The novel Kite (200 pages) was inspired by the case of Giovanni Pontiero, the English translator of José Saramago’s Ensaio sobre a Cegueira or Blindness. The translator himself started to go blind as he was translating Saramago’s novel and later died of his illness. This is the inspiration for Queipo’s novel, though the characters and events in the novel are not directly connected with Saramago or Pontiero.

         In a dark cinema, a woman is scared by scenes from the film Apocalypse Now and takes the hand of the man next to her. They continue holding hands after they leave the cinema, amazed to have found each other, and walk back to the hotel where Rose is staying. Rose invites the man, Francis, up to her room, where, after kissing, they take off each other’s clothes and make love. The city is San Diego in southern California, and the hotel is the Radisson. In the shower, Francis is bothered by the amount of light and the couple again makes love. Over some coffee, they tell each other the story of their lives. The following morning, they go for a walk in Balboa Park. Francis is amazed by the memories Rose has of Galway in Ireland, her native city, and goes on to tell Rose of the mythological creatures that inhabited the rivers of his home town, Padrón in Galicia. Rose is more interested in what Francis is thinking at the moment and suggests visiting the zoo in the park, where there are some pandas. On the way, Francis removes his T-shirt and the guard at the entrance tells him to put it back on. This puts Francis in a bad mood, but Rose tries to placate him. Francis finds the visit to the zoo dull, that is until they see the pandas for two minutes, having waited in a queue for half an hour. After leaving the zoo, they drive up the coast in the direction of Los Angeles and discover a secluded beach, where they stand in the waves and Rose asks Francis if he loves her. Francis prefers not to answer. After dinner in a Japanese restaurant, they return to Rose’s hotel, where Francis talks about his house on San Rafael beach and his work as a translator for a publisher in San Francisco, his friend Andy and the time he spent teaching Hispanic Literature in Chicago, and Rose tells him about her apartment in San Francisco, her work for an IT consultancy and a previous, unsuccessful relationship when she was living in Boston.

         It is the start of spring, and Francis has just received the news that he is going progressively blind and won’t be able to see anything in six months. At the same time, he receives a phone call from his editor, Martin, summoning him to the publishing house. Francis wonders who he can turn to in his moment of need. He prefers not to bother Rose, with whom he is planning a future, nor Andy, his best friend, whose mother has recently died. He wonders if the diagnosis might be a mistake. He thinks his life until now has really been just one continual holiday. At the publishing house, Martin says there’s a Portuguese author, José Saramago, who is on the verge of receiving the Nobel Prize and they absolutely have to bring out his novel Blindness at the shortest possible notice, Francis will have to sideline all his other commitments, they agree on a fee and deadline, in time for the book to appear in the autumn.

         As he leaves the publishing house, Francis realizes this could well be the last book he translates. On the way home, he stops off at Borders and buys two novels by Saramago, as background reading, and some Portuguese music he can listen to while he translates. He is intrigued by the character of Raimundo Silva, who falls in love with his much younger editor and is saved from emotional mediocrity, but decides to buy this novel later. This will give him an excuse to continue his conversation with the Afro-American girl who served him so courteously. He invites Rosa around for dinner and stops to buy a bottle of wine. He decides he is going to celebrate the new commission, the start of a new literary adventure, and returns to the idea that perhaps the doctor has made a mistake.

         After dinner that night, Francis gives Rose the news that he is going blind. She doesn’t know how to react and foresees the difficulties this will pose for them. They go to bed, waking up in the night and making love while there is a storm outside. Rose then explains she had a nightmare about a blind boy kicking along a barrel full of scrotums, while Francis dreamed he was reading nineteenth-century authors in Braille, but then got involved in a political conspiracy and had his fingertips cut off, so he couldn’t read. The next morning, Francis considers how much worse it is to lose your sight than to be blind at birth. He returns to bed but, when he wakes up again, Rose is not there and he is left alone in the company of Lucretius, the cat Rose gave him. Francis decides to turn his attention to the first of the novels by Saramago, The Stone Raft, and then goes to buy some fish for his dinner. When he gets back, there is a message from Rose at work and from Martin, saying the contracts for the translation of the new book are ready. He feels uncomfortable with the way the television is a permanent accessory in American life, you have to drive to go everywhere, and couples always put their work commitments first. He and Rose see each other twice a week and at the weekends. He tries ringing a Portuguese friend, Rui Andrade, to talk about the translation, but the friend is away, studying the creole of Cape Verde. He has a read of Blindness and finds that it’s going to be a difficult book to translate. He has a cocktail and heads out to the beach for a walk.

         On the beach, he handles and examines various shells, considering how everything that arrives on the beach is already dead. He helps a Chinese boy who is trying to fly a kite and is pleased that his knowledge can be useful, though he wonders how he will be able to do this once he is blind. After a delicious fish dinner, which he himself prepares, he goes back to his reading of Saramago’s novel, where he notices an absence of physical descriptions, something he needs when he is reading a book. Late in the evening, Rose calls him to see how he is.

         Two months have gone by since the doctor’s diagnosis of his condition. He has suffered migraines when the light is very strong and has noticed he finds it difficult to focus on things that are not directly in front of him. The doctor recommends he start using dark glasses and avoid exposure to the sun. He reveals that Francis has lost 23% of his field of vision. At home, over dinner, Rose suggests that Francis should return to his grandparents’ house in Galicia, where he will be able to escape the California sun and work on the translation, undisturbed. The house in Padrón is occupied by a nephew, Clodio, and his girlfriend, Luísa. Rose says she cannot go with him, but will try to get some time off work when she can. Francis decides to fly via Chicago, so that he can visit his friend Andy on the way. Andy’s boyfriend, Aldo, is addicted to methamphetamine and Andy has been going through a difficult time. Andy was Francis’ first sexual partner in the States, but this is a secret between the two of them that Rose doesn’t know about.

         Rose has organized a surprise farewell party for Francis, so that he can see his friends in San Francisco before he goes. They are here for him, when he needs their support. He sits down to revise the first draft of his translation, which he always records with his voice rather than writing it down. He’s pretty happy with the first few pages. Later that day, his friends start arriving for the party. Everybody gets on. The fishmonger, Huo, who is Chinese, meets a Chinese girl who invites him to dinner the following Saturday. He is ecstatic and promises to look after Francis’ cat, Lucretius, while Francis is away. At the airport, Rose and Francis give each other a long embrace and Rose is distraught when she leaves the airport and gets back in the car. They are both a little exhausted by the way Francis’ illness has dominated the last few months of their relationship. She bursts into tears, but soon recovers and drives away, happy to be living in California, the best place in the world. Francis finds his seat on the plane and enjoys a hearty meal washed down with a Californian red wine. By the time the plane touches down in Chicago, it is raining.

         In Chicago, Francis meets up with Andy, who is waiting for him with a blank sign in front of his face. He has six hours before his flight to Madrid. They head to the area where Andy now lives, North Halsted. Over lunch in a Chinese restaurant, they discuss the death of Andy’s mother and Francis’ progressive blindness but, since there’s nothing they can do to resolve either question, they decide to go and visit the Art Institute, where they view their favourite paintings by Georgia O’Keefe, Kandinsky and Hubert Robert. This is where they first met. Francis advises Andy not to put up with Aldo’s erratic behaviour, while Andy warns Francis that, once he is truly blind, Rose may not want to stick around. They confess their old feelings for one another and regret that their relationship came to an end for no particular reason, and leave each other in the airport, aware that this is the last time they will be able to gaze into each other’s face.

         Francis is met by his nephew Clodio at the station in Padrón. His great-grandmother María, who raised fifteen children, all of whom then emigrated, has died and Clodio is looking after the house. They visit her grave in the cemetery. Clodio is indignant about the widening of a road through their village, which has destroyed part of the property. A fig tree was lost in a hurricane, while Clodio was working as a fisherman at sea. They go down to the cellar, drink some wine, talk about their past and current relationships and arrange to have lunch with Clodio’s girlfriend, Luísa, the next day.

         Francis quickly falls into a routine, working according to a timetable and heading out every morning for a walk in the surroundings, to think about Rose and Andy. He has started taking Prozac, but realizes that to avoid falling into a pit of despair over his blindness he must put something of himself into the equation. One morning, it is raining heavily. Once the rain has subsided, Francis heads out with Zoe, the dog, leaving Clodio to plant seeds in the vegetable garden. At one point, Zoe doesn’t want to continue, sensing that it is going to rain again, and they return to the house. Francis takes out a photograph of himself and Rose with Andy and Aldo by Lake Michigan, in which he senses that they are interchangeable couples, since they all had something in common with the other. In the evening, he prepares a rabbit stew and, despite what Clodio has said, lets Zoe into the house. Clodio returns late and is annoyed that Zoe has dirtied the kitchen floor. It’s not always easy living with somebody who’s lived on their own for a while.

         After a couple of weeks, Rose announces that she will come on a visit. Francis is very pleased and awaits her arrival with expectation. On the night of her arrival, they stay up late with Clodio and Luísa, discussing glow-worms and Luísa’s interest in entomology. One afternoon, Francis goes for a walk and discovers that aspects of his childhood memories have changed, not everything is the same and sometimes it’s better not to return. The four live together in the house, working during the day and meeting up in the evening to have supper and share conversation. Francis has almost finished the translation, which he is due to send to Martin in the coming days, and sits to correct the proofs under a vine arbour next to the house, where he remembers how, when he was a child, somebody had died in Cuba and how he used to walk at night with his eyes closed, without turning on the lights, or with a bandage over his eyes, as if foreseeing the blindness that would one day overtake him.

         The next day, they arrange to go the beach, but what should have been an enjoyable change of routine turns into a disaster. Francis drowns, there is no way of knowing whether this was an accident or deliberate, and Clodio’s efforts to revive him are useless. The funeral follows quickly and is attended by a few of Francis’ friends, Andy and Martin among them. Rose confesses to Andy that she knows about his relationship with Francis, but he wasn’t the only one. Clodio tries to comfort Andy by telling him that Francis loved him more than anyone. Before returning to the States, Rose deletes all the files with Francis’ translation and decides to send an empty disk to Martin instead. Clodio gives Andy an envelope with a poem Francis wrote to him. The author ends by explaining how, as in Saramago’s novel, blindness can be contagious.

         The author has managed to create a rich narrative which examines the approach of a calamity, the awful coincidence between translating a novel about blindness in society and actually going blind. The novel is made up of a cast of characters who are all a little blind in their actions, trying to reach out and hold on to something stable. One is left with the impression that the only thing that is worthwhile is not company or sentimentalism, but love in the brief moments that it reveals itself to be real.

Synopsis © Jonathan Dunne