What Becomes by A. L Kennedy Page A

blind. But not the way they
should
be pathetic.
    No, they
shouldn’t
be pathetic.
    That’s the problem.
    Probably.
    They are pathetic and they shouldn’t be.
    Hands waving, sticks waving, they’re totally out of control – they make the whole street look post-apocalyptic. It’s hopeless. I end up feeling sorry for them and I’m not supposed to, I’m supposed to feel
empathy
, not
sympathy
– here I am, a human being and they’re human beings, too – only with this extra thing, this visual impairment thing, but they’re also human beings and that’s how we keep our mutual respect, by knowing that we’re the same species, no matter what. That’s your dignity, right there, that is.
    Except anyone who’s like me would have no dignity, that would be gone.
    And if the blind are pathetic and lost – like they’ve been let outside randomly – recklessly – each of them needing help, a lot of help, total assistance, asking strangers to lead them, guide them, haul them over roads – then what does that imply? If we’re linked, then what does that say about me? Or if they end up standing, blank and standing, like people who have no idea of what’s in their own pockets – then I do not wish to empathise.
    Or are the blind testing us: the sighted: me? Are they checking we’ll pitch in and be Samaritans? Would they be that perverse?
    Not that the blind shouldn’t be perverse. They should have the right.
    Unless it’s the school that’s playing games: some twisted kind of institution. What does it teach them? Exactly? Anything? Basket-weaving? Mattress-making? Piano-tuning? Traditional blind stuff? Forensic anthropology? I mean, they should learn all the things that anyone could know, not just the blind stuff: being a switchboard operator, that stuff. I think they used to have blind switchboard operators. Of course they should learn
everything
, absolutely should – but crossing roads, too – not being killed, not getting hurt in preventable tragedies, that’s what I’d say.
    They can’t see, so they need to be trained in improvisation.
    Human beings, they need to be safe: no tragedy, no oncoming car, just you with your own name and no worries, happy.
    Every time he steps beyond what is currently his front door, he feels angry on the blind people’s behalf and also tries not to identify with them, not to find them grotesquely bewildered in a way that reflects quite badly on his life. And when he comes home – when he’s tired and perhaps apprehensive, given what’s going on with Elaine and with all of the crap that is worse than Elaine – then the blind become a pantomime of every bloody sadness in the world. And he is a sadness, too, it can’t be denied, along with everything he touches. And his heart cramps as his key slips in the lock.
    It’s pure self-obsession – disgusting – I only care about the blind, because they’re me.
    I have decided they are me. All of them, a crowd of me.
    Truth is, the only people who ever get my full attention have to be exactly like me, have to
be me
, as if they’re pieces of my head.
    She’s right.
    Elaine’s right.
    She isn’t me and she is right.
    That’s when I’m interested.
    Otherwise I’m mainly not.
    I’d have to be this tired to admit it, because I like to be good, to believe that I am decent, but I’m not.
    But she’s a bitch to say it.
    Lately, he has been trying, as a discipline, to maintain a positive mental state. But when he’s being negative about something which is, itself, negative, does that doubled negative count as a positive?
    And none of the blind are Caucasian, why is that? The school is only for the non-white blind? They segregate the blind, first and second class, according to race? Is that why it’s useless? A second-class type of school?
    Who would think like