The figures in the coffins — dolls made of plastic — bear witness to the link between death and these dolls: all of the tribes represented in the form of dolls were, at some point in history, culturally or economically conquered by others and to some extent destroyed. As in other museums as well, a power relationship is illustrated here: that which is represented is always something that has been destroyed. In a zoological museum, for example, a stuffed wolf might be put on display, whereas no wolf can display a human being. Historical museums, too, are marked by a hierarchical relationship between past and present.
As long as an outsider appears threatening, the others try to destroy him. When he is dead, he can be lovingly represented as a doll in a museum. One can look at the doll, listen to the explanations of its way of life, view the photos of its homeland, but there is always something that remains unclear. There is a veil separating the museum visitor from the dead doll, making it impossible to learn much. One learns much more when one attempts to describe an imaginary tribe. What should their lives look like? How does their language function? What is this completely unfamiliar social system like? It is equally interesting to play the role of an observer who comes from a fictional culture. How would he describe “our” world? This is the endeavor of fictive ethnology, in which not the described but the describer is imaginary.
6
That the dolls can be thought of only in conjunction with death can be seen in the following brief example: a long time ago, when the people in many Japanese villages were suffering inescapable poverty, it sometimes happened that women who gave birth to children, rather than starving together with them, would kill them at birth. For each child that was put to death, a wooden doll called kokeshi, meaning make-the-child-go-away, was crafted, so that the people would never forget they had survived at the expense of these children.
7
It is difficult to understand the language of dolls. To our ears, they are usually mute. The language of the dead isn’t really comprehensible either. For the most part it can’t even be heard. Only in a state in which one is not fixated on understanding can one hear it.
I remember a day when I felt as though I’d heard the language of the dead. In 1982, in the spring, I visited a village in Nepal inhabited by Tibetans. Before me stood a temple from which a prayer was emanating. When I listened more closely, I realized it consisted of several voices. I looked inside the temple and saw a single monk praying. From his body came several voices. After he had taken a breath, he once more spread out a deep voice like a carpet on which several other voices could then appear. He produced these voices from within his body, offering a sounding board to storytellers who themselves had none. The dead, for example, who had no bodies of their own in which their voices could resonate, were able to become audible in the voice of the monk.
At the time I tried to produce my own voice carpet. I failed in my attempt, but for the first time I became conscious of several secondary voices that form part of my speech. I began to pay attention to these voices as I spoke. Telling stories no longer took the place of listening; rather, listening gave rise to stories.
Perhaps the ear is the organ of storytelling, not the mouth. Why else was the poison poured into the ear of Hamlet's father rather than his mouth? To cut off a person from the world, you must first destroy not his mouth but his ear.
8
There are even dolls that can articulate the language of the living. In 1992 I visited London to see them. It wasn’t only the popular singing and speaking wax figures of rock musicians that could speak our language, there were also several less famous mechanical dolls in the guise of a fortune teller or a doctor. I found a mechanical doctor at a marketplace. When I sat down opposite him, he told me in a mechanical voice to place my hands on the glass plate. Between us stood a desk topped with a glass plate through which one could observe his fascinating mechanism. The creases in my palm were read, that is, they were deciphered like letters of the alphabet. The doctor nodded and picked up a slip of paper with a precise gesture. He wrote out a prescription and gave it to me. Unfortunately, his handwriting was illegible. A furiously wavy line traversed the paper from left to right. This, then, is what the translation of the creases in my palm into a particular language looked like. I pretended I was able to read this writing, thanked the mechanical doctor and went on my way.
TONGUE DANCE
My tongue is always somewhat swollen when I wake up, much too large to move easily within my mouth. It blocks my windpipe, I can feel the pressure building up in my lungs. How much longer do I have to suffocate? I wonder, and at once it begins to shrink. At such moments, my tongue reminds me of a worn-out sponge: dry and stiff, it retreats into my esophagus, dragging the rest of my head behind it.
Once in a dream I was standing on a deserted highway. My entire body was one huge tongue. Far off in the distance, I could see a man in uniform lying on his stomach. I told myself I hadn’t seen anything. Tongues don’t have eyes. Then two policemen appeared from nowhere and spoke to me. They said I was the only one who could have witnessed this brutal murder. Shooting a uniform in the back carried a severe penalty. In reality, the man lying on the ground was a tin soldier. There was a lit cigarette sticking out of the pocket of his metal trousers.
I was a tongue. I left the house just as I was: naked, pink and unbearably moist. It was easy to delight people I met on the street, but no one was willing to touch me. The shop windows were full of plastic women who lacked sexual organs. The prices on the tags had been crossed out with red ink. Vigilant citizens are careful not to touch any tongues that haven’t been wrapped up in plastic. My entire person now consisted of one huge tongue. I was unable to find work. Then I wrote an autobiography. The life story of a tongue. I read it aloud to audiences in Melsungen, Hemmelsdorf, Winsen, Bad Hersfeld, Bendestorf, Reutlingen and Ittingen.
For several weeks now I’ve had difficulties each time I give a reading: the letters on the pages of my manuscript transform themselves into a wall. I walk patiently along this wall, but there is no door, no window, not even a bell to ring. I can’t read the sentences, even though I’m the one who wrote them. (But how can I use the word “I” so carelessly? As each line is completed, it pulls back from me and is transformed into a language I no longer understand.)
Unsure of what to do, I begin to force out the first few words. Each one is a hurdle. If only the text didn’t have any words in it, I think, I’d be able to read it easily. The wall of letters blocks my view. Sometimes the sentences break off so suddenly I nearly tumble into the hole of the period. And no sooner have I gotten beyond this danger than the next sentence is already standing there in front of me, with no visible entryway. How am I to begin? The words are becoming more and more angular, unwieldy. Soon the individual letters are sprouting out of them in all directions. Where does a word begin? Where does it end? My courage, which consists of one huge tongue, shrinks until it is smaller than a comma. I have to clamber up each of the letters with my tiny feet, unable to see what lies behind it. Each sound plunges me into an abyss. My voice becomes softer and softer, while the written characters become louder and louder.
I am sick. My entire illness consists of one huge tongue. I look under “doctors” in the phone book but don’t know which one to call. My old dentist hated tongues because they interfered with his examinations. My internist ought to be interested in tongues, since they reveal the condition of the stomach. But he never let me show him my tongue. I turn a few more pages in the phone book. Finally, under the heading “language,” I find a language doctor.