' Which translates into, 'May I show you how much more capable I am than you are, Madame?' I'm sick of it! I thought when I got here, all of that, at least, was going to stop. I wouldn't even demand to be able to see. But why can't I be treated just like everyone else?"

"Because you're not like everyone else."

"But I am! All human beings are equal."

"Well, they're not, you know."

"How dare you!"

"For instance, other people can see. You can't. So you can't be treated as if you could."

"Oh yes I can! All I need is to be given a chance!"

"You mean, for instance, if we built access ramps with railings, you could walk up to the door just as easily as a sighted person."

"Exactly."

"But then if we have to tear out part of these steps and put in a ramp just for you to use, how is this treating you like everyone else?"

"You don't understand! Because then I could get up to the door without anyone helping me!"

"You mean so that you could pretend you were getting to the door without any special help; but really, the special help only came beforehand, with the building of the ramp. But you see, Madame, we don't pretend here. If you need help, you need help--and we are happy to give it to you."

"Then why didn't you have a ramp constructed? If you call that 'help,' that's the kind of help I need--and the only kind of help I need."

"Well, you see, it's our policy to help anyone reach any goal he sets for himself; we will defer to his goals, and, for instance, build his room to his specifications. But we reserve the right to help the person in our way, and not necessarily his. What difference does it make if he reaches the goal he was aiming at in any case?"

"It makes all the difference in the world! A person has a right to have control over her own life!"

"One does? What ever gave you that idea?"

"Well, it-- But it's obvious! It just stands to reason! Why live if you can't be in control of your life?"

"Perhaps we misunderstand each other. Everyone has control over what his life will ultimately turn out to be--in other words, what his room here will be like. But no one has control over everything that happens to him while he is on the way here."

"Well they ought to," she said. "You're just playing with them when you 'help them in your own way,' the way you say you do."

"That may be, Madame," he answered. "But that is the way things are."

"You don't need to tell me that!" she retorted. "I didn't ask to be born blind, you know."

"That's true. Of course, you didn't ask to be born, either."

"Why was I singled out? What did I do to deserve being born blind?"

"Nothing at all. You were 'singled out' as you put it, because everyone is singled out. We give each person certain gifts at the beginning, and other gifts along the way; some we give more to, and some less. No two people have ever had the same gifts. In that sense, no two human beings are exactly equal; if they were, they would be the same person."

"Well, I don't understand it; but I know one thing. It's not fair."

"No, you're right. It's not."

"And you're not ashamed of this?"

"Ashamed? Because I give someone more than he deserves, and I give another a great deal more than he deserves?"

"Well, it seems to me that you give some people a lot less than they deserve!"

"Really?"

"Take me, for instance. I didn't deserve to be born blind."

"You mean that, even though you had no right to be born in the first place, you somehow had a right to be born sighted?"

"You know perfectly well what I mean! Ninety-nine percent of the people in the world are born sighted. I was born less 'gifted,' if you want to call it that, than ninety-nine percent of the people."

"Yes, that's true. And so?"

"So why was I singled out to be discriminated against? That's the question I've asked all my life, and I expect an answer! I demand an answer!"

"You really do want an answer? That is, you don't simply want an excuse to complain?"

"--I wish there were someone else here to talk to who had some minimal degree of understanding of people who aren't like himself! You don't know what it's like to go through the things I've been through. I've had to struggle and struggle my whole life long."

"Yes, you have. And now the time of struggle is over. Now you can take possession of the room we built to your specifications."

"But other people haven't had to struggle as much as I have for their rooms! Is mine going to be any better than theirs?"

"Than some, because you were more ambitious than some people who weren't constantly faced with obstacles. But there are others who, frankly, have more expensive and elaborate rooms than you have, because they set their sights higher--but not because they worked harder. How hard you work, in the last analysis, has nothing to do with what your room looks like, because in the last analysis, it too is a gift. The only difference is that this particular gift depends on what the person asks for out of life."

"I don't understand it."

"As I said, I can give you some kind of an explanation, if you want. I am not sure it will satisfy you, however."

"Well, if you think you can explain it, go ahead."

"You remember I said to you that if two human beings received exactly the same gifts--the same talents, the same circumstances, and so on--then they wouldn't be two different human beings, but one and the same person. Even identical twins, you know, are not exactly the same in every respect--because if they were, then they'd have to be in the same place at the same time, for instance, and then how could there be two of them in any sense?"

"That's all just metaphysics! What difference does it make?"

"You said you wanted an explanation, Madame. It turns out that the explanation involves metaphysics. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is. Shall I go on?"

"Oh, go ahead."

"At any rate, if you grant that if there is going to be a plurality of human beings, each has to have different gifts, it necessarily follows that some will have more gifts than others. Some will necessarily lack the gifts that others have.

"And that means, as I said, that no two human beings are equal. But if they are all endowed with different gifts, and there are many people, then obviously, there will have to be some with a great deal fewer than the ones who have most."

"That's what I mean. It's not fair."

"You are right, and I agree with you that it is not fair, if by 'fair' you mean that each person should have the same gifts that everyone else has. But what I was trying to show is that on that condition, there could only be one human being."

"Then there shouldn't be any human beings in the first place!"

"There is that alternative, of course. But if you make the assumption--which happens to be true--that something is greater than nothing, it follows that the least gifted human being is greater than nothing at all, and so if he exists, whatever his total of gifts, it is greater than if he did not exist. And it was our opinion that, since the least gifted human being is nonetheless gifted, it was worth while that human beings exist."

"But I keep telling you! It's not fair!"

"That is, of course, the price one pays for having many human beings. But you see, if you don't compare yourself with other human beings, and just consider the gifts you have, you find that you are gifted indeed. And most people who do this think that it is better to be alive and have these gifts than never to have lived. Some don't, of course."

"Well I happen to think they're right. I don't see any reason why I have to have fewer gifts than the next person."

"There is no particular reason for that, of course."

"And in practice, this means that some people have an easy life, and others have to suffer. That's discrimination if I ever saw it."

"Oh, yes, we discriminate."

"Well, I've fought against discrimination my whole life long!"

"I know."

"Well, then."

"I can tell you a secret, if you'd like; though I don't think it will solve your particular problem."

"All I can say is I'm not satisfied with your self-justification yet. But if that secret of yours has anything to do with it, I'm willing to give you that chance. Go ahead."

"Well, as I say, in the last analysis, what happens to you before you get to this country doesn't matter, because the room you have is just exactly the room you choose, and really has nothing to do with the gifts you were given at the start. It's just that we had to start all of you off somehow so that you could choose what you wanted out of life.

"But the secret is this. You mentioned suffering a few minutes ago. We built not only this mansion, you know, to the specifications of each of you, but we built the whole country you came from, also to your--how shall I say it--collective specifications. We consulted the original inhabitant about the kind of world he wished to live in, only putting certain conditions upon it because of what we knew about the underpinnings of the construction.

"But it turned out that he refused to accept the minor limitations his reality imposed upon himself and chose a world with good and evil. And the result was that, in deference to his wishes, we built a universe which included suffering in it."

"So we have to suffer because of his choice. That's even more unfair!"

"Yes, I suppose, but as I said, in the last analysis it doesn't really make any difference, because we moved the mansion over here, instead of where we would have built it in the other world; and so we kept this land from the infection that our original consultant had brought upon his universe. But there is more."

"Well, I might as well hear you out to the end. But you were right when you said I wouldn't be satisfied."

"Our plans were that I myself would go into the other world, to reconstruct it into the condition it would have been in if the original consultant had not given us such a--let me say it--pitifully inadequate plan.

"But we never want to impose our ideas on other people, because we want them to choose their own destiny. And so, I was to let the people know what this new kingdom was to be like, and the condition now was that they were to accept me to be its king. Our hope, you see, was that the experience of the results of the original consultant's specifications would lead people to prefer the world that could have existed: one without death, without disease, without blindness, without, in short, suffering.

"Unfortunately, as you know, the people I chose as the spokesmen for all humanity would not accept me as their king, nor would the representative of the rest of humanity, who we saw to it was to be in control of them so that he could exercise a veto over their decisions if he chose.

"They killed me, in short, which means that the only way any human being can arrive at this mansion is to share my death, so that he can share a room in my home."

"You're punishing everyone for what some Jews and Romans did thousands of years ago."

"If you want to look at it that way. But the mansion is here waiting for anyone who wants to come in, of course. And if I may say so, it is rather more generously appointed than it would have been had it been built over there. I suppose you could call that a kind of compensation. I call it another gift."

"So for some reason," said the blind woman, "I was appointed to suffer because you weren't accepted as the King of Judea. How just is that? I certainly didn't volunteer."

"Well, I didn't think I would satisfy you. But really it doesn't matter now. Would you like me to show you to your room?"

"It most certainly does matter now! I won't go in there until all this is straightened out! I want to know why you treated me as shabbily as I was treated!"

"You will see, you know, once you settle into your room; and your sight will never be taken away from you forever. We've been keeping it for you."

"But why couldn't I have had it from the very beginning, like everyone else? That's what I want to know!"

"Would it help if I told you that if you hadn't been born blind, you would in fact have had considerably more to suffer, most of which you would have brought on yourself? You would not even have approached this door."

"How can you be so sure of that?"

"Madame, you forget who you are talking to."

"But even so, it makes no difference. All you're saying is that I was singled out for suffering from the very beginning, because, according to you, you resent what some other people did to you once. It's just that I was subjected to less suffering than I might otherwise have been. Thank you very much."

"Well, whatever happened in the past, and whatever the reason for it, what's done is done, and from now on, the only thing that will happen is just exactly what you want to happen. Let me show you to your room."

"Not until I get an apology!"

"You want me to apologize for giving you life? For giving you a brilliant mind? For making you attractive? Healthy all your life? For the parents who loved you so deeply?"

"For making me blind!"

"That is, for not giving you sight. I did not give you much strength either, and you are shorter than most women. Should I apologize for those deficiencies?"

"I don't care about all that."

"Why must I apologize for not giving you some gifts, and need not apologize for not giving you others?"

"Why are you torturing me like this? You know what I mean!"

"Indeed I do, Madame; but I don't think you do. If you don't come in and occupy your room, you will never see--physically. But if you don't open the eyes of your mind, you will not come in. I am trying to help your mental blindness."

"Well, I've always been able to think for myself, thank God--"

"You're welcome."

"Don't be snide. And I don't happen to think that I'm spiritually blind."

"I know. I was hoping I could show you. But not even that matters. Whatever you think, only come in. We can discuss all this after you're settled and comfortable."

"You don't understand, do you? How could I live in the same house with you when you've done all you've done to me? I'd be willing, perhaps, if you at least had the decency to give me even a hint that you were the least bit sorry for it; but when you try to make a virtue out of forcing me into a life of pain and struggle, it's--how could anyone live in your house under those conditions? I'd rather not live anywhere!"

"Unfortunately, that's the alternative. You realize that, don't you?"

"I don't care. It would be more torture for me to be in there constantly reminded at every second of who it was who treated me so shabbily for so long! At least if I'm outside, I'm on my own. I've been able to manage for myself so far, and, since it's obvious I'll get no help from you, I can keep managing."

"I did offer to help, you remember."

"I spit on your kind of help!" She turned and, waving her cane angrily before her, walked swiftly away into the darkness that was as dark without as within.