Blind Man by Louis Aragon. Short summary

5 seconds

A deaf man goes to the post office to send a letter to his beloved. A blind man meets him on the way back. On his way back, the same man hands over a dropped photo of her beloved, noting that she is beautiful.

1 minute

The narrative is told on behalf of a deaf man in his seventies. He is in love, his «lady of the heart» lives in Japan, while he himself is in France. The man has to go to the post office to send a letter.

He sneaks out of the house with the letters and heads in the direction of the post office. A blind man moves along the road, groping quietly for the edge of the sidewalk with a stick. In the man’s mind, a fascinating novel about the blind man, «who knows what for others remains behind the seven seals, and so on…» begins to form. In a few seconds he imagines a whole life.

So he reaches the post office, sends a letter to Japan, and walks back home. The same blind man moves toward him. As he approaches, he calls out to the man and holds out a picture of her beloved, which has apparently fallen out of his pocket by accident. As he does so, he notices that the woman in the picture is charming. And how could a blind man know that!