It was a long time ago, and all that remains now are some generic memories. People often ask me the same questions: light? images? faces?
My mother’s face?
No way. She was the first to disappear, replaced by her voice. Only it wasn’t her voice anymore, but that of another person. Anxious. Despairing. In the morning: an anxious voice. In the evening: a desperate voice. I could tell the time by her, better than a clock. As for the rest: pitch black. Not that I’ve ever seen this pitch, but that’s how the expression goes.
I remember a large dome, some wavy lines… though it could be my imagination. I imagine a memory, then another, then another, until there are none left. There aren’t a lot of them.
I don’t mind talking about it.
You might think that friends, relatives, and colleagues would have pestered me over the years, asking me how it happened. Nobody wants to know. They’re afraid. Of something that could happen to them as well, or to their children. Superstition.
Most of all, superstition.
Not even my mother talked about it afterwards. Taboo. Besides, everyone knew, everyone could see, so what else was left to say? For years I kept it bottled up inside like it was something to be ashamed of, a crime almost. On the other hand, she’s just like that. The first time I had my period, I was scared because it smelt different and I didn’t understand. The only thing she said to me was that I shouldn’t make a fuss about it. It will pass in a few days, she said. Nowadays, children know everything about everything, but at the time, I was really scared. I thought it would never stop. Because that’s the same thing they told me the other time too, that it would pass in a few days. I spent months waiting. Every morning, before opening my eyes, I would pray.
So perhaps you can understand why, when he asked me with the calmest voice in the world how it happened, I almost didn’t know what to answer.
But I was pleased.
I’m not sure I can explain to you exactly how I know about things outside. Outside of me, I mean. Of course, touching objects, I can get an idea of their shape and I never forget it. At home I’ve learnt how all the furniture is made, how large the rooms are, and can move myself around fine. If something gets repositioned for whatever reason, I can find it and put it back exactly where it was. I can recognize the route from home to the office and can tell if you change streets. I know how many bends, drops, and climbs it takes to get there. I know how long the gap is between one traffic light and the next, and whether the light’s yellow, from the press of the accelerator or the brake.
Yet there are a few things even I can’t explain. For example: I go into a room, and I have the impression there’s a window on the wall in front of me. Because a flow of air comes towards me at a different temperature? Or that there’s always a minimal flow, even when it’s closed? Maybe, but I feel it more like an instinct. Because I can even tell if the window is big or small, square or rectangular. Just like I know if a person who’s in front of me is happy or angry, even if they don’t say anything, even if they don’t move. It happens to lots of people. It’s almost as if your intuition gets refined along with your touch and hearing.
It had been years since anyone had asked me how it happened, given that, I think, it’s pretty evident that I haven’t been like this since I was born. His interest seemed genuine. Not pity or solidarity. Some people talk to me as if I was ill, they act polite so they can feel good about themselves. But I always say that if someone asks you how it happened, it means that they really want to know about you, about your life, about your past. This is the difference. Nobody is interested in my future or my past: How are you? What do you do? Where do you work? It all ends here, in the present. Why? Because you’re terrified by the idea of an inalterable condition! It suffocates you. You feel it like death itself.
Anyway, I was pleased that he’d shown an interest in the original trauma. He didn’t use this expression. It’s me that calls it that, because this is the name the doctors gave to the accident. Whereas “accident” was the name that my relatives gave to the original trauma. My relatives, not my parents. They never talked about it, and didn’t even respond willingly to the questions that the doctors put forward in neutral tones, as if they were asking for your tax code: “Madam, we would like a little more information about the original trauma. Were you present?”
I started telling the story with a certain detachment, bored almost, as if I was talking about something that, in the end, didn’t really involve me. Then I responded to his questions in more detail.
Because I haven’t forgotten anything. I remember it all.
Apart from the colors.
Sounds? For me, sounds are everything. Music, do I really have to say it? it’s magnificent. I love music. Every type: pop, jazz, classical… I’ve always got something in my head, even when I’m talking, even when I’m concentrating on my work. Tunes, little motifs, melodies… But it’s not only music, it’s all sounds and noises. My head is a box full of sounds. One refers back to another, one contains another, and there are no empty spaces. I think of them as the words of the world. Do you understand? It’s like the world is always talking to me, to keep me company.
No, you can’t understand.
The first years were hard. I couldn’t accept it. All I wanted was to go back, to return to how I was before. I couldn’t believe that I was going to stay like… even if my mother’s dull voice confirmed it every day. And the fact that my father stopped touching me.
That’s right, they stopped touching me.
My mother washed and dressed me, of course. She or someone else would feed me or comb my hair. But they stopped hugging and kissing me, they never stroked me again. I’m telling you, it’s true! I had the distinct feeling that they were horrified by me, as if I’d become a disgusting animal that they were forced to keep in their home.
So, when he stroked my face for the first time, can you imagine the shock, the sensation? He always did it at the beginning, and sometimes he still does when we’re next to each other in bed. But it’s not exactly a stroke: he passes his hand across my face as if he wants to know it somehow. He must have learnt that from me.
I would have been around five years old. My mother had gone upstairs to meet a woman who needed to try on a dress. My mother was a seamstress, and she worked from home. I remember the sound of the wheel of the sowing machine. And a flat, smooth surface, pieces of cloth, pins… a ribbon… yes, a ribbon wrapped around a bobbin. And my mother’s thimble, I can still feel it on my finger, too big for a child.
She’d left me on my own to quickly go upstairs and meet a client who had to try on a dress that she was stitching. Because it doesn’t take long, you know? You just let it down, let it out, take it in here and there… I could be left alone for half an hour, a good girl like me, a little treasure, they said, I remember it well.
Afterwards, I was never that girl again.
But what am I saying? That’s not true, I don’t believe it: child, girl, woman, what does it even mean? For me, there’s no difference. For me, life is an emotion that unfolds like a ribbon. Yes, just like that ribbon. Sooner or later you reach the bobbin and the ribbon falls away.
For a long time, I was most upset for my doll. I was testing out a little dress on her, pretending to be a seamstress like my mother. A little doll made of hard plastic that could only move its eyes, she’d open and close them, and she had these long eyebrows that looked like little toothbrushes.
When I met him, I was already used to it. To not be being able to run. To the walking stick. Right foot forward, stick to the left, left foot forward, stick to the right. Do you know how much I had to practice in the courtyard before plucking up the courage to go out in the street? And as I was walking, I’d only pay attention to maintaining my coordination so I wouldn’t trip up and fall forward. The dog was a liberation, as well as a companion. When they gave me the dog, I stopped swaying back and forth and rubbing my eyes. But I was over sixteen by then.
More than anything, I was used to being afraid.
It’s not easy to explain. I wasn’t afraid of dangers, of obstacles, or being alone, of not knowing what to do. It was just fear. If you ask me what air is, I’ll tell you that I don’t know: I can’t see it. But I feel it around me, it’s all over me, I move in it, I breathe it in. That’s what fear used to be like. Inside and outside, always, ever present. But he erased that, dispersed it, dissolved it. I don’t know how he did it. One day, I just realized it wasn’t there anymore. We were married already… and yes, I suddenly realized that the fear was gone. Now the ribbon was made of another tissue, lighter, and stronger.
At first, I couldn’t understand why he wanted me, given that I’m not exactly beautiful. It all started there, with me telling him about the accident. When I reconstructed my story in a loud voice. How many times had I thought about it before? Pieces of memories, one after the other, one next to the other, without ever being able to shape them into something coherent.
Just colorless rags.
But, when he asked me, I suddenly saw it, I truly saw the scene. Or I imagined the scene, which is the same thing, I mean, my brain produced a series of images and… I felt pity.
Not for myself. I felt pain and compassion for that five-year-old child that was playing with her doll alone in the kitchen while her mother was upstairs fitting a dress for a client, and she was so sure that the child would have been well-behaved, because she was a treasure of a little girl and you could trust her. It wasn’t the first time that she’d left her alone, and she’d always come back to find her just as she’d left her. But later on, the mother never did forgive herself for having left her alone, because even if she was a good girl, she was still only five years old. And that’s what the father shouted. Yes, he shouted, not right away, after some time, perhaps after a few years, he shouted at the mother that if she hadn’t left the girl alone…
But that’s all in the past now. Because so much time has passed. And now, I don’t know what to do.
Years of work, of suffering, of rage. To make sense of it. Destiny: everyone has their destiny. A test: God puts you to the test. You’re no different. You can do it. For years. Alone.
Then they started to talk about prosthesis. Artificial vision. Light that transforms into electrical signals that get sent to the brain.
I’d never been convinced.
But now it’s different. Apparently, we’re the avant-garde in Europe, we’re world leaders. I didn’t delude myself at first. But life flies by, and you have to decide quickly, because if you want to try it, you might as well try it right away. How much do I lose by waiting?
Yes. That’s what I told him when I found the courage to speak to him. I had to. He’s my husband.
It will change his life too, no?
They call them cells without identity cards, because they’re undifferentiated: they can grow, multiply, and become the specific cells that you require. Need cardiac tissue? They take the stem cells, and they make them into cardiac tissue. Or neurons, capable of treating Alzheimer’s. No embryos are involved. These are adult stem cells taken from the epithelium, which is the tissue that lines the cornea. And there’s no possibility of rejection, because they are your own, homegrown, so there’s no need for silicon appliances or corneas from dead people. No laying on of the hands.
This is what I told him when we talked about it.
He answered that he didn’t want to influence me, that the choice had to be mine, totally mine. Because everything will change.
That much we know for certain.
Last summer, we took a trip around Ireland. A beautiful long holiday. As soon as we got to Dublin, we rented a car and set off for the North following the coast. He described the landscape to me. We took walks along the beach. We were constantly damp from that light drizzle that never stops falling in Ireland.
One day, we arrive in a place called Malin Head. It’s famous for its very high cliffs. To reach them, you leave the car in the carpark and continue by foot, climbing up a steep path that runs by the sea.
The weather is worse than usual and there are no other tourists. We walk, happy to be alone, concentrating on the sound of the sea and the screech of the gulls that fly above our heads. Then it starts raining, ever heavier. By now we are totally soaked, barely protected by our light cagoules. The rain mingles with the damp heat that rises up from the ground, turning into a fog that I feel thickening around me. An intense smell of sea and wet earth hits my throat. He says it’s impossible to see anything anymore. I hear the sea to my right, very close by, the waves swelling and smashing against the rocks. Splashes of salt water are mixed with the rain, and I know, I know that we are walking on the edge of the cliff, but I don’t know how close we are to the precipice. The ground’s become one enormous puddle, it’s impossible to recognize the path.
I’m so focused on coordinating my steps that it takes me a while to realize that he’s no longer walking beside me. Then I hear him a little behind, breathing loudly, his heavy boots sinking into the grass and the mud. I turn around and ask if we’re lost.
“No,” he answers, “I’m following you.” Yes, that’s just how he said it.
“I’m following you.”