It was late afternoon when the chairman of our Bangkok-based company gave me last-minute assignment: I would leave the next day to accompany an important Chinese businessman to tourist sites in Chiang Mai.
Silently fuming, I stared at my cluttered desk. The stacks of paper testified to a huge backlog of work, even though I had been putting in seven-day weeks.
Early the next morning I met a polite and elegant man wearing fine clothes. After a one-hour flight, we spent the day visitting attractions along with hundreds of other tourists, most of them overloaded with cameras and souvenirs.
That evening my Chinese companion and I climbed into a minibus to go to dinner and a show, one which I had attended many times before. While he chatted with other tourists, I exchanged polite conversation in the darkness with a man seated in front of me, a Belgian who spoke fluent English. I wondered why he held his head motionless at an odd angle, as though he were in meditation. The truth struch me when I saw the palecolored cane beside him. He was blind.
The man told me he had lost his sight in an accident when he was a teenager. But this did not prevent him from traveling alone. Now in his late 60s, he had mastered the skill of sightless tourism, using his remaining four senses to create pictures in his mind.
Turning to face me, he slowly extended a hand which explored the contours of my face. Behind me someone switched on a light, and I could see his luxuriant silvery hair and strong, craggy face. His eyes lay misted and deep in their sockets. "Could I please sit beside you at the dinner?" he askes. "And I' d love it if you' d describe a little of what you see."
"I' d be happy to," I replied.
My guest walked ahead toward the restaurant with new-found friends. The blind man and I followed, caught up in a long string of tourists. My hand cupped his elbow to steer him, but he stepped forward unfalteringly, his shoulders squared, his head high, as though he were quiding me.
We found a table close to th stage. As we waited for our drinks, the blind man said, "The music seems out of tune to our Western ears, but it has charm. Please describe the musicians."
I hadn't noticed the five men performing at the side of the stage as a prelude to the show. "They' re seated cross-legged, dressed in loose white cotton shirts and baggy black trousers with brigth-red sashes. Three are young, one middle-aged and one elderly. One beats a small drum, another plucks a wooden stringed instrument, and the other three have smaller, cello-like pieces they play with a bow."
He smiled. "And these small instruments are made of....?"
I looked again. "Wood...but the the spherical sound box is fashioned out of a whole coconut shell," I said, suppressing my surprise.
As the lights dimmed, the blind man asked, "What do our fellow tourists look like?"
"All nationalities, colors, shapes and sizes," I whispered. "Very few are neatly or tastefully dressed."
As I lowered my voice further and spoke close to his ear, the blind man leaned his head eagerly toward me. I had never before been listened to with such rapt intensity.
"Very close to us is an elderly Japanese woman, whose profile is partially lit from the stage," Isaid. "Just beyond her a blond Scandinavian boy about five, with a cute turned-up nose, is leaning forward, creating a second illuminated profile just below hers. They' re motionless, waiting for the performance to start. It's the perfect living portrait of childhood and old age, of Europe and Asia."
"Yes, yes, I see them," the blind man said quietly, smiling.
A curtain at the back of the stage opened. Six girls in their early teens appeared, and I described their saronglike silk skirts, white blouses with shoulder sashes, and gold-colored headdresses like small crowns, with flexible points the moved in rhythm with the dance. "On their fingertips are golden fingernails perhaps four inches long," I told the blind man. "The nails accentuate each elegant movenment of their hands. It's a delightful effect."
He smiled and nodded. "How wonderful - I would love to touch one of those fingernails."
When the first performance ended, I excused myself and went to talk to the theater manager. Upon returning, I told my companion, "You've been invited backstage."
A few minutes later he was standing next to one of the dancers, her little crowned head harldly reaching his chest. She timidly extended both hands toward him, the metal fingernails glinting in the overhead light. His hands, four times as large, reached out slowly and clasped them as though they were cradling two tiny exotic birds. As he felt the smooth, curving sharpness of the metal tips, the girl stood quite still, gazing up into his face with an expression of awe. A lump formed in my throat.
As the evening progressed, the more I observed and was rewarded with excited nods of the head, the more I discovered: colors, patterns and designs of local costumes; the texture of skin under soft lights; the movement of long, black Asian hair as elegant heads angled to the music; the intense expressions of the musicians as they played; even the flashing white smile of our waitress in the half-darkness.
Back at the hotel lobby, with my Chinese guest still in the company of others, the blind man extended a large hand, which gripped mine warmly. It remained there for a moment, then traveled to my elbow and shoulder. Heads turned in surprise as the cane fell with a clatter to the marble floor. He made no attempt to retrieve it, but instead pulled me toward him and hugged me tightly. "Hou beautifully you saw everytihing for me," he whispered. "I can never thank you enough."
Later the realization struck me: I should have thanked him. I was the one who had been blind. He had helped me lift the veil that grows so quickly over our eyes in this hectic would, and to see all those things I' d failed to marvel at before.
About a week after our trip, the chairman summoned me to his office and told me he had received a call from the Chinese executive, who expressed great satisfaction with the trip. "Well done," the chairman said, smiling. "I knew you could do the magic."
I was not able to tell him that the magic had been done to me.
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