Brian Friel Plays 2 (56 page)

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant –

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind –

Emily
Dickinson

‘Learning to see is not like learning a new language. It’s like learning language for the first time.’

Denis
Diderot

Molly
By the time I was five years of age, my father had taught me the names of dozens of flowers and herbs and shrubs and trees. He was a judge and his work took him all over the county. And every evening, when he got home, after he’d had a few quick drinks, he’d pick me up in his arms and carry me out to the walled garden.

‘Tell me now,’ he’d ask. ‘Where precisely are we?’

‘We’re in your garden.’

‘Oh, you’re such a clever little missy!’ And he’d pretend to smack me.

‘Exactly what part of my garden?’

‘We’re beside the stream.’

‘Stream? Do you hear a stream? I don’t. Try again.’

‘We’re under the lime tree.’

‘I smell no lime tree. Sorry. Try again.’

‘We’re beside the sundial.’

‘You’re guessing. But you’re right. And at the bottom of the pedestal there is a circle of petunias. There are about twenty of them all huddled together in one bed. They are – what? – seven inches tall. Some of them are blue-and-white, and some of them are pink, and a few have big, red, cheeky faces. Touch them.’

And he would bend over, holding me almost upside down, and I would have to count them and smell them and feel their velvet leaves and their sticky stems. Then he’d test me.

‘Now, Molly. Tell me what you saw.’

‘Petunias.’

‘How many petunias did you see?’

‘Twenty.’

‘Colour?’

‘Blue-and-white and pink and red.’

‘Good. And what shape is their bed?’

‘It’s a circle.’

‘Splendid. Passed with flying colours. You
are
a clever lady.’

And to have got it right for him and to hear the delight in his voice gave me such pleasure.

Then we’d move on to his herb bed and to his rose bed and to his ageratum and his irises and his azaleas and his sedum. And when we’d come to his nemophila, he always said the same thing.

‘Nemophila are sometimes called Baby Blue Eyes. I know you can’t see them but they have beautiful blue eyes. Just like you. You’re my nemophila.’

And then we’d move on to the shrubs and the trees and we’d perform the same ritual of naming and counting and touching and smelling. Then, when our tour was ended, he’d kiss my right cheek and then my left cheek with that old-world formality with which he did everything; and I
loved that because his whiskey breath made my head giddy for a second.

‘Excellent!’ he’d say. ‘Excellent testimony! We’ll adjourn until tomorrow.’

Then if Mother were away in hospital with her nerves, he and I would make our own meal. But if she were at home she’d appear at the front door – always in her headscarf and wellingtons – and she’d shout, ‘Molly! Daddy! Dinner!’ I never heard her call him anything but Daddy and the word always seemed to have a mocking edge. And he’d say to me, ‘Even scholars must eat. Let us join your mother.’

And sometimes, just before we’d go into that huge, echoing house, sometimes he’d hug me to him and press his mouth against my ear and whisper with fierce urgency, ‘I promise you, my darling, you aren’t missing a lot; not a lot at all. Trust me.’

Of course I trusted him; completely. But late at night, listening to Mother and himself fighting their weary war downstairs and then hearing him grope his way unsteadily to bed, I’d wonder what he meant. And it was only when I was about the same age as he was then, it was only then that I thought – I thought perhaps I was beginning to understand what he meant. But that was many, many years later. And by then Mother and he were long dead and the old echoing house was gone. And I had been married to Frank for over two years. And by then, too, I had had the operation on the first eye.

Mr Rice
The day he brought her to my house – the first time I saw them together – my immediate thought was: What an unlikely couple!

I had met him once before about a week earlier; by himself. He had called to ask would I see her, just to give an opinion, if only to confirm that nothing could be done for her. I suggested he phone the hospital and make an
appointment in the usual way. But of course he didn’t. And within two hours he was back at my door again with an enormous folder of material that had to do with her case and that he had compiled over the years and he’d be happy to go through it with me there and then because not only were the documents and reports and photographs interesting in themselves but they would be essential reading for someone like myself who was going to take her case on.

Yes, an ebullient fellow; full of energy and enquiry and the indiscriminate enthusiasms of the self-taught. And convinced, as they usually are, that his own life story was of compelling interest. He had worked for some charitable organization in Nigeria. Kept goats on an island off the Mayo coast and made cheese. Sold storage batteries for those windmill things that produce electricity. Endured three winters in Norway to ensure the well-being of whales. That sort of thing. Worthy pursuits, no doubt. And he was an agreeable fellow; oh, yes; perfectly agreeable. Frank. That was his name. She was Molly. Reminded me instantly of my wife, Maria. Perhaps the way she held her head. A superficial resemblance. Anyhow. Molly and Frank Sweeney.

I liked her. I liked her calm and her independence; the confident way she shook my hand and found a seat for herself with her white cane. And when she spoke of her disability, there was no self-pity, no hint of resignation. Yes, I liked her.

Her life, she insisted, was uneventful compared with his. An only child. Father a judge. Mother in and out of institutions all her days with nervous trouble. Brought up by various housekeepers. For some reason she had never been sent to a blind school. Said she didn’t know why; perhaps because her father thought he could handle the situation best at home.

She had been blind since she was ten months old. She
wasn’t totally sightless: she could distinguish between light and dark; she could see the direction from which light came; she could detect the shadow of Frank’s hand moving in front of her face. But for all practical purposes she had no useful sight. Other ophthalmologists she had been to over the years had all agreed that surgery would not help. She had a full life and never felt at all deprived. She was now forty-one, married just over two years, and working as a massage therapist in a local health club. Frank and she had met there and had married within a month. They were fortunate they had her earnings to live on because he was out of work at the moment.

She offered this information matter-of-factly. And as she talked, he kept interrupting. ‘She knows when I pass my hand in front of her face. So there is some vision, isn’t there? So there is hope, isn’t there, isn’t there?’ Perhaps, I said. ‘And if there is a chance, any chance, that she might be able to see, we must take it, mustn’t we? How can we not take it? She has nothing to lose, has she? What has she to lose? Nothing! Nothing!’

And she would wait without a trace of impatience until he had finished and then she would go on. Yes, I liked her at once.

His ‘essential’ folder. Across it he had written, typically,
Researched
and
Compiled
by
Frank
C.
Sweeney.
The ‘C’ stood for Constantine, I discovered. And it did have some interest, the folder. Photographs of her cycling by herself across a deserted beach. Results of tests she had undergone years ago. A certificate for coming first in her physiotherapy exams. Pictures of them on their honeymoon in Stratford-on-Avon – his idea of self-improvement, no doubt. Letters from two specialists she had been to in her late teens. An article he had cut out of a magazine about miraculous ophthalmological techniques once practised in Tibet – or was it Mongolia? Diplomas she had won in provincial swimming
championships. And remarkably – in his own furious handwriting – remarkably, extracts from essays by various philosophers on the relationship between vision and knowledge, between seeing and understanding. A strange fellow, indeed.

And when I talked to them on that first occasion I saw them together in my house, I knew that she was there at Frank’s insistence, to please him, and not with any expectation that I could help. And as I watched her sitting there, erect in her seat and staring straight ahead, two thoughts flitted across my mind. That her blindness was his latest cause and that it would absorb him just as long as his passion lasted. And then, I wondered, what then? But perhaps that was too stern a judgement.

And the second and much less worthy thought I had was this. No, not a thought; a phantom desire, a fantasy in my head; absurd, bizarre, because I knew only the barest outlines of her case, hadn’t even examined her yet; the thought, the bizarre thought that perhaps, perhaps – up here in Donegal – not in Paris or Dallas or Vienna or Milan – but perhaps up here in remote Ballybeg was I about to be given – what is the vulgar parlance? – the chance of a lifetime, the one-in-a-thousand opportunity that can rescue a career – no, no, transform a career – dare I say it, restore a reputation? And if that opportunity were being offered to me and if after all these years I could pull myself together and measure up to it, and if, oh my God, if by some miracle pull it off perhaps … (
He
laughs
in
self-mockery.
)

Yes, I’m afraid so. People who live alone frequently enjoy an opulent fantasy life.

Frank
One of the most fascinating discoveries I made when I was in the cheese business – well, perhaps not fascinating, but interesting, definitely interesting – one of the more interesting discoveries I made – this was long
before I met Molly – for three and a half years I had a small goat farm on the island of Inis Beag off the Mayo coast – no, no, not a farm for small goats – a farm for ordinary goats – well, extraordinary goats as a matter of fact because I imported two piebald Iranian goats – and I can’t tell you how complicated and expensive that whole process was; and the reason I wanted them, the reason I wanted Iranians, was that in all the research I had done and according to all the experts they were reputed to give the highest milk yield – untrue as it turned out – and because their pelts were in great demand as wall coverings in California – equally untrue, I’m afraid; and although they bred very successfully – eventually I had a herd of fourteen – they couldn’t endure the Mayo winters with the result that I had to keep them indoors and feed them for six months of the year – in Mayo the winter lasts for six months for God’s sake – at least it did on Inis Beag. And of course that threw my whole financial planning into disarray. As you can imagine. And yes, as a matter of interest, they are small animals, Iranian goats. And, as I say, from Iran which, as you know, is an ancient civilization in South West … Asia …

But I was telling you about – what? The interesting discovery! Yes! Well, perhaps not an interesting discovery in any general sense but certainly of great interest to anybody who hopes to make cheese from the milk of imported Iranian goats, not that there are thousands of those people up and down the country! Anyhow – anyhow – what I discovered was this. I had those goats for three and half years, and even after all that time their metabolism, their internal clock, stayed Iranian; never adjusted to Irish time. Their system never made the transition. They lived in a kind of perpetual jet-lag.

So what, you may ask. So for three and a half years I had to get up to feed them at three in the morning my time because that was 7.00 a.m. their time, their breakfast
time! And worse – worse – they couldn’t be kept awake and consequently couldn’t be milked after eight in the evening because that was midnight their time – and they were lying there, dead out, snoring! Bizarre! Some imprint in the genes remained indelible and immutable. I read a brilliant article once by a professor in an American magazine and he called this imprint an engram, from the Greek word meaning something that is etched, inscribed, on something. He said it accounts for the mind’s strange ability to recognize instantly somebody we haven’t seen for maybe thirty years. Then he appears. The sight of him connects with the imprint, the engram. And bingo – instant recognition!

Interesting word – engram. The only other time I heard it used was by Mr Rice, Molly’s ophthalmologist. In that swanky accent of his – ‘engram’. And he was born in the village of Kilmeedy in County Limerick for God’s sake! I really never did warm to that man. No wonder his wife cleared off with another man. No, no, no, I don’t mean that; I really don’t mean that; that’s a rotten thing to say; sorry; I shouldn’t have said that. But I was talking about the word engram and how he pronounced it. That was before any of the operations, and he was explaining to Molly that if by some wonderful, miraculous good fortune her sight were restored, even partially restored, she would still have to learn to see and that would be an enormous and very difficult undertaking.

The way he explained it was this. She knew dozens of flowers; not to see; not by sight. She knew them only if she could touch them and smell them because those tactile engrams were implanted in her brain since she was a child. But if she weren’t allowed to touch, to smell, she wouldn’t know one flower from another; she wouldn’t know a flower from a football. How could she?

And interestingly interestingly this very same problem
was debated three hundred years ago by two philosophers, William Molyneux and his friend, John Locke. I came across this discussion in a Do-It-Yourself magazine of all places! Fascinating stuff, philosophy – absolutely fascinating. Anyhow – anyhow. If you are blind, said Molyneux – he was an Irishman by the way and in fact his wife was blind – if you are blind you can learn to distinguish between a cube and a sphere just by touching them, by feeling them. Right? Right. Now, supposing your vision is suddenly restored, will you be able – by sight alone, without touching, without feeling – will you be able to tell which object is the cube and which the sphere? Sorry, friend, said Locke – incidentally he went to Westminster School where he was flogged regularly – sorry, friend, you will not be able to tell which is which.

Then who comes along to join in the debate but another philosopher, George Berkeley, with his essay entitled
An
Essay
Towards
a
New
Theory
of
Vision.
Another Irishman incidentally; Bishop Berkeley. And actually when I say along came the Bishop, his ‘Essay’ didn’t appear until seventeen years after the discussion I told you about between Locke and Molyneux. Anyhow – anyhow. When the problem was put to the Lord Bishop, he came to the same conclusion as his friends. But he went even further. He said that there was no necessary connection
at
all
between the tactile world – the world of touch – and the world of sight; and that any connection between the two could be established only by living, only by experience, only by learning the connection.