Was this same face the one I had been compelled to look at for so many years? I was another person, and the face must belong to someone else. Nevertheless I washed and made it up as usual and took the habitual care with my long hair. That hair! Even as a little girl it was my bane, always long and soft and tangled. In those days it was honey yellow and my mother would not cut it, and she coaxed me when I cried and praised me when she had combed it out and tied a ribbon about my head. She made curls when I was small and then long braids and I longed for the day when I was grown up and could cut it all off and I did, as soon as I could, and then let it grow again because he wanted it long. Now I could cut it again, since he would never see it, and then knew at the same moment that I never would cut it, although its length was silver instead of gold. Without caring in the least, my hands did their habitual task and I could not believe, when I looked in the mirror, that I looked the same, after all, but I did.
When I returned to my seat, the stewardess gave me breakfast and I could smell the coffee and bacon and toast. Though the spirit was remote and took no part in any of this, the body performed as usual. O cruel flesh!
And everyone in the jet was awake now and I knew no one and no one knew me, for which I was grateful. The stewardess took the breakfast tray away at last, half-finished, and I tried to read a Japanese novel and then put it away. I did not want a love story or even a story of human beings and I opened my dressing case and took from it a thin book, Science and Human Values, by J. Bronowski. This book I read all morning, my mind working sharply apart from my individual life.
Whether our work is art or science or the daily work of society, it is only the form in which we explore our experience which is different; the need to explore remains the same. That is why, at the bottom, the society of scientists is more important than their discoveries. What science has to teach here is not its techniques but its spirit; the irresistible need to explore. … For this is the lesson of science, that the concept is more profound than the laws and the act of judging more critical than the judgment. In a book I wrote about poetry I said:
“Poetry does not move us to be just or unjust, in itself. It moves us to thoughts in whose light justice and injustice are seen in fearful sharpness of outline.”
What is true of poetry is true of all creative thought. And what I said then of one value is true of all human values. The values by which we are to survive are no rules for just and unjust conduct but are those deeper illuminations in whose light justice and injustice, good and evil, means and ends, are seen in fearful sharpness of outline.
Here the book ended and I closed it, and was grateful for a thinking mind that spoke to mind. How grateful indeed am I to my scholarly parents, those two who from my earliest years taught me by their example to find release and courage and strength in the use of the mind! Whatever the individual sorrow and however absolute the individual solitude, the mind, trained in use and by use, continues to explore. I carried within my skull my own implement. I need not, I must not, retreat or pause or cease to grow because I walk my way alone.
A strange peace, warm and alive, flowed through me. I leaned my head back against the seat and closed my eyes. I remember smiling to myself, though I do not know why. It was as though we had communication, he and I, through thought and silence, instead of words.
The day wore on and still I did not speak to anyone. Then in the middle of the afternoon, my seat mate asked if he might tell me that he recognized me. I was reluctant to acknowledge recognition, but I have never been able to lie comfortably and it was not worth the effort now, and so I thanked him, and said yes, it was I. It became necessary then to talk politely and casually, but I could still be solitary, not mentioning the reason why I was here, and I asked him about himself. I do not remember his name, it seems impossible to remember anything specific about that journey, and I doubt I would recognize his face again if I saw him. He was tall, because I had to look up when I spoke, and he had a lean western sort of face. The one thing I do remember was that he was traveling for the Wells Fargo Bank and that roused a vague historical interest. Wells Fargo is a romantic name in American history, but of banking I know nothing beyond the needs of every day.
Encouraged by my ignorance, the traveler explained to me with a dry vivid clarity exactly what his task was, and I grasped the significance of international banking, particularly in our modern world. He had been to Singapore and Hong Kong and other cities that I knew well, but he saw them in a light entirely new to me, in areas unknown, where men manipulate the exchange of currencies and provide capital and create power as they see fit. I listened with an interest that was first listless and then superficial and finally real, “the irresistible need to explore.” I forgot myself, almost, and was surprised when the voice of the radio over our heads announced that we had arrived in Honolulu. I saw then that it was night again. We had run through a whole day in a short space of time and were once more entering our own country.
The usual bustle of disembarking and lining up for customs inspection took place and I do not remember that. What I do remember was again an experience. For while I waited, deeply aware again of being alone, a customs official came to me and asked me to step aside. I did so, and he leaned across the counter to speak in a low voice.
“I don’t want to hold you up, but there’s something I want to talk about, confidentially.”
I was surprised out of myself again. I had never seen this man before, a big burly fellow, a kind round face, very American.
“You see,” he said, his voice low, “I have a retarded daughter.”
Ah, now I knew why he had drawn me aside! I am accustomed to having people take me aside and tell me this. Everywhere in the world I have had the same experience. “I want to tell you — I have a child—”
“Tell me about her,” I said.
I listened while he talked, and though I heard every familiar word, I was filled with inner wonder. How could it be that at this very moment when I needed desperately to be made to want to live, this man should be here, recalling me to life? For much of my life has been spent in working with and for those who are the parents of retarded children and for their children. This has been my destiny. Yet in the last hours, ever since my daughter’s voice had come to me over the telephone in the early morning in Tokyo, I had not once remembered this part of my life. Now here it was, claiming me again.
“You see,” the man was saying, “it’s this way. My wife and I are having an argument. She says that Americans always put their retarded children into institutions because it’s better for them there. And she says that we ought to be doing what Americans do, now that Hawaii is a state. And I say that our girl is no trouble — she’s gentle and quiet and she’d be lonesome in an institution.”
“Would your wife be happier if she were there?” I asked.
“No, she cries when she talks about it but she says it would be better for the girl.”
“Do you want her there?”
“Me? It would break my heart.”
I considered. “What would happen if both of you happened to die? Who would take care of your daughter?”
“Plenty! My wife’s Hawaiian. She’s got one of these big Hawaiian families. They’d all take care of our girl. Matter of fact, they get mad when we talk about an institution. It’s just that my wife—”