„BLINDNESS” de José Saramago

Eram în Berlin cînd am mîncat pentru prima dată într-un restaurant aflat într-o beznă completă. În timp ce eram servită de chelneri parțial orbi, am realizat ce ar însemna să nu vezi. Deloc. Și mi-am pierdut poftă de mîncare și nu știam cum să plec mai repede de acolo.
Asta se întimpla la mult timp după ce citisem cartea lui José Saramago.
Și am înțeles că, deși cartea mă marcase profund la momentul lecturii ei, după un timp, îmbătată de culorile pe care le vedeam zi de zi, uitasem complet de neputința pe care doar mi-o imaginasem.

„I am blind, I am blind, he repeated in despair as they helped him to get out of the car, and the tears welling up made those eyes which he claimed were dead, shine even more.
The blind man pleaded, Please, will someone take me home.
…all he wanted was that someone might accompany him to the entrance of the building where he lived.
And what about the car, asked someone.
…I’ll take charge of the car and accompany this man home. Tell me where you live, and at the same time the engine started up.
Faltering, as if his luck of sight had weakened his memory, the blind man gave his address, then he said, I have no words to thank you, and the other replied, Now then, don’t give it another thought, today it’s your turn, tomorrow it will be mine, we never know what might lie in store for us.”

„On offering to help the blind man, the man who then stole his car, had not, at that precise moment, had any evil intention, quite the contrary, what he did was nothing more than to obey those feelings of generosity and altruism which, as everyone knows, are the two best traits of human nature and to be found in much more hardened criminals than this one, a simple car-thief without any hope of advancing in his profession.„

„Either the police will arrest me or, worse still, I’ll have an accident, the thief murmured. It then occurred to him that it would be best to get out of the car for a bit and try to clear his thoughts. He got out and did not bother to lock the car, he would be back in a minute, and walked off. 
He had gone no more than thirty paces when he went blind.„

Editura: A Harvest Book, 1999