‘But you are treating me. And I am feeling pain.’
‘The pain is a sign of a beneficial response to the crisis. The pain shows that your optic nerve and retina, so long abandoned from use, are becoming active again.’
‘Other doctors have told me that the pain they were inflicting was necessary and beneficial. You are a doctor of philosophy as well?’
‘I am.’
‘Philosophers can explain anything away.’
M- took no offence, indeed was pleased with such an attitude.
Such was the girl’s new susceptibility to light that he had to bind her eyes with a triple bandage, which remained in place at all times when she was not being treated. He had begun by presenting to her, at a certain distance, objects of the same kind which were either white or black. She was able to perceive the black objects without distress, but flinched at the white objects, reporting that the pain they produced in her eyes was like that of a soft brush being drawn across the retina; they also provoked a sense of giddiness. M- therefore removed all the white objects.
Next, he introduced her to the intermediate colours. Maria Theresia was able to distinguish between them, though unable to describe how they appeared to her – except for the colour black, which was, she said, the picture of her former blindness. When the colours were ascribed their names, she often failed to apply the correct name the next time a colour was shown. Nor was she able to calculate the distance objects were from her, imagining them all to be within reach; thus she extended her hands to pick up items twenty feet away. It was also the case, in these early days, that the impression an object left upon her retina lasted for up to a minute. She was obliged, therefore, to cover her eyes with her hands until the impression faded, else it would become confused with the next object presented to her view. Further, since the muscles of the eye had fallen into disuse, she had no practice at moving her gaze, searching for objects, focusing upon them and accounting for their position.
Neither was it the case that the elation felt by both M- and the girl’s parents when she first began to perceive light and forms was shared by the patient herself. What had come into her life was not, as she had expected, a panorama of the world so long concealed from her, and so long described by others; still less was there an understanding of that world. Instead, a greater confusion was now heaped upon the confusion that already existed – a state exacerbated by the ocular pains and feelings of vertigo. The melancholia that was the obverse of her natural cheerfulness came much to the fore at this time.
Understanding this, M- resolved to slow the pace of his treatment; also, to make the hours of leisure and rest as pleasant as possible. He encouraged intimacy with the other two young women living in the household: Fräulein Ossine, the eighteen-year-old daughter of an army officer, who suffered from purulent phthisis and irritable melancholia; and the nineteen-year-old Zwelferine, struck blind at the age of two, whom M- had found in an orphanage and was treating at his own expense. Each had something in common with one of the others: Maria Theresia and Fräulein Ossine were both of good family and imperial pension-holders; Maria Theresia and Zwelferine were both blind; Zwelferine and Fräulein Ossine were both given to the periodic vomiting of blood.
Such company was a useful distraction; but M- believed that Maria Theresia also needed several hours in the day devoted to a peaceful and familiar routine. He therefore took to sitting with her, talking of subjects far from her immediate concern, and reading to her from his library. Sometimes they would play music together, she with bandaged eyes at the klavier, he on the violoncello.
He also used this time to know the girl better, to assess her truthfulness, her memory, and her temperament. He noted that even when her spirits ran high, she was never headstrong; she showed neither the arrogance of her father nor the wilfulness of her mother.
He might ask, ‘What would you like to do this afternoon?’
And she would reply, ‘What do you propose?’
Or he might ask, ‘What would you like to play?’
And she would reply, ‘What would you like me to play?’
When such courtesies were finished with, he discovered that she had clear opinions, arrived at through the use of reason. But he also concluded that, even beyond the normal obedience of children, Maria Theresia was accustomed to doing as she was instructed: by her parents, her teachers, her doctors. She played beautifully, with a fine memory, and it seemed to M- that it was only when she was at the klavier, immersed in a piece familiar to her, that she truly felt free, and allowed herself to be playful, expressive, thoughtful. It struck him, as he watched her profile, her bandaged eyes, and her firm, upright posture, that his enterprise was not without some danger. Was it possible that her talent, and the pleasure she evidently took in it, might be tied to her blindness in a way he could not fully understand? And then, as he followed her hands moving in their practised, easy manner, sometimes strong and springy, at others as leisurely as ferns wafted by a breeze, he found himself wondering how the first sight of a keyboard might affect her. Might the white keys throw her into turmoil, the black ones remind her only of blindness?
Their daily work continued. So far, Maria Theresia had been presented with a mere sequence of static objects: his concern had been to establish and accustom her to shape, colour, location, distance. Now he decided to introduce the concept of movement, and with it the reality of a human face. Though she was well used to M-’s voice, he had so far always kept out of her lines of perception. Gently, he undid the bandages, asking her immediately to cover her eyes with her hands. Then he came round to face her, placing himself at a distance of a few feet. Telling her to take away her hands, he began slowly turning his head from one profile through to its opposite.
She laughed. And then placed the hands she had removed from her eyes over her mouth. M-’s excitement as a physician overcame his vanity as a man that he should provoke such a reaction in her. Then she took her hands from her mouth, placed them over her eyes, and after a few seconds released them and looked at him again. And laughed again.
‘What is that?’ she asked, pointing.
‘This?’
‘Yes, that.’ She was giggling to herself in a manner which, in other circumstances, he would have judged uncivil.
‘It is a nose.’
‘It is ridiculous.’
‘You are the only person cruel enough to have made that observation,’ he said, pretending to be piqued. ‘Others have found it acceptable, even agreeable.’
‘Are all… noses like that?’
‘There are differences, but, charming Fräulein, I must warn you that this is by no means anything out of the ordinary, as far as noses go.’
‘Then I shall have much cause for laughter. I must tell Zwelferine about noses.’
He decided on an additional experiment. Maria Theresia had always enjoyed the presence, and the affection, of the house dog, a large, amiable beast of uncertain species. Now M- went to the curtained door, opened it slightly, and whistled.
Twenty seconds later, Maria Theresia was saying, ‘Oh, a dog is a much more pleasing sight than a man.’
‘You are, sadly, not alone in that opinion.’
There followed a period when her improving sight led to greater cheerfulness, while her clumsiness and error in the face of this newly discovered world drew her down into melancholy. One evening M- took her outside into the darkened garden and suggested that she tip her head backwards. That night the heavens were blazing. M- briefly found himself thinking: black and white again, though happily much more black than white. But Maria Theresia’s reaction took any anxiety away. She stood there in astonishment, head back, mouth open, turning from time to time, pointing, not saying a word. She ignored his offer to identify the constellations; she did not want words to interfere with her sense of wonder, and continued looking until her neck hurt. From that evening on, visual phenomena of any distinction were automatically compared to a starry sky – and found wanting.