As she came out of the museum room, Daisy probed the side of the doorway with her cane and knew she had to make a sharp turn to the right to proceed down the corridor. Just as she did so she bumped head-on into another person moving in the opposite direction.
“Accidenti!” the man cried, dropping the books and papers he was holding in his hands.
“Drat!” Daisy cried, jumping out of her skin.
“English, eh?” the man said with a heavy Italian accent, “can’t you look where you’re going?”
“Well no, I’m blind!”
Daisy raised the handle of her white cane to underline her words.
“Even so: you were not paying attention!”
“I beg your pardon?”
“It is true, no?”
Already the man had picked up his documents and publications from the floor and stepped past Daisy. She could hear his footfalls receding down the corridor behind her. She righted her dark glasses and turned to him.
“Excuse me!?” she called out harshly, intending to hector him about his bad manners.
The man’s footfalls stopped.
But just at that moment Daisy realized in a flash that he’d been right: not only had she not been paying attention, but also he was right not to treat her any differently from anyone else because she was blind. So she repeated in a much softer voice, “Excuse me, you were right, I was not paying attention.”
She took a few steps in his direction and bumped into the man again, softly this time. Apparently he’d just turned around too and walked back towards her. He was a priest of some kind, as she could feel a many-buttoned cassock stretching over his belly.
“I apologize also. It just struck me how crazy this is, me dedicating my whole life to disability studies, and now I’m missing this opportunity to get to know a real-life blind woman!”
“You’re Father Contini, our lecturer! I recognize your voice now.”
“And you’re one of our Irish interns.”
“British, actually. Shall I tell you why I was not paying attention? I just made a momentous discovery, a moment ago, in that gallery back there.”
“A discovery, really? Do you realize that scholars have been studying these collections for almost a thousand years? So I doubt very much that you could have discovered anything new.”
“Well it’s new for me, and I’m very excited, and besides, you have to ask yourself: how many blind people have studied these collections in a thousand years?”
“Not many, I’ll grant you that. So what is it; what can only the blind find out in that gallery?”
“Well, I was probing the funeral inscriptions in there, and it came to me in a flash that in ancient Rome, the blind didn’t need anything like Braille. They could easily learn the normal alphabet from the carved inscriptions all around them, and read those. They could even learn to write, using the wax tablets that were widespread at the time. If you wrote large enough, you could feel with your fingertips the script that you or someone else had scratched into the wax.”
“Interesting. So what exactly is your discovery?”
“That in antiquity, the blind could read and write without a problem. Don’t tell me you already knew that?”
“No, I had never thought of it, I admit. But it stands to reason, yes; it’s not a discovery as such; it’s just a practical inference and it’s purely speculative.”
“You are hard to please, Father Contini!”
“Well I’m sorry, but from a strictly scholarly point of view this is not really… relevant.”
Daisy shrugged: never mind the strictly scholarly point of view! She was thinking of why she’d been in such a hurry in the first place, and decided that the man standing right in front of her could come in handy anyway. She tapped his belly lightly with the back of her hand, which was still holding the cane. “Listen: do you have a moment? I need your help.”
“I was on my way to lunch. That is why I was in such a hurry: I’m famished!”
“And I was on my way to the educational service, to see if I could find someone to help me translate an inscription: it will only take a minute.”
“All right, young lady,” the priest said, “let’s have a look at your inscription, and then you’ll have lunch with me.”
He felt some relief that this lively blind woman was not challenging his authority, and he looked forward to her company: sharing a meal with a pretty woman, blind or not, was never to be sneezed at. Daisy turned around, and sweeping with her cane, she went back into the room, leading the way.
This was another collection of plaster casts, but here they had brought together copies of interesting inscriptions from antique monuments and funerary stones. The blind woman stopped in front of one of them, with the priest by her side, and after putting on her surgical gloves again, she started probing the inscription with rapid movements of her fingertips, and read aloud the words and letters of each line.
N·QVINCTIVS·ↃↃ·L·COMICVS
SIBI·ET·QVINCTIAE·PRIMILLAE
COLLIBERTAE·ET·CONIVGI·SVAE
VIXI·CVM·EA·AN·XXX
The man in the cassock was impressed in spite of himself; his thick dark eyebrows bounced up and down; this was unprecedented, you had to give the blind woman her due.
“Now,” Daisy explained, “I have some Latin from school, like everybody else, and what struck me was the last line: ‘Vixi cum ea annos triginta—I lived with her for thirty years’. Is that correct?”
“Absolutely. Very good.”
“How romantic!”
“I agree: tidings of a good marriage from almost two thousand years ago. What could be more moving?”
“But I have difficulties with the rest.”
“Let me start at the beginning then, yes? Numerius or Naevius Quinctius is the author of the inscription. His praenomen starts with N, and we also learn that he was a comic poet, ‘comicus’. But then the mysterious code ‘ↃↃ L’, or ‘ↃↃ libertus’ tells us that he was a slave, freed by two women: that is the meaning of the inverted Cs. They were probably the sisters of the slave-owner, and they ‘manumitted’ the comedy writer or actor when they inherited him, together with the rest of their brother’s estate.”
“Again, very romantic.”
“It gets even better. The inscription is dedicated to himself, ‘sibi’, and to Primilla Quinctia, his wife, ‘conjugi’, who was freed together with him. And then the man declares, ‘I lived with her for thirty years’. Then she died and he buried her, and commissioned this stone for the grave where he expected to be joining her soon… Is everything clear now?”
“Yes, thank you, kind sir. So:
“I, Numerius Quinctius, freed by two women, comic poet;
“for himself and for Primilla Quinctia,
“who was freed together with him, and who was his wife;
“I lived with her for 30 years… That is incredibly moving!”
Father Contini chuckled, “My dear lady, they know what they’re doing at the Vatican Museums.”
A few moments later they were sitting together at a small table in the museum canteen. This was where the attendants, the staff, the researchers and the interns had lunch. It reminded Daisy of the refectory of her old boarding school, but instead of the din of giggling blind girls, you were overwhelmed by the harsher hubbub of countless loud conversations in Italian all around you. Still, the smell of this place was almost the same—the whiff of watered-down vinegar from the kitchens—and the food was almost as bland. Well, a lot better than in England, but bland compared to the restaurants in town.
The gruff priest turned out to be surprisingly obliging and helpful in assisting his blind table companion; they’d had to choose a menu and collect what they needed at a counter; father Contini had insisted on shuttling back and forth to their table, first with Daisy, then twice with their trays. And now at last they were tucking in.
Daisy was delighted to be with a sighted companion this time. On previous occasions she’d shared her meal with some other blind participants of “the project”, but the fact that they were so young had made her uncomfortable. Well, that and the fact that they were very Irish, and blind too. Now at least she had the feeling she could see through the old priest’s eyes, vicariously: she could ask him where her bread bun had gone, or tell him to describe the view through the window. Wonderful. As for Morag, she thought with a pang of guilt, she was probably sitting at another table somewhere, having a great time with other deaf girls, conversing animatedly in sign language, completely oblivious to the hubbub around her.
“I must confess that I was impressed in spite of myself by your little demonstration, back there, my dear lady. I’m starting to realize how clever you must be.”
“Call me Daisy, Father… But you still think it is not relevant from a scholarly point of view?”
“That’s right: your skill, as extraordinary as it is, proves nothing.”
They both had to lean over the small table and huddle over their spaghetti in order to hear one another. And even so they had to speak loud and clear. Besides, Daisy was struggling hard with her very messy spaghetti Bolognese.
“What I would like to ask you, erm… Daisy: is it normal nowadays, for a blind person, to be so familiar with the Latin alphabet?”
“No, as a matter of fact it is not… As a girl I went to a very special school, where they insisted we should learn ‘Braille and self-reliance’. That was before the war. They wanted us to be able to write an address on an envelope, say, or to use a typewriter. They wanted us to lead ‘a productive life in the real world’, as they called it. So later I studied to become a physiotherapist, and now, at work, I still use these skills on a daily basis.”
“I see! Interesting. But it proves my point exactly: not everyone who is blind could read an inscription the way you just did.”
“True, but I was just trying to imagine an intelligent blind girl in ancient Rome, middle-class and well-educated like me. Now, even if there existed no such thing as Braille, wouldn’t such a girl just naturally find out about all these inscriptions around her in the city, and on the tombs along the roads outside the city?”
“Ah yes, each road outside the gates was literally lined with graves, as it was forbidden to bury people within the city walls.”
“Exactly! And my doppelgänger in ancient Rome would have been as fascinated by them as I was in that collection room just now. So she would have pestered her mother, or her father’s secretary, or the slave that taught her siblings, to please teach her the alphabet, and she would have carried on for as long as it took, until she could read the stones.”
“You make it sound so easy!”
“I’m trying to make it sound inevitable! So what do you think?”
“I’m starting to understand your point of view, but what I would want to see is some written evidence from the past, any inscription or document from antiquity that tells me directly, or even by implication, that a blind individual was ever known to read inscriptions with his or her fingertips.”
“Scusi, Monsignor, I couldn’t help overhearing.”
A man sitting at another small table right next to them said these words, half in Italian, half in English.
“Vanetta! You were eavesdropping!” Father Contini cried, and to Daisy he said, “It’s all right, Vanetta is an old friend, and a great scholar.”
“Possibly I know of a record by implication about such a blind person in antiquity, who could read and write.”
“Really, Vanetta? Well I’m curious: out with it!”
“It is in the Compendium, by Bishop Rorick of Trier. Do you know it, Monsignor?”
“Of course! A well-known historical source for disability studies, although I must confess I never read it in extenso. You know how it is: you see quotations by others all the time and you end up thinking you know the work, but you don’t, really.”
For Daisy’s benefit Contini added, “The Compendium Mirabilium Sanationum is a list of holy relics people could go and visit as pilgrims, to heal specific ailments. This was in the Merovingian age, in the 6th century, when such practices were current.”
“Yes, Monsignor, and at some point Rorick mentions that on his first pilgrimage to Rome, he saw a miraculous stone from antiquity, with an inscription. He calls it the ‘Desiderata stone’. He reports that it was a very powerful relic for healing blindness as well as deafness. Now the interesting part is: he also claims that this Desiderata person, who was supposed to be blind, had carved the inscription herself. Of course many scholars have argued that he makes that claim only because he wants the stone to be a true relic, not a mere inscription…”
“Desiderata!” Daisy exclaimed, interrupting the man at the next table.
“Do you know her, Madam? I mean, have you heard of her before?”
“No, but I was just fantasizing about a doppelgänger in ancient Rome, right? Well, if Desiderata really existed and was blind like me, her family and friends would have called her ‘Desi’ for short. And my name is also Daisy!”
The two men chortled fondly: what a girlish thing to say… and how completely irrelevant!
“There are three questions arising in my mind, my dear Vanetta,” Contini now said very earnestly, “the first one being: is Desiderata a Christian saint? Is she on the list?”
“No, Monsignor, I don’t think so. She must have been a normal Roman woman. But valid point nonetheless.”
“Secondly: do we find her name in the Corpus?”
“I have no idea; I would have to check.”
“Oh, don’t bother, I’ll do that myself, it will amuse me.”
“What’s the ‘Corpus’?” Daisy wanted to know.
“The Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. All the Latin inscriptions—and graffiti—that have ever been found anywhere have been collected in a kind of encyclopaedia by German scholars. If Desiderata is not mentioned in the index of that work, it would imply that the stone, or plaque, mentioned by Bishop Rorick, has never been found.”
“Oh no, it can’t be, that would be such a pity!”
“And the third question, Monsignor?”
“Do we know the name of the church where Rorick saw the stone?”
“I suppose so, yes: that’s the whole point of the Compendium, isn’t it? Go to this church in that town or convent and pray in front of such and such a relic to heal this or that ailment… However, I can’t remember the name of the church, only that it didn’t ring a bell, particularly, which is strange, because I know my Roman churches.”
“Very well. I’ll have to find the relevant heading in the Compendium, and check that detail too. Again, I’ll do it myself, I find this thing intriguing.”
In the meantime they’d finished eating, like all the other people around them; the noise level in the museum canteen had gone down and it sounded like everybody was about to go back to work.
“So what’s the plan, Father Contini?” Daisy asked, “I may be very ignorant, and I’m not sure I understand everything you two gentlemen have been discussing, but you intend to go looking into this thing, right?”
“Yes, my dear Daisy. I propose we meet again tomorrow, same time same place, and have lunch together. Then I should be able to tell you more about Desiderata, and explain all the ins and outs. I have a feeling that you are very passionate about her already.”
Daisy sighed, smiling. “But of course! Wouldn’t it be wonderful to discover a stone that tells us her story? Just like Quinctius the comic poet and his wife Primilla?”
Daisy found Morag at the debriefing right after lunch, or rather, Morag found her, and they sat down next to one another in the little lecture room and waited for the start of the discussion without even attempting to communicate. They’d all spent the morning scattered among the collections, in small groups or on their own. You’d have thought there would not be any new developments to “debrief” by now.
But as soon as Father Cadogan and Sister Elizabeth opened the proceedings, it became clear that there was a small crisis at hand, and that the mood was rather sour. Through the voice of Sister Liz a couple of deaf girls started complaining about being partnered with blind girls all the time. Daisy suppressed a smile: now that she had finally accepted the strange rules of engagement of the “project”, it turned out that other participants found it just as hard to stomach as she had at first.
“Why can’t we stay together and just use our own language?” one of the deaf girls pleaded, “At home, when we go to the Uni and all that, we have to do everything in English all the time. Now that we’re on holidays we’d like to relax.”
“You know why we’re doing this,” Cadogan replied calmly, “we’ve discussed this repeatedly. I know it’s a sacrifice, but I truly believe it’s a beneficial experience for all of you.”
“I agree with you, Father,” Morag said by way of Sister Liz, “I don’t mind being partnered with Daisy at all, on the contrary. And it’s not even like we have to use English all the time, it’s more like using ‘mime’, just the same as with the Italian nuns.”
Daisy was pretty sure Morag was very chummy with the two girls who were complaining. In the canteen she was always sharing a table with some deaf girls; you could smell her and her friends’ distinctive odours when you passed them with your tray. And Daisy assumed that they were always silently chatting in sign language, having a good time. So it wasn’t as if her deaf partner didn’t have the same reasons to complain as the others.
“Very good, Morag,” Father Cadogan exclaimed, “I like the way you call it ‘mime’! So in fact English as such is not really an issue here.”
“Wait a minute,” Daisy now said, “what’s all this about ‘English’? Do I sense a certain hostility towards my mother-tongue? Is this some Irish thing?”
The priest and Sister Liz both tittered; Morag leaned over and pulled Daisy’s earlobe, which meant that the other deaf participants must have been sniggering silently too. But it struck Daisy that she didn’t hear any reaction from the blind in the room, so it wasn’t some Irish thing after all; it must be a deaf thing.
“What?” she demanded, “Did I say something funny?”
“Sorry, my dear Daisy, you couldn’t possibly know. Neither could the other blind in our group. So let me explain. The issue here, is that our deaf friends would rather use sign language than English, and the point is: it’s not the same thing at all. Morag, you know BSL as well as ISL, can you tell our blind friends more about this?”
“Yes, Father, I’ll try. So, as it happens, the British and the Irish have completely different sing languages. ISL, just like the American version, is based on the French system. But BSL, on the other hand, is not: it’s… different. Anyway, the thing is: ISL, ASL and especially BSL are not only completely different languages, but they’ve got nothing to do with English either… For us, English is a foreign language!”
“All right, I had no idea… But in that case, what was Anne Sullivan using when Helen Keller went to college at Radcliffe, for instance, when she interpreted the teachers’ lectures for Helen?”
“She was probably doing just that,” Father Cadogan replied, “interpreting from spoken English into sign-supported English. As it happens, I believe Helen Keller never learned ASL, poor thing. Didn’t she learn to lipread and to use voiced speech?”
“Yes, that is quite incredible: Helen Keller can lipread with her fingertips! And she learned to speak too. It took her more than twenty years to learn to speak in such a way that others could understand her. I mean, don’t forget she is deaf and blind: she really has a handicap!”
“Of course!” Father Cadogan said placatingly, “that’s not the issue here.”
“The issue,” one of the deaf girls said through Sister Liz’s voice, “is that it took the poor creature twenty years to learn to voice English speech properly. That only goes to show how unnatural it is for the deaf. I am certainly not going to break my backside doing the same!”
“But still,” one of the blind boys said, “if you’re talking about communication between the deaf and the blind, lipreading and voicing is a viable solution, definitely.”
“Hah! You only say that because that way you don’t need to make the effort. It’s not fair!”
Daisy recognized the blind boy’s voice; he’d been in her lunch group a couple of times; he was very Irish, meaning rather sarcastic and opinionated. And after he’d bickered for a while with the very Irish deaf girl, Father Cadogan put an end to the debate.
“To get back to the complaints we started with: if you two girls want to team up, I have nothing against it, as long as your blind partners don’t mind being thrown together as well.”
The two blind girls assured him that it would not be a problem. They both could find their way to their digs unassisted by now, or rather, using their canes only, so it was just a matter of choosing the most convenient location of the two.
“Well that’s great, girls, thank you ever so much. Any other teams who’d like to split up, no? Daisy and Morag, you two are good, yes? In that case we’re dissolving just two of our six partnerships, after almost a week… not bad… I’ve seen much worse on this project; we’ve hardly ever had a better set of participants than you people.”
During the priest’s little pep talk, Daisy smiled waggishly and started wriggling her fingers on her lap as if she were typing, then gave a sweep to an invisible return chariot with her right hand. Morag leaned over and fondled her earlobe.
Dear ?orag;
So ,uch to say::: I zas thinking about our biwarre debriefing all afternoon: And suddenly it hit ,e: Inside your head and in your drea,s you ,ust be thinking in sign language; BSL or ISL: Incredible::: People often tell ,e they can’t i,agine hoz ,y ,ind zorks because I’, blind since birth: Even our teachers at school said that: Zell; noz I have the sa,e feeling about YOU; darling ?orag: I can hardly i,agine hoz that ,ind of yours zorks: So you still re,ain a very ,ysterious creature: And ,uch cherished; of course:
Another thing: Today it also hit ,e that in antiquity the blind could read inscriptions by touch: No need for Braille::: I should have knozn that already; after our little experi,ent zith the zax tablets: Anyzay; I deciphered a fascinating stone zith a little help fro, Contini; our lecturer: You ,ust have seen ,e having lunch zith hi, and another scholar: It zas very interesting: Ze discussed a blind zo,an; Desiderata; fro, the 6th century or earlier; zho ,ight have left an inscription so,ezhere in a local church:
Ro,e is a place zhere the stones can speak; and I’ve found out they can have a ,ind of their ozn: I’, hoping to get a