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Ivan and I had settled into a rhythm: he would take a week to write to me, and then I would force myself to wait a week before writing back. This already felt like a huge waste of time. Then eight days went by and he didn’t write, and then it was ten days, and I was sure he was never going to write to me again, and I was in despair. Finally he sent a message. The subject line said crazy, which I found encouraging because that was how I felt. But when I opened the email, it was only one line: My thesis is due in two weeks—I will write to you then.
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In Spanish class we watched an angry movie in Basque and a sad movie in Galician. The teacher explained in a matter-of-fact voice that the landscape of Galicia was unbearably beautiful, that it always rained, there were castles and petroglyphs and dolmens and the coast was pure stone like Ireland’s. Introspective, resigned, and melancholy, the people answered one question with another in a singsong, and played “primitive bagpipes” called gaita galega. Their language contained eight falling and rising diphthongs: ai, au, eu, ei, oi, ui, ou, and iu. The “Galician trinity” was cow, tree, sea; the Galician himself was a tree with wings: despite roots he flew away.
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“Snow in springtime, what is this?” the Italian psycholinguist demanded in a tone that clearly signified charm and humor, but which to me seemed, like nearly everything he said, pregnant with the unspeakable sadness of the world. “Why is nobody capable of really enjoying a leisurely lunch?”
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In philosophy class, we talked about the problems we would have on Mars—the language problems. Supposing we went to Mars and the Martians said “gavagai” every time a rabbit ran by; we would have no way of knowing whether “gavagai” referred to rabbits, to running, or to a kind of fly that lived in rabbits’ ears. I found this incredibly depressing—both the obstacles to understanding and the rabbits with flies in their ears.
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Late one night Ralph called and asked if I was busy. We went to Pizzeria Uno. “I don’t even know how to talk about it,” Ralph said, and ordered bruschetta. I didn’t know what bruschetta was.
Ralph told a long story about Cody, a guy who lived in his hallway, and whom Ralph and I had both found annoying on previous occasions. I couldn’t figure out why he was talking about Cody, and when he would start talking about whatever the real problem was. First Cody had loaned Ralph a book about Auden. Ralph had then read a New Yorker article about Stephen Spender that had to do with something in the book, so he photocopied it and left it in Cody’s door basket. Later Cody said something interesting about the article and Ralph thought that maybe Cody wasn’t so bad. But then Cody berated him about some kind of lamp and put his hand on Ralph’s waist. That was it—that was the whole story. At first, I thought it was Cody’s strange comments about the lamp that had upset Ralph, but it wasn’t. It was that Cody thought Ralph was gay.
“What could have given him that impression?” Ralph said. “Was it because of Stephen Spender?”
“Maybe it was that,” I said, wondering who Stephen Spender was.
“Did you ever think anything like that about me?”
“Oh, Ralph.” I touched his shoulder, wondering what was the right thing to say. I said that probably Cody’s actions were less a reflection of how Cody thought Ralph felt, and more a reflection of the fact that he, Cody, thought Ralph was funny and handsome and lovable, which Ralph was.
“And anyway,” I said after a moment. “I mean—that wouldn’t be the end of the world. You wouldn’t be like Cody, like weird about lamps. You would still be yourself.” He looked up from his half–iced tea half-lemonade with an expression I had never seen before.
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Ralph and I went to the student center to study for midterms. He was reading an econ textbook and I was studying psycholinguistics. Every time I looked up, I caught the eye of Ham from Constructed Worlds, who was sitting at a nearby table with three other guys.
After a few minutes, Ham came to our table.
“You seem pretty interested by that book,” he said. “What’s it about?”
I tipped it up to show the cover, which was purple and said LANGUAGE in big white letters.
“Man, do I hate language,” Ham said. “If I had it my way, we would all just grunt.”
“If we all did that, the grunting would become a language.”
“Not the way I would do it.”
“Really,” I said.
In reply he made some kind of noise.
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I went home for spring break. My mother and I stayed up late talking. When I woke up the next day she had gone to work. I went running, but not for long, because the batteries in my Walkman started to die. “No one knows these things but hiiim and meee,” droned a hideous distorted version of They Might Be Giants. I headed home. Mrs. Oliveri was wandering around the driveway wearing a yellow cardigan. I had never had that much to talk about with Mrs. Oliveri, who was ninety-eight. My first thought was that I could probably get into the house without her noticing, but then I felt guilty for thinking that and called out a greeting. She didn’t seem to hear. “Hi!” I called twice more, loudly. She still didn’t answer. Apparently she didn’t want to trivialize our relationship with spoken language. I walked right up in front of her. “Hi!” I said.
“Oh, hi! Where’d you come from? I didn’t see you!” She looked up at the sky. I said I had come from the driveway. She just couldn’t believe it. “From there? There? But I didn’t see you!” She said it was so good to see me. Then she said, “Oh, I love you!” and patted me on the arm. I was really confused; she had never said she loved me before. I patted her arm too, and said it was really good to see her. When I went inside to take a shower and looked in the mirror, I was surprised by how radiant my own face looked.
When my mother came home, she explained that Mrs. Oliveri had had a stroke. She was mad at the other Mrs. Oliveri, because she had charged her ten dollars for being late with rent. Just then the doorbell rang. It was Mrs. Oliveri—the one who hadn’t had a stroke. She was carrying a cake. My mother made a funny face. “Well, thank you,” she said. “Would you like to come in?” The cake turned out to be made almost entirely of frosting.