The blindfold: "volunteer blindness" and the Dymphna/Thorp theory

pivotal · UNDATED — ? Nov YDAU

• When: UNDATED — an unspecified November day, in the little hall off the weight room in the tunnel system; placed before the 11 Nov cluster by documented inference (see Dating notes)
• What: His one scene of his own (dialogue-only, Arslanian-led). Blindfolded with a rayon handkerchief and lost on a stairway, he collides with Ted Schacht and then Mike Pemulis, increasingly desperate for a lavatory. He explains the blindfold: prorectors Thorp and Tex Watson ("Thorp and Texas Watson were who scouted this player") have scouted an incoming blind nine-year-old, Dymphna, highly ranked in his Midwest Twelve-and-Belows — though delayed to next term ("He's not coming in til next term. He delayed, Inc said they said. Dural edema or something.") — whose excellence Thorp theorizes comes from the blindness itself: the ear judging where a ball will land, by the intensity of sound off the opponent's string, better than the eye. Arslanian carries the theory on a carefully notated folded paper ("Sound Merely 'Variations In Intensity'—Throp," the misspelling his own, "It was meaning Thorp, in excitement"). Compelled, he practices volunteer blindness and had played Whale blindfolded that day — badly, facing the wrong way and straying onto adjacent courts. He is meanwhile a decorous bystander to the Anton ("The Booger") Doucette anxiety-depression subplot next door: the crueler players watch Lyle work on Doucette like it's entertainment, Schacht has walked out in disgust ("I got disgusted. Somebody in pain isn't entertainment."), and Pemulis delivers Arslanian the whole right-triangle annular-fusion lecture while the boy hops foot to foot — forbidden to lift the blindfold because "Mr. Thorp will evince keen disappointment if I resort to remove my blindfold to locate a lavatory."