Lunch with Helen Keller

My husband and I loved our house in Italy. It sat high on a cliff above Portofino with an extraordinary view of the blue harbor below, and its white beach was surrounded by cy-presses. There was, however, a serpent in our paradise: the path up the cliff. The municipal authorities refused to grant us permission to build a proper road in lieu of the mule track. The only vehicle that could climb the narrow path and negotiate the hairpin turns, the steep incline and the potholes, was an old American Army jeep we had bought in Genoa. It possessed neither springs nor brakes. When you wanted to stop, you had to go into reverse and back up against something. But it was indestructible, and you could rely on it in all weathers.

One day in the summer of 1950, our neighbor, Contessa Margot Besozzi,who of necessity also owned a jeep,called to say that her cousin had Links Of London arrived in town with a companion and that her own jeep had conked out. Would I mind going to fetch the two old ladies in ours? They were at the Hotel Splendido.

“Whom should I ask for at the hotel?” I asked.

“Miss Helen Keller. “

“Who?”

“Miss Helen Keller,K-e-1-1…”

“Margot ,you don’t mean Helen Keller^.” “Of course,” she said. “She’s my cousin. Didn’t you know?”

I ran into the garage, jumped into the jeep and raced down the mountain.

I had been twelve years old when my father gave me the book about Helen Keller written by Anne Sullivan, the remarkable woman whom fate had chosen to be the teacher of the blind and deaf child. Anne Sullivan had turned the rebellious, brutish little child into a civilized member of society by teaching her to speak. I still remembered vividly her description of the first few months of physical battle with the child, until the glorious moment when she held Helen’s left hand under a running water tap and the blind, deaf and up until then mute little girl made history by stammering out an intelligible word:”Water. “

Over the years I had read about Helen Keller in the newspapers. I knew that Anne Sullivan was no longer with her and that a new companion now accompanied her everywhere. But the few minutes it took me to drive down the hill were not nearly enough to get used to the idea that I was going to meet in person this mythical figure from my early youth.

I backed the jeep up against a bougainvillaea-covered wall and presented myself at the hotel. A tall, buxom, vigorous-looking woman rose from a chair on the hotel terrace to greet me: Polly Thomson,Helen Keller’s companion. A second figure rose slowly from the chair beside her and held out her hand. Helen Keller,then in her seventies,was a slight, white-haired woman with wide-open blue eyes and a shy smile.

“How do you do?” she said slowly and a little gutturally.

I took her hand, which she was holding too high because she didn’t know how tall I was. She was bound to make this mistake with people she was meeting for the first time,but she never made it twice. Later, when we said good-bye, she put her hand firmly into mine at exactly the right level.
The luggage was loaded into the back of the jeep, and I helped the jolly Miss Thomson to sit beside it. The hotel porter lifted Helen Keller’s fragile body and set it down on the front seat next to me. Only then did it dawn on me that this was going to be a risky undertaking. The jeep was open; there was nothing you could hold onto properly. How was I to keep the blind and deaf woman from falling out of the rickety old thing when we took a curve, which had to be done at a fast clip because of the angle and the jeep’s general condition?! turned to her and said,”Miss Keller,! must prepare you — we’re going up a very steep hill. Can you hold tight to this piece of metal on the windshield?”

But she continued to look expectantly straight ahead. Behind me, Miss Thomson said patiently,”She can’t hear you, dear,nor see you. Links London I know it’s hard to get used to it at first. “

I was so embarrassed that I stammered like an idiot, trying to explain the problem ahead of us. All the while, Miss Keller never turned her head or seemed puzzled by the delay. She sat motionless,a slight smile on her face, patiently waiting. Miss Thomson knelt across the luggage and reached for her hand. Rapidly she moved Helen’s fingers up, down and sideways, telling her in blind-deaf language what I had just said.