Arrival
1
ARRIVAL
I wasn’t always blind. For about twelve beautiful, colourful years - a lifetime for some creatures, nothing more than an instant for others - I could see perfectly. I didn’t even wear glasses, and year upon year I continued to pass vision tests with flying colours. And now that I have been blind for another long decade - it seems like an eternity - I still can’t decide whether the fact that I once could see is a gift or a curse.
At the age of twelve, I was in a car accident. I woke up in a hospital bed, with a concussion and itchy bandages in front of my eyes. A cold hand touched my arm, my mother’s. Then, a moment later, a warm hand ran through my damp hair, my father’s. My little brother, ten at the time, was hiding behind his legs and didn’t dare coming any closer. Different, he said I looked.
It would stay with me for the rest of my life. Different.
The news was delivered to me carefully, by a doctor with a pleasant voice, but I would not believe him. I waited stubbornly until the bandages came off and I opened my eyes. There was nothing. Nothing to see, nothing to look at, nothing to watch. There was only darkness. I cried then.
Sometimes I tell people that I saw different shades of brown and grey, but that is a lie. Everything was just black. The voice of the doctor seemed to come from far away, as if he was standing at the other end of a tunnel. Glass had pierced through my eyes, he said, and I would never be able to see again. I remember little of the days that followed: the weight of my dad’s hand on my shoulder as he pushed my wheelchair through the hallways of the hospital, his voice quiet and empty; my brother, confused and not daring to address me directly, asking my mother when he and I would play soccer again. My mother’s silence. Then there are the bruises and cuts on my arm where the glass had pierced, the stiches burning, then itching; and finally, the hospital frog sticking to my back as I awoke from nightmares, again and again.
Later I began to wonder if these are truly memories. The characters are frozen, like on photographs, and I watch them, distant and without emotion, as if the memories belong to someone else and I am only a guest, not the host. Not memories, I realized then, with a shock. But images of imagination. My eyes had been reduced to decoration, but my brain invented and guessed; produced and shaped. And although the images of my stay at the hospital were perhaps not entirely real, I carried them with me nonetheless, like a child carries a stuffed bear for comfort. Everything else was dark.
In the beginning, people were always quite disappointed when I mentioned my blurry memories: that’s all I remember. I can’t give you any more details. Sorry. And I was always surprised at the speed with which they recovered. ‘Can’t they do anything about it?’ they asked, all excited. ‘I’ve read an article about these special glasses…’ As if I knew less about my own condition than they did.
I must say though that such scenes are a rarity nowadays. An odd change has occurred that seems to go back years, perhaps even half a decade, but I have only lately begun to notice: People no longer pay close attention to their surroundings. They have begun to see less and less because they are engaged elsewhere. I once found myself on a train thinking that it was utterly, utterly quiet, and then realized that everyone was looking at their phones, submerged in a hectic online world, surrounded by thousands and thousands of voices screaming to be heard in the current.
It made me think of the moment my parents brought me home from the hospital, the dead silence. Neighbours stopped, pointed at us as my dad guided me to the door. I heard their whispers behind our backs, and felt their curiosity even more, even when it was uttered in the privacy of their own homes. Nothing worth remembering ever happened in our neighbourhood, and now it finally had. A boy had gone blind; after a terrible car accident. It was a shock, and people talked about it over a glass of wine at community barbeques.
I also sensed their relief. Not my child. My child was spared.
And I remember my thoughts strolling down a similar path, sinking into similar swamps that were buried somewhere in the dark depths of my mind. Why not that child? Why did it have to be me? As if the gods looked down on us from above the clouds, rolling dices, pointing fingers, finally picking that boy, Will de Graaf, the ordinary twelve-year-old.
What had I ever done to offend the gods?
I pondered over this question – frustratingly, restlessly – years and years later. Not in the beginning. There was nothing to pond over then. My mind was blank, my world bleak. It is hard to describe what I felt during those dark weeks after the accident. I spent them on the sofa, or my bed, staring up at the ceiling I could no longer see. In my mind, I couldn’t do anything anymore. I was useless. Paralyzed. Unwilling to leave the house. My world was suddenly tiny, and I walked the same path every day, from my bed to the sofa and back. I had nightmares and I was utterly terrified to be on my own, and so my father quit his job and stayed with me. Taking care of me seemed to give him purpose, whereas my mother seemed to feel the exact opposite: she didn’t know how to act around me, whether to cry or motivate, help me or give me space. She would come in my room, sit down on my chair by the desk and regard me. Then she would leave again, quietly and with a sigh of relief, as if she’d checked something off a to-do-list. She began to drown herself in work up to the point that I hardly saw her anymore - figuratively speaking of course.
For months it was night. I was very clumsy in those days. I stumbled and fell, walked slowly like an old man. Still I bumped into things - all kinds of things - and bruises spread across my body rapidly. They turned from red to blue, I was told, before scars settled down permanently on my skin.
Mercifully, there were some distractions. First came the sounds, then the smells. I began to pay close attention and got acquainted with the soundtrack of my tedious days: the newspaper hitting the pavement as a cheerful young man threw them towards our doorstep, whistling an unrecognizable tune. My little brother running through the living room with Lego, no longer asking me to join him as I was boring now. My dad squeezing fresh oranges into a thick pulp juice that no one wished to drink but him. My mother leaving the house for work, with the door falling shut behind her, and it spoke a thousand words, telling its own sad story.
The smells were equally fascinating to me. I marvelled at the intensity of them and their richness. Had I really not noticed before how fruity the perfume of my mother smelled, and how chemical the ointments she put on her face? Chocolate suddenly seemed extra sweet, and meat smelled decayed even though, as my father kept reassuring me, it truly was not rotten. I couldn’t swallow it.
And then, after the nightmares, came the dreams. They ruined things for me in the beginning, crushed the little progress I had made after my newly discovered fascination with my other senses. I will tell you more about them later and you’ll come to understand the large role they would come to play in my life. The power they had over me. The fascination with which I regarded them. Every night I closed my eyes and I could see again. It was a relief to slip away into colourful worlds and a disappointment to wake up at the break of dawn and lose my sight all over again. I began to stay in bed. It didn’t matter to me anyway, day or night, it all looked the same.
I slept and I slept, shutting out the darkness. Different people attempted to get me out of bed – my parents, my little brother, even an uncle I barely knew, and finally the girl next door. None of them succeeded but one.
On a rainy Saturday afternoon there was a knock on my bedroom door. Marseille came in, bringing the light, and my world trembled, not unlike a dream does when it is about to collapse.
In my life, there exists a before and an after. In the middle, there is a river that separates two worlds, two separate lives. The one I led before I went blind could be characterized as unremarkable. In Dutch, we would say: onopvallend. Niets bijzonders.
I grew up in Amsterdam, in an ordinary house that is located somewhere in a neighbourhood within a neighbourhood. It is plain and dull: long, cobbled streets, completely straight, with cars parked on each side and rijtjeshuizen going on endlessly. Our house is neither small nor large, neither expensive nor cheap, and before the accident, so was our family I suppose -- ordinary.
We were neither rich nor poor, neither extremely smart nor extremely stupid. I did well in school, not exceptionally well though, and I seemed to be a good soccer player but not so that I would score a lot of goals. I was good at some things: building tall towers with Lego blocks, drawing cartoons, and I was a pretty fast runner. I wasn’t very interested in girls - nor were they in me, I think - until I saw Marseille. That would be my beautiful neighbour, not the city.
She was born in Orléans, but her parents named her after the city Marseille. Her father was Dutch, her mother French. They spoke in a foreign tongue. They wore bright clothing, and sandals. They were our new neighbours.
I suppose I am lucky to have seen her. She came a year or so before I went blind, in a large truck, all the way from France. Though when I conjure up the memory, it almost seems as if I saw her through a television screen. I see her looking down at me, grinning as if she is amused, her long, dark hair hanging over her shoulders, and I begin to doubt that I really saw her with my own eyes.
In late May, nearly 13 years ago, a large truck came to an abrupt stop in front of our house, as if the driver wasn’t certain he was at the right address. After a moment, it slowly rolled forward a meter or two until it was parallel to the front door of the house next to ours.
‘The new neighbours!’ my little brother said. ‘Finally!’
Finally. Something exiting was happening in our dull neighbourhood. We had waited for their arrival for days.
We jumped on the sofa and gazed through the window at the white truck. It had a French number plate, yellow as was ours, and I felt a jolt of excitement. I had never been to France. I had never been anywhere.
Doors opened. I saw the woman first, carrying a plant pot as if in need for extra oxygen; on her shoulder hung an expensive looking purse. Then the man, tall and with silver hair. He’d driven the truck himself and parked it in the middle of the road, blocking three cars. We weren’t the only ones gazing at the truck now. From across the street, people stared through windows, and the old lady from four houses down had stopped on the pavement with her dog, to look.
Finally, I saw the girl. She followed her parents reluctantly, almost as if she didn’t want to be there. While her parents unlocked the door, she stared up at the house with crossed arms, her back unnaturally straight.
How old was she? I wondered. 13, 14, 15? Definitely older than me.
Her hair was long and black, nearly reaching her waist. It stood in dark contrast against her pale skin. She wore a colourful dress with red and yellow flowers that would have looked childish on every other person, but somehow seemed to fit her. Then she moved and disappeared out of my line of sight.
Another car arrived, again with French plates. Their friends, I learned later, who had come to help with the carrying, the lifting, and shoving and dragging. For some time, we watched them going back and forth between the truck and the entrance, their faces sweaty. My brother grew bored after a while and went back to his room, but I stayed there, amazed about what came out of the truck. Boxes carrying names, African vases, a large Buddha statue. Then larger things came: white sofas, a colonial table, four grey chairs. I waited for the girl, but she had yet to make a reappearance.
My mother coughed behind me. ‘Staring is rude,’ she said sternly. ‘Go see if you can help them.’
Hesitatingly I left the house. In front of me, the air vibrated with French melodies. I walked towards the man with the silver hair who had just disappeared inside the back of the truck, trying to remember the French word for welcome, but then I saw the girl. She was sitting on a white bench next to the front door of her new house, her face catching the last rays of the late afternoon sun. Her eyes were closed.
I changed my direction.
She had tied her hair back in an elegant knot. Her hands rested on her lap as if in prayer.
She opened her eyes when I blocked her sunlight and my breath caught. They were large and clear, but most of all it was the colour that had me gaping, emerald green.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Hoi,’ I replied hoarsely.
‘You live next door?’
‘Yes.’
She nodded and indicated with her hand that I had to move aside. The light caught her face and she closed her eyes again. I realized suddenly that I had no problem understanding her.
‘How come you speak Dutch?’ I asked.
She shrugged. ‘My dad is Dutch, my mother French. I speak both languages.’
‘Well,’ I said, trying not to sound shy. ‘Welcome to our neighbourhood….uh…Bienvenu.’
She looked up then, an amused expression in her eyes. ‘Merci.’ She regarded me a moment. ‘Would you like to help me carry some of my things up to my room?’
I nodded, delighted that I could be in her presence a little while longer. She stood and I noticed with a shock that she was taller by a head. Feeling the age difference between us with every bone, I followed her inside the house, where boxes piled up in the living room. I barely noticed she handed me a lamp and a painting. She took a heavy box herself.
We climbed the staircase, steep and narrow, as is usual in Dutch houses. My hands began to itch and I was afraid the lamp would slip from my hands and shatter in a thousand pieces.
The room we entered was small and dark, with depressing brown walls. There were already some items in it, but not many: a few books and boxes, the frame of a bed, a cactus. I put the lamp in a corner, and the painting against the wall. ‘Careful,’ she said, ‘I bought it in Greece.’
The painting portrayed a white city with blue rooftops that looked out over the blue Aegean. She saw me looking. ‘Have you ever been there?’
I shook my head.
She leaned against the wall and regarded me. ‘And France?’
‘No,’ I told her, wishing it were not so. ‘Just in Amsterdam.’
Her forehead wrinkled at this. ‘Surely you have left Amsterdam once.’
I heard the surprise in her voice. ‘Well, yeah. But just for family visits, and IKEA.’
Her laugh, lovely and soft, echoed through the empty room and I felt pleased. I have made her laugh.
I looked at the painting once more. It seemed too bright against the brown wall.
‘I’m going to paint them white,’ she said, following my gaze. ‘The walls. And then I want a vintage carpet, grey I think, and a Shabby Chic closet.’
I had no idea what all of this meant, but I couldn’t help but think of my own room; glow-in-the-dark stickers sparkled at the sealing, under them Lego castles spread across the floor. Superman figures lined the windowsill, peaking in from behind red curtains. My cheeks burned in shame and I swore never to show her any of it.
I cleared my throat. ‘And this,’ I said, pointing at the painting. ‘Where should this go?’
She considered for a moment. ‘Above my bed, I think.’
’I would hang it next to the window.’ It sounded more confident than I felt. ‘In the morning, it will catch the light.’
She wasn’t really listening. ‘I had a bigger room in Orléans, you know,’ she said and sighed. ‘I didn’t really want to come to the Netherlands. All my friends are in Orléans.’ Her voice had taken on a bitter edge. ‘But my dad got offered a job at the Rijksmuseum. Have you ever been?’
I knew that it was Amsterdam’s grandest museum, hosting a collection of famous artworks that included Vermeer’s The Milkmaid and Rembrandt’s best-known masterpiece, the Night Watch. But I had never been.
I shook my head once more. She must be thinking I’m boring.
But then she surprised me.
‘I’ll take you some time,’ she said, her voice sweet again. ‘It’ll be easy for us to get in, and cheap. My dad will work there as a curator.’
‘All right,’ I said with a large grin. I couldn’t hide my excitement and my voice was high.
She smiled and her green eyes were bright, nearly the same colour as the Aegean. ‘Bye the way,’ she said, ‘My name is Marseille.’
She didn’t keep her promise. After that first day, I saw little of her. The French family friends left soon. The truck was already gone, replaced with a shiny Volvo with a Dutch plate. The next few weeks were accompanied by noises of renovation; nails that were hammered into the wall, tables moved, sofas pulled and shoved. Sometimes, when both of our windows were open, I heard her humming French melodies, always slightly out of tune but not without charm. And I would wonder if she had hung her painting on the wall. She later told me it had found a place next to the window, as I had suggested. ‘How did you know?’ she said. ‘That it would look so good there?’
I remember shrugging. ‘I don’t know. I imagined it hanging there and knew it would look great.’
I knew the rhythm of her daily life by then, even without knowing her. It was inevitable. You see, when you are neighbours in a city like Amsterdam and your brick houses are attached to one another, getting a look into each other’s private lives is an unpreventable consequence. You hear the television and the radio through the thin walls. You hear loud arguments and telephone calls as the odour of fried food drifts through the open window. You even know what time your neighbours are going to bed or get up because you hear their footsteps on the wooden stairs. And in summer, when everyone is having dinner outside and only thin fences separate our small gardens, you can hear every single conversation. Although in this case, the latter hardly played a role as my new neighbours conversed in French mostly. Good for them, I remember thinking.
She went to a different school, non-Christian. And soon she brought girls home with her, new friends. How I longed to be one of them! From my room I would see her sometimes, with a book in the backyard. I would rush down the stairs, jump the last three steps and run into the garden. ‘Hoi,’ I would say, stepping up a plant pot to lean over the wooden fence that was nearly as tall as me.
She would look up, distracted, but with a smile. ‘Bonjour, Will.’
‘Are we still going to the museum?’ I would ask, feeling small and young under her large green eyes.
‘Yes, we will,’ she would say. ‘Soon. I promise.’
And her eyes would turn towards her book again and I would go back inside the house, pleased but impatient. Do they have a different concept for soon in France?
On cold autumn and winter days, I wouldn’t see her for longer periods of time. They felt like an eternity to me, a lifetime. I caught only glimpses of her: when she left the house in a green coat, her black hair nearly reached her waist while she held an umbrella that shielded her face. When she cycled off in the grey rain. When she crossed the street, her hand wrapping a scarf around her neck. When she came back at the end of the day, with the whole world reflected in her sunglasses.
You are beautiful, I thought as I gaped down at her from my bedroom window. It would be the last time I’d ever see her.
As if she heard me, she looked up. When her green eyes found mine, she smiled and raised a hand in greeting. Then she went inside the house.
I didn’t know her then, but I loved looking at her, at Marseille.
