Spoken World

“Wake up, it’s a beautiful morning, it’s a beautiful morning ...” – but Thandi Ntsomi wasn’t so sure. Despite the encouragement of the too-friendly voices on her radio alarm clock, it was a slog as usual to get out of bed. Shuffling through to the bathroom, she growled through the phlegm in her throat and regretted not having left a glass of water or orange juice on the bedside table. The previous evening she had felt a cold coming on; to make matters worse, a heater left on overnight had dried out the air, soldering her tongue to the roof of her mouth. She started the shower running.     As soon as the warm water was flowing over her parched lips she felt better, and after a few minutes of gargling, she even managed a croaky hum. She mentally reviewed the day that lay before her: a familiar day, lived a thousand times already. Yoghurt with a sprinkling of muesli for breakfast. Catch the weather after the morning news. Out of the house and into the car just in time to meet the morning rush hour. Pass the half-hour’s drive to work by practising internal channelling of energy as recommended by Dr Winston’s self-improvement tapes. Work. Lunch break. Work ... the details faded as the day progressed.         An hour later she was at the offices of Mobile Communications Incorporated: a collection of computers, stationery and coffee-machines that was Thandi’s place of work. She ran the IT support desk, which meant reading the e-mailed computer-related complaints of her fellow employees and responding with an e-mailed answer to queries, or fiddling with the company’s internal network. Occasionally she made “house calls”, as she liked to think of them (as a young girl she had always wanted to be a doctor). Then she could sit down at someone’s computer terminal and find a lost file or fix a faulty hard drive. Unfortunately, these personal encounters were rare, and so most of her colleagues remained to her – as she was to them – blank-faced and voiceless. For this reason, it was always encouraging to recognise and be recognised by the security personnel at the front desk. She didn’t know their names, but invariably flashed them a smile as she walked in, which was usually reciprocated with a wave or, in the case of the old guy with the yellow teeth, a playful military salute.         Today there was a new person on duty, a strange looking man: his eyes bulged behind thick glasses; his wide and flat mouth receded into his chin, which in turn was almost indistinguishable from his protruding neck; his long, thin nose seemed more of a proboscis than anything else – in fact, Thandi thought, he looked like an overgrown insect. He was reading a book, turning the pages with his tendrilled fingers, but he shut it sharply as she approached. The name KAFKA was printed in bold black letters on the cover. She had never read any Kafka, but imagined him to be one of those authors of incommunicable profundity. Slightly taken aback by this new insect-man, Thandi nevertheless summoned the full force of her facial muscles to contrive a friendly, sympathetic-without-being-condescending smile. She was very proud of her smile. The man-insect straightened his glasses and mumbled something incomprehensible in a high-pitched tone that Thandi felt was an appropriate buzzing sound for this recently discovered species to make. She passed by, awkwardly.                  Kafka. Odd name.         Thandi didn’t read very much. Despite numerous reminders on yellow Post It notes, she had still not arranged to have one of the daily papers delivered, and she couldn’t be bothered to embark on the odyssey of wading through a novel – whatever her romantic future might hold, she feared that, ultimately, she would find it difficult to commit to the long haul. She preferred the ephemeral, self-contained, compact experience of a movie or a TV drama. Or even the theatre – as long as the show made some kind of sense, had a beginning and an end, a logical plot. She remembered seeing a play, First impressions or something like that, all about those miscued encounters when people talk past each other, or around each other, or even through each other, but just never quite understand each other. (She could relate; her days were filled with cringes, awkward snatches of conversation, crossed wires of communication.) Person A is a regular guy, fairly intelligent, funny, kind, quirky enough not to be boring, usually presentable, all that normal stuff. But Person A spills coffee down the front of his pants. He reads his bank statement and discovers that he didn’t get paid in full last month so his stop order for rent has been bounced and now he’s in trouble. He’s having a bad day. Now Person A meets Person B – Person B is a she – and he’s looking all scraggly and his pants are stained and he’s distracted and a little rude and can’t keep up conversation. So Person B thinks he’s an idiot. Person B tells Person C, her friend. Person C meets a new colleague at work and for whatever reason ends up referring to Person A and talking about how he’s such an idiot. Person D – the colleague – knows person A, is a friendly acquaintance, in fact, and doesn’t think he’s an idiot; quite likes him, but now thinks that Person C is a gossiping judgemental know-all.         And so we go, Thandi thought to herself. What was that movie about butterflies? Everything affects everything else, and usually messes it up.         Someone crosses over the road and leaves a space on the busy pavement, which is then filled by a running woman – running after a thief? No. Running to catch a bus? Yes, running late for work, a running woman running late for work who needs the gap now left behind and takes it when she wouldn’t otherwise have done. Lands with her foot at an angle and breaks a heel. Falls down in the path of a child in a pram who is scarred for life – no, that’s too melodramatic – has to take the heel in to be fixed. Shoe man (what do you call him? tailor? cobbler?) has to phone the shop around the corner to order more glue. The line’s busy so when the sister of the wife of the man who owns the shop phones to say she’s going into labour, she can’t get through. Tries him on the cellphone instead, which rings to the tune of Shosholoza. A customer in the shop hears the song and is walking steadily further and further down memory lane as the shop owner excitedly runs out the door. The customer, thinking of Shosholoza and the migrant labourers and his father who is dead and his mother who is not, decides to visit his mother who lives in another city. Goes home, packs a bag, starts walking to the train station. May get run over by a bus or may be reconciled to his mother. All because one person, some person, some insignificant stranger, crossed the road.         Now there was a story someone should write down. It was probably too short; Thandi liked it because it was short. She liked variety in her reading matter. During a spell in London (a black girl taking a gap year after school, the exception proving the rule about the whiteness of the 20-something South African diaspora), she had dabbled in the subtle art of second-hand reading on public transport. They were common enough, these literary scavengers of the commuting terrain: jackals preying on discarded tabloids, vultures peering over shoulders to feast on fleeting extracts from someone else’s dog-eared paperback. Anything to avoid the bleak view of dirty streets rushing by, the horrors of their own thoughts, or the ignominy of scratching, sniffing, picking and other personal hygiene taboos. London – so grey, so lonely, so anonymous. When she came back home after a few months, she had felt constantly surrounded by the friendly smiles of strangers. That was a long time ago. It was certainly before she started working at Mobile Communications Incorporated.                  There were no house calls to be made – in fact, during the course of the day, there was very little to do in the way of IT support at all. Instead, she used up the hours reading and forwarding e-mail jokes. She also spent some time on the internet, finding out about Handel’s Messiah. Her best friend, Sarah, had been given tickets to a concert hosted by some big symphony orchestra and choir in a few days’ time. It seemed a bit early in the year for Christmas music, but a free concert was a free concert and Sarah had persuaded her to go. Usually Thandi didn’t enjoy classical music, but at least the Messiah had words. Although she didn’t have very strong musical tastes, the lyrics of a song were always important to her, and her general disliking of classical music was based on the premise that it offered no lyrics at all. During the vocal silence of classical pieces she often felt that the musicians were ignoring her, and she could not tolerate being ignored.         For lunch she had brought the leftovers of last night’s supper: readymeal chicken and rice. In the office kitchen, as she watched the container turn inside the humming microwave, she wondered if the contents had ever actually been cooked, or if they had just been placed in a series of warming up devices that eventually aggregated to produce a steaming, hyper-lukewarm meal. A piercing beep brought her out of her reverie. It wasn’t the microwave timer, as she had expected, but her cellphone signalling that she had an sms. It was Sarah, jst chckng tht we r stil on 4 tom eve & Mess nxt day. Thandi didn’t like sms as a form of communication. Sure, it was convenient, cheap, all of that, but it was also an easy way to evade responsibility; it didn’t require the effort of actual conversation. Thandi sent back a message saying, Absolutely! I’m looking forward to it. See you tomorrow for dinner at 7:30. She refused to use abbreviations or compromise on punctuation and grammar. Thoroughness. Clarity. That was what she liked.     By late afternoon a mild headache and a feeling of slight nausea reminded her that she was in the slow, downward spiral towards a winter cold. Deciding to leave early and go home to a quiet, relaxing evening followed by a good night’s rest, Thandi congratulated herself on her decisive, health-conscious action. Instinctive diagnosis and treatment; she really could have been a doctor. She prescribed a course of headache tablets and cough mixture, combined with a diet of soup and orange juice. Fortunately she already had all these provisions at home. She couldn’t bear the rigmarole of going to the chemist, choosing from amongst the hundreds of similarly packaged and priced products, and meekly approaching the lady at the front counter who had a look in her eye and a tone in her voice saying, I still remember the day you bought those flavoured condoms.                  She went home, sat down in front of the TV for a few hours and slipped slowly into unconsciousness. When she woke up, yawning, a voice from a familiar advert cried, “Yebo, gogo!” Her lips moved to echo the phrase like a mocking parrot. In her mind she could hear the sounds. But she couldn’t form the words. She stuttered. She mumbled. She made a grunting noise and then a wheezing sound as if someone had punched her in the stomach, but no syllables were pronounced. She steadied herself and concentrated on making a silent “yebo” with her lips. Nothing. After repeated attempts at “gogo”, she gagged as the noise was strangled inside her mouth. She panicked. The room began to tilt and melt around her, doors and tables warping into a Dali painting. A loud ringing sound filled her ears and seemed to echo off the walls. She sat down, feeling faint, and tried to compose herself. What had happened? How had she lost the power of speech?         She focused her mind. With a perverse fascination, she grasped the sad truth that she had lived an entire day amongst hundreds of people without needing to speak a single word. The novelty of this thought soon turned into horror and dread: had she killed her own ability to communicate? Had her speech organs, starved of use, terminated themselves?         The animal instinct for survival drove her to think of how she could adapt. There would still be the usual forms of communication, on which she had come to depend: rushed e-mails, scissored text messages, artificial smiles, charade-like hand gestures. But to look into another human being’s eyes and to tell them who she was ... was that lost to her forever?         She staggered to her bed, where she spent a restless night punctuated by fitful sleep and a series of vivid dreams, in which she imagined herself conversing with white-bearded wise old men. When she lay awake, a low whining sound filled the room. It was her only means of complaint, her only cry for help.         Her eyes were open to greet the dawn. This was a time for pragmatism, she convinced herself; she resolved to learn to speak once more, and was prepared to be reduced to the level of a young child again if necessary. Comforted by this resolution, she fell into a deep sleep.                  When she woke up again, her clock-radio was blaring the 10:00 news. She sat up with a start, realised the time and sank back onto the bed. “Bloody hell,” she remarked involuntarily to the ceiling, her only fellow conspirator. Then, gathering her thoughts, she remembered the previous night – and the suddenly enormous significance of those two words just uttered. She could speak! It was a miracle, there was no doubt in her mind: she had been healed. For the first time in years she was excited about getting ready for work. Each object she passed received a special greeting or a stream of long words. The fridge was told that the capital of Japan is Tokyo; she sang a song to her shoes; the flushing of the toilet was accompanied by the words “cantankerous” and “flexibility”. In short, Thandi was exuberant – she revelled in the crystalline sound of her voice and the delicate, precise movements of her tongue.         She left the house determined to speak to as many people as possible throughout the day. She hoped the insect-man would be at the reception desk again, but he had been replaced by an enormous thug whose arms and legs sprawled over two chairs. In Thandi’s over-active imagination, he was a huge spider who had eaten the poor insect-man and was now looking for his next meal. Nevertheless, she greeted him with “What a lovely day, isn’t it?” The reply came in the form of a throaty grunt, which could have been either a gruff concession that it was indeed a lovely day, or a burp of indigestion caused by the mangled remains of the insect-man.         She was expecting that her absence at work would have been noticed and that she might even be called in by her boss to explain why she was late. Instead, she passed unheralded through to her office and settled into her desk. Despite this disappointment, there was plenty of work awaiting her, a mountain of e-mailing to do and, although she was itching to find someone to talk to, it would have to wait. At least there was dinner with Sarah later. Having arrived late she had to work through lunch, and it was soon 5:30.         She rushed home to change. Alone again, she turned on the TV and the radio, desperate to hear the comforting sound of other human voices. Her phone beeped with an sms from Sarah, saying that she had to work late and might not be able to make dinner. Thandi was furious; she absolutely had to see Sarah and talk to her. She felt betrayed, desperate, dizzy, and her eyes welled with tears. She dialled Sarah’s number. Voicemail. “Sarah, it’s Thandi. Please, you have to phone me back. I need to talk. I just ... need ... to talk. It’s been two days now. The strangest things have happened. No-one will talk with me. I don’t understand it. What’s happening these days? Why don’t people talk to each other any more? I don’t want to depend on a TV. Please – ”         A beep and an electronic voice told her that she had run out of time. Her message was over. She couldn’t speak any longer.

 

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