The Word

by William Lane

  ‘“The dead writer?”’ asked Judith.

  ‘“Yeth,”’ lisped Bruno, who at this sudden impediment faltered briefly. ‘I mean, “Yes, although the writer must be preserved in some sense, as he lives in me; having eaten him, I actually feel obliged to preserve his voice, for I consumed it. It lives on – in fact, it not only inhabits, it becomes me. It seems to have more authority than my original voice – for it is the voice of the dead, and the unjustly dead.”’

  ‘“Hard for you.”’

  ‘“Yes, Doc, it is, actually. Do you know how it feels when the words you speak are not yours? Do you know how that hollows out a person?”’

  ‘“It must be difficult.”’

  ‘“It is. Yet I must speak the borrowed words – I am compelled. Let me ask you this, Doctor: are you sure your words are yours? You don’t sound entirely spontaneous or original to me.”’

  ‘“Let’s not talk about me,”’ said Judith nervously.

  ‘“Another thing: I cannot read anything these days without criticising it – it’s as if the dead guy’s voice in my head is commentating on everything I read, and I can’t switch it off …”’

  ‘“That’s distressing.”’

  ‘“It is. Oh, by the way, Doc, have you read anything I’ve written yet? I think I’ve asked you before.”’

  Bruno’s performance was growing in strength, and Judith appeared almost afraid.

  ‘“Yeth,”’ said Judith, beginning to frown, ‘“my attention hath been drawn to thome – writing – it’th imprethive – your detailed dethcriptionth of the … human body –”’

  ‘“Oh, it’s not me, it’s him! So you liked what I wrote? I ask you out of curiosity, not vanity, as the words are not mine. So you like it – even though you know the details of my case? You have read all that’s in my file, haven’t you, including the court transcript? But don’t be scared to tell the truth, for I know you are a writer too, and part of our fraternity, and I must have your thoughts.”’

  Play readings were held most nights that week, all at the Whale Beach house. Little else progressed – or even happened – at The Word. Perhaps it was simply the joys of the seaside that occasioned a fresh slackness among the members during those days, most noticeably at the Pittwater house. The washing-up was often left unfinished for days on end, classes were poorly attended, and learning initiatives fizzled out unsupported. What little learning did take place was rarely followed up – people were having too much fun. Even participation in truth-telling and root word classes became half-hearted – some classes were skipped or scratched altogether.

  If work was to be done at one residence, members simply went to the other, where they could be seen on the beach, splashing in the water, skipping stones, collecting shells or eating fish and chips. Meanwhile, Maria’s long absence continued, Robert drank and Kenric was rarely seen – he seemed intent only on reading.

  Among other things, he re-read the testimonials of past and present members of The Word. Every woman who had stayed any length of time had written one; not one of the men had, apart from Kenric himself. Upon first reading a testimonial, Kenric was in the habit of earmarking passages he thought interesting. On Krystal’s testimonial, titled ‘The Wonder of Words’, he found he had marked, perhaps six months before, these paragraphs:

  I had been going out with my first serious boyfriend for about two months before I realised he could not read. He lived in a caravan at the back of the neighbour’s house. He drove a truck. I was sixteen, he was twenty-four. He was so ashamed to admit he could not read, it took him two months to tell me. But it explained so much. Like how it was always me that chose the TV shows from the TV guide. I still don’t understand how he managed to drive a truck and not read. He would memorise the look of the name of the place where he was going, he told me. I once met a signwriter who could not read. Occasionally he made a mistake, and he’d be told to do the sign again. Like he’d put the very last letter of a long word on the next line. The sign would look ridiculous, people would laugh, and the message was completely lost.

  That experience with my boyfriend made me realise the importance not only of reading but of words in general, I mean how powerful they are. When I became a teacher’s aide, my admiration for the teachers became great. How they explained these lifeless signs to little people, and how the lifeless signs began to gather meaning, was a wonder to watch. I always asked to work with the little ones who were struggling to read. Yet I truly believe some children aren’t ready to read until they’re ten or eleven. Their brains develop at a different rate to those kids that teach themselves to read at three or four, or whenever. The ones who don’t read see the world differently. They notice different things. They compensate in interesting ways. They really observe closely. They’re very immediate, very here and now. I can now identify a non-reader not long after I meet them. They have little tricks. Their memories are usually exceptional. I often try to remember what the world was like before I could read, and it is frighteningly large.

  Judith’s testimonial began:

  I grew up in a house of lies. My first memory is of my mother holding her finger to her lips. I grew to know that look; she was protecting my father. My mother was dutiful and timid, my father was a womaniser. As my sisters and I grew older, we slowly became aware of this, one by one, in our own ways. Only much later, after we had left home, did we tell one another what we knew. As teenagers we would sit at the table with our father as he made his excuses for absences and odd phone calls and trips here and there. For a long time we all knew what was going on. Nothing was said. My mother smiled through it all, and kept saying the right things. He said the right things too – things that matched up to what my mother wanted to hear. My father began abusing my eldest sister. Still nothing was said. We all knew. Nothing was spoken. My sister Gemma was brilliant at English. She wrote stories. My father found one and read it aloud in front of us, mocking her. She stopped writing. He mocked my lisp. People said nice things about him at his funeral. And my mother was happy about that. No one ever knew, she thought, because nothing was ever said. The bad things never happened, because nothing was said about them.

  Three marked paragraphs in Connie’s testimonial read:

  I have always had a troubled relationship with words. I can never forgive myself for calling Olive O’Leary a carrot top, and her friend Marjorie Quince a square eyes. That was in Year Three. And once at about that time I called out to my mother, as she drove past on the way home, ‘Here comes the old bag!’ When I got home, mother took me aside and gave me the gentlest little talking to, quietly explaining to me what I had said. I have never felt so ashamed.

  Since then I have always been fearful of how powerful words are. When I speak, I am never quite sure what effect the words are going to have on people. I went through a stage where I vowed to say only nice things, until I realised I was sounding intolerably insipid and friends were avoiding me. And half of what I said, probably more, just wasn’t true. People started to take offence at that, I could tell, as if they suspected I was making fun of them. So then I stopped talking altogether for long periods of time, and I have never quite lost this habit. It comes and goes.

  In some ways I admit I still try to avoid words. I love doing things that require no words. Like dancing. I love dancing, and nothing gets said. And cooking. Once the recipe is in your head, not a single word has to enter your mind and you can cook all day long. Can I talk about sex?

  In the margin of Connie’s typed testimony was handwritten:

  The world does exist outside language. I know because my inner life exists beyond words. It exists:

  – in dreams

  – in desires

  – in childhood memories.

  These are the places where the self really exists – not in language, but in everything before and beyond language?

  Words are attempts at copies, poor copies, of the things listed above?

  Discuss: Ultimately it’s not words or
their inadequacy that create illusion – they are the symptom, not the cause: illusion’s real cause is we are intent on playing out roles assigned to us, despite our selves having little or nothing to do with these given roles? Are words merely conscripted to the service of roles, words form the script? Consider Tess’s poem overleaf.

  Consider: I’ve been assigned the role of guru, but I can no long speak in role.

  Note: Could where we live affect how strictly we are in role? That’s why I want to leave the city? The closer to the centre, the more constricting the roles, the more pressure to play a part? That’s why country towns are full of eccentrics?

  It took Kenric some time to realise the handwriting in the margin was his, and that he had written the notes almost a year before. He had more or less forgotten these thoughts. Under his notes was scribbled, in Maria’s loose handwriting, We should talk about this! He was pretty sure they never had.

  Kenric turned over the page and read the poem by Tess, ‘Not When She’s in Uniform’, clipped to the back of Connie’s testimonial page:

  Policeman’s patrolling in the rain

  He’s leading the baton charge

  He’s locking the handcuffs

  That keeps the prisoner inside the bay

  And he laughs a lot

  At the end of his day

  And he cries a lot

  But not when he’s in uniform

  The doctor puts on that voice again

  Delivering babies

  Putting patients at ease

  And knowing one day she’s going to make a mistake

  And she laughs a lot

  At the end of her day

  And she cries a lot

  But not when she’s in uniform

  The hostess runs through her list again

  Pre-tasting the soufflé

  And giving the okay

  And covering for those guests with nothing to say

  And she laughs a lot

  In her infectious way

  And she cries a lot

  But not until the guests have gone.

  As Kenric was re-reading the testimonials, Judith was meeting her sister Gemma near one of the boatsheds at Pittwater. (Gemma had become convinced The Word was an insidious cult and refused to visit the house). The sisters sat on a low wall bordering a narrow strip of sand, and talked while looking along the tide-exposed piers of a wharf before them.

  ‘I heard there was some sex scandal to do with The Word,’ said Gemma, taking half a sandwich from a hinged plastic box. ‘Does Kenric expect the women to sleep with him?’

  ‘No, what nonsense!’ exclaimed Judith. ‘God, if only you lived with him. He’s so nondescript,’ she said.

  ‘So it doesn’t happen?’

  ‘No – there was no scandal, there was a mischievous claim by a lying and spiteful person who’s got the wrong end of the stick and can’t see otherwise. I know her, I had to live with her.’

  ‘So you won’t leave?’ asked Gemma. She asked this every time she visited.

  ‘No, why should I? I’m happy here,’ Judith said simply.

  ‘Are you instructed not to contact us – your sisters, your family?’

  ‘No, it’s just that I don’t really want to,’ Judith said.

  ‘What could make you leave this … community, or whatever it is?’

  Irritated, Judith stopped attending to Gemma, and began muttering lines from Tess’s play, which she was learning.

  ‘What are you saying?’ asked Gemma, vexed. ‘I’ve driven all this way in my lunchbreak to talk to you, and you’re having some weird inner conversation – you can’t even give me your attention.’

  ‘“Hard for you –”’

  ‘It hurts me, actually!’ cried Gemma.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Judith, ‘but I don’t want to leave The Word, Gemma. I’ve grown to see how empty and ugly the outside world is.’

  ‘Which happens to be reality.’

  ‘Your reality. “Let’s not talk about me” –’

  ‘But I’m here to talk about you,’ said Gemma. ‘You were never happy with what you got, Judith – you were the youngest, and spoilt.’

  ‘You’ll be happy to know we live very austerely at The Word – there’s precious little spoiling.’

  Bruno had appeared further along the sand, where the beach broadened into a thumbnail cove. The women watched him remove his shirt.

  ‘What about Justin?’ asked Gemma. The sisters sometimes spoke about Justin on the phone – they had always discussed and dissected their romantic entanglements, and this was one thing Judith’s time with The Word had not altered.

  ‘Oh – nothing changes,’ muttered Judith.

  ‘You’ve got to give up on him,’ said Gemma. ‘From what you’ve told me, he plainly doesn’t care for you. I’ve only met him once, but I could tell straight away he’s not interested. Not interested in a relationship, I mean – only the sex.’

  Judith frowned at the sand. ‘“What exactly do they say?”’

  ‘What? I’m going on my own observations. You’re stuck living with him all the time,’ said Gemma, ‘and that can’t be good. That’s another reason you should leave this cult –’

  ‘It’s not a cult!’ cried Judith. ‘Stop using that word – you kept saying it last time, too!’

  ‘– or whatever it is. What does it matter what I call it? The problem with you is that you feel too deeply,’ Gemma said in a low, fierce voice, ‘you love too much, you always have. It’s better to be friends, not lovers; you lose control with lovers. You’ve always been the same. You’re no good at relationships.’

  ‘I think I could get over Juthtin,’ said Judith, as she watched the now sleek-headed Bruno swim into deeper water, head-up like an otter between the boats. He clambered onto a hull and perched there a moment, gleaming, before diving back into the water.

  ‘Who is that?’ asked Gemma, putting on her sunglasses. ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Oh, him – he’th jutht another one of the memberth.’

  ‘What are you going to do about Justin?’

  ‘I think it’s over with him … you don’t need to worry about me, Gemma. “Must be difficult for you”.’

  ‘It’s you I’m worried about, not me!’

  ‘Go back to your work,’ said Judith, ‘go back to your advertising world. Perhaps it’s you you should worry about, not me.’

  ‘I just hate seeing you like this, Judith.’ Gemma looked at her watch. ‘And now I have to go – do you know how I feel whenever I leave you?’

  Judith returned to the house, where Justin was reading on the verandah.

  ‘I saw you talking to your sister down by the water,’ he said, not looking up. ‘She’s pretty. Did you talk about me? You did, didn’t you? I’ve also been watching Connie, while pretending to read.’ He glanced at Connie through the verandah’s glass door; she could be seen moving about in the kitchen beyond the living room. ‘She’s been going over that kitchen with a fine-tooth comb. You should have seen her slap the peanut butter on her sandwich. Didn’t you buy that peanut butter? You’ve got to keep an eye on Connie. The proof ’s in the pudding: she’s piling on the kilos.’

  ‘Don’t talk about her like that,’ said Judith, ‘she’s not a pudding.’

  ‘But who’s going to tell her to stop? She’s always taxing the food.’

  ‘You once told me you liked fatties.’

  ‘Did I? That must have been pillow talk,’ said Justin. ‘Can you lend me the money for a pack of cigarettes?’

  ‘No. And you won’t be getting any money from The Word, either, the moment your scholarship runs out.’

  Justin closed his book. ‘That’s not up to you, Judith.’

  ‘Maria and Kenric have told me.’

  ‘No, they haven’t.’

  ‘Yes, they have.’

  ‘How come Bruno getth thupported?’ Justin asked coldly. (Since moving to Pittwater, Bruno had been receiving a small allowance from the group while he loo
ked for a new job.)

  ‘Bruno’s practical.’

  ‘Is this about me not doing the washing-up?’ asked Justin. ‘You know they only put up with you here, Judith, because you can do the books, because no one else here is a numbers person –’

  ‘I love words, too!’ cried Judith. ‘I was never good at English at school, I admit that, and I’m not much of a writer –’

  ‘You’ve got no talent with words at all,’ said Justin. ‘You can hardly spell. Maria doesn’t like you, she thinks you’re a flibbertigibbet, and your lisp drives Kenric nuts, I know it does – it’s like nails down a chalkboard to him. They just put up with you here, we all do. No one here likes you, Judith. There’s a reason you’re in the granny flat. And you’re basically unemployed. Don’t think you can throw your weight around because you do the accounts. They take up about an hour a day, and there’s nothing else you can do.’

  Judith left Justin and returned to the shore, where she found Bruno preparing to launch Robert’s rowboat. Seeing Judith, he continued to fit the oarlocks. The oars he had placed over the seats.

  ‘Fallen out with your lover boy?’ he asked, glancing up. She had been standing a little way off on the sand, waiting for him to notice her, to speak.

  ‘I have no lover boy.’

  ‘I’m going fishing,’ said Bruno. ‘Want to come?’

  He took her hand, helped her into the boat, and rowed with short, decisive strokes, his white knuckles sometimes brushing her knees. Soon he had the boat over the glassy deep water. They passed buoys where water rested glossily black. With a stroke of one hand, and one or two of the other, Bruno manoeuvred them between the white-hulled craft. A few seagulls screeched ‘Judith, Judith!’ Then their little boat was in the deeper channel; Judith thought she had seen a shark fin here once. They moved through a long, wind-flapping silence towards the far shore. At one point Judith looked over her shoulder, to see the houses of Pittwater as dwindling dabs of white and pink on a khaki cliff, then she looked back to the uninhabited shore before them and saw it was distinctly closer than a moment before, as if it had stepped forward. Trees grew densely, multiplying by the water. Soon they could hear cicadas, then birds.