One on One. Craig Brown

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СКАЧАТЬ Paine and Dunne and Rogers play. The blind couldn’t play worse,’ he jokes.

      They go upstairs to see his bedroom. ‘Try to picture, Helen, what we are seeing out of these windows. We are high up on a snow-covered hill. Beyond, are dense spruce and firwoods, other snow-clad hills and stone walls intersecting the landscape everywhere, and, over all, the white wizardry of winter. It is a delight, this wild, free, fir-scented place.’

      He shows the two women to their suite. On the mantelpiece there is a card telling burglars where to find everything of value. There has recently been a burglary, Twain explains, and this notice will ensure that any future intruders do not bother to disturb him.

      Over dinner, Twain holds forth, ‘his talk fragrant with tobacco and flamboyant with profanity’. He explains that in his experience guests do not enjoy dinner if they are always worrying about what to say next: it is up to the host to take on that burden. ‘He talked delightfully, audaciously, brilliantly,’ says Helen. Dinner comes to an end, but his talk continues around the fire. ‘He seemed to have absorbed all America into himself. The great Mississippi River seemed forever flowing, flowing through his speech, through the shadowless white sands of thought. His voice seemed to say like the river, “Why hurry? Eternity is long; the ocean can wait.”’

      Before Helen leaves Smithfield, Twain is more solemn. ‘I am very lonely, sometimes, when I sit by the fire after my friends have departed. My thoughts trail away into the past. I think of Livy and Susy and I seem to be fumbling in the dark folds of confused dreams …’

      As she says goodbye, Helen wonders if they will ever meet again. Once more, her intuition proves right. Twain dies the following year. Some time later, Helen returns to where the old house once stood: it has burnt down, with only a charred chimney still standing. She turns her unseeing eyes to the view he once described to her, and at that moment feels someone coming towards her. ‘I reached out, and a red geranium blossom met my touch. The leaves of the plant were covered with ashes, and even the sturdy stalk had been partly broken off by a chip of falling plaster. But there was the bright flower smiling at me out of the ashes. I thought it said to me, “Please don’t grieve.”’

      She plants the geranium in a sunny corner of her garden. ‘It always seems to say the same thing to me, “Please don’t grieve.” But I grieve, nevertheless.’

      HELEN KELLER

      AND …

      MARTHA GRAHAM

      66 Fifth Avenue, New York

       December 1952

      Before she taught Helen Keller each new word and phrase, Annie Sullivan used to say, ‘And …’

      ‘AND open the window!’

      ‘AND close the door!’

      Everything life had to offer began with this little word.

      The first word Helen ever learned was w-a-t-e-r. In Helen Keller’s dark, silent childhood, her teacher placed her hand beneath the spout of a well.

      ‘As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten – a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that “w-a-t-e-r” meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! … I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me.’

      Now aged seventy-two, Helen Keller still dreams of being like other women: what must it be like, she wonders, to see and hear? However much she gains the upper hand over her disabilities, there are still many perfectly simple and basic things within easy reach of everybody else that she can never hope to master, or perhaps even to comprehend: dance, for instance.

      She has gained the respect of some of the most distinguished people in the world, but sometimes she thinks she would swap it all for the chance to dance. ‘How quickly I should lock up all those mighty warriors, and hoary sages, and impossible heroes, who are now almost my only companions; and dance and sing and frolic like other girls!’ she confesses to a friend.

      But she abhors self-pity; when she feels it looming, she forces herself to count her blessings. ‘… I must not waste my time wishing idle wishes; and, after all, my ancient friends are very wise and interesting, and I usually enjoy their society very much indeed. It is only once in a great while that I feel discontented, and allow myself to wish for things I cannot hope for in this life.’

      Dance comes to symbolise the carefree land from which she is for ever exiled. ‘There are days when the close attention I must give to detail chafes my spirit, and the thought that I must spend hours reading a few chapters, while in the world without other girls are laughing and singing and dancing, makes me rebellious; but I soon recover my buoyancy and laugh the discontent out of my heart. For, after all, every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in my own way … Every struggle is victory.’

      Still fêted wherever she goes, Helen Keller is taken by a friend to meet the electrifying Grande Dame of modern dance, Martha Graham. Graham is immediately taken by what she calls Helen’s ‘gracious embrace of life’, and is impressed by what appears to be her photographic memory. They become friends. Before long, Helen starts paying regular visits to the dance studio. She seems to focus on the dancers’ feet, and can somehow tell the direction in which they are moving. Martha Graham is intrigued. ‘She could not see the dance but was able to allow its vibrations to leave the floor and enter her body.’

      At first, Graham finds it hard to understand exactly what Helen is saying, but she soon grows accustomed to what she calls ‘that funny voice of hers’. On one of her visits, Helen says, ‘Martha, what is jumping? I don’t understand.’

      Graham is touched by this simple question. She asks a member of her company, Merce Cunningham, to stand at the barre. She approaches him from behind, says, ‘Merce, be very careful, I’m putting Helen’s hands on your body,’ and places Helen Keller’s hands on his waist.

      Cunningham cannot see Keller, but feels her two hands around his waist, ‘like bird wings, so soft’. Everyone in the studio stands quite still, focusing on what is happening. Cunningham jumps in the air while Keller’s hands rise up with his body.

      ‘Her hands rose and fell as Merce did,’ recalls Martha Graham, in extreme old age. ‘Her expression changed from curiosity to one of joy. You could see the enthusiasm rise in her face as she threw her arms in the air.’

      Cunningham continues to perform small leaps, with very straight legs. He suddenly feels Keller’s fingers, still touching his waist, begin to move slightly, ‘as though fluttering’. For the first time in her life, she is experiencing dance. ‘Oh, how wonderful! How like thought! How like the mind it is!’ she exclaims when he stops.

      Helen Keller and Martha Graham appear together in a documentary film, The Unconquered, in 1953. Still wearing her hat, Keller stands in the middle of a group of dancers ‘feeling’ the dance, while Graham and her dancers circle around her. She has a look of ecstasy СКАЧАТЬ