Blindness

Miraculously, the apartment is clean except for a thin layer of dust. The group removes their shoes to prevent tracking filth through their new home, and they move into the living room reverently. The doctor’s wife asks everyone to take off their clothes as well, then moves the filthy clothing to the balcony. She returns inside and finds an oil lamp, which she uses to find for clothing for everyone because “it is better to have clean clothes on a dirty body, than to have dirty clothes on a clean body” (274).

Once everyone gets settled, the doctor’s wife declares they must “decide how [they] are all going to live” together. She sets some ground rules which include teaching everyone how to find their way home in case she goes blind. She also sets up a privy bucket on the balcony and tells everyone to keep the place clean, then reminds people to act in accordance to “what is right and wrong” (276) without providing further details. With that, she sets out their meager rations, which are so scant that the dog does not beg for a bite. When the boy says he is thirsty, the doctor reminds her they have bottled water. She breaks out her finest crystal to serve everyone equal portions, and when the old man and girl set down their cups, they are crying.

In the early hours of the morning the woman awakes to the sound of a heavy downpour. She rushes to set pots and bowls outside to catch rainwater, then starts washing clothes. Somehow the girl and the first blind man’s wife find their way to the door, and they offer to help. They strip down and work together to clean the laundry, then wash each other. The old man is awoken by their laughter, which prompts him to silently observe that “there was still life in this world” (283). Once the women come in, he asks to take a bath in the bathtub. They fill the tub with a little water, and he washes himself and his eyepatch. In the middle of his bath, someone silently comes in and scrubs his back. He suspects it is the doctor’s wife, because she is the one who has “cared for us” (285), but has no proof.

The doctor’s wife knows they must find food, and the first blind man and his wife volunteer to help. They also ask to visit their old apartment, which they do after they scavenge enough supplies to fill their bags. With that finished, they make their way to the apartment though the blind man forgets his own address. They find the flat occupied by a blind writer and his family. The two groups swap stories for a moment—the doctor’s wife says they have fled quarantine, while the writer and his family have survived on the outside—and then discuss living arrangements. Ultimately, they all decide to maintain the status quo: The writer can continue to live in the first blind man’s house, while he and his wife will stay in the doctor’s flat.

The writer then tells them he is recording the story of the epidemic. When the doctor’s wife asks how he can write, he brings her 20 neat pages with occasional overlapping lines. He explains that he writes with a ballpoint pen which leaves indentions in the surface. By dragging his finger along the text, he knows where to place the next row. The doctor’s wife points out the overlapping lines, which then leads her to confess that she can see. The writer jumps on this and begins asking her questions, to which she replies that she has not been cured but instead never went blind in the first place.

The chapter concludes with the group heading back to the doctor’s flat to share what happened with everyone else, and later the doctor’s wife reads everyone a few pages from a book.

Two days later, the doctor asks if he can visit his surgery office to check if it is still intact. The girl asks to visit her apartment to see if her parents are there, and the doctor’s wife agrees. On the way, the doctor says he worries about the increasing heat given how many dead bodies, rotten food, and waste litter the streets. He says the blind need to establish social organization, otherwise they will die because of the complications caused by their blindness.

They make it to the surgery office and find it ransacked, most likely by the Ministry when they came to seize the doctor’s files. As the girl walks though the office, she remarks that “the dream continues,” meaning that their new lives post-epidemic seem like something they will wake up from and find nothing more than a flight of imagination (296). The doctor then quietly laments his lack of sight and reiterates that society is running out of time: “[P]utrescence is spreading, diseases find the doors open, water is running out, food has become poison” (298).

After wrapping up at the surgery, the trio make their way to the girl’s apartment. They pass a mass of blind people on a corner who take turns speaking of the end of the world like doomsday preachers. The doctor’s wife remarks, “Here nobody is speaking of organization” (298), and the doctor responds that perhaps that conversation is happening elsewhere. As they approach the girl’s building, they see the corpse of the old woman collapsed across the building’s main entrance. Animals have partially eaten her, but she clutches the keys to the girl’s apartment in one hand. The girl suspects the old woman, suspecting someone in their group had sight, wanted to make sure the girl could find her keys.

They agree that they cannot leave the old woman there, so they carry her body to the back garden. The doctor’s wife wraps the woman’s body in a dirty sheet and buries her, then plants a rose bush on top of the grave. The noise of the shovel brings the blind out onto their balconies, and when the doctor’s wife is finished, she yells out, “She will rise again” (302). The doctor asks her why she did so, joking that she will be preaching on the square soon. Before they leave, the doctor’s wife does two things. First, she lets the old woman’s animals out of their cages so they can survive. Second, she cuts a lock of the girl’s hair and ties it around her apartment’s doorknob. That way if her parents return, they will have a sign that their daughter still lives.

That night after they return home, the doctor’s wife reads to everyone once again. The girl and the old man get into a conversation about maintaining hope. The conversation becomes argumentative—the old man dodges the girl’s questions about what keeps him hopeful until he finally confesses that one of his hopes is that they stay blind so they can continue living together. When the girl presses him, he tells her he wishes that “because the man I still am loves the woman you are” (307), and that if their sight returns, she will leave. The girl tells him she wants to live with him, too, and they become a couple. The old man realizes it was the girl—not the doctor’s wife—who washed his back the other morning in an act of “purifying” care.

The next day, the doctor’s wife tells her husband they are nearly out of food. She plans to go back to the supermarket she went to when they first came into town to check the basement again. She initially wants to go alone, but the doctor insists on accompanying her, asking, “How long will you be able to carry the weight of six helpless people” (308). She confesses that she is tired, though she plans to continue caring for everyone as long as possible. The two leave the apartment shortly thereafter, trailed by the dog of tears.

When they near the supermarket, the wife suspects something is amiss because no one is entering or exiting the building. They cautiously enter the market and are immediately struck by a smell so terrible that even the dog’s hackles rise. The doctor’s wife leaves her husband to check the basement stairwell where she finds true horror. A pile of rotting corpses is piled in the staircase where the blind rushed the basement, fell down the steps, and were trampled. Those who did make it to the bottom found their exit blocked and died trapped below.

The smell of bodies—and the horror of the situation—causes the woman to vomit violently. Her husband hears her and rushes toward her, then leads her out onto the street as best he can. The experience leaves the woman faint, and they make it to a church to rest. The building is packed with people. The dog of tears barks to clear a space on the floor, where the woman collapses in a faint. Her husband checks her pulse, then moves her into a better position. The woman recovers in a few minutes, and when she opens her eyes, she realizes all the statues have white bandages wrapped around their eyes. Even the paintings have streaks of white paint covering the subjects’ eyes.

She shares this with her husband, but a nearby blind person overhears. The doctor’s wife suspects the priest did it—maybe out of solidarity with the blind, perhaps because “ultimately, God did not deserve to see” (318). The blind man says he knew the priest, who would never do such a thing. The news spreads through the crowd like wildfire, and people start to panic and charge the door. The doctor and his wife wait out the stampede, then collect the supplies that are left behind.

They return to the doctor’s flat, and talk then turns to the dwindling supplies. The doctor’s wife fears there is little left to scavenge, and they start talking about relocating to the country where there may be livestock and fresh vegetables. With this on their minds, the woman reads to them a little more before they go to sleep. As the first blind man lays there with his eyes closed, the brilliant whiteness suddenly goes black: “I’m blind” (322), he cries out to his wife. When he opens his eyes, however, the man realizes he can see again as perfectly as he did before his sight vanished.

Excitement erupts as the doctor hypothesizes that the blindness is running its course. A little while later the girl’s vision returns, which confirms his suspicions. The doctor’s wife collapses into sobs “because all her mental resistance had suddenly drained away” (323). The trauma of the ordeal and her exhaustion hit her all at once, and the girl comforts her. The next morning the group has a celebratory banquet as they hear joyful exclamations from the people around town. Just as they exclaimed “I am blind,” so now they yell out “I can see” (326). The doctor sits beside his wife and tells her the old man will still be blind because of the cataract in his good eye, but he will fix it in a few weeks when the chaos settles down.

The excitement spreads around town, and the doctor’s wife walks out onto the balcony to look over the city. She glimpses up at the sky and for a terrifying second her vision goes white: “It is my turn,” she thinks, but when she looks down the “city is still there” (326)