Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant (28 page)

Card counting is not easy and even highly skilled practitioners only gain around 1% by using this method. Casinos will often ban those they suspect of card counting from their tables. Our table used an eight-deck shoe, meaning that there were 416 cards in play, a number large enough to minimise any possible counting advantage.

Casinos are noisy and distracting environments in which to play and one of the biggest challenges for me was trying to concentrate. As I sat on my stool opposite the dealer I focused on the decks of cards, watching intently as they were individually opened, shuffled and stacked ahead of the start of the game. The cameras around me attracted onlookers and I quickly had a crowd encircle me as I played.

I was to play for a pre-set period of time. The casino had specially reserved the table so that I was the only player. It was the dealer versus me. Wanting to develop a feel for the game, I started by making simple judgements based on the cards displayed in each hand: I would ‘stand’ if dealt a 10 and 8 and ‘hit’ if given a 3 and 9 (except where the dealer showed a 4, 5 or 6, in which case I stood), a technique known as ‘basic strategy’.

Even when the player uses basic strategy optimally, the dealer still has a statistical advantage. Over time my stack of chips became increasingly depleted. My feel for how the cards were playing, however, was a lot better than at the start; I was making my decisions more quickly and feeling more comfortable at the table. I made a snap decision to play instinctively, going on how I was experiencing the flow of numbers in my head as a rolling visual landscape with peaks and troughs. When my mental numerical landscape peaked, I would bet more aggressively than when it ebbed.

A change occurred; I began to win more and more individual hands. I relaxed and began to enjoy the game much more than I had been. At a key point I was dealt a pair of 7s with the dealer showing a 10. Basic strategy says to hit. Instead I went with my instinct and split the pair, doubling my original bet. The dealer drew a third card, which was also a 7. I asked if I could split this 7. The dealer was surprised – this is extremely unusual play against a dealer’s 10. The card was split and I now had three hands of 7, my original bet trebled, against a 10. The audience of onlookers behind me were audibly tutting. One man loudly remarked: ‘What’s he doing splitting 7s against a 10?’ The dealer proceeded to deal out further cards on each of the three 7s – the first totalled twenty-one. Then more cards for the second-hand: another twenty-one. Finally came the third of the 7s, and once again a winning total of twenty-one. Three consecutive twenty-ones in a single hand against the dealer. In one fell blow I had made up my losses and beaten the house.

I was still glad to leave Las Vegas. It was too hot, too crowded, with too many flashing lights. The only time I had felt comfortable was among the cards. I was feeling increasingly homesick and after returning to the hotel phoned Neil from my room, bursting into tears at the sound of his voice. He told me I was doing fine and should carry on. He was proud of me. I was not to know then that the most important and special episode in the entire trip was just ahead of me.

We flew into Salt Lake City, capital of the state of Utah and home to the Mormon religion, the following day. It was a short drive from the hotel to the city’s public library. The building was extraordinary: six-storey curving, transparent walls covering 240,000 square feet and containing more than half a million books, with shops and services at ground level, reading galleries above and a 300-seat auditorium. With my abiding love of books and memories of the years spent reading for hours in my small local libraries every day, this seemed like paradise to me.

The huge space was infused with daylight and I felt the familiar tingle of tranquillity inside me. Libraries had always had the power to make me feel at peace. There were no crowds, only small pockets of individuals reading or moving from shelf to shelf or desk to desk. There was no sudden loud outburst of noise, just the gentle flicking of pages or the intimate chatter between friends and colleagues. I had never seen or been in any library quite like this before; it really seemed to me like the enchanted palace of a fairy tale.

I was asked to sit on a bench on the ground floor and wait, so I counted the rows of books and the people as they walked quietly by. I could have sat there for hours. The director came and collected me and we rode the elevator to the second floor. Here there were rows upon rows of books for as far as the eye could see. An elderly man approached and shook my hand. He introduced himself as Fran Peek, father and full-time carer of his son, Kim.

Kim Peek is a miracle. When he was born in 1951, doctors told his parents that he would never walk or learn and that they should put him in an institution. Kim was born with an enlarged head and a water blister inside his skull that damaged the left hemisphere, the side of the brain involved in such critical areas as speech and language. A 1988 scan by neuroscientists found that he had no corpus callosum, the membrane separating the brain’s two hemispheres. Yet he was able to read at sixteen months and completed the high school curriculum by age fourteen.

Kim has memorised a vast amount of information from more than a dozen subjects over the years, ranging from history and dates to literature, sports, geography and music. He can read two pages of a book simultaneously, one with each eye, with near perfect retention. Kim has read more than 9,000 books altogether and can recall their entire content. He is also a gifted calendrical calculator.

In 1984, Kim and his father met producer and screenwriter Barry Morrow at a conference meeting of the Association of Retarded Citizens in Arlington, Texas. The result was the movie
Rain Man
. Dustin Hoffman spent the day with Kim and was so awed by his abilities that he urged Fran to share his son with the world. Since that time, Kim and his father have criss-crossed the US and talked to more than a million people.

This was to be a moment I had long waited for; it would be the first time in my life that I had met and spoken with another savant. Fran had told his son who I was and why we were coming to meet them. The choice of the city’s public library for our meeting was a no-brainer; for both Kim and myself libraries are a special place, full of quiet, light, space and order.

After meeting Fran I was introduced to Kim. Standing close to his father, Kim was a heavy-set, middle-aged figure with a mop of greying hair and piercing, inquisitive eyes. He quickly held my arms and stood very close to me. ‘Give him your birth date,’ suggested Fran. ‘31 January 1979,’ I said. ‘You turn sixty-five on a Sunday,’ replied Kim. I nodded and asked for his birth date. ‘11 November 1951,’ he replied. I smiled broadly: ‘You were born on a Sunday!’ Kim’s face lit up and I knew that we had connected.

Fran had a surprise for me: the Oscar won by
Rain Man
’s screenwriter Barry Morrow which Morrow generously gave the Peeks to take on their speaking tours. I held the statuette carefully in both hands; it was much heavier than it looked. I was asked to sit with Fran and talk about Kim’s childhood, so we walked over to a corner with comfortable leather chairs and sat while Kim was given a book to read. Fran spoke with passion about the reaction of the doctors to his young son’s problems: ‘We were told to put him in an institution and forget about him.’ A brain surgeon even offered to lobotomise Kim to make it easier to institutionalise him.

I wanted to know more about Kim’s life today and asked Fran to describe a typical day’s routine. ‘Kim speaks to his mother on the phone every morning and he comes here every day and reads for several hours. In the evenings we go visit an elderly neighbour of ours. Kim reads to her.’

I asked about Kim’s speaking tours. ‘We always travel together and never ask for any money. We visit places like schools, colleges and hospitals. Kim can tell them almost anything they want to know: dates, names, statistics, zip codes, you name it. The audience asks him all sorts of questions and he always comes out with so much information, more than I ever knew he knew. He hardly ever gets stuck for an answer. His message is this: “You don’t have to be disabled to be different, because everybody’s different.” ’

We finished the interview and I was able to walk with Kim alone around the different shelves of the library. Kim held my hand as we walked. ‘You’re a savant like me, Daniel,’ he said excitedly and he squeezed my hand. As we walked among the shelves I noticed that Kim would pause briefly and take a book from the shelf, flick through a few pages as if already familiar with its contents, and return it. He would sometimes murmur a name or date out loud as he read. Every book dealt with non-fiction topics; novels did not seem to interest him. It was something else that we had in common.

‘What do you like doing here most, Kim?’ I asked him and without saying a word he took me over to a section with rows of thick, red leather-clad books. They were phone directories for every town in Salt Lake City. Kim pulled one off the shelf and sat himself down at a nearby desk. He had a notebook and pen with him and proceeded to copy several names and numbers from the directory into his book. I watched and asked him if he liked numbers too; he nodded slowly, absorbed in his notes.

I sat with Kim and remembered that Fran had told me Kim enjoyed being given questions related to historical dates and figures. History was one of Kim’s favourite topics. ‘What year did Victoria become Queen of England?’ I asked. ‘1837,’ replied Kim in an instant. ‘How old would Winston Churchill be if he were alive today?’ ‘130’. ‘And what day of the week would his birthday fall on this year?’ ‘It would be a Tuesday, the last day of November.’

With Fran and the crew’s supervision we were then taken down to the library’s ground floor where Kim pointed to the different rows of shelves and explained which books they contained. We walked out into bright mid-afternoon sun and then stood, Kim once more clasping my hands in his. Standing close to me, he looked into my eyes and said: ‘One day you’ll be as great as I am.’ It was the best compliment I had ever received.

I agreed to meet Kim and Fran later that evening for supper at a local restaurant. Kim recounted his memory of meeting Dustin Hoffman and Hoffman’s amazement at Kim’s abilities and warm character. Both father and son emphasised the importance of continuing to share Kim’s abilities and his message of respect for difference with as many people as possible.

We left Kim and Fran in Salt Lake City with considerable reluctance. Each member of the crew said how much they had taken away from the experience of meeting Kim and his father. Their story of unconditional love and of dedication and perseverance in the face of adversity was extremely inspiring. For me, it had been a simply unforgettable experience. Kim reminded me of how fortunate I was, in spite of my own difficulties, to be able to live the sort of independent life that he cannot. It was equally a joy to find someone who loved books and facts and figures as much as I did.

As we flew home, I was left with several thoughts. Kim and I had much in common, but most important of all was the sense of connection I think we both felt during our time together. Our lives had in many ways been very different and yet somehow we shared this special, rarefied bond. It had helped to bring us together and on that day we reminded one another of the extraordinary value of friendship. I had been moved by the enthusiasm with which he and his father had welcomed me and with which they had openly and candidly shared their story. Kim’s special gift is not only his brain, but also his heart, his humanity, his ability to touch the lives of others in a truly unique way. Meeting Kim Peekwas one of the happiest moments of my life.

12

Reykjavík, New York, Home

After my return to the UK, the programme makers had one last challenge for me: to learn a new language from scratch in one week in front of the cameras. They had spent several months researching various possibilities, before finally settling on Icelandic – an inflected language, largely unchanged since the thirteenth century and comparable to Old English, and spoken today by around 300,000 people. Here is a written example, to give an idea of what it looks like:

Mörður hér maður er kallaður var gígja. Hann var sonur Sighvats hins rauða. Hann bjó á Velli á Rangárvöllum. Hann var ríkur höfðingi og málafylgjumaður mikill og svo mikill lögmaður að engir óóttu löglegir dómar dæmdir nema hann væri við. Hann átti dóttur eina er Unnur hét. Hùn var væn kona og kurteis og vel að sér og þótti sá bestur kostur á Rangárvoöllum.

There was a man named Mord whose surname was Fiddle; he was the son of Sigvat the Red, and he dwelt at the ‘Vale’ in the Rangrivervales. He was a mighty chief, and a great taker up of suits, and so great a lawyer that no judgments were thought lawful unless he had a hand in them. He had an only daughter, named Unna. She was a fair, courteous, and gifted woman, and that was thought the best match in all the Rangrivervales.

Excerpted from
Brennu-Njáls Saga (The Saga of Burnt Njál)
, Iceland’s most famous saga, dating from the thirteenth century.