“BLINDNESS” by José Saramago

I was in Berlin when I ate for the first time in a no-lights at all restaurant. As partially-blind waitresses served me, I realized what it means to be blind. And I lost my appetite, and I wanted to leave as quickly as possible.
This was happening a long time after I read the book by José Saramago.
And I understood that, even though the book had a significant impact on me when I was reading it, after a while, drunk by the colors I saw every day, I have entirely forgotten about the blindness that I only imagined.

“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.“

Published by A Harvest Book, 1999