85 Mimicry
Although our friend the watchman has worked for the past twenty years for foreigners who live in this area he has never managed to learn more than scraps of the international language that prevails in this part of the country. However he has mastered a language that has a far broader application than English even, that I first discovered this unusual talent when I took over as pump house attendant. I had got fed up with the pump, which is alongside my hermitage, being switched on at any odd hour of the day or night, interrupting both my meditation and my sleep, and had decided that if I did the job myself I could regulate it more to my liking. My friend therefore showed me how it worked, how to prime it when necessary and so on, and then standing back and pulling his head and shoulders rigid he let out a cry: drrrrr, drrrrr, drrrrr, meanwhile shaking his taut body violently. I wondered what was going on, if he were subject to fits or whatever, but then he explained: empty, drrrrr, well empty, drrrrr, and all became clear. In fact he was sufficiently accurate with his imitation for me to recognise the sound when I started work that morning.
On another occasion I had found some dung on the path outside the house, it was quite large, but was evidently not a cat’s or dog’s, and I was curious as to what creature had left it there. I asked my man, and he immediately dropped into a crouch and started flicking his tongue in and out, meanwhile pulling on his ears so that his eyes were spread apart. He was also making a noise, but no known script on earth could render it. What he was being baffled me, and I tried various creatures I thought it might be – a mongoose, a porcupine, and so on – before we resorted to the Picture Dictionary and discovered he was mimicking a toad! I must admit I was skeptical about the correctness of his identification at first, but after a few days in which I became more familiar with the possibilities given the fauna in this area I eventually had to concede the point, though I must say it seems to me that toads have disproportionately large bowels.
As I was trying to learn some of the bird names in the local language I often had occasion to resort to mimicry myself in order to extract the necessary information. I don’t profess to being a great impersonator and I put down the success of my attempts simply to my friend’s inherent sympathy with the art. Needless to say he would also resort to imitation whenever he thought fit to teach me a few more names. Nothing it seems did our friend deem to be beyond his skill. The day the electricity meter blew up he was for some reason absent from the premises, but when he returned he was indeed anxious to understand how such a disaster might have taken place. Tztztatztz, quoth he, and so accurately that I, being still nervous from the memory of the real thing in which the sparks had almost dropped on my head, jumped back so as not to be electrocuted; ‘Yes, yes, it was just like that,’ I exclaimed, and then to my surprise, and evidently to the surprise of his family who had gathered round the burnt out hunk of machinery, our friend, gripped in an ecstasy of sympathy with the tragic event, suddenly burst into flames and slowly died.
The winds are blowing with great force
across the open fields and plains –
then there’s a moment of silence,
transition, and transformation –
before the sounds of the night are born.
Under the roof and upside down
comes a squirrel – punctual as ever –
and clamours noisily between
the coconut matting and thatch
– a cosy home for the night time.
Out from the same space bats appear,
quietly they come, and quickly fly,
one, two... and then there are many,
crazily dashing back and forth
around the trees in the garden.
The crickets chirrup; the dogs howl;
in the distance the sound of chanting;
night follows day, day follows night,
relentlessly pressing on.
Such things are the marking of time;
such things are the movement of life.