Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant (20 page)

In the summer, work at the centre reduced to a trickle as the students went away for long, coastal holidays with their families. Žygintas’s family, like many Lithuanians, had a summerhouse in the countryside and invited me to come and visit him. He gave me instructions for a bus that travelled close by the house and said that he would pick me up and drive me the rest of the way once I had reached the agreed meeting point. The bus was old and shaky and very quickly the route took me out of the towns and into long, muddy roads surrounded only by trees and fields. Žygintas had given me a name to lookout for but I could not see it anywhere and was too nervous to ask anyone, so I sat and waited and hoped. Eventually the bus reached a stop next to a series of wooden buildings, the first I had seen for half an hour, so I summoned all my courage and stood and explained in Lithuanian that I was lost. The three other passengers just stared at me so I climbed off the bus and counted to myself because I was shaking and did not know what to do. Then the driver came over to me and without saying a word pointed to a timetable. The name Žygintas had given me was not on there. I looked at my watch; I was an hour late for my meeting with him. I walked into the first building and explained the situation in Lithuanian to a woman standing behind a counter. She shook her head and did not say anything. I tried again, repeating myself in Lithuanian but she again shook her head. Then, out of desperation, I tried English. ‘Do you have a telephone?’ I asked. On the word ‘telephone’ she suddenly nodded and pointed to a black telephone in the corner. I ran over to it and dialled Žygintas’s number. ‘Where are you?’ he asked and I gave him the name that I saw on the timetable outside. ‘How did you get there?’ he asked and then, ‘wait there, I’ll come and collect you.’ Half an hour later his car came and we drove to the summerhouse. On the way, Žygintas explained that I had found myself in one of the parts of Lithuania’s countryside inhabited by Russian speakers who do not understand Lithuanian. The delay meant my visit to the house was abbreviated, but I met Žygintas’s family and was just in time for a barbecue, followed by a swim in the nearby river.

Birut
, too, wanted me to come over and spend some time at her family’s summerhouse. She took me to meet her sister who was a poet. Over cups of coffee she recited some of her poems to us and afterwards we walked together along a lake of clear, blue water. The sky was cloudless and the sun shone brightly, its light sparkling on the water’s surface like solar flotsam. As the day went on, Birut
asked me to come with her to a point close by where we could sit and watch the sunset. This was our first meeting in several weeks and our last, too, because my volunteer contract had expired and it was time for me to return home. Birut
told me that our friendship had meant a great deal to her, particularly through what had often been difficult times for her. She felt that I had grown a lot in the time that she had known me. I knew it too and had felt for some time that it was not only my day-to-day life that had changed with the decision to come and live in Lithuania; I myself had changed and had been somehow renewed. As we sat in silence together, looking out towards the sinking summer sun, our hearts were not heavy because we knew that even as one adventure was ending, another was about to begin.

8

Falling in Love

It’s never easy to say goodbye, particularly to a country that has become a home away from home, as Lithuania had for me over the past year. It was July, the height of summer, as I walked up the avenue to the centre for the last time. Inside, Liuda and the other volunteers had gathered in the classroom to see me off. I thanked each of them in Lithuanian for their help and kindness towards me. Liuda presented me with an illustrated leather-bound diary as a farewell gift and told me that she hoped I would fill it with new ideas and future adventures. A part of me was sad to be leaving, but I knew inside that I had achieved everything – personally as well as professionally – that I could in Lithuania, and that it was time to move on.

The flight home to London felt as though it might never end. I passed some of the time by reading and rereading a letter sent a week before by my parents. Shortly after I had left for Lithuania, my father had received news of a large, newly-built house available to rent in the local area. It was actually two houses that had been knocked into one, with six bedrooms and two bathrooms. The property was a godsend to my family, who moved there not long afterwards. It was to this new address that I was now returning and the letter included a photo of the house and directions to it.

A familiar face, my friend Rehan, was waiting for me at the airport. We had stayed in touch by postcard throughout my time overseas, but even so it was good to see him in person after all this time. As he had done for me years before, Rehan acted as my guide through the labyrinthine Underground. While we sat together on the train, he listened patiently to my anecdotes about my time in the city of Kaunas and asked to see my photos of the different places and people I had seen and met. A little while later, he stood up quickly and told me that we were approaching my stop. There was just enough time to gather up my bags and thank him for his company. No sooner had I stepped off the platform and turned round than the train had pulled away, its outline rapidly disappearing into the darkness of a tunnel.

The street outside was completely foreign to me. I walked for a long time before realising that I was stuck: the road’s name I’d arrived at wasn’t the same as the one in my parents’ letter. Perhaps I had taken a wrong turn somewhere. Nervously, I asked a passer-by for help. ‘Walk straight on and go right at the next turn,’ he said. As I passed the correct road name it suddenly occurred to me how strange it was that I had just had to ask where my own family’s street was.

The family were delighted to see me and we spent many happy hours catching up. Some of my brothers and sisters said that I had a slight accent, which was perhaps not surprising as I had been away for so long and had spoken more Lithuanian than English in that time. My mother showed me around the house and my new room, which was situated at the back, away from the road, and was the quietest of all the rooms. It was small, especially after all the space I’d had in Lithuania, though there was still enough space besides a bed for a table and chair and a small television set. I liked the newness of my room; it represented a tangible sense that my return to the UK was a step forward in my life and not back to my past. This was a fresh start.

There was a period of readjustment to my new surroundings. Living on my own had given me a real feeling of independence and I had liked the control I had been able to exert on my immediate environment, without the noise or unpredictability of other people to cope with. It was difficult at first to get used to the sounds of my siblings running up and down the stairs or arguing with each other. My mother told each of them to try to respect my need for quiet, and for the most part they did.

My experiences abroad had undoubtedly changed me. For one thing, I had learned a great deal about myself. I could see more clearly than ever before how my ‘differentness’ affected my day-to-day life, especially my interactions with other people. I had eventually come to understand that friendship was a delicate, gradual process that mustn’t be rushed or seized upon but allowed and encouraged to take its course over time. I pictured it as a butterfly, simultaneously beautiful and fragile, that once afloat belonged to the air and any attempt to grab at it would only destroy it. I recalled how in the past at school I had lost potential friendships because, lacking social instinct, I had tried too hard and made completely the wrong impression.

Lithuania had also allowed me to step back from myself and come to terms with my ‘differentness’ by illustrating the fact that it needn’t be a negative thing. As a foreigner I had been able to teach English to my Lithuanian students and tell them all about life in Britain. Not being the same as everyone else had been an advantage to me in Kaunas, and an opportunity to help others.

I also now had a database of widely varied experiences that I could reference in all manner of future situations. It gave me a greater confidence in my ability to cope with whatever life might bring to me. The future wasn’t something for me to be afraid of anymore. In my tiny new bedroom at home I felt freer than ever before.

As a returned volunteer, I was eligible for an end of service grant for which I had to write about my experience in Lithuania and the things I had learned whilst there. I sent all the forms back and waited. In the meantime, I found work as a tutor helping local children with their reading, writing and arithmetic. Several months after first applying, I finally received the grant at the start of 2000. It was just enough money for a computer; a dream realised for me and the first my family had ever owned. Once arrived and unwrapped, it took some time for me, with the help of my brothers and father, to piece it all together and get it working. For the first time I was able to access the World Wide Web, and was delighted by the sheer wealth of information now available to me at the click of a mouse: online encyclopaedias, dictionaries, lists of trivia, word and number puzzles – they were all there. So too were message boards and chat rooms.

There is something exciting and reassuring for individuals on the autistic spectrum about communicating with other people over the Internet. For one thing, talking in chat rooms or by email does not require you to know how to initiate a conversation or when to smile or the numerous intricacies of body language, as in other social situations. There is no eye contact and it is possible to understand the other person’s every word because everything is written down. The use of ‘emoticons’, such as
and
, in chat room conversations also makes it easier to know how the other person is feeling, because he or she tells you in a simple, visual method.