‘It really is heavy,’ said the goat. ‘But, you know, I’ve gotten used to it. Even though it’s heavy, even though it’s broken.’
The psychiatrist paused and took a sip of his own orange juice, then looked at me, grinning. I said nothing, waiting for him to continue his story.
“So one day, it’s the goat’s birthday, and the rabbit brings a small box with a pretty ribbon as a present. It was a shiny, glittering, very light, and yet stillworking new watch. The goat was incredibly happy and hung it around his neck, then went around showing it to everyone.”
The story suddenly ended there.
“You’re the sheep, I’m the rabbit, and the watch is your soul.”
Feeling tricked, all I could do was nod. Once a week, on Sunday afternoon, I rode a train and then a bus to the psychiatrist’s house, eating coffee rolls and apple pies and pancakes and croissants topped with honey while receiving my treatment. It took an entire year, but thanks to all those sweets, I got stuck going to the dentist. With civilization comes communication, he said. Whatever can’t be expressed might as well not exist. Nil, nothing. Suppose you’re hungry. You say, ‘I’m hungry,’ and even that short phrase will suffice. I’ll give you a cookie. You can eat it. (I was now holding a cookie.) If you say nothing, there’s no cookie. (The psychiatrist then hid the plate of cookies under the table with a sadistic look on his face.) Nothing. You get it? You don’t want to talk. But you’re hungry. Without making words, you can’t express your hunger. Here’s a gesture game. Come watch this. I grabbed my stomach like it was hurting. The psychiatrist laughed. I had indigestion.
Indigestion…
After that, the next thing we did was ‘free talking’.
“Tell me about cats. Say whatever pops into your head.”
I pretended to think about it, then shook my head back and forth.
“Anything you can think of.”
“They’re animals with four legs.”
“So are elephants.”
“Cats are much smaller.”
“What else?”
“They live in the house, and they can kill mice if they want.”
“What do they eat?”
“Fish.”
“How about sausage?”
“Sausage, too.”
That’s how it went.
What the psychiatrist said was true. With civilization comes communication. Expression and communication are essential; without these, civilization ends. *Click*…OFF.
The spring when I turned 14, an unbelievable thing happened: as if a dam had burst, I suddenly began talking. I don’t really remember what I talked about, but it was like I was making up for lost time, talking non-stop for three months, and when I stopped talking in the middle of July, I came down with a 105
degree fever and missed school for three days. After the fever, I wasn’t completely silent, nor was I a chatterbox; I became a normal teenager.
8
I woke up at six in the morning, probably because I was thirsty. Waking up in someone else’s house, I always feel like I’m in someone else’s body with someone else’s soul stuffed inside. Eventually collecting myself, I rose from the narrow bed, and from the sink next to the door, like a camel, I drank glass after glass of water before returning to bed. From the open window, I could see just a tiny sliver of the ocean. The sunlight glimmered above the tiny waves, and I gazed upon the who-knowshow-many rusty freighters going nowhere in particular. It looked like it was going to be a hot day. All the nearby houses were sleeping quietly, and every once in a while the squeaking of the trains on the rails could be heard, and I thought I detected a faint trace of a radio playing the melody for morning calisthenics.
Still naked, I was leaning against the bed and, after lighting a cigarette, I let my eyes wander over to the girl sleeping next to me. From the southward-facing window, rays of sunlight illuminated the full spread of her body. She was sleeping with her bedsheets pushed down to below her knees. Occasionally, she would struggle when taking a breath, and her wellshaped breasts would jiggle up and down. Her body was well tanned, but over time, the dark color had begun to change, and with the clear tanlines of her swimsuit leaving those areas looking strangely white, she looked like her flesh was decaying.
Ten whole minutes after finishing my cigarette, I made an attempt to remember the girl’s name, but it was useless. First off, I couldn’t even remember if I’d known her name to begin with. I gave up, yawned, then went back to gazing at her body. She was a little younger than twenty, and she was a little on the slim side. I spread out my fingers and measured her from head to toe. She was eight handspans long, with a remainder of a thumb. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 158 centimeters, I’d say.
Under her right breast was a birthmark the size of a nickel, and on her abdomen a thin happy trail of pubic hair had sprung up like weeds along a river. As an added bonus, she only had four fingers on her left hand.
9
From then, it was still three whole hours before she woke up. After that, it took her five minutes to become fully cognizant. During that time, I hunched my shoulders together and looked out towards the east, at the thick clouds changing shape over the horizon of the ocean.
A short time later, when I looked back, she had the covers pulled up to her neck. She was struggling with the whiskey vapors rising from the pit of her stomach, staring at me without any expression.
“Who are you?”
“Don’t you remember?”
She shook her head just once. I lit a cigarette and tried to offer one to her, but she ignored me.
“Explain.”
“Where should I start?”
“At the beginning.”
For starters, I had no idea where the hell to begin, and what’s more, I didn’t have any idea how to tell the story so that she’d understand. I wasn’t sure whether it would go over well or not. After thinking about it for ten seconds or so, I started to speak.
“It was hot, but it was a nice day. I swam all afternoon, then went home and, after an afternoon nap, I had dinner. Now it’s after 8pm. Then I got in my car so I could go somewhere and go for a walk. I parked my car on the road near the shore and listened to the radio while I looked at the ocean, like I always do.
“After thirty minutes of this, I all of a sudden got to feeling like talking to people. Whenever I look at the ocean, I always want to talk to people, but when I’m talking to people, I always want to look at the ocean. I’m weird like that. So then I decided to go to J’s Bar. I wanted to drink beer, and I usually can meet up with my friend there. But my friend wasn’t there. So I decided to drink by myself. In just one hour I drank three beers.”
I paused for a moment to ash my cigarette into the ashtray.
“By the way, have you ever read Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?”
She didn’t answer, wrapped in her sheet she looked like a mermaid who washed up onto a beach as she glared up at the ceiling. Undeterred, I went back to my story.
“What I mean is that I’m always reminded of that play whenever I’m drinking by myself. Like a little switch that goes off and lets me relax or something. But in reality, it didn’t go so well. I didn’t even hear the click. After awhile, I got sick of waiting and called up his apartment. I was going to invite him to come out and have a drink with me. However, some girl answered his phone. It made me really uneasy. He’s just not the type to let that happen. Even if he’d had fifty girls in his room and was dead drunk, he’d still answer his own phone. You know what I mean?