The Word

by William Lane

  ‘So Barnabus and Tess get smiley stamps,’ Justin said summarily, ‘and I’ve gone to the bottom of the class. No doubt I’m inarticulate, but I suspect you yourself, Kenric, found something lacking or odd about the tongue-talking. Tell us, please do, esteemed teacher, what you thought about it – don’t afford yourself the luxury of silence.’

  ‘You’re right, Justin,’ said Kenric, ‘what worried me was nothing was actually said – nothing we could translate and understand, at any rate. Nothing that remains to be learned or repeated. I’ve come to think it doesn’t classify as language, as it had no form –’

  ‘I’ve practised it since,’ Connie said, again talking over someone before they had finished, ‘once I understood what was going on, and it got stuff off my chest – it felt good.’

  ‘But you couldn’t critique what was said,’ yelled Kenric into her ear, and the hearing aid screeched. ‘I have to admit, I was frightened by the voices, the noise –’

  ‘Why?’ they asked. And it was definitely not just noise, they all protested, except Justin.

  ‘It’s the same as singing “la la la” in a song,’ Robert suggested, ‘nothing is said by “la la la”, but often it is the most articulate and meaningful – I mean deeply felt – part of the song.’

  ‘Or “lai lai lai”.’

  ‘Or even “la-di-dah”.’

  ‘Were we singing?’ asked Barnabus. ‘Right, I get it now –’

  ‘No, but it’s akin to song,’ clarified Robert, ‘it’s another kind of language.’

  ‘He’th right, I vote we keep the tongue-talking.’ ‘If you say so.’ Kenric shrugged.

  ‘I won’t be attending,’ said Justin.

  ‘Before we all go away,’ said Tess, sounding more practical, ‘I feel I should say I believe something of the newspaper letter was partially true.’ She waited. Everyone was listening. ‘Maria does cajole.’

  In these sessions, it was customary not to speak about an absent member.

  ‘No one responds to Tess,’ said Kenric, ending a long silence. At this they dispersed, except Connie, who began to make a pot of coffee, and Robert and Justin, who sat at the table watching Connie move about with her back to them. A peculiar atmosphere always lingered after truth-telling, a sort of slack-sided calm. A cockroach could be heard scuttling under the fridge, which began to buzz. The black cat from the brothel paced along the balcony, tail up.

  ‘Connie’s arse is a wonder,’ mused Justin, as Connie bent to get milk from the fridge. ‘I should have said that in the session – that was what I was really thinking about. That’s the real truth, the deepest truth.’

  ‘Sure she can’t hear us?’ asked Robert.

  ‘Nah, deaf as a post, old Connie. Aren’t you, Connie, eh? Connie, can you hear me? Turn around, Connie. Connie, calling Connie!’

  Connie began to push down the coffee plunger, her back to them.

  ‘See,’ said Justin, ‘she’s totally dependent on lip reading now.’

  The hearing aid emitted a curious hollow whistle, until Connie twiddled it.

  ‘That noise gives me the creeps,’ muttered Robert, ‘it’s unnerving. I think she might need a new hearing aid.’

  ‘Costs money, I expect, and I don’t think Connie’s too flush at the moment,’ said Justin. ‘When was the last time you worked, Connie? Or do you like being a kept woman? And maybe that’s why you always tax the food?’

  Justin winked at Robert. Connie poured the coffee into three mugs, still with her back to them.

  ‘Think it’s her?’ asked Robert.

  ‘Looks like it,’ said Justin, ‘look at those love handles, all sugar and dairy products. There’s no hiding the evidence. Now, Robert, why do all the women go for that truth-talking crap? They find it so meaningful and satisfying. They’re so earnest about it. It’s something about confession – as if saying something expels it, and what’s left is left pure.’

  ‘But it’s not so?’

  Connie poured milk into the cups; she knew how everyone took their coffee.

  ‘You can’t expel thoughts or feelings merely by speaking them,’ Justin continued. ‘Words change nothing. Words are completely meaningless in themselves. They’re arbitrary – for a start, the relationship between their meaning and their sound is arbitrary. You can micturate, or you can urinate, right – it means the same thing. Two different words.’

  ‘Or you can piss.’

  ‘Right. And people will say whatever serves them best in the moment to say. So words are meaningless, and the way they are used is self-interested. It’s actions that count. But Connie and the girls like to get things off their chest, don’t you, Connie?’

  Now Connie was slowly stretching to reach the sugar in a high cupboard. ‘How is your chest, by the way, Connie?’

  ‘I think we can all agree Connie’s chest is splendid,’ muttered Robert.

  Connie stirred in the sugar, then turned to place the men’s steaming cups before them; she did trip with Justin’s, however, and he received quite a nasty scalding about the thighs.

  3

  Maria returned that evening. ‘What’s worrying you?’ she asked Kenric. She had decided he needed a haircut, and took up scissors from the bedside table in their room. ‘You’ve been more than usually distracted lately.’ She began to move around the chair where Kenric sat. As she brushed his hair, he began to feel encircled, becalmed – he did not really know the word for the feeling, and gave up trying to find one. Instead he let himself enter the soft feel and the smell of Maria. ‘Is it the letter in the paper that’s upset you?’ she asked.

  He had doubts about their whole enterprise, he admitted: ‘When I hear my words repeated back to me, things I’ve said over the last few years – I don’t like what I hear,’ said Kenric, ‘or I just don’t recognise the words or the ideas. I don’t understand so much of what I’ve said, even when people say it’s benefited them.’

  ‘You should re-read your testimonial about your time at The Firm,’ said Maria, ‘the reasons you’re here are all written down. And maybe it’s time for a sortie.’ A sortie would take him outside himself, she reminded him, and take the message outside the building; previous sorties had netted Bruno and Barnabus for The Word.

  ‘Soon, maybe,’ muttered Kenric, who remained content to listen to the snip of the scissors and feel her moving about him. Maria cut slowly, her stomach pressed against his side. Some things he had never been able to discuss with Maria – Paloma, for instance, who had come to Kenric in his dreams the past few nights. And he had never been able to tell Maria how slow he had been to read and write – he was too ashamed. For what qualified him to pursue the Word? He knew nothing of philosophy, literature or theology. He knew so little of the world.

  Worse still, doubts had grown in him about the nature of the Word. Words were never spoken in his dreams, for instance – his dreams might incorporate an external sound, but no sound came from the characters he dreamt – and this silence bothered him. More troubling, his ideas about the Word itself first came to him as wordless, formless impulses he had to work into language – like the feeling in his guts he once got before he hit on a product name. Kenric no longer doubted things existed before and outside language; language was a mere lamination. What he had gleaned of the Word originated beyond language; the Word had to be born into language.

  He had spoken of these things in a halting way to Tess but he bit his tongue and did not express them to Maria, as she combed his fringe this way and that and edged around him, without losing contact.

  ‘Are there any home truths I need to know that came out of the truth-telling?’ she asked.

  She had begun to snip near Kenric’s ear.

  ‘The men aren’t doing the washing-up,’ said Kenric, looking straight ahead while keeping still.

  ‘That’s true enough,’ said Maria. ‘And what had our darling Tess to say about me?’

  ‘That you cajole.’

  Maria’s stomach expanded as she laughed against
his side. She put down the scissors and began to massage his scalp with her hands – or was she just feeling his head?

  ‘Bruno worries me,’ said Kenric. ‘Who knows anything about him? He so rarely talks. And Barnabus really has no idea what we do here – I heard him speaking to his mother on the phone the other day, and he seems to believe he’s at some kind of college, learning about how to enter the advertising world.’

  Maria, thoughtful now, started sweeping the hair off the floor. She had her back to him when she asked, ‘Why don’t you ever tell me you love me anymore?’

  Kenric ran a hand over his suddenly cold neck. ‘It’s in my actions,’ he replied.

  ‘But I want to hear it.’

  ‘I said lines like that too many times to Janis, in the early days of our marriage.’

  ‘I’m not Janis!’

  ‘I’m just telling you the truth. I no longer want to say things when they mean so much. Love lies in action, not words. It’s like you cutting my hair, that’s how you told me you still love me.’

  ‘But I need to hear it,’ Maria reiterated. She had become stoop-shouldered, and smaller, darker. ‘You’re not listening to me.’

  ‘Haven’t we made all this together?’ said Kenric, indicating the space of the warehouse. ‘Doesn’t that show I love you?’

  ‘But our relationship always takes second place to The Word,’ said Maria. ‘You articulate so much – but not the simplest, most important thing.’

  Kenric would have told her he loved her, only it was too late for the words – or those words, at that time.

  The next morning found Robert trying to overcome a hangover by steadily consuming pots of coffee in the kitchen, as he did every morning. Robert was telling Maria of the malaise he sensed coming over The Word, an ill feeling most evident whenever Maria was absent – a kind of corporate jadedness, a vacuum; there was scant goodwill in the group.

  ‘I feel it’s splintering,’ Robert told her. ‘I always feel it as soon as you go away, Maria – it’s splintering between the women and the men, and between the university educated and the otherwise educated, and between the old-timers and the new. This is what happened last time, with Lionel – it’s coming back to me now. Kenric doesn’t seem to notice, he’s not reading the signs.’

  ‘Kenric always drifts a bit before hitting on a new idea,’ said Maria.

  ‘Yes, that’s it – the general sense is things are drifting, sliding. And that he’s becoming uninterested in the group’s affairs. He initiated the tongue-talking, but then didn’t take part. I got so into it I didn’t notice at the time, but Justin pointed it out to me afterwards.’

  ‘You don’t think you listen too much to Justin, Robert?’

  ‘It’s coming from the women too, especially from Tess.’

  Maria shook the bell tree, a homemade musical instrument kept in the broom cupboard. This was the signal for the commencement of a ‘silent day’. On these days, the members of The Word had about ten minutes left to talk and make noise after the bell, before being required to not speak until dusk, when they would meet again as a group in the kitchen for a communal meal. It was Maria’s prerogative alone to call silent days.

  Bruno, who had been on his way to the kitchen when he heard the tinkling that heralded the coming silence, abruptly turned and made for the front door, where he met Barnabus.

  ‘So what do you know, young Barnabus?’ cried Bruno, clapping Barnabus on the back.

  ‘Fuck-all!’ boomed Barnabus, equally hail-fellow-well-met in return.

  ‘Good, very good – you’re a quick learner.’ Bruno smiled. ‘Now, you look hungry to me, Barnie, as usual. Let me buy you some breakfast. How about we go to the cafe across the road?’

  ‘Just us?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Okay.’ Barnabus shrugged, surprised. No one talked to him much at The Word, and Bruno, who seemed to avoid him, never had, although the older man sometimes looked at him in a thoughtful, distant way, which made Barnabus uneasy.

  ‘How’ve you been enjoying your time at The Word?’ asked Bruno as they waited at the lights to cross the highway. The cafe was some distance down the road, behind the wire fence of the industrial park opposite.

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ confided Barnabus, gangling in his shorts, thongs and T-shirt. ‘I have to admit I want to go home sometimes.’

  ‘Is home far?’

  ‘It is. You’ve probably guessed I’m not from the city. I come from a little country town.’

  Bruno nodded.

  ‘Ever been to Final Rest?’ asked Barnabus hopefully. ‘It’s near Lake Despair, the salt lake.’

  ‘Can’t say I have,’ said Bruno.

  ‘Everyone knows one another in Final Rest, it’s a nice little community, and everyone pretty much says what they think – they have to, you know. No point in telling a lie, really, when everyone knows everyone else’s business. You can’t hide much in a small town in the middle of – well, nowhere.’

  ‘And it’s different in the big smoke?’

  ‘I’m beginning to think it might be,’ admitted Barnabus. ‘Sometimes I’m not sure what people are getting at hereabouts. People talk differently in the city, that’s for sure. They don’t always say exactly what they mean – that’s what I’m beginning to suspect, at least. You may not agree.’

  ‘Got the money for the ticket home?’ asked Bruno, as the signal pinged and stuttered and they crossed the highway. ‘You look like you could do with a few bucks.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m pretty skint,’ sighed Barnabus. While they had been waiting at the lights, Bruno had given him one of those distant looks, a gaze from a place Barnabus could not begin to imagine – only he knew it was far from Final Rest.

  ‘Want to make some money for that ticket home?’ Bruno asked Barnabus.

  ‘Mum’s going to send me some money as soon as she can.’

  They settled on the rickety plastic seats outside the cafe, where the traffic noise masked their words.

  ‘You seem like a pretty smart guy to me, Barnabus,’ Bruno said, or shouted, across the table. ‘What do you reckon about all the things that go on in that place?’ He lifted his eyes over the road, in the direction of The Word.

  ‘Can’t say I always get it,’ admitted Barnabus. ‘I’m sure having trouble writing my testimonial, I’m not sure what to say –’

  ‘You don’t believe in it all, do you?’ asked Bruno. ‘I mean, a smart bloke like you isn’t taken in, right? They’re nuts, aren’t they – and Tess told me once the head honcho’s only paraphrasing some old dude from the Dark Ages – Platypus or something his name was. Plodinus, that’s it.’

  ‘It can get pretty weird, you’re right,’ Barnabus conceded, ‘but I thought only I thought that. And I reckon that’s what it’s like in the city – The Word’s probably pretty representative.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Well … why do you stay if you think it’s nuts?’ asked Barnabus.

  ‘The rent’s low,’ grinned Bruno, ‘that’s why I stick it out, mate, and it’s private – I like my privacy. Hello, here come some sisters. They must be fleeing the silence too.’

  Tess and Connie had appeared at the lights over the road.

  ‘That video camera of yours work?’ asked Bruno. ‘I heard you say you got it as your going-away present when you left – where was it? Grave’s End?’

  ‘Final Rest. Sure it works. It was my twenty-first birthday present as well as my going-away present, it was a combined gift. Why do you ask?’

  ‘And you know how to use it?’ asked Bruno.

  ‘Sure I do. I’m not dumb.’

  ‘What say you and I do a bit of filming, Barnie?’

  Barnabus said nothing. He did not want to share his present. It was the only thing he had, other than his old guitar.

  ‘I mean film certain happenings inside that place,’ said Bruno, lifting his eyes again towards The Word. ‘We could make a little doco about the joint. It’s nice to have a reco
rd of things. But we’d keep it a surprise.’

  Tess and Connie began crossing the road.

  ‘Why a surprise?’ asked Barnabus.

  ‘We could bring a little homemade movie out on a special occasion,’ said Bruno. ‘They like to think of us as a kind of family, don’t they? Noticed that?’

  ‘I guess it is a bit like that.’

  ‘But they’re kind of private – secretive, you might say,’ said Bruno, ‘and they might not like us filming things at first. Everything has to be run by the big boss. You know who I mean.’

  ‘Maria?’

  ‘You got it.’ Bruno began playing with sachets of sugar in a plastic bowl. No one had appeared to take their order, but Bruno seemed to be in no hurry. ‘You ever watched Sixty Minutes?’ he suddenly asked Barnabus.

  ‘Oh, don’t Ken and Maria hate Sixty Minutes?’

  ‘The show does exposés,’ said Bruno, observing Barnabus. ‘You know they pay people for helping make those.’ He waited, then asked, ‘Do you know what an exposé is, Barnie?’

  ‘Sure I do,’ said Barnabus, ‘I’m not that dumb.’

  ‘And have you been following that business in the papers about The Word?’

  ‘That nasty letter, and the article?’

  ‘Yeah, those,’ said Bruno, ‘the allegations about a cult and all that.’

  ‘Well, Robert refuted it all pretty strongly, I thought –’

  ‘But do you believe that stuff said in the paper about the place?’ Bruno pressed.

  Barnabus began to wish someone would appear to take their order. He shifted his feet around under the table.

  ‘Did – did you go to the papers?’ he unhappily asked Bruno.

  ‘I knew you were a smart guy.’ Bruno grinned. ‘No, it wasn’t me, but when I read that newspaper article, that’s when I realised there’s an audience, see – a market.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Here come the sisters. Anyway, have a think, Barnabus. There’s an interest in the place, and we’ve got the tool to meet that interest. That’s an opportunity. Understand?’