The ethnographers take notes. Nobody ever compiled a complete grammar or lexicon of the language, so part of their mission is to attempt to reconstruct the language in its fullness. They will never know that in her language there were more than a dozen ways of indicating and describing gratitude. Here are a few more: the gratitude of natural things for one another, like the hive for the branch, the tree for the bees, the cloud for the sun; collective gratitude, the thanks of a family or a town or a people; gratitude—directed to the cosmos—for superiority, for knowing that one is better than everybody else; the gratitude of one saved from death by starvation.
Her language boasted many verbs for which no simple equivalents exist in the common language. For example, this means to be afraid of seeing time pass. This means to tell stories in the depths of winter. This is the action of stirring a kind of gravy in a pot; this also denotes the motion of a pig rooting around in the mud. This refers to the way light splinters against a range of mountains at dusk. This describes in one word how mountains gain mass and shape at dawn. This means to feel strange in an unfamiliar place. This means to be patient for spring. As does this. And this.
If she remembered all or some of these words, the last speaker’s testimony would be a little more refined. Unfortunately, she doesn’t remember them. Some she never knew in the first place. It’s not her fault, no measure of her intelligence or sophistication. When the number of speakers of a language shrinks, so does the language itself. She grew up with an impoverished vocabulary, a skulking tongue, never with the means to recover those lost words. The ethnographers, despite their best efforts, won’t be able to restore her language. How can anybody learn that which has never been written down, that which nobody knows any longer? It is sad, but sad in an unremarkable way. Humans always lose more history than they ever possess.
Speech, however, can be added to, no matter its condition. When she cannot find the word she wants in her language, she builds compounds with the words she does have. Occasionally, she imports one from the common language. She sketches her life for the ethnographers, narrates in her language the sequence of events and relationships that brought her to this chair before their camera and its severe lamp. Our father raised us in my mother’s absence, which means that we raised ourselves, because he was away during the days, and often for many nights. He would come back with new clothes and boxes of contraband goods—electric fans, flyswatters, medicines, beer, and so on—that he would then shift along. (In his childhood, there was no border on the other side of the valley. I would ask him, why do you have to go over there all the time? Oh, I’m not going far, he would say, laughing, before reminding me that when he was young, over “there” was still “here.” He would say that in the common language, because in our language the word for “here” is the same as the word for “there.”) My favorite thing to do in the summers was to wade into the irrigation channels and feel the chill of the mountain water on my ankles. I don’t remember anything from my wedding night, I got very drunk. Neither of my children likes eating cake, which is a real pity; life isn’t complete without confectionery. The army installed solar (“fed by sun”) streetlamps—look, they just came on!—in the village so now it’s never dark at nighttime in the way our nights were once so totally dark. I miss that darkness, I miss angling lanterns and torches around corners. I only recently learned that I was the last. I had assumed there were others elsewhere, just not where I was, not here.
A neighbor interrupts the recording with a platter of pastries, a generous pretense with which to inspect the visitors. The ethnographers are ravenous. For a few moments, the sounds of grateful munching overwhelm conversation. The neighbor studies the ethnographers and their equipment, and then, for a long while, her. How quickly something familiar becomes strange when it takes shape in another language. He makes his excuses and leaves. At the door, he passes the loitering boy, who is still poking about on the threshold. The last speaker beckons to the boy. Why don’t you come in? The boy shakes his head, backs a few steps away, and stares.
It is getting late. Stray dogs growl in the dust. Bicycles rustle down paths. The most popular soap operas blare from the televisions in nearby houses, where families assemble for dinner in the glow. My nurse will be coming soon, the last speaker reminds the ethnographers, and she will want to settle me for my bedtime. She won’t be happy that I’ve strained myself like this.
Oh no! they protest. You should have allowed us to give you a break.
That’s all right, I’m beginning to enjoy myself. It’s coming back to me. Tomorrow, I hope I’ll be able to tell you even more.
We’ll return after breakfast. In fact, we’ll return with breakfast.
How sweet, but don’t go just yet. I’ll sing you one more song today. Make certain your recorders are working, are they properly plugged in? Are you sure? I want a snatch of my singing played at my funeral, too.
Eager to please her, the ethnographers vigorously double-check all the controls and settings before signaling to begin. She sings, tuneless and a bit rasping, but still full.
On their wedding night, the bride and the groom retreat to the chamber prepared for them. He undresses and rushes to get under the covers. Awaiting her arrival in the pregnant darkness (a rough translation of one of many kinds of darkness in the last speaker’s language), he realizes that he has not heard her talk at any point during the day. She must be shy, he thinks, she must be as nervous as I am about this moment. Is she? He feels her weight on the bed, her fingers now on his shoulder, her knee in the space between his knees. Her face looms above him, all light concentrated in the teeth. He moves to bring her mouth to his, but she pushes away and raises her torso, her hands firmly on his neck and chest, straddling him.
The last speaker stops. Thinking that she is done, the ethnographers start to commend her singing and to turn their thoughts toward dinner. She has not finished. Her eyes search the camera lens. She sings again, not quite song, more like an incantation urgent in its rhythm, her feet tapping a measure on the floor. The ethnographers strain to discern the sequence in the flow of words. Weeks later, in the computer lab, they will discover that there is no order at all in this passage. It is merely a list of unconnected phrases, shards of speech, jagged and inscrutable, the debris of a language swept clean. But in the moment, in her living room, it rises in pitch and volume and dissolves the ethnographers’ scholarly attention. They surrender to the unlikely beauty of it. She looks up when she finishes. Was the song racier this time? the ethnographers grin. Was there sex? She smiles, exhausted.
Her nurse enters and looks balefully upon the scene. I’m afraid your interviews are over for the day, the nurse says, it’s time for me to take care of her. The ethnographers pack away their things. They linger at the door, watching the last speaker as she settles into an armchair, puts up her feet, and turns on the TV. Until tomorrow, they say.
Until tomorrow, she replies, staring closely at the buttons on the remote. The ethnographers sputter away in their van. While the last speaker watches TV, her nurse does all the required nursely duties, checking blood pressure and temperature, feeding her the nightly quota of pills, talking to her about the antics of celebrities she only pretends to recognize. Restless, the last speaker eventually goes to the kitchen and insists on preparing dinner for both of them. What is the point of living if I can’t exert myself? The nurse, who knows this routine well, protests and then acquiesces, expressing her earnest, simple gratitude. While the last speaker cooks, the nurse sinks into the armchair and starts to channel surf on the TV.
The last speaker turns to the stove. The pots begin to murmur. She whispers in her language to a smattering of onions and garlic and greens and lentils: Soon you’ll become delicious and then, I’m afraid, I’m going to eat you … Don’t worry, there’s much more of you where you came from. Through her kitchen window, the wheezing solar lamps cast a light gloom over the village. She is surprised to see a hunched form sitting on her courtyard wall. It i
s the boy from earlier. He’s been here the entire time, she thinks. Whose son is he? At her gaze, he drops from the wall and runs down the village path, red flashes in the dark, leaving her wondering if there was ever a time when she knew his name.
TALE OF THE TEAHOUSE
Seven days before the khan’s army razed the city, judges presided over their courts, babies were breast-fed, the teahouse clattered with cups emptied and smashed, puppeteers led shadows through the alleyways, men and women made love, and the hum of schoolboys repeating their lessons echoed from the marble-and-granite schools. The bakeries pumped out bread and beggars woke up for yet another day of yellowed nails and coins, as if nothing at all would ever happen.
* * *
Six days before the khan’s army razed the city, men and women were making love, especially the captain of the city guard, who squatted his girl on the parapets. Bored, the guards below toyed with the returning merchant caravans, skimming something—a bolt of silk, a barrel of wine, a crate of dates—off the top. The business of the city was business. Off duty, the guards sneaked to the market to hawk their loot, and then took their earnings to the brothels, from which prostitutes took their money to the bakeries, from which the pastry makers went to the butchers, who in turn visited the vegetable sellers, who shared the bloody passions of the cockfighters, who loved nothing more than long conversations with librarians, who tickled the fancy of the scribes, who penned letters in vain for the washerwomen, who clapped in time for the itinerant musicians, who could play songs remembered only by the astrologer, who promised every trader, for better or worse, a safe return to this city of noise from the quiet of the desert. In the teahouse, misty shapes still told their tales. But every so often, the gnarled tea drinkers looked at the young, the smooth-faced looked at the old, and all wondered if somehow the world was passing them by.
* * *
On the fifth day before the khan’s army razed the city, the supply of raisins in the market dried up so suddenly that the fruit seller could only shrug away his queue of customers. By midmorning there were no more dates. The street of the weavers soon shook with indignation. We are running out of silk—where is the week’s shipment? the long hands, plucked from their looms, curved to ask. In the adjacent neighborhood, the scribes sent their pupils to the gates to see whether the illiterate guards were keeping the incoming ink to themselves, while in his mildewed tower, the astrologer brooded over turtle shells and began to suspect that only bad things could come from lines so thin. A restless muttering filled the schools. Crows flapped irritably about the rooftops. And women and men were still making love, except for the captain of the guard, whose regular tryst with his squat girl was delayed by a mob of bent tailors and watery-eyed scribes’ apprentices.
No, his guards hadn’t taken their supplies, he said, and no, he didn’t know why the caravans hadn’t arrived. Would the kind citizens please not crowd before the gate? And would they return to their quarters and not disturb the city with their tantrums? It was left to the younger guards to disperse the mob and, later, as the day passed into the heat, to receive the breathless rider and his foaming horse and the bad news that always comes on the backs of such creatures. The caravans will not come today, nor tomorrow, nor for all eternity perhaps. The routes are blocked by an army the size of which I’ve never seen—it approaches the city. The guards peered toward the horizon and for once saw not the heat rippling from the bleached earth, nor the returning black humps of traders, but a faint smudge of dust.
The people were informed: our city is in grave peril, an army marches on us. An envoy was sent galloping into the distance. Jostling along the walls and atop the towers, the people squinted after him and wondered, How strange it is to fear a tuft of dust. Proclamations were issued urging calm and unity in the face of the enemy and nailed to the doors of shops, and banners were raised in the markets and squares that called for strength and patience and denounced the spread of rumors as a threat to the city. Everyone took the signs seriously and agreed, for writing is true knowledge revealed. But the denizens of the teahouse still told their tales. They too understood that truth lives only in the word and never in a single, bitter syllable of their breath.
* * *
Four days before the khan’s army razed the city, the teahouse opened early and speculation began with the calls of the morning crows. The tea drinkers drained their cups in questions: Do they come to pillage and leave? Or do they come to conquer and stay? Should we negotiate? Is there no reasoning with them? Can we even talk to them, or will our words fall on their barbarian ears like rain on the senseless mountains?
And answers took shape in the steam. A tea drinker with a voice as round and rattling as a kettle stood up: They come to pillage, but they won’t stay, because they’ll leave nothing behind. We’d seal our fate if we tried negotiations. These barbarians think of diplomacy as a sure sign of weakness. In any case, they speak no tongue we could understand, instead favoring the language of birds and of the grunting creatures of the steppes. But you shouldn’t think mountains are unfeeling, he said in a tinny rebuke; like old women, the mountains store aches in their bowels.
The teahouse tittered. As a fresh batch of tea steeped in the whistling samovar, questions percolated from the misty cups. In the land that they come from, do the men let their hair hang long and straight and tuck it into their belts? Do they stiffen it short with starch and lime? Do their caftans shine golden through the dust? Or do they ride over the land wild and bare-chested?
A sugary voice answered: They come from the cold, windy lands to the north, so their hair has to be thick and plentiful to keep them warm. It also makes a cushion for the many nights they sleep on the open plain. They are meticulous with their clothing, whatever it may be, especially on the warpath. All you men, even nomad men, are as vain as the next.
And the tea drinkers murmured. Nomads emerge every so often from the wilderness. They pour down on civilization, ravage cities, steal women and children, burn books, uproot the cabbages. But then what? They disappear into thin air, back into the unmapped earth, and nobody remembers them.
Not true. My grandmother still sings the old songs about Tukhluk Beh. He came from the roof of the world, smashing city after city after city, until one day, when there was nothing left to smash, he decided it was time to rebuild everything again. She says the spirits of his soldiers live on in today’s builders and stonemasons.
Have you heard the tale, someone else asked, of Timur the Studious? He brought his army down from the mountains to attack monasteries and temples. Surrounded by gold, jewels, and silks, his men were only allowed to steal the written word. Timur then built the largest library in the world, but even till his death, he never knew how to read.
What about Obruk Han? Spurned by the woman he cherished most, he left his disconsolate steppes for a life of war. He plotted his path of devastation from city to city deliberately so that the gods in the heavens could see his devotion to this woman. Obruk had written her name across the earth. From those letters of ash, we get our word for love.
I don’t know these stories of yours, rattled the kettle voice. But let me tell you this: we’d best start praying to all the gods we can muster, especially the gods of the nomads. The city guards are dull and fat as old dogs. We’ll have to get the gods on our side.
The sugary voice slipped in. Suppose this army keeps no gods and follows only the rhythm of their horses over the prairie? The question dropped into a tide of silence. The answer was clear. In that case, the tea drinkers had to agree, we are surely doomed.
* * *
Three days before the khan’s army razed the city, the teahouse owner brought out pastries and water pipes, leavening conversation with the smell of jasmine and a thick purple smoke that made it difficult to roll one’s r’s. The teahouse patrons watched the steam rise from their cups, while one drinker, between bites that shook her jowls, wondered about food. How often do they eat? Did they pack their flatbread in sacks of jute o
r linen? Did they cook with cloves or cinnamon? Would they spare our bakeries and bakers if they knew the taste of honey pastries, pistachio and almond, yogurt cooked through with winter sap from the forests?
The answers came in swift succession. They eat as often as we do—when the sun is rising, when the sun has ceased to rise, when the sun is setting, and when the stars reign in the night. Only they do not keep the prescribed fast days and, indeed, choose those days to eat in excess.
They keep their flatbread in bags of linen. It must be impossible for them—who come from the west—to get jute, since, as it is, the stuff arrives at great price and in small quantity in our markets from the faraway east, from a land of thick jungles and rivers where, in the summer, water floats from the earth to meet the clouds.
They cook with neither cinnamon nor cloves, since they are men of blood, not commerce, and find such tastes disagreeable.
They will spare our bakeries, since even barbarians understand the sanctity of the oven. But they will kill the bakers, who are all men of craft and discipline, the very opposite of the nomad. So when our city is reduced to ash and rubble, and the crows are pecking out our eyes, and our young boys and girls have been dragged to their unholy tents, they will warm themselves in the glow of the ovens and eat the very last crumbs of our famous cakes.
But if they spare the bakeries for the oven, some asked, why not the potteries for the red kiln? Or the smithies for the hearth and wheezing bellows? Or, for that matter, this teahouse for its whistling samovar?
They won’t bother looting this place, said the kettle-voiced man. What could they want from here? Not our wealth, for we have none. Not our beauty, since clearly even you, my dear, he said, nodding in the direction of the jowls, have seen better days. And not our wisdom, for that, we know, has never been our vocation. The kettle-voiced man let his hands fall to his thighs in a soft slap, as if to emphasize the last point with the sound of a full stop.
Swimmer Among the Stars Page 2
