by André Gide
Undeniably the poor child was covered with it, and I could not avoid a feeling of disgust when thinking that she was pressed against me for such a long time in the carriage.
When I came back in two minutes later, after having cleaned myself up as best I could, I found my wife melted into a chair with her head in her hands, sobbing.
“I did not plan for you to endure such a test,” I said to her tenderly. “In any case the hour is getting late, and we cannot see sufficiently. I will sit up tonight and tend to the fire which the little girl will sleep next to. Tomorrow we will cut her hair and clean her up properly. You do not have to begin taking care of her until you can look at her without horror. And I beg you to please not speak about this to the children.”
It was time to eat. Our daughter Rosalie served us while giving a hostile look to my protégé, who greedily devoured the bowl of soup that I held for her. The meal was silent. I wanted to tell the story of my adventure, to speak to the children and move their emotions by making them understand and feel the force of the events that happened, to excite their pity and their sympathy for the girl that God had invited us to receive. But I was afraid of reviving the irritation of Amélie. It seemed as if the order had been given to move forward and to forget the events that had occurred, despite the fact that certainly none of us would be able to think about anything else.
I was extremely moved when, more than an hour after everyone went to bed, and Amélie had left me alone in the room, I saw my little Charlotte open the door and walk toward me with bare feet and wearing her nightshirt. She threw herself around my neck and restrained me savagely while murmuring,
“I did not say good night to you.”
Then, pointing her little index finger at the blind girl who was resting innocently and whom she was curious to see before going to sleep, said,
“Why did I not kiss her good night?”
“You can kiss her tomorrow. For the present let us leave her. She is sleeping,” I said while walking her back to the door.
Then I sat down again and worked until the morning, reading and preparing my next sermon.
“Certainly,” I thought, “Charlotte was much more affectionate today than her older siblings. But has not each one of them changed since they were her age? Jacques has grown up and has become so distant and so reserved. One believes them to be tender, but they cajole, coax, and cuddle.
27 February
The snow fell even more abundantly last night. The children are delighted because soon, they say, we will be forced to leave the house by the windows. In fact this morning the door was blocked, and we had to go out through the laundry. Yesterday I assured myself that the village had sufficient provisions because, without doubt, we are going to be isolated from the rest of humanity for some time. This is not the first winter that the snow has blocked us, but I do not remember ever seeing it so deep. I will take advantage of this and continue the story that I began yesterday.
I said that I did not think much about what place this handicapped girl would occupy in our house when I brought her here. I knew there was resistance from my wife, and I also knew that both the disposable space in it and our resources were very limited. I had acted, as I always do, not so much guided by principles but from a natural disposition without trying to calculate what expense that my impulse would place upon us (this always seemed to me to appear anti-evangelic). But relying on God is one thing while forcing obligations on others is another. It soon appeared to me that I had given Amélie a heavy task, so heavy that I was at first confused by it.
I did my best to help her with cutting the hair of the little girl which I saw that she had only done with disgust. But when it came to washing and cleaning her, I had to leave this task to my wife, and I understood that I would be avoiding the heaviest and most disagreeable kinds of care.
In fact, Amélie did not make the slightest protest. It seemed that she had reflected upon this during the night and had accepted her part in this new burden. She even seemed to take some pleasure in it, and I saw her smile after she had finished getting Gertrude ready. A white bonnet was covering the shaved head upon which I had applied some cream. Some of Sarah’s old clothes and some clean linen replaced the sordid rags that Amélie just threw into the fire. This name of Gertrude was chosen by Charlotte and accepted by all of us right away because we did not know the real name of this orphan or how to find out what it was. She seemed to be a little bit younger than Sarah because the clothes that Sarah had stopped wearing last year fit her reasonably well.
I must confess here the profound disappointment and sinking feeling I felt in those first days. Certainly I had conceived a complete novel about the education of Gertrude, but the reality of the situation forced me to cut back those aspirations. The indifferent and obtuse expression on her face, or rather her absolute blank looks, iced over my goodwill to the core. She stayed all day long next to the fire, on the defensive, and when she heard our voices, or above all when someone approached her, her features seemed to harden. They only ceased being inexpressive when she showed hostility, for if we made a small effort to attract her attention, she would start to groan and grumble like an animal. This sulking only stopped at the approach of mealtime. I served her myself, and she threw herself into what I offered her with a bestial greed that was difficult to watch. And just as love responds to love, I felt a feeling of aversion come over me in front of the obstinate refusals of this soul. Yes, really, I confess that those first 10 days dispirited me and even caused me to be disinterested in her to the point that I regretted my initial reactions and that I wished that I had never brought her here. And what stung the most was that Amélie acted a bit triumphant in front of these feelings that I could not hide from her, and she was more lavish with her care and was in better spirits, it seemed, since she felt that Gertrude had become a burden to me and that her presence among us was mortifying me.
I was in that state of mind when I was visited by my friend, Doctor Martins, of Val Travers, during the course of his rounds to visit sick patients. He was very interested in what I had to tell him about the condition of Gertrude, very much astonished at first that she remained in such a state of mental retardation since she was only blind. But I explained to him that her infirmity was magnified by the deafness of the old woman who up until then was the only person who had ever taken care of her, and who had never spoken to her, such that the poor child remained in a state of total abandonment. He told me that in such a case I was wrong to be dispirited, but I did not really agree with him.
“You want to lay the groundwork,” he told me, “before you can be assured of being on solid ground. Think that everything is chaos in this poor soul and that even the first outlines of it are not yet drawn out. To begin with, connect several touch and taste sensations together like a bundle and attach to them a sound and a word, almost like a label, that you will repeat to her again and again and then you will try to get her to repeat them herself.
“Above all, try not to go too fast. Work with her at regular hours and don’t work too long during each session.”
“You should realize that there is nothing magic about this method,” he added, after having described it to me in great detail. “I did not invent it, and others have applied it already. Don’t you remember when we were together studying philosophy in school that our professors taught us about Condillac and his statue where he employed similar tactics? Or perhaps I read about it and another case in some psychological journal. That doesn’t matter. In any case I was struck by a story, and I even remember the name of this poor child who was even worse off than Gertrude, for she was blind and a deaf-mute. A doctor in some county in England took her in towards the middle of the last century. Her name was Laura Bridgeman. This doctor kept a journal, as you should do, recording the progress of the child, or at the least the techniques he used to instruct her at the ve
ry beginning of the process. For days and weeks he persisted in having her touch and feel alternatively two small objects, a pin and then a pen, and then he had her touch a paper which had these two English words, pin and pen, printed in Braille. For some weeks he got no result. Her body seemed uninhabited. But he never lost confidence. He said that he felt like someone who was bent over the edge of a deep, black pit, moving a rope around haphazardly in the hope that someone at the bottom would grab the end of it. He never doubted for an instant that someone was there at the bottom of the chasm, and that sooner or later it would be seize. And then one day, finally, he saw the impassable face of Laura light up with a smile. I think that at that time tears of recognition and love poured from his eyes, and he fell to his knees to thank God. Laura suddenly understood what the doctor wanted from her. She was saved! From that day on she paid attention, and her progress was rapid. Soon she could even instruct herself, and eventually she became the director of an institute for blind people. Or maybe that was someone else, because other cases have been presented recently, and they have been discussed at length in magazines and newspapers with each one wondering more than the other, a bit foolishly in my opinion, if such creatures could be happy. For it is a fact. Each one of these walled up people were happy, and as soon as they could begin to express themselves, they spoke about their happiness. Naturally the journalists were ecstatic, and they took from this a lesson for those who were “enjoying” all of their five senses and who nonetheless had the nerve to complain.”
This was followed by a discussion between Martins and me, because I rebelled a bit about what I perceived to be pessimism on his part. I could not agree that the senses, as he seemed to imply, only served to cause sadness.
“That is not what I meant,” he protested. “I simply mean that the soul of man more easily and readily recognizes beauty, ease, and harmony than disorder and sin, which everywhere tarnishes, degrades, and stains this world, and that the five senses help us recognize this fact. How happy men would be if they did not know evil!”
Then he spoke to me about a tale of Dickens that he believed had been directly inspired by the example of Laura Bridgeman and which he promised to send me a copy of right away. And four days later I received The Cricket of the Foyer which I read with intense pleasure. It is a story, a bit long and a bit pathetic in some parts, of a young blind person whose father, just a poor toymaker, maintained for him the allusion that they lived in comfort, wealth, and happiness. This was a lie that the art of Dickens strives to pass off as pious, but which, thank God! I will not have to use with Gertrude.
On the day after Martins came to see me, I began to put his method to use and did my best to apply it. I regret right now that I did not take notes, as he advised me to do, of the first steps of Gertrude on this uncertain road where I was guiding her at first only gropingly. In those first weeks it took more patience than one would have believed, not only because of the time this initial education demanded, but also of the reproaches that it caused me to encounter. It is painful to me to have to say that these reproaches came from Amélie. If I speak about it here it is not that I hold any animosity or bitterness. I solemnly attest to it for the case where she might read these pages some day. (Did Christ not teach us about giving pardon for offenses immediately after the parable of the lost sheep?) I will say more. At the same time that I was suffering the most from these reproaches, I could not blame her for disapproving of the large amount of time that I consecrated to Gertrude. What I reproached her for, rather, was that she had no confidence that my efforts would result in some kind of success. Yes it was the lack of faith that pained me, but that did not discourage me from continuing. How often did I hear her repeat,
“If you could just get some kind of result.”
And she remained convinced that my effort was in vain, such that it naturally appeared to her improper that I consecrate so much time to this effort that she felt could be employed differently. And each time that I worked with Gertrude, she would let me know that I do not know who or what needed my attention, and that I was spending time with Gertrude that I should have used to help others. Finally, I believe that a sort of maternal jealousy motivated her, for I heard her say more than once,
“You have never done this much for any of your own children.”
And this was true, for if I love my children a great deal, I never believed that I needed to spend a lot of time with them.
I often felt that the parable of the lost sheep was one of the most difficult to understand for certain people who consider themselves to be profoundly Christian. That each sheep in the herd, taken apart, could be more precious in the eyes of the shepherd than all the rest of the herd taken together, this is what they cannot bring themselves to understand. And these words,
“If a man has 100 sheep and if one of them is lost, will he not leave the 99 others alone in the mountains to go in search for the one that is lost?” These words are full of charity, but the people who do not understand them would, if they were to speak frankly, claim that they evoked the most revolting injustice.
The first smiles of Gertrude consoled me completely and repaid me 100 times for my care. For, “This sheep, if the shepherd finds it, I say to you truly, will bring more joy than the other 99 who were never lost.” Yes, I admit honestly, that no smile from any one of my children had ever filled my heart with such seraphic joy than the one I saw break out on the face of this statue one morning, when she suddenly seemed to begin to understand and become interested in what I had tried so hard to teach her for so many days.
The 5th of March. I noted this date like that of a birthday. It was less of a smile than a transfiguration. All of a sudden her features were animated. It was like a subtle light, similar to the crimson glow in the high Alps which, before the dawn, makes the snowy summit that it is outlining and pulling from the night, vibrate. One could say that it was a mystical coloration, and I thought about the pool of Bethesda at the moment when the angel descended and woke up the sleeping waters. I felt a sort of ravishing delight from the angelic expression that Gertrude suddenly took, for it appeared that what she expressed at that instant was not so much intelligence but love. This show of gratitude lifted me up such that it seemed that I was offering to God the kiss I placed on this beautiful forehead.
As much as these first results were difficult to obtain, her subsequent progress was equally rapid. I am trying to remember today the paths that we proceeded upon. It sometimes seemed to me that Gertrude advanced by such leaps and bounds that her progress was mocking my methods. I remember that at first we concentrated upon the qualities of objects rather than the variety of them: the heat, the cold, the warmth, the soft, the bitter, the rough, the supple, the light… Then we concentrated upon movements: to go away, to come back, to lift, to cross, to lie down, to tie, to disperse, to put back together, etc. And then soon we abandoned all methods. I began to speak with her without worrying much about whether her mind always followed me. But slowly, I invited her and provoked her to question me at her leisure. Certainly her mind was working during the time that I left her alone, because each time that I saw her again, there were new surprises, and I felt that her understanding was increasing even in the short period of one night. I thought that it was just like what happens when the warmth of the air and the insistence of springtime triumphs little by little over winter. How many times had I admired the way in which the snow melts. One could say that the blanket wears itself out from underneath, and that its appearance on the top remains the same. Each winter Amélie notices this and tells me that the snow has not changed. One would think it is still thick, when all of a sudden here and there, from place to place, the earth starts to appear and life begins again.
Fearing that Gertrude would wither away like an old woman if she remained next to the fire all the time, I began to take her outside for walks. She would only agree to this if she could hold my
arm. When she first left the house, she was surprised and afraid, and this made me understand, even before she could speak to me about it, that she had never before hazarded out of doors. In the thatched hut where I found her, no one took care of her other than giving her something to eat and helping her to avoid dying, for I don’t dare say living. Her obscure universe was bordered by the walls of this unique room that she never left. On summer days she had barely dared to go near the entryway, when the door remained opened on the great light universe. Later on she told me that when hearing the songs of birds, she imagined them to be a pure effect of the light and the warmth that she felt caressing her cheeks and hands. Without having thought about it precisely, it appeared to her completely natural that hot air would begin to sing like water does when it boils next to the fire. The truth is that she was never bothered by anything, that she paid attention to nothing and lived in a state of profound numbness up until the day that I started taking care of her. I remember her inexhaustible delight when I taught her that these small voices were emanated by living creatures whose only function was to feel and express the sparse joy of nature. (This is the day when she began the habit of saying, “I am as happy as a bird.”) However, the idea that these songs were telling the splendor of a spectacle that she could not contemplate had begun to make her melancholy.