35

ALTHOUGH Albinus had several times—in the depths of a night which employed the bright small-talk of daylight—been for a walk, a pitifully hesitating walk along the scrunching gravel paths of the hospital garden, he proved to be very ill-prepared for the journey to Zurich. At the railway station his head began to swim—and there is no stranger, more helpless sensation than that of a blind man when his head is going round. He was stunned by all the different sounds, footsteps, voices, wheels, viciously sharp and strong things which all seemed to be rushing at him, so that every second was filled with the fear of knocking against something, although Margot was guiding him.

In the train he felt his gorge rise with nausea, because he could not harmonize the clatter and rocking of the carriage with any forward motion, no matter how hard he tried to imagine the landscape which, surely, was speeding past. And then again, at Zurich, he had to make his way among invisible people and objects—obstacles and angles, which held their breath before hitting him.

“Oh, come on, don’t be afraid,” said Margot irritably. “I’m leading you. Now stop. We are just going to get into the taxi. Now lift your foot. Can’t you be a little less timid? Really, you might be a two-year-old.”

The professor, a famous oculist, made a thorough examination of Albinus’ eyes. He had a soft unctuous voice so that Albinus pictured him as an old man with a clean-shaven priestlike face, although in reality, he was still fairly young and sported a bristly moustache. He repeated what Albinus for the most part already knew: that the optic nerves had been damaged at the point of their intersection in the brain. Possibly this contusion might heal; possibly complete atrophy might ensue—the chances were obscurely even. But in any case, in the patient’s present condition, a thorough rest was the most important thing. A sanatorium in the mountains would be perfect. “And then we shall see,” said the professor.

“Shall we see?” repeated Albinus, with a melancholy smile.

The idea of a sanatorium did not appeal to Margot. An old Irish couple whom they met in the hotel offered to let them a small chalet just above a fashionable mountain resort. She consulted Rex and then (leaving Albinus with a hired nurse) traveled in his company to see what the place was like. It turned out to be quite nice: a small two-storied cottage with clean little rooms and a cup for holy water affixed to every door.

Rex found its position to his liking: all alone, high upon a slope amid dense black fir trees, and only a quarter of an hour’s downhill walk to the village and the hotels. He chose for himself the sunniest room in the upper story. A cook was engaged in the village. Rex talked to her very impressively:

“We are offering you such high wages,” he said, “because you’ll be in the service of a man who is blinded as the result of a violent mental shock. I’m the doctor in charge of him, but in view of his state of mind he must not know that a doctor is living in the house with him as well as his niece. If, therefore, you breathe the slightest hint, direct or indirect, as to my presence—addressing me, for instance, in his hearing, you’ll be responsible in the eyes of the law for all the consequences of interrupting the progress of his recovery, and such conduct is, I believe, very severely punished in Switzerland. Moreover, I advise you not to come near my patient, or indeed to engage in any sort of conversation with him. He is subject to fits of the most violent insanity. You may be interested to know that he has already seriously injured one old woman (much like you in many respects, though not so attractive) by stamping on her face. Somehow, I should not care for such a thing to happen again. And most important of all, if you gossip about things in the village with the result that people become curious, my patient might, in his present condition, smash up everything in the house, beginning with your head. Do you get me?”

The woman was so terrified that she almost refused this extraordinarily well-paid post, and made up her mind to accept it only when Rex assured her that she would not see the blind man, his niece serving him, and that he was quite peaceable if left undisturbed. He also made arrangements with her that no butcher’s boy or washer woman should ever be allowed to penetrate the grounds. This done, Margot traveled back to fetch Albinus, while Rex moved into the house. He brought with him all the luggage, decided how the rooms were to be allotted and arranged that every superfluous breakable object should be removed. Then he went to his room and whistled tunefully as he fastened some rather improper pen-and-ink drawings to the wall.

Toward five o’clock he looked through a pair of field glasses and saw, far below, a hired motorcar approaching. Margot in a brilliant red jumper skipped out and helped Albinus to alight. With hunched shoulders, in dark spectacles, he looked like an owl. The car turned round and disappeared behind a thickly wooded bend.

Margot took the meek, clumsy man by the arm, and he climbed the footpath holding his stick in front of him. They vanished behind some fir trees, reappeared, vanished again and at length emerged upon the little garden terrace where the gloomy cook (who, incidentally, was already whole-heartedly devoted to Rex) went timorously to meet them and, trying not to look at the dangerous lunatic, relieved Margot of her attaché case.

Rex, meanwhile, leaned out of the window and made droll gestures of greeting to Margot: he pressed his hand to his heart and flung out his arms jerkily—it was a capital imitation of Punch—all this of course in dumb show, though he could have squeaked remarkably in more favorable circumstances. Margot smiled up at him and entered the house, still leading Albinus by the arm.

“Take me through all the rooms and describe everything to me,” said Albinus. He was not really interested, but he thought that it would give Margot pleasure: she loved settling in a new place.

“A little dining room; a little drawing room, a little study,” she explained, as she steered him through the ground floor. Albinus touched the furniture, patted the different objects as if they were the heads of strange children, and tried to get his bearings.

“So the window is over there,” he said, pointing trustfully at a blank wall. He collided painfully with the edge of a table and tried to pretend that he had done it on purpose—groping over it with his hands, as though he wanted to take its measure.

Then they climbed side by side up the creaking wooden staircase. Above, on the top step, sat Rex, convulsed with soundless mirth. Margot shook her finger at him; he stood up cautiously and stepped back on the tips of his toes. This was really superfluous, for the staircase creaked deafeningly under the blind man’s tread.

They turned into the passage. Rex, who had now retreated to his door, crouched down several times and pressed his hand to his mouth. Margot shook her head angrily—a dangerous game; he was larking about like a schoolboy.

“This is my bedroom, and here’s yours,” she said.

“Why not one?” asked Albinus wistfully.

“Oh, Albert,” she sighed. “You know what the doctor said.”

When they had been everywhere (except into Rex’s room, of course) Albinus tried to go through the house without her help, just to show her how splendidly she had made him see it all. But almost at once he lost his way, ran into a wall, smiled apologetically, and nearly smashed a wash-basin. He also strayed into the corner room (which Rex had appropriated and which could only be entered from the passage), but he was already so confused that he thought he was coming out of the bathroom.

“Careful, that’s a lumber-room,” said Margot. “You’re going to break your head. Now turn around and try to walk straight to bed. And really I don’t know whether all this roaming is good for you. Don’t imagine that I shall let you go on exploring like this; today is just an exception.”

As it was, he already felt utterly exhausted. Margot tucked him in and brought him his supper. When he had gone to sleep she joined Rex. As they were not yet on speaking terms with the acoustics of the house, they talked in whispers. But they could just as well have spoken aloud: Albinus’ bedroom was far enough away.