Dear All,

I will to tell you a short story. Six years ago my latest book is published, alone in the Netherlands. The title is: LEVENS VOL GEBAREN (in English: LIVES FULL OF SIGNS). It is tell about the Deaf people. These story is include in this book.

                                    SPEECH-TRAINING

                                         by Henk Betten.

 "The deaf person must satisfy itself with watching minimal movements of the muscles (of a mouth); usually without any result; it is shown the very incomplete carcass of language; it is invited to dance with a skeleton.": C.G. Postma and E.P.Frohlich, Lip-reading as foundation for educating the Deaf fully unfit (1927) page 50.

It was a rainy day in August 1942, when tree people crossed the street: a man, a woman and between them a small boy, three years of age, Hendrik. They stopped to look up to the imposing building of the Institute for the Deaf with its commanding facade of red brick. Both parents sighed. They would have to leave their darling at the boarding-school. But Hendrik looked around untroubled, and made some noise with his feet, which he himself couldn't hear. He had been deaf from birth, so had his elder sister Hiltje.

            After some fifteen minutes the director of the Institute approached them. It was a short man, with a face that reflec­ted strictness. He took a good look at Hendrik, then said: "well, well."

            "Yes", Mr. Masters, Hendrik's father, replied uneasily.

            "Where is Hiltje?"

            "She is ill sir. We think it's the flu."

            "That's all right Masters, I see. When will she be joining us again?"

            "Next week, I hope, sir."

The director nodded and invited the family to inspect the boys' house. They walked through a hallway, the walls clad with tiles, to the courtyard. They crossed it to enter a narrow but high building. There farmer Masters and his wife spoke with the matron. She looked friendly with her silver-­grey hairs.

            "What's his name?" miss Tiel asked, pointing at Hendrik.

The boy looked up to her, impressed by her appearance, when she made the gesture. The usual formalities were exchanged and the visitors and the director walked across the same courtyard through the 'blue hallway' to a classroom. They looked inside the room, which was empty. The new school-year was to start the next day.     

            It was time for Farmer Masters and his wife to leave their son. Miss Tiel tried to interest Hendrik in some toys, sit­ting as he was be­tween playing boys in the boys' house. At first he stubbornly turned away, but slowly his fear and suspicion faded. The matron noticed it, and nodded at the parents that this would be a good time to leave. Easier said than done. The farmer's wife tarried, but her husband pulled her arm softly.

"Come."

They left the room, where the boys played silently.

            After a while Hendrik looked up and scanned the room with agitation. He started to panic. Miss Tiel quickly approached to comfort the little boy, but that only made things worse. He ran to the door, but he wasn't tall enough to reach the hand­le. That made him very angry, and he stamped his feet furious­ly on the wooden floor. The other boys, until then vaguely aware of Hendrik's presence, all looked at him in amazement. Some walked over to take a better look. Hendrik's tears reminded several that they too had only just been separated from their parents and they started crying as well. The matron shook her head in sorrow.

            "Where have you ever seen such a vale of tears?"

Sitting in a classroom the next day, together with other boys and girls his age and a teacher, was completely new to Hendrik. A figure in a brown jacket came through the door. His face was tanned, his coal-black hair swayed in a funny way. The man beckoned Hendrik with his index-finger. Hendrik recognised the meaning of that sign. He had seen Hiltje make it before. So he got out of his bench and walked over to the man without hesi­tation.

            "Amazing!" the man remarked to his colleague, who sat in front of the pupils. "He's only been here a day and yet he understands me fully."

            "He seems promising. You're right. I'll keep an eye on him", the teacher replied.

            Then the man in the brown jacket softly pushed Hendrik into the hallway and closed the door of the classroom. The man turned out to be the speech-trainer.

            "Well Hendrik, I am sure we will become good friends, but only if you help me", the speech-trainer said. But Hendrik only saw his lips move a little and entered the small room curious­ly. A big mirror was placed against the wall. The boy, fright­ened at first, recognised the image as himself and smiled. He liked it, and expected more fun. The teacher got out a wooden plank with a groove along the length of it. Hendrik had to blow a little ball from one end to the other. He loved it and wanted to do it over and over again.

            This game was necessary to develop his breathing to allow the boy to speak. From the day he was born the child had barely used his voice. It had to be stimulated. This first phase passed quickly. Within a few weeks the speech-trainer had taught Hendrik how to make several sounds. It had not been easy. The teacher first had to explain to Hendrik how it felt to make the sound. Hendrik had to put his hand op the teacher's throat to feel it. That scared him. The speech-trainer decided that the time had come for Hendrik to say his first word; mammy. That morning his parents had come to see him and Hiltje after a long while. He had burst into tears at the first sight of them, because he had missed them so much. The teacher put a photo­graph of Hendrik's mother on the ledge in front of the mirror. Again Hendrik started weeping. Full of concern the teacher took the boy on his knee. That helped.   

            "Mammy, mammy", the teacher started, but his pupil just stared at him blankly. Patiently the man took the little hand and placed it on his throat. Hendrik again felt aversion, parti­cularly because of the huge size of the Adam's apple.

            "Mammy..."

But all Hendrik did in reaction was to try to climb off the knee that held him. It was enough. The teacher decided it was best to return him to the classroom again. In the weeks after Hendrik progressed only slightly, to the desperation of his teacher. He was a famous speech-trainer, with a reputation to lose in several European countries. He spoke about the child with his wife, who used to be a teacher in a regular school.

            "He has it in him, but he does not seem to have any inclination to cooperate!"

His wife put down her knitting. "Poor Hendrik. You haven't mistreated him have you?"

            "What on earth? I wouldn't do such a thing!"

She stopped and thought for a while. Her husband looked to her concentrated face intently.

            "Well, it just seems sometimes, I'm not sure if you are going to like me saying this."

            "Oh woman, please say what you think."

            "It's my impression your students have to take so much trouble learning to speak. And not being allowed to use signs depresses them. Shouldn't they have the pleasure of listening as well as speaking? Don't the sign with each other?"

            "Certainly. You should see them. So many movements of the hands, with so much meaning! I have over the years picked up a few myself, even though the director strictly forbade it."

            "There you are." She smiled a bit.

            "What is that supposed to mean? What are you driving at?"

His voice raised by the notion of being criticised.

            "Aren't we trying hard enough?" the tormented teacher asked.

            "Yes. Sure you do. You're famous for it. But about Hendrik. I have the feeling, if he could speak, he'd ask you: why did you take all the trouble? Why waste all this energy and time only to impair the natural development of speech?"

            She continues bravely. "I think Hendrik is homesick and feels a lot of stress. And now that I think about it, why is it so terribly important to learn deaf children to speak? It's like their via dolorosa, and perhaps yours too."

            The comfortable room filled with icy silence.

            "Oh, just keep out of it from now on. What do you know of educating the Deaf?"

He grabbed his pipe and filled it. His wife saw his hands tremble.

One day Hendrik returned to the boys' house from the visiting room where his parents had spent half an hour with him and Hiltje. He sat on a bench with some other boys, staring. Sud­denly he felt something tapping on the floor. The tapping grew more intense, annoyed his eyes searched the room to see who or what was causing the irritation. A fat boy in the corner was holding a stick and he was pounding the wooden floor with it. Hendrik ran towards him and took the stick. A few moments later they were fighting. Miss Tiel, attracted by the noise, inter­vened. Her fearsome hand hit out several times. Hendrik and his enemy shrank in fright. Then, to the surprise of miss Tiel, Hendrik started wailing, louder and louder. It made him retch, so she took him to the toilet. The content of his stomach and all the homesickness of the past months disappeared in the bowl. A bit later he was fit to be seen again. It was decided that he could see Hiltje every other day in the courtyard. He badly needed that.

            The next day the speech-trainer saw Hendrik in the hallway. Now or never, he thought. The persistent teacher gently stee­red Hendrik to the high chair and the lesson began. On the brown-stained board pictures of Mr. and Mrs. Masters and Hendrik's brothers and sisters. The manicured index-finger of the teacher pointed to the writing below the picture, while his mouth slowly articulated the words.

            "Daddy, daddy, mammy, mammy, mammy."

For the first time Hendrik really focused on what the teacher was doing.

            "Maaaaaaaaammmm..." And again: "Maaaaaaaaaammmmm."

The teacher jumped up joyfully and Hendrik laughed broadly. The trainer picked him up and lifted him. In the mirror Hendrik saw himself sitting on the shoulders of the teacher. He screamed with joy. Never had he had so much fun as he had now.

            When Mr. and Mrs. Masters, fearing a message from the director saying Hendrik was unfit to be taught, arrived that last Tuesday in November, they heard their son speaking in his own way the words: mammy, daddy.