And There Was Light Page 5

  Whatever puts a blind child in touch with physical reality is good, especially if it has to do with his movements and his muscles. I am not a good example of this because I never learned to swim, and that was a mistake. I never conquered my dislike for cold, for water and all the soft obstacles which abound on the edges of streams. But all the more reason for wanting blind people to know how to swim. And this should be increasingly easy now that the swimming pool is almost a part of the furnishings of the house. Fortunately, water was the only thing for which I felt this kind of distaste.

  The first thing my parents put in my grandfather’s garden at Juvardeil was a jungle gym, and I seem to have spent years hanging from the ropes, the rings, climbing the rope ladder, turning somersaults on the trapeze. This was my favorite spot in the holidays, the place where I threw my dreams overboard by the handful, and got rid of my vapors. When I pulled myself up by the arms on the parallel bars, I changed course and moved with all my weight towards air and sun.

  The gym was much more than exercise. It was a marriage with space. Besides, I was never afraid of it. From the moment when I took a firm hold on a bar or a rope I recaptured the freedom which others get from their eyes. The trapeze swung as I pushed it, but in a limited range where I had only myself to reckon with. I felt more alive at some distance from the ground than level with it. I seemed to grow more knowing, and all sorts of shadows were swept away. I had keener senses of touch, hearing and sight. I saw the rounded top of the hundred-year-old box tree right under my toes every time the swing, going all out, made me touch it. I saw the sky open up beyond the garden walls and drop steeply down to the river.

  I could see in all directions sitting, standing, curled up, hanging by my knees with my head down. It always ended with the marvelous sense of no longer being an animal standing up like a man, but a circular being.

  From the jungle gym I ventured up into the trees, especially the apple trees, which were low with many branches. My grandfather owned and tended an orchard on the edge of the village. I would go there early in the morning with a book, climb up into one of the apple trees, sit down in the fork between two branches, and begin to read. But every ten minutes I would stop reading to explore higher up in the tree.

  What about running? I couldn’t do without it, yet running by myself was impossible. I had to find a teammate my own age, and this was easy. People are wrong in thinking that most children are not obliging, and don’t like cluttering up their games with someone whom adults call an invalid. I assure you that for children there are no invalids. The bright boys hate the stupid ones, and the enterprising run from the cowards. It is as simple as that. Neither eyes nor legs have anything to do with it.

  No boy in Juvardeil ever refused me his hand or arm, or gave it grudgingly. Sometimes they even bickered to see which one should have the right to hold me by the shoulder and run with me as fast as our legs could carry us, like good drivers who get the most out of their cars. I certainly covered much more ground in races than most children who see. I was guided back and forth through the rows of vegetables in the village gardens. Jumping from one lump of earth to the next, I crossed every newly plowed field, on forbidden ground. I climbed hundreds of hedges, scratched myself on the brambles, and landed in muddy ditches with water up to my thighs. I tried every rascal’s trick.

  Naturally, I was always harnessed to another boy, but the team ran so smoothly that for hours neither cart nor driver knew which was in the lead.

  That is how I came to know the countryside around Juvardeil as well as any peasant child, and in September I took part in the ceremony which belongs to the end of summer — apple-picking. Or perhaps I should call it picking up, since it meant finding fallen apples in the thick grass and filling the great willow hampers with them. I was more at ease than ever, since I only had to crawl, hunt through all the holes with my hands and touch things nearby. In the process my fingers worked like searchlights. And in September the ground was ripe, heavy, rotting and had the pungence of a liqueur.

  There were the apples and the hayricks. In the country in France hay is piled up in the meadow before it is taken into the barns, and that makes for the maddest and most fragrant days of the whole year. For those enormous blocks of hay which they call the veilles in Anjou stand up in the fields like volcanic islands or disheveled pyramids. The peasants don’t like people to climb these cliffs, for it takes only ten determined urchins to pull the whole structure down in an hour. But the urchins, and I was not the least of them, have many other things to think about than the man who owns the hay.

  Usually, a rope holds the rick together, making it into a solid block in the middle of the field. By taking hold of the rope you can climb to the top, and then an orgy of commotion begins — trampling, diving, shaking, with scratches and caresses, all in a whirlwind of aromatic dust. I don’t think the game foreshadows anything in real life. If it does it can only be the first outburst of love.

  THERE IS NOT A SINGLE ONE of my vivid memories which is not bound up with another human being. But why complain of that? In the nature of the case a blind man cannot carry anything through all by himself. The time always comes, in work or play, when he needs the hand, shoulder, eyes or voice of another person. Since there is no getting away from it, the question arises: Is the condition a happy or an unhappy one?

  I hear blind people say this kind of dependence is their greatest affliction, turning them into poor relations or hangers-on. Some of them even look on this dependence as added punishment, quite unjust, and call it a curse. I think they are wrong in two ways. They are wrong for their own sakes because they torment themselves without cause. They are wrong as they face life, since they are the ones who make a misfortune of dependence.

  But can these sad blind point to a single individual anywhere who has not been dependent, even with his eyes, not waiting for someone else, nor subservient to better or stronger men or ones far away; not bound in one way or another to every living creature? Whatever the bond, be it hate, love, desire, power, weakness or blindness — it is part of us, and love is the simplest way to cope with it.

  I have always enjoyed having someone near me. Naturally, there are times when it is irritating, but on the whole I can thank my blindness for having forced me into bodily contact with my fellow men, and for making this an exchange of strength and joy more often than one of torment. The torment I have experienced has almost always been in solitude.

  I cannot count my childhood friends. They still crowd around me, but I no longer know just who they are. They have left so much of themselves in me, and I so much of myself in them. Whom shall I see in this play of mirrors?

  Of course, there are the dead. I belonged to a generation decimated a few years later in the Second World War. That is why so many of the people I am going to write about are no longer living. But I don’t believe we should mourn them. They would not have wanted that, having died because they loved life too much.

  My first friend was at Juvardeil, and his name was Leopold. When I first knew him he was always a little too big for his age, not very steady on his long legs as he flew in big wobbly jumps over the stony roads, making a noise with his clogs. I was always afraid he was going to fall down. His father, a fine cabinetmaker, died when he was still very small. His mother ran the dry-goods store in the village. Leopold was a little deaf, or so everyone said because he made the teacher repeat his questions in class. Only I knew he was much less deaf than people thought, for the things that made sense or were beautiful he heard right off. He had a way of throwing his head back suddenly as if to say: “You don’t need to talk so loud, I heard you perfectly.”

  He was a sort of peasant poet. People in the village snubbed him a little because he was hard of hearing, but mostly because they sensed that he was out of place. And he was out of place in the village, perhaps even in the world.

  He and I became great pals because each of us had the same scenes going on in our heads. I could tell him about light, about so
unds, the voice of trees and the weight of shadows. They didn’t surprise him and, in return, he had a different story to tell me every day. It almost always had something to do with flowers. He said that flowers were made to save us. But to save us from what? As I said before, Leopold was a poet and a romantic.

  In the country around Juvardeil we used to visit the haunted crossroads where there was a crucifix or a forked tree, or where ghosts had been seen once upon a time, according to folklore which was as old as the Sarthe itself. We didn’t take the ghosts seriously, but we enjoyed their mystery. That last year the only thing Leopold liked was chrysanthemums. He planted them all over the place, and when they were not to be seen he imagined them and described them.

  But more than that Leopold never had any coarse thoughts. He never boasted about tossing up the girls’ skirts or watching them behind the hedges. When he spoke to them he was awkward and respectful, so of course they made fun of him. He didn’t care because what he liked about girls were their warm hearts and their sweetness. Indeed, he was out of place in the village.

  One winter day when he was sixteen (I was in Paris and only heard about it) Leopold died of a terrifying disease of the lungs. They told me he put up a tremendous fight. That seems likely, for he had really not had enough of life. He was my first friend — one of the dimmest and one of the dearest. But when one is blind it is amazing how many people of this sort one meets. Perhaps it is because they have the courage to reveal themselves to people who cannot see them.

  In Juvardeil there was also promiscuity, especially out in the country on rainy days when people escaped to the barns from the garden and fields turned into ponds. Country boys have no modesty and no immodesty. With them one learns about life much faster than in the city, where civilized people play hide-and-seek.

  Besides, to my knowledge no moral preachment has ever got the better of this kind of natural physical contact between boys and boys and girls. At least it leads to the realization that we are all one flesh and have the same foolish desires and the same limitations; that there are no differences between us except those which come from heart and spirit. In other words, we could all be thrown into the same basket and tossed like a salad without losing much of our dignity.

  And, for that matter, what could a blind child learn about the world and other people unless like them he had the right to touch and meddle with them without being punished? If some sighted people are shocked by this notion, they should stop and think what their eyes do on the sly and often unconsciously, even when they are fully grown.

  Beside the broken boards, the ladders, the firewood and the piles of hay in the barn there stood the “Little Republic.” That was the name of a cart which everyone knew. It belonged to my great-grandfather in 1870 when the Third Republic was proclaimed. And since this particular ancestor, hardheaded as he was, had repudiated all the clerical and reactionary opinions of the rest of the family and shouted “Long live Gambetta, long live the Republic!” his two-wheeled cart was a symbol of the event, perpetuating the Revolution.

  It stood there in the middle of the barn, so tempting with its shafts standing up in the air like arms. In principle we had no right to touch it, since it was being preserved for more serious work. But disorder has demands of its own, and we sneaked off with the Little Republic. Sometimes there were two of us, and sometimes ten, holding on to the shafts and pushing. When the Little Republic was empty, it sounded like a stream rushing over the pebbles. It danced up and down, fell into all the ruts and threatened to fall to pieces. Our fear of not bringing it home in one piece multiplied our pleasure ten times over.

  But when the Little Republic was loaded it really gave tongue. Inside it we heaped up apples, wood shavings, weeds picked up along the way or piles of pebbles left on the roadside by the road mender. My playmates put me to the test. They were driving the cart while I, between them, followed along. But from time to time they took the wrong turn deliberately. They started the Little Republic on a shortcut or headed it straight for a wall. They said they did it to find out how much I could see. They hardly ever got anywhere, for the Little Republic, in front of me, told me right away that it was off its course, on the grass, having made a ridiculous turn, thrown out of line as it could be only by malicious design. Then I called out, protested, and stopped the cart. The boys were all glad, because they had seen that I was one of them.

  I know the Little Republic was stalwart, but I don’t know whether it survived. Anyway I still think of it often and with tenderness. Perhaps as a good republican, it knew the motto of the Republic. It certainly taught me Fraternity, also Liberty and Equality, and the fact that if I really wanted to I could go along with the others, for better or worse.

  [ 4 ]

  RUNNING MATES AND TEACHERS

  IN PARIS, BLINDNESS WAS HARDER TO BEAR. The street was a labyrinth of noises. Each sound, repeated many times by the walls of the houses, the awnings of the stores, the grills over the sewers, the dense mass of the trucks, the scaffolding and the lampposts, created false images. I could no longer rely on my senses. People did not stay on the sidewalks. They cut their way through the crowds, with shoulders slumped forward and vacant eyes. Like all cities, Paris was a school for selfishness.

  In the Champ de Mars, in the garden I knew as a little child, I heard mothers whispering to their sons: “Don’t play with him. Can’t you see he is blind?” I can’t count the number of times I have heard sentences like these. They went through me like an electric shock.

  I have no intention of putting stupidity and malice on trial. They were judged a long time ago. But I should like to say that those sulky, ill-tempered mothers, sickened by fear, ended by doing me a service. They may not have known how to defend their children, but at least they succeeded in defending me against them.

  The parents of a blind child have little need to worry about the kind of people he chooses for friends. Thoughtless children, who are badly brought up, take good care not to get involved with a blind person. They prefer their mothers’ skirts, and take no chances.

  Until I was fifteen, when adult life began with its unavoidable exchanges, I was in a position to associate only with good children, weak ones or strong ones, but good children, prepared if not to give at least to lend what they had.

  In the neighborhood school they had to find a guide for me, a boy willing to come for me at my table, take me downstairs as soon as the bell rang, and even stay with me during recess. A boy called Bacon volunteered his services. What a good fellow! An outcast for all that, for he was always at the bottom of his class. No matter how much he tried, and he did try hard and patiently, he could never find a single boy less bright than he was. As I remember it, the head of the school was scornful and made fun of him in the presence of the others. But as far as I was concerned the only effect of this injustice was to endear him.

  The wretched Bacon had a mother who was a famous character in the Champ de Mars. All day long she drove her troop of small donkeys, and the children who came to the garden could ride on them for a few pennies. Because I was the friend and almost the only friend of her boy, the fat lady with the bass voice let me ride her donkeys for nothing.

  In place of a quick mind Bacon had a heart of gold. He spent so little time thinking about himself that he thought of others instead, and knew more about them than the brightest students in the class. I told him stories which enthralled him, probably because the others never told him any. He loved me so much that I think he would have gone through hellfire for my sake. He was the first of a long series of friends whom heaven has thrown in my way, simple and crude if you will, but in whom my blindness aroused an irresistible feeling of tenderness. This alliance is as old as the earth. In the tales of nurses and in popular songs, there is always the never-ending brotherhood of idiots and blind people. And let there be no mistake, I say this without malice or contempt.

  Still, many years went by before Bacon had a successor, for in the meantime I had gathered around me boys o
f quite a different kind. Children are much more ready to change their environment than adults. They haven’t had time to be smug about the one they already know. To tell the truth, what embarrasses and depresses them is the fact that grownups, and their parents most of all, never change, believing this, criticizing that, calling the table table and money money, repeating the same phrases and always forgetting the heart of the matter: that the world is double, triple, countless and forever new.

  My real friends always belonged to that special race of children, the seekers, the tireless ones, the ones they will call enthusiasts as young men. When people made friends with me, something rather astonishing happened to them. They were no longer satisfied with the kind of truth they were accustomed to. They had to take on some of my ways of looking at things, ways which were almost always new to them. It was not hours we spent comparing our worlds, among companions, but days. We took a real inventory, and I remember our surprise and our satisfaction every time we found out that there was a connection, a bridge between these two worlds. It was so easy for us to become identified with each other. At our age words made no trouble because they were used with such abandon, to be sure that everything got said.

  My real friends did not appear until after I began going to the lycée. But there was not one of them, even in the first year, who was not drawn to me by the difference between us. That was even the case with Jean, and I shall soon be talking about him.

  For the dreamers I had a bag full of dreams, so many we forgot time and even rain, and came home covered with mud. For the braggarts I saved up a lot of things to boast about. If you have an imagination it is there to be used, so we would fight duels for more than an hour, with tall stories for swords.

  The gentle ones were sorry for me to begin with (they thought I must be unhappy since I couldn’t see), but when they knew me better they no longer pitied me. By that time it was too late to go away, for already we were pals. For the tough ones, the ones determined to show their strength, I was the ideal protégé. I needed their protection but did not ask for it. They came around in a hurry.