Back Blindness Save as PDF
Chapters (24)
  1. Copyright
  2. Dedication 1
  3. Dedication 2
  4. Epigraph
  5. The amber light came on. ...
  6. On offering to help the ...
  7. A policeman took the car-thief ...
  8. The suggestion had come from ...
  9. I must open my eyes, ...
  10. We must see if there's ...
  11. An empty belly wakes up ...
  12. The arrival of so many ...
  13. When, at the beginning, the ...
  14. The old man with the ...
  15. If, because of a sudden ...
  16. On the fourth day, the ...
  17. Say to a blind man, ...
  18. They dressed and put their ...
  19. Leaving aside the household dust ...
  20. Two days later the doctor ...
  21. The next day, while still ...
  22. Publishers' Note
  23. More by Saramago:
  24. Cain

They dressed and put their ...

They dressed and put their shoes on, what they still had not solved was some way of washing themselves, but they already looked quite different from the other blind people, the colours of their clothes, notwithstanding the relative scarcity of the range on offer, for, as people often say, the fruit is hand-picked, go well with each other, that is the advantage of having someone on the spot to advise us, You wear this, it goes better with those trousers, the stripes don't clash with the spots, details like that, to the men, of course, these matters do not make a blind bit of difference, but both the girl with dark glasses and the wife of the first blind man insisted on knowing what colours and styles they were wearing, so that, with the help of their imaginations they have some idea of how they look. As for footwear, everyone agreed that comfort should come before beauty, no fancy lacing and high heels, no calf or patent leather, given the state of the roads such refinements would be absurd, what they want here are rubber boots, completely waterproof and coming halfway up the leg, easy to slip into and out of, there is nothing better for walking through mud. Unfortunately, boots of this kind could not be found for everyone, there were no boots to fit the boy with the squint, for example, the larger sizes were like boats on him, so he had to settle for a pair of sports shoes with no clearly defined purpose, What a coincidence, his mother would say, wherever she might be, when someone told her what had happened, those are exactly the shoes my son would have chosen had he been able to see. The old man with the black eyepatch, whose feet were on the large side, solved the problem by wearing basketball shoes, specially made for players six foot tall and with extremities to match. It is true that he looks somewhat comical, as if he were wearing white slippers, but he will look ridiculous only for a while, within ten minutes the shoes will be filthy, just like everything else in life, let time take its course and it will find a solution.