The next day I call the language doctor and go to his office. I tell him about plunging into the abyss and my language pains. This man in his white smock immediately interrupts me and starts making recommendations. In each sentence I say, I am to select a single word I wish to emphasize. This word, he says, should dominate over the others and take complete control of the sentence, otherwise anarchy will reign in my oral cavity. I am to focus on this single word and skim over all the others with a light breath. Suddenly my tongue starts to speak in Japanese.
Not like that, he says, select a word to emphasize. But I can’t pick out a single word at the expense of all the others. It’s not that it offends my sense of democracy, but the rhythm of my breathing trips me up. The doctor is insistent. It really is necessary, he says, for me to emphasize a single word, not by raising the pitch of my voice, but by giving this word greater weight. Once again, Japanese words begin to spring out of my larynx, or are my vocal cords a tape running in some strange machine?
Not like that, the doctor says, hold the pitch steady, otherwise it sounds indecent. In the world of phonetics, pitches are like prostitutes. Besides, “b” isn’t supposed to sound like a spring wind creeping up behind your back; it should make an explosive entrance. In the word “bed,” for instance: one should leap into bed in a single bound, not creep in furtively.
Following the doctor’s instructions, I begin to emphasize only these few chosen words, and all at once the letters of stone vanish. How strange! In order to read, I have to look at the text. But to avoid stumbling, I have to pretend the letters don’t exist. This is the secret of the alphabet: the letters aren’t there any longer, and at the same time they haven’t yet vanished.
In a dream, I meet Zoltán in the street. I invite him to have tea with me. It’s getting dark. In the light of a neon lamp, his face looks pale. What’s the matter? I ask. His skin has become nearly transparent, and beneath it his red and blue veins appear like written characters. On the bare flesh of his inner thigh, I see an “n.” What is that? I ask. Embarrassed, Zoltán replies that he’s become so thin he can no longer cover his blood with flesh. In the chilly air of the dark room, his skin becomes more and more transparent, as if it were covered with ice. I’m glad I have on a fur coat. Is it a tattoo? I ask him warily. No, it’s just my nature, he murmurs. But what about that “n”? That can’t be just nature.
He says that when I say “n,” I shouldn’t press the back of my tongue against my palate; the tip of my tongue is supposed to press against the back of my front teeth. Otherwise you can’t hear this consonant at all, and I would be cutting off the end of his name.
No, not like that, he says, the “n” is supposed to sound different. But for me, this is physically impossible. If the “n” isn’t followed by a vowel, I can’t coax my tongue back to the front of my mouth. Therefore I can’t, for example, pronounce the word “want,” because my tongue is pressing not against the consonants but against Zoltan’s soft penis. It appears to be true that nothing can cover his transparent skin any longer. I watch as countless tiny letters flow into the organ. If only there were an “o” in between! It would be easy for me to say “wanot.” So why shouldn’t I say “wanot” instead of “want”? If some day I no longer need the “o,” I can just drop it. Until then, I’ll keep my wanot. The penis is becoming harder and harder, its surface feels smooth, like silk cloth. Perhaps a person, to be a friend, has to want, to wish for something in the future; but I’m not a friend, I’m a tongue. In any case, I can’t pronounce the word “friend” because there’s a single “n” in the middle of it. “Frienod!” I cry out. At this moment, Zoltan’s penis explodes. Liquid characters spurt out of it, gleam briefly in the neon light and vanish again amid the silence of mute taste buds.
WHERE EUROPE BEGINS
1
For my grandmother, to travel was to drink foreign water. Different places, different water. There was no need to be afraid of foreign landscapes, but foreign water could be dangerous. In her village lived a girl whose mother was suffering from an incurable illness. Day by day her strength waned, and her brothers were secretly planning her funeral. One day as the girl sat alone in the garden beneath the tree, a white serpent appeared and said to her: “Take your mother to see the Fire Bird. When she has touched its flaming feathers, she will be well again.” “Where does the Fire Bird live?” asked the girl. “Just keep going west. Behind three tall mountains lies a bright shining city, and at its center, atop a high tower, sits the Fire Bird.” “How can we ever reach this city if it is so far off? They say the mountains are inhabited by monsters.” The serpent replied: “You needn’t be afraid of them. When you see them, just remember that you, too, like all other human beings, were once a monster in one of your previous lives. Neither hate them nor do battle with them, just continue on your way. There is only one thing you must remember: when you are in the city where the Fire Bird lives, you must not drink a single drop of water.” The girl thanked him, went to her mother and told her everything she had learned. The next day the two of them set off. On every mountain they met a monster that spewed green, yellow and blue fire and tried to burn them up; but as soon as the girl reminded herself that she, too, had once been just like them, the monsters sank into the ground. For ninety-nine days they wandered through the forest, and finally they reached the city, which shone brightly with a strange light. In the burning heat, they saw a tower in the middle of this city, and atop it sat the Fire Bird. In her joy, the girl forgot the serpent’s warning and drank water from the pond. Instantly the girl became ninety-nine years old and her mother vanished in the flaming air.
When I was a little girl, I never believed there was such a thing as foreign water, for I had always thought of the globe as a sphere of water with all sorts of small and large islands swimming on it. Water had to be the same everywhere.Sometimes in sleep I heard the murmur of the water that flowed beneath the main island of Japan. The border surrounding the island was also made of water that ceaselessly beat against the shore in waves. How can one say where the place of foreign water begins when the border itself is water?
2
The crews of three Russian ships stood in uniform on the upper deck playing a farewell march whose unfamiliar solemnity all at once stirred up the oddest feelings in me. I, too, stood on the upper deck, like a theatergoer who has mistakenly stepped onstage, for my eyes were still watching me from among the crowd on the dock, while I myself stood blind and helpless on the ship. Other passengers threw long paper snakes in various colors toward the dock. The red streamers turned midair into umbilical cords — one last link between the passengers and their loved ones. The green streamers became serpents and proclaimed their warning, which would probably only be forgotten on the way, anyhow. I tossed one of the white streamers into the air. It became my memory. The crowd slowly withdrew, the music faded, and the sky grew larger behind the mainland. The moment my paper snake disintegrated, my memory ceased to function. This is why I no longer remember anything of this journey. The fifty hours aboard the ship to the harbor town in Eastern Siberia, followed by the hundred and sixty hours it took to reach Europe on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, have become a blank space in my life which can be replaced only by a written account of my journey.