When he was two years old they gave him his first hearing aid. When guests come to the house and see him, you immediately start to explain, even when they ask no questions. It’s the first topic of conversation and sometimes the last as well. Just don’t let them think he’s mentally deficient or backward or abnormal because of the way he expresses himself. You begin to get used to the handicap, it seems natural. There are some educational and social problems, but with good will they can be overcome. The crucial thing is to treat him as if he’s normal, even to hit him from time to time, which I did, sometimes without really sufficient reason.
For he was an intelligent child and at the age of two he was already chattering constantly, looking at your face all the time, at the movement of your lips. If you forget and turn away from him when you’re talking, he touches you to remind you, to make you turn and face him, or he shakes his head with an endearing gesture so sweet it would melt the devil’s heart. All in all, a happy child. Minor problems — like calling him back home when he’s playing outside. No use just shouting, you have to go down and touch him. What exactly did he hear? Even this we were able to discover, thanks to the clever instruments in the clinic. They think of everything there, even educating the parents. They gave us headphones and played us the sounds that they reckoned he heard, so we could understand better, identify with him.
At the age of three we sent him to a nursery near our home. A charming old nurse took care of him. There were maybe five children there altogether and he got along fine. She didn’t really understand him very well, because she was a bit deaf herself, but she gave him warmth and love. She used to put him on her lap and kiss him, carrying him around from place to place as if he were crippled, not deaf. He loved her very much, and always talked about her with love, with enthusiasm. From time to time I found an opportunity to leave the garage for a while during the day and go to the nursery, to try to explain to her and the other children what he was saying, training the children to stand directly in front of him, to open their mouths wide and to speak slowly and distinctly. The children were a little scared of me, but basically they were friendly and helped out. Perhaps I overdid things a bit. Asya told me to abandon these visits, she herself had gone back to full-time work, a little too early perhaps, but it’s hard to judge. At first we were interested in special schools, Asya even thought of trying to find a job in a school of this kind, but we soon saw there was no need. He showed independence and was capable of normal relationships with other children. His ability to express himself was improving all the time. In the evenings I used to remove his hearing aid and talk to him face to face, through lip movements only. There was a time when the hearing aid made him self-conscious, we let his hair grow and he was able to hide it. I made him a smaller earpiece on the lathe in the garage. The business of the hearing aid brought me particularly close to him at that time. Together we dismantled it, I explained to him how it worked, he examined the little microphone, the battery, he seemed to have inherited a technical sense from me.
It was essential not to take him too seriously, essential to joke with him even about his deafness, to expect him to help with the chores, to take out the rubbish or dry the dishes. We were already planning another child. When he was five years old we moved to another house. To his sorrow he was forced to part from the old nurse, he was so at home there. He found it hard to get used to the kindergarten. There were tears in the mornings. But it seemed that things were working out. The Passover seder before his death we celebrated in our new home. Asya’s parents came and various other elderly relations of hers and he sang his part without a single mistake, rolling out the tune in a strong, jaunty voice. We clapped our hands and applauded him. The gloomy, taciturn old grandfather looked at him with great interest, with astonishment, then wiped away a tear and smiled.
Sometimes he used to take out the hearing aid when he wanted to read a book or when he was building something, a tractor or a crane. We used to call him and he wouldn’t hear, buried deep in his own silence. I envied him this ability to break off contact with the world, to enjoy his own personal silence in his own way. There can be no doubt that the handicap speeded up his development. He also knew how to exploit the advantages of his situation. Sometimes he complained of pains in his ears because of loud noises from the hearing aid. We consulted the doctors and they saw this as a good sign, some of the nerves were showing signs of life, but the doctors were able to predict his condition only for the next few years. There was no way of knowing if the noise really disturbed him or if he just enjoyed having silence around him. I agreed to make him a little cut-off switch, to wear under his shirt, beside his heart, so he could now and then switch off the hearing aid without removing it. Of course this was intended only for use in the house.
In the meantime we bought him a little bicycle to ride on the pavement outside the house. We found him new friends in the neighbourhood. He settled down well with them, but sometimes when they got on his nerves he simply switched off the hearing aid. One of the children even came to me once to complain that “Yigal makes himself deaf on purpose when he doesn’t want to give something or join in a game.”
I mentioned it to him, though I was pleased with this evidence of independence.
Why not?
On that Sabbath afternoon, a week before the beginning of the school term, he went to visit a friend of his who lived just four blocks away from us, on the same street. His friend wasn’t at home so he decided to come back, and it seems that he switched off his hearing aid on the way, though I can’t be sure. Suddenly he saw his friend on the other side of the road playing with some children. They beckoned to him to join them, and so he crossed the road, still in total silence. The car coming down the hill, not all that fast (the skid marks were checked), sounded its horn, confident that he’d have time to stop, but Yigal went on crossing the road, in his silence, not running, but at a slow walk directly into the path of the car.
It all happened for him very slowly and in total silence.
The children woke me from my sleep, a dozen little fists hammering at the door. I ran out into the street barefoot and half naked. The ambulance was already there. The children shouted wildly, “Wait, wait, here’s his daddy.” He was still breathing, his eyes were full of blood, the hearing aid was broken, he could no longer hear me.
The two of us are realistic, rational people, we tried to behave reasonably, not to lay blame, not to make accusations. I thought she might say something about the cut-off switch that I’d made for him, but it didn’t occur to her. I hinted at it, and she didn’t understand what I was talking about.
The strange thing is that for a long time, for two or three months after the disaster, we were hardly ever alone. Her parents came immediately from Tel Aviv and at our request they stayed on with us. The father was himself very ill and had to be cared for. Elderly aunts came to help, to cook, to clean the house. It was all taken out of our hands, as if we’d both gone back in time and were children again. I slept in the study, Asya apparently on the sofa in the living room, and all the time there were people moving about the house. Practical matters took on great importance, they absorbed the grief, diverted it. Concern with her lather’s medicines, special diets, above all with the constant stream of guests passing through the house who came not to visit us but Asya’s father.