The blind man's tale
From Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing:
She said the blind man had been born of humble origins. Orígenes humildes, she said. She said that he had lost his eyes in the year of our Lord nineteen thirteen in the city of Durango. He'd ridden east in the late winter of that year and joined Maclovio Herrera and on the third of February they had fought at Durango with the rebels under Contreras and Pereyra. In the federal arsenal was an antique demiculverin of french manufacture which he was placed in charge of. They did not take the city. He could have saved himself, the woman said. But he would not leave his post. He was taken prisoner along with many others. The prisoners were given the opportunity to swear oaths of loyalty to the government and those who did not do so were stood against a wall and shot without ceremony. Among them were men of many nations. American and English and German. And men from lands no one had ever heard of. Yet they went also to the wall and there they died in the terrible volleys of riflefire, the terrible smoke. They fell down soundlessly beside each other, their hearts' blood on the plasterwork behind them. He saw this.
Among the defenders of Durango there were of course few foreigners yet there was one such. A German Huertista named Wirtz who was a captain in the federal army. The captured rebels stood in the street chained together with fencewire like toys and this man walked their enfilade and bent to study each in turn and note in their eyes the workings of death as the assassinations continued behind him. The man spoke spanish well for all that he spoke it with a german accent and he told the artillero that only the most pathetic of fools would die for a cause that was both wrong and doomed and the captive spat in his face. The German then did something very strange. He smiled and licked the man's spittle from about his mouth. He was a very large man with enormous hands and he reached and seized the young captive's head in both these hands and bent as if to kiss him. But it was no kiss. He seized him by the face and it may well have looked to others that he bent to kiss him on each cheek perhaps in the military manner of the French but what he did instead with a great caving of his cheeks was to suck each in turn the man's eyes from his head and spit them out again and leave them dangling by their cords wet and strange and wobbling on his cheeks.
And so he stood. His pain was great but his agony at the disassembled world he now beheld which could never be put right again was greater. Nor could he bring himself to touch the eyes. He cried out in his despair and waved his hands about before him. He could not see the face of his enemy. The architect of his darkness, the thief of his light. He could see the trampled dust of the street beneath him. A crazed jumble of men's boots. He could see his own mouth. When the prisoners were turned and marched his friends steadied him by the arm and led him along while the ground swamp wildly underfoot. No one had ever seen such a thing. They spoke in awe. The red holes in his skull glowed like lamps. As if there were a deeper fire there that the demon had sucked forth.
They tried to put his eyes back into their sockets with a spoon but none could manage it and the eyes dried on his cheeks like grapes and the world grew dim and colorless and then it vanished forever.
She said the blind man had been born of humble origins. Orígenes humildes, she said. She said that he had lost his eyes in the year of our Lord nineteen thirteen in the city of Durango. He'd ridden east in the late winter of that year and joined Maclovio Herrera and on the third of February they had fought at Durango with the rebels under Contreras and Pereyra. In the federal arsenal was an antique demiculverin of french manufacture which he was placed in charge of. They did not take the city. He could have saved himself, the woman said. But he would not leave his post. He was taken prisoner along with many others. The prisoners were given the opportunity to swear oaths of loyalty to the government and those who did not do so were stood against a wall and shot without ceremony. Among them were men of many nations. American and English and German. And men from lands no one had ever heard of. Yet they went also to the wall and there they died in the terrible volleys of riflefire, the terrible smoke. They fell down soundlessly beside each other, their hearts' blood on the plasterwork behind them. He saw this.
Among the defenders of Durango there were of course few foreigners yet there was one such. A German Huertista named Wirtz who was a captain in the federal army. The captured rebels stood in the street chained together with fencewire like toys and this man walked their enfilade and bent to study each in turn and note in their eyes the workings of death as the assassinations continued behind him. The man spoke spanish well for all that he spoke it with a german accent and he told the artillero that only the most pathetic of fools would die for a cause that was both wrong and doomed and the captive spat in his face. The German then did something very strange. He smiled and licked the man's spittle from about his mouth. He was a very large man with enormous hands and he reached and seized the young captive's head in both these hands and bent as if to kiss him. But it was no kiss. He seized him by the face and it may well have looked to others that he bent to kiss him on each cheek perhaps in the military manner of the French but what he did instead with a great caving of his cheeks was to suck each in turn the man's eyes from his head and spit them out again and leave them dangling by their cords wet and strange and wobbling on his cheeks.
And so he stood. His pain was great but his agony at the disassembled world he now beheld which could never be put right again was greater. Nor could he bring himself to touch the eyes. He cried out in his despair and waved his hands about before him. He could not see the face of his enemy. The architect of his darkness, the thief of his light. He could see the trampled dust of the street beneath him. A crazed jumble of men's boots. He could see his own mouth. When the prisoners were turned and marched his friends steadied him by the arm and led him along while the ground swamp wildly underfoot. No one had ever seen such a thing. They spoke in awe. The red holes in his skull glowed like lamps. As if there were a deeper fire there that the demon had sucked forth.
They tried to put his eyes back into their sockets with a spoon but none could manage it and the eyes dried on his cheeks like grapes and the world grew dim and colorless and then it vanished forever.