Many were frightened, but Waldas wasn’t one of them. He went home at four o’clock. The lights were on. They gave off very little light—seemed like reddish balls, danger signals. At the lunch counter where he always ate, he got them to serve him cold sandwiches. There was only the owner and one waitress, who left afterward, walking slowly through the shadows.
Waldas got to his apartment without difficulty. He was used to coming home late without turning on the hall lights. The elevator wasn’t working, so he walked up the stairs to the third floor. His radio emitted only strange sounds, perhaps voices, perhaps static. Opening the window, he confronted the thousands of reddish glows, lights of the huge buildings whose silhouettes stood out dimly against the starless sky.
He went to the refrigerator and drank a glass of milk; the motor wasn’t working. The same thing would happen to the water pump. He put the plug in the bathtub and filled it. Locating his flashlight, he went through his small apartment, anxious to find his belongings with the weak light. He left the cans of powdered milk, cereal, some crackers, and a box of chocolates on the kitchen table and closed the window, turned out the lights, and lay down on the bed. A cold shiver ran through his body as he realized the reality of the danger.
He slept fitfully, dreamed confused and disagreeable dreams. A child was crying in the next apartment, asking its mother to turn on the lights. He woke up startled. With the flashlight pressed against his watch, he saw that it was eight o’clock in the morning. He opened the windows. The darkness was almost complete. You could see the sun in the east, red and round, as if it were behind a thick smoked glass. In the street dim shapes of people passed by like silhouettes.
With great difficulty Waldas managed to wash his face. He went to the kitchen and ate Rice Krispies with powdered milk. Force of habit made him think about his job. He realized that he didn’t have any place to go, and he remembered the terror he felt as a child when they locked him in a closet. There wasn’t enough air, and the darkness oppressed him. He went to the window and took a deep breath. The red disk of the sun hung in the dark background of the sky. Waldas couldn’t coordinate his thoughts; the darkness kept making him feel like running for help. He clenched his fists, repeated to himself, “I have to keep calm, defend my life until everything returns to normal.”
There was a knocking on his door; his heart beat more rapidly. It was his neighbor, asking for some water for the children. Waldas told him about the full bathtub, and went with him to get his wife and children. His prudence had paid off. They held hands and the human chain slid along the hall, the kids calmer, even the wife, who, no longer crying, kept repeating, “Thank you, thank you very much.”
Waldas took them to the kitchen, made them sit down, the children clinging to their mother. He felt the cupboard, broke a glass, then found an aluminum pan which he filled from the bathtub and took to the table. He surrendered cups of water to the fingers that groped for them. He couldn’t keep them level without seeing and the water spilled onto his hands.
As they drank, he wondered if he should offer them something to eat. The boy thanked him and said that he was hungry. Waldas picked up the big can of powdered milk and began to prepare it carefully. While he made the slow gestures of opening the can, counting the spoonfuls, and mixing them with water, he spoke in a loud voice. They encouraged him, telling him to be careful and praising his ability. Waldas took more than an hour to make and ration out the milk, and the effort, the certainty that he was being useful, did him good.
One of the boys laughed at something funny. For the first time since the darkness had set in, Waldas felt optimistic, that everything would turn out all right. They spent an endless time after that in his apartment, trying to talk. They would lean on the windowsill, searching for some distant light, seeing it at times, all enthused, only to discover the deceit that they wouldn’t admit.
Waldas had become the leader of that family. He fed them and led them through the small world of four rooms, which he knew with his eyes closed. They left at nine or ten that night, holding hands. Waldas accompanied them, helped put the children to bed. In the streets desperate fathers were shouting, asking for food. Waldas had closed the windows so he couldn’t hear them. What he had would be enough to feed the five of them for one or two more days.
Waldas stayed with them, next to the children’s room. They lay there talking, their words like links of presence and company. They finally went to sleep, heads under their pillows like shipwrecked sailors clinging to logs, listening to pleas for help that they couldn’t possibly answer. They slept, dreaming about the breaking of a new day, a blue sky, the sun flooding their rooms, their eyes, hungry from fasting, avidly feeding on the colors. It wasn’t that way.
Rationed and divided, the box of chocolates had come to an end. There was still cereal and powdered milk. If the light didn’t return soon it would be cruel to predict the consequences. The hours passed. Lying down again, eyes closed, fighting to go to sleep, they waited for the morning with its beams of light on the window. But they woke as before, their eyes useless, the flames extinguished, the stoves cold, and their food running out. Waldas divided the last of the cereal and milk. They became uneasy.
The couple and their children were filled with hope when he suggested the only idea that might work. He would go out and break into a grocery store about a hundred yards away.
Armed with a crowbar from his toolbox, he was leaving his shelter to steal food. It was frightening to think what he might encounter. The darkness had erased all distinctions. Waldas walked next to the wall, his mind reconstructing the details of this stretch, his hands investigating every indentation. Inch by inch his fingers followed the outline of the building until they came to the corrugated iron door. He couldn’t be wrong.
It was the only commercial establishment on the block. He bent over to find the lock. His hands didn’t encounter resistance. The door was only half closed. He stooped over and entered without making a sound. The shelves on the right would have food and sweets. He collided with the counter, cursed, and remained motionless, muscles tensed, waiting. He climbed over the counter and began to reach out with his hand. It touched the board and he started running it along the shelf.
There was nothing. Of course, they sold it before the total darkness. He raised his arm, searching more rapidly. Nothing, not a single object…
He took up the crowbar again and with short careful steps he started back home in search of his invisible friends….He was lost. He sat down on the sidewalk, his temples throbbing. He struggled up like a drowning man and shouted, “Please, I’m lost, I need to know the name of this street.” He repeated it time after time, each time more loudly, but no one answered him. The more silence he felt around him, the more he implored, asking them to help him for pity’s sake. And why should they? He himself, from his own window, had heard the cries of the lost asking for help, their desperate voices causing one to fear the madness of an assault.
Waldas started off without any direction, shouting for help, explaining that four persons depended on him. No longer feeling the walls, he walked hurriedly in circles, like a drunk, begging for information and food. “I’m Waldas, I live at number two fifteen, please help me.”
There were noises in the darkness; impossible for them not to hear him. He cried and pleaded without the least shame, the black pall reducing him to a helpless child. The darkness stifled him, entering through his pores, changing his thoughts.
Waldas stopped pleading. He bellowed curses at his fellow men, calling them evil names, asking them why they didn’t answer. His helplessness turned into hate, and he grasped the crowbar, ready to obtain food by violence. He came across others begging for food like himself. Waldas advanced, brandishing his crowbar until he collided with someone, grabbing him and holding him tightly. The man shouted and Waldas, without letting him go, demanded that he tell him where they were and how they could get some food. The other seemed old and broke into fearful sobs. Waldas relaxed the pressure, released him. He threw the weapon into the street and sat down on the sidewalk, listening to the small sounds, the wind rattling windows in the abandoned apartments. Different noises emerged from several directions, deep, rasping, and sharp sounds, from animals, men perhaps, trapped or famished.
A light rhythmic beating of footsteps was approaching. He yelled for help and remained listening. A man’s voice, some distance away, answered him. “Wait, I’ll come and help you.”
The man carried a heavy sack and was panting from the effort. He asked Waldas to help him by holding one end—he would go in front. Waldas sensed something inexplicable. He could hardly follow the man as he turned the corners with assurance. A doubt passed through his mind. Perhaps his companion could see a little; the light was coming back for the others. He asked him, “You walk with such assurance, you can’t by any chance see a little?”
The man took a while to answer. “No, I can see absolutely nothing. I am completely blind.”
Waldas stammered, “Before this…too?”
“Yes, blind from birth, we are going to the Institute for the Blind, where I live.”
Vasco, the blind man, told him that they had helped lost persons and had taken in a few. But their stock of food was small and they couldn’t take anybody else in. The darkness continued without any sign of ending. Thousands of people might die from starvation and nothing could be done. Waldas felt like a child that adults had saved from danger. At the Institute they gave him a glass of milk and some toast. In his memory, however, the image of his friends was growing, their hearts jumping at every sound, going hungry, waiting for his return.
He spoke to Vasco. They deliberated. The apartment building was large, all the others living there also deserved help, something quite impracticable. Waldas remembered the children. He asked them to show him the way or he would go alone. He got up to leave, stumbled over something, falling. Vasco remembered that there was a bathtub full of water, and water was one thing they needed. They brought two big plastic containers, and Vasco led Waldas to the street. They tied a little cord around both their waists.
Vasco, who knew the neighborhood, walked as fast as possible, choosing the best route, calling out the name of the streets, changing course when they heard suspicious sounds or mad ravings. Vasco stopped and said softly, “It must be here.” Waldas advanced a few steps, recognized the door latch. Vasco whispered for him to take off his shoes; they would go in without making any noise. After tying their shoes to the cord, they entered with Waldas in front, going up the stairs two at a time. They bumped into things along the way and heard unintelligible voices from behind the doors.
Reaching the third floor, they went to his neighbor’s apartment, knocked softly and then more loudly. No one answered. They went to Waldas’s apartment. “It’s me, Waldas, let me in.”
His neighbor uttered an exclamation like someone who didn’t believe it and opened the door, extending his arm for his friend to grasp.
“It’s me all right. How is everybody? I brought a friend who saved me and knows the way.”
In the bathroom they filled the two plastic containers with water, and Vasco tied them to the backs of the two men with strips of cloth. He also helped to identify some useful things they could take. They took off their shoes and in single file, holding hands, started for the stairs. They went hurriedly; they would inevitably be heard. On the main floor, next to the door, a voice inquired, “Who are you?” No one answered and Vasco pulled them all out into the street. In single file they gained distance; it would be difficult to follow them.
It took more time to return because of the children, and the stops they made to listen to nearby noises. They arrived at the Institute exhausted, with the temporary feeling of relief of soldiers after winning a battle.
Vasco served them oatmeal and milk and went to talk to his companions about what they would do to survive if the darkness continued. Another blind man fixed them a place to sleep, which came easily since they hadn’t slept for a long time. Hours later Vasco came to awaken them, saying that they had decided to leave the Institute and take refuge on the Model Farm that the Institute owned a few miles outside the city. Their supplies here wouldn’t last long and there was no way to replenish them without danger.
Like mountain climbers, they formed four groups linked by a cord. Waldas was surprised when the cord tied to his waist pulled him into a dirt road. Without knowing how, he realized that they were in the country. How did the blind men find the exact spot? Perhaps through their sense of smell, the perfume of the trees like ripe limes. He breathed deeply. He knew that odor; it came from eucalyptus trees. He could imagine them in straight lines, on each side of the road. The column stopped; they had arrived at their unseen destination. For the time being the urgent fight to keep from dying of hunger had ended.
The blind men brought them a cold soup that seemed to contain oatmeal and honey. Vasco directed the difficult maneuver to keep them from colliding. They had shelter and food. And the others who remained in the city, the sick in the hospitals, the small children…? No one could or wanted to know.
There were carrots, tomatoes, and greens in the gardens, some ripe fruit in the orchard. They should distribute equal rations, a little more for the children. There was speculation as to whether the green vegetables would wilt after so many days without sunshine. The man in charge of the small henhouse told how he had fed the hens every day since the sun stopped shining, but they hadn’t laid since then….
They were already in their sixteenth day when Vasco called Waldas aside. He told him that even the reserves of oatmeal, powdered milk, and canned goods that they had saved were almost gone. And their nervous condition was becoming aggravated; it wouldn’t be prudent to warn the others. Arguments came up over the least thing and were prolonged without reason. Most of them were on the edge of nervous collapse.
During the early hours of the eighteenth day, they were awakened by shouts of joy and animation. One of the refugees who hadn’t been able to go to sleep had felt a difference in the atmosphere. He climbed the ladder outside the house.
There was a pale red ball on the horizon.
Everyone came out at once, pushing and falling, and remained there in a contagious euphoria waiting for the light to increase. Vasco asked if they really did see something, if it wasn’t just another false alarm. Someone remembered to strike a match and after a few attempts the flame appeared. It was fragile and without heat, but visible to the eyes of those who looked upon it as a rare miracle.
The light increased slowly, in the way that it had disappeared. At four o’clock in the afternoon you could already distinguish a person’s shadow at a distance of four yards.
After the sun went down, the complete darkness returned. They built a fire in the yard, but the flames were weak and translucent and consumed very little of the wood. At midnight it was difficult to convince them that they should go to bed. Only the children slept. Those who had matches struck one from time to time and chuckled to themselves.
At four thirty in the morning they were up and outside. No dawn in the history of the world was ever awaited like this one. The sun was brighter. Unaccustomed eyes were closed. The blind men extended the palms of their hands toward the rays, turned them over to feel the heat on both sides. Different faces came forth, with voices you could recognize, and they laughed and embraced each other. Their loneliness and their differences disappeared in that boundless dawn. The blind people were kissed and hugged, carried in triumph. Men cried, and this made their eyes, unaccustomed to the light, turn even redder. About noon the flames became normal and for the first time in three weeks, they had a hot cooked meal. Little work was done for the rest of the day. Flooded with light, they absorbed the scenes about them, walking through the places where they had dragged themselves in the darkness.
And the city? What had happened to the people there? This was a terribly sobering thought and those who had relatives ceased to smile. How many had died or suffered extreme hardships? Waldas suggested that he should investigate the situation the next day. Others volunteered, and it was decided that three should go.
The three refugees left as the sun was coming up, walking along the road that would lead them to the railroad tracks.
They went around a curve and the city came into view. After the first bridges, the tracks began to cross streets. Waldas and his companions went down one of them. The first two blocks seemed very calm, with a few persons moving about, perhaps a bit more slowly. On the next corner they saw a group of people carrying a dead man, covered with a rough cloth, to a truck. The people were crying.
A brown army truck went by, its loudspeaker announcing an official government bulletin. Martial law had been declared. Anyone invading another’s property would be shot. The government had requisitioned all food supplies and was distributing them to the needy. Any vehicle could be commandeered if necessary. It advised that the police be immediately notified of any buildings with bad odors so that they could investigate the existence of corpses. The dead would be buried in common graves.
Waldas didn’t want to return to his own apartment building. He remembered the voices calling through the half-opened doors and he, in his stocking feet, slipping away, leaving them to their fate. He would have to telephone the authorities if there was a bad odor. He had already seen enough; he didn’t want to stay there. His young companion had talked to an officer and had decided to look for his family immediately.
Waldas asked if the telephones were working and learned that some of the automatic circuits were. He dialed his brother-in-law’s number and after a short while there was an answer. They were very weak but alive. There had been four deaths in the apartment house. Waldas told them briefly how he had been saved and asked if they needed anything. No, they didn’t, there was some food, and they were a lot better off than most.
Everyone was talking to strangers, telling all kinds of stories. The children and the sick were the ones who had suffered most. They told of cases of death in heartbreaking circumstances. The public services were reorganizing, with the help of the army, to take care of those in need, bury the dead, and get everything going again. Waldas and his middle-aged companion didn’t want to hear any more. They felt weak, weak with a certain mental fatigue from hearing and seeing incredible things in which the absurd wasn’t just a theory but what really had happened, defying all logic and scientific laws.
The two men were returning along the still empty tracks, walking slowly under a pleasantly clouded sky. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves of the green trees and birds flitted among their branches. How had they been able to survive in the darkness? Waldas thought about all this as his aching legs carried him along. His scientific certainties were no longer valid. At that very moment men still shaken by the phenomenon were working electronic computers making precise measurements and observations, religious men in their temples explaining the will of God, politicians dictating decrees, mothers mourning the dead that had remained in the darkness.
Two exhausted men walked along the ties. They brought news, perhaps better than could be expected. Mankind had resisted. By eating anything resembling food, by drinking any kind of liquid, people had lived for three weeks in the world of the blind. Waldas and his companion were returning sad and weakened, but with the secret and muffled joy of being alive. More important than rational speculations was the mysterious miracle of blood running through one’s veins, the pleasure of loving, doing things, moving one’s muscles, and smiling.
Seen from a distance the two were smaller than the straight tracks that enclosed them. Their bodies were returning to their daily routine, subject to the forces and uncontrollable elements in existence since the beginning of time. But, as their eager eyes took in every color, shade, and movement, they gave little thought to the mysterious magnitude of their universe, and even less to the plight of their brothers, their saviors, who still walked in darkness.
There were planets, solar systems, and galaxies. They were only two men, bounded by two impassive rails, returning home with their problems.