A Silent Death

by Peter May

  Afterwards she sat for what seemed like an age in a waiting room with her parents until Doctor Esteban called them into his office. His manner was very matter-of-fact, but there was a certain gravitas in his tone when he addressed them that somehow telegraphed the bad news to come. He directed his comments directly to her parents as if she were not there.

  ‘I believe your daughter is suffering from something called retinitis pigmentosa, sometimes known as RP. When considering this in conjunction with the continued deterioration of her hearing, I am inclined to believe that she has a condition known as Usher Syndrome.’

  It was a name that meant nothing to any of them, though it was one that would come to haunt Ana, not only in the days to come, but for the rest of her life.

  He said, ‘Assuming my diagnosis is confirmed, Ana will become not only profoundly deaf, but will also lose her sight. She will become deaf and blind.’

  Ana was devastated. She had more or less come to terms with the possibility that she would at some future time lose her hearing altogether. But to become blind as well? It was unthinkable. Unimaginable. She remembered Sergio’s words from their first meeting. I think losing your sight would be the worst of all. I can’t imagine not being able to see the world around me. And when, a week later, the diagnosis was confirmed by a senior consultant in Malaga, she was plunged into the deepest depression. An abyss from which she could never imagine any way out.

  It was a genetic condition, the consultant said. There was no cure. Nothing to be done. And the prognosis itself was uncertain, impossible to predict how quickly or slowly her sight would deteriorate. The only certainty was that blindness, along with eventual deafness, would come. Whether it was weeks, months or years was in the lap of the gods.

  He had suggested that Ana start preparing for it immediately. There was, he told them, a form of sign language specifically designed for deaf-blind people. It was called tactile signing. A little like sign language for the deaf, except that the movement of the hands was conveyed by touch rather than sight.

  It was with considerable reluctance that Ana’s father allowed her, then, to return to the centre in Estepona. They could, they had told him, obtain the services of a special instructor to teach her the basics of tactile signing, preparing her for future blindness. And so with great trepidation Ana went back for the first time in weeks. She had not seen or heard anything of Sergio since the tapas they had shared that fateful night, and with the knowledge that her future promised only darkness, she was afraid to face him. Afraid that when he realized how dependent she would be on him in any future relationship, he would turn away. After all, who in his right mind would want to take on that kind of responsibility for another human being? Living your own life was hard enough.

  Her father drove her to the centre and told her he would return to collect her later, before it got dark. She was taken into an office at the back of the building, where the centre’s administrator told her that they had applied on her behalf for the services of a touch-signing instructor. But the instructor would not arrive for another week, and could only come once a fortnight. So it was important for Ana to have someone to practise with in between times.

  When her session with the administrator was over, Ana ventured back out into the big lounge. It was busy tonight. Elderly deaf men and women gathered around tables, signing and laughing and drinking coffee together. But her eye was drawn, almost involuntarily, towards the little group of blind people who sat near the door, white sticks resting against chairs, a guide dog sleeping against the back wall. They had no need to sign, for none of them was deaf. However bad it might be for any one of them, it would be worse for Ana. She felt tears of self-pity gathering in her eyes.

  ‘Hello stranger.’

  She spun around to find herself face to face with Sergio. She could see the uncertainty behind his smile, and she blinked away her tears.

  ‘It’s been a while.’

  She nodded.

  ‘I thought you were never coming back.’

  She shrugged and attempted a smile. ‘Neither did I.’

  They stood in awkward silence, then, unsure of what to say next. Finally Sergio said, ‘I have a little car now. I could run you home at the end of the evening, if you want.’

  ‘My father’s coming to get me.’

  ‘Oh. Okay.’ He looked disappointed. ‘How have you been?’

  She shrugged noncommittally. How could she tell him about her night blindness, that soon it would extend to daylight hours too, that the only future she faced was one of darkness? ‘I had a fall,’ she said. ‘Nothing serious. I’m okay now.’

  He seemed concerned. ‘What kind of fall?’

  She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  He gazed at her with apprehension, aware that somehow all the intimacy of that evening spent together in the tapas bar at the port had dissipated, like smoke in the wind. ‘Can I get you a coffee?’

  She shook her head. ‘No.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m not staying.’ What was the point? The instructor would not come for another week. No reason for her being here, or coming back until then. It was light until much later in the evenings now. She could walk down to the Paseo and telephone her father from a call box. She saw the disappointment in Sergio’s face.

  ‘Why not?’

  She looked him very directly in the eye. ‘Forget about me, Sergio. We weren’t meant to be.’ And she turned to walk briskly to the door. Moving carefully through the darkness of the hall, and then out into the evening sunshine that slanted across the street from the clearest of blue skies.

  She had reached the Plaza de las Flores before Sergio caught up with her. Tables around the perimeter of the square were filled with people enjoying drinks and tapas. The warm air was filled with their voices, like the chatter of birds. Trees in full leaf were laden with oranges, and flowers in bloom suffused the evening with their fragrance. He grabbed her arm, and she turned, surprised, and pulled it free of his grasp.

  ‘What do you want?’

  He couldn’t hear the tone of her voice, but he could see the anger in her face, and he recoiled from it, hurt, like a dog suddenly slapped by a trusted master.

  ‘What did I do?’ he said. ‘All this time I’ve been thinking I must have done or said something to offend you. Why else would you have stopped coming to the centre? Was it the kiss? Did I cross a line?’

  His obvious distress felt like someone plunging a knife into her heart. She fought hard to stop the tears. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No. It’s not you. Nothing to do with you.’

  He was, quite patently, completely bewildered. He put his hands on her shoulders. ‘Well, what, then? What? What’s wrong, Ana?’ Heads turned, drawn by the pitch of his voice, which had risen beyond his ability to control it.

  And quite suddenly her tears came. Welling up from deep inside, and spilling down her cheeks in large, quivering drops. ‘You don’t want to know.’

  ‘I do!’

  She shook her head. ‘You won’t want to be with me anymore.’

  He threw his head back in despair. ‘Why in God’s name would I not want to be with you?’

  More heads turned towards them.

  ‘Because I’m going blind, Sergio. Soon I won’t be able to see you, or hear you. You’ll just be a touch in the dark. And you won’t want anything to do with me.’

  He was shocked. Staring at her in disbelief. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I have a genetic disorder. It’s called Usher Syndrome. And it’s going to take away my sight, as well as the rest of my hearing. It’s already begun.’

  He closed his eyes. ‘Oh, dear God.’ And she let him gather her into his embrace, drawing her head to his chest, fingers laced through her hair. ‘Oh, Ana. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.’ Then he held her again by the shoulders, at arm’s length, and absolutely trapped her in his gaze. Earnest eyes staring determinedly into hers. ‘How could you think, even for one minute, that something like that would drive me away? That
somehow I wouldn’t want to be with you any more?’ Now he raised his eyes to the heavens. ‘For God’s sake Ana. It’s you I love. The person you are inside. Not what you can see or hear.’

  But the only thing she heard was It’s you I love. Words that replayed themselves in her brain like an echo on a loop. And she saw that he did not even realize what he’d said.

  He was oblivious. ‘We’ll find a way to communicate. It’ll only bring us closer.’

  She wiped the tears from her face, but couldn’t stop the flow of more. ‘An instructor is coming next week to start teaching me touch-signing while I can still see and hear. I don’t know exactly how it works, but . . .’ Her voice trailed away.

  ‘I’ll learn it with you,’ he said quickly. ‘We’ll be fluent in it in no time.’

  And she imagined how intimate that might be. Communication by touch alone. She couldn’t think of anyone she’d rather have touch her. And for the first time since receiving the diagnosis, a glimmer of light shone somewhere in the darkness of her future.

  *

  The next weeks passed in a blur, and in equal measures of hope and despair. Learning tactile signing was easier than she had thought, since in many ways it was like a sensory extension of the signing for the deaf that she had already started to adopt. But as each session required her to close her eyes, she began to get a sense of what it would be like to be blind, and the shadow that cast upon her future was deep and depressing. By contrast, hope came from the regular and intimate contact with Sergio. They attended the lessons together, and there was something arousing about feeling his hands on hers when she couldn’t see him. His fingers on her face, and hers on his. Something she had never known before.

  Since the evenings were still light, she persuaded her father that she could travel to and from the centre by bus, and she thought he was relieved to be excused from the obligation of driving her there and back. But, in fact, she and Sergio only attended the centre on the days that the instructor came, and two evenings a week they would go and eat together at a little fish restaurant on the beach front at Santa Ana.

  The proprietor was a small bald man with no teeth who greeted them every evening with a gummy smile and a bottle of white wine that he set open on the table almost before they sat down. They ate salad with tuna, and boquerones, and calamares and abadejo, and watched the sea wash pink phosphorescence upon the shore as the sun dipped towards the west. They closed their eyes and practised touch-signing with fingers greasy from anchovies and olive oil, and Ana thought she had never laughed so much in her life.

  It was a desperate idyll. Desperate because it could not last, idyllic because they were sharing themselves with each other in ways that most people would never experience.

  On the nights they ate at the restaurant, Sergio would drive her home, dropping her in a quiet street just around the corner from the apartment. Always before darkness fell, although already she was struggling to see in the twilight.

  Nearly two months of tuition in the basics of tactile signing, and the regular practice she achieved with Sergio, was paying dividends. Already she was quite comfortable with it, spending sometimes hours on end with her eyes closed, the world reaching her only through Sergio’s fingertips. But the summer was coming to an end, and with it the nights were drawing in. There was less and less light, and Sergio was forced to take her home earlier. Soon, as the evenings grew darker, Ana’s father was going to insist on picking her up from the centre, and their idyll must come to an end.

  It was a hot evening in mid-September when a thunderstorm rumbling across the Mediterranean from North Africa brought the meal at their little restaurant in Santa Ana to a premature end. They saw the storm approaching across the water, like a giant rolling cloud of mist, blotting out the blue of the evening sky, and finally the sun, before the wind that accompanied it began whipping large stinging drops of rain in under the awning. Day turned to night in the space of only a few minutes.

  Sergio took her hand and they ran to where he had parked his car in the narrow Calle Condesa de Arcos. But, still, they were soaked by the time they had thrown themselves into the seats and slammed the doors shut. Rain streamed down the windscreen, and all the windows in the car quickly misted.

  Ana was alarmed by how little she could see as they drove up the hill towards Marviña. The storm seemed to be following them, surging up the slope in their wake. The rain hammered out a deafening tattoo on the roof, and even though her hearing was fading, Ana felt it fill the car.

  Marviña was deserted as they drove past the police and fire stations before turning down to their right, the view across the valley to the mountains obliterated by the storm. Sergio wanted to take her as close as he could to her apartment. It was almost dark out there, and the rain was obscuring the far end of the street. But Ana told him to stop. She could make it home from here, she said. It would be dangerous to get much closer because it was likely that in this weather her father would head out to meet her off the bus in the square.

  Reluctantly, Sergio pulled in. He reached over to brush the wet hair from Ana’s face and leaned in to kiss her. A long, lingering kiss that left the taste of him on her lips. She would have given anything to stay with him, safe and warm in the car. But the threat of an encounter with her father was too great. He would be incandescent if he knew that Ana had continued seeing Sergio, after he had made her promise him that she wouldn’t.

  She let her fingers trail gently across the fine stubble on his cheeks. ‘See you Wednesday,’ she said, and slipped out into the night.

  She was startled in the rain by a figure that appeared out of nowhere. A shadow disengaging itself from the dark, brushing past her to round the front of Sergio’s car and open the driver’s door.

  ‘Get out, you pervert!’ It was her father’s voice.

  In the rain and the gloom, it was a shadow play that acted itself out before her. Her father dragging the hapless Sergio from his car, a fist swinging through the night to impact with the face she had so recently touched with loving fingers. She screamed as she saw Sergio fall into the road, raindrops hammering the surface of it, bouncing off the tarmac all around him. She saw her father pull back his leg to swing repeated kicks into the chest and stomach of the now foetal curl of the young man who had just kissed her.

  ‘Stop it!’ she screamed, and tried to intervene, to prevent this madness. But she stumbled on the kerb and fell.

  ‘Just stay away from my fucking daughter! If I ever see you with her again, I’ll kill you.’ Her father’s words falling, literally, on deaf ears.

  He hurried around the car to pick his daughter off the road and drag her away, weeping, into the rain.

  By the time he got her back to the apartment, it was impossible to tell the tears from the rain on her face. She pulled herself free of him. ‘I hate you!’ she screamed. ‘I hate you!’ And she fled to her bedroom, slamming the door shut behind her, and collapsing in a sobbing heap on the bed.

  *

  It was into October before her father let her return to the centre to resume her lessons in touch-signing. But he was leaving nothing to chance, dropping her off and then going to meet friends for a coffee before returning to drive her home again.

  In the intervening weeks, the atmosphere in the house had been febrile, simmering tempers and Ana’s bubbling resentment. The tension was palpable, and she could not bring herself even to speak to her father. She would address him only through her mother, and spent most of her days, and quite often evenings too, at the home of her sister, unburdening herself, confiding her secret feelings and deepest fears. Isabella’s husband might have resented her constant presence, but for the fact that Ana would babysit the girls, allowing the couple to go out dancing, or for meals at restaurants down on the coast. It was during this time that she formed the bond with Cristina and Nurita that would long outlive their parents.

  Ana had been dreading that first night back at the centre, not knowing how she could possibly face Sergio after
what her father had done to him. And so it was with a mixture of relief and disappointment that she discovered he was not there. Had not, in fact, been there for several weeks. She feared that perhaps her father had inflicted more serious injury than she had imagined and was filled with concern.

  Every night she returned she hoped that he might be there. But he never was, and after a month she went to the administrator to ask for his contact details. The young woman had been very nice, but politely declined. Personal details, she said, were confidential. And, in any case, Sergio had deregistered with the centre, and she had no expectation that he would ever be back.

  It was as if the bottom had simply dropped out of Ana’s world. And with the acceptance that in all probability she would never see Sergio again, came the realization that she had been in love with him. Deeply, hopelessly, in love. And that while he, in an unguarded moment, had inadvertently confessed his love for her, those words had never passed her lips. Now they never would, and he would never know. And all that lay ahead in the desert that defined her future was a world of darkness in which the only possible light had already been extinguished.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The little vibrator clipped to her blouse vibrates twice against her chest, alerting her to the presence of someone at the door downstairs. It is too soon to be Sergio, and she supposes it will be Nuri or Cristina. Since Nuri’s illness she is never sure which of them will turn up.

  She feels for and finds the little panel of rocker switches on the tabletop in front of her, releasing the electronic catch on the door at the foot of the stairs. She sits perfectly still then, eyelids lightly closed, and senses the faintest of footfalls on the wooden staircase.

  She is still aquiver with the excitement generated by the call from Sergio, but determines to say nothing about it. Neither Nuri nor Cristina knows anything of her history with Sergio. Both were just children at the time, absorbed in their own worlds, and Ana has not the heart to recount a story that still pains her. And, in any case, Sergio might lose courage and never come. If there is one thing that Ana has learned over all these years, it is that hope only ever brings disappointment.