Read Online The Museum of Doubt by James Meek - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: James Meek
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print. It was not as old as it seemed. It was a reprint of a book published in 1868. On the inside front cover was a stamp in faded crimson ink saying Property of the War Office, Reprinted 1916 By Order, and at the back, after the summit of Mercian language skills demanded fifty years previously, a squire’s speech at a prize-giving for agricultural labourers, was a pamphlet-thick addendum with Serving King and Country written in English and Mercian, followed by lists of vocabulary and phrases. The officers are your friends. They are on your side. Machine gun. Phosphorous shell. Mustard gas. Come on lads, up and at them! Let’s smash the Hun/Johnny Turk/Johnny X! Fix bayonets! This man has trench foot. This man has gangrene. This man is a hero. This man is a deserter. This man is a coward. You will be decorated for this. You will be court-martialled for this. Stretcher party. Dear Mrs X, I regret to tell you that your son was killed in action near X yesterday. He died doing his duty for King and country. He was a brave soldier.
He turned back to the beginning and read the introduction. Sundry gentlemen and men of affairs have turned to me in indignation over the truculence of their Mercian servants and day labourers. Their refusal to understand the simplest instructions in English. Pernicious influence of religious tracts in their own language. Ideas above their station. My answer is invariably the same: in the simplicity of their hearts and souls, they are as much God’s children as you or I. If you are to claim mastery over them, must you not demonstrate your superiority by learning their tongue, just as they have demonstrated their ignorance by failing to learn ours? Cannot all pretend to the erudition of a Milton or a Pope. Many may feel reluctant to turn once again to the syntax and parsing of their youth for an aim somuch less elevated than the enjoyment of Virgil. Yet Mercian is not a difficult language. Anglo-Saxon roots. Baltic influences. Celtic strands. Pleasing rustic airs. Young children will recite their epics with unaffected simplicity. With no more than an hour’s application each day, six months will be sufficient for reasonable profiency. The Reverend G. R. Wiley.
One day the sound Cate’s shoes made when she threw them down and they hit the skirting board was harder, and the padding of her stocking feet to the kitchen, and her shoulders in a white blouse against the black of the window, her back to him when he came in.
He’s going into hospital tomorrow, she said.
For the operation.
I don’t think there’s going to be an operation.
Why’s he going into hospital?
I don’t know. She turned round and took the tissue away from her soaking face. She looked into his eyes and sniffed. She looked down at the ground and said something to him in Mercian.
What does that mean? he said.
It means how’s it going, she said. You should know that by now.
It’s not that kind of book. They start you off with 200 different sentences starting I am a.
What are you? she said.
I am a haberdasher. Sorry, that’s the only one I can remember.
She smiled and sniffed and put out her hand to stroke his chest. It’s two months now you’ve been studying that book, she said.
I know.
I thought you wanted to speak it.
I do, but your dad. Unless I speak it like a native he doesn’t want to know.
Just for him? It wasn’t him who bought the book for you.
But when you thought you spoke the same language and then you have to start again, and one of you is super eloquent and the other one can hardly put a sentence together.
How d’you know I’m super eloquent if you don’t understand what I’m saying?
I can tell.
What does it sound like?
It sounds like the sounds the wind makes things make, or a river, or heavy rain on the street.
And what does it sound like when I’m speaking English?
Like words. Like hospitals, and bus timetables, and cups of tea, and a bit short this week, and anything good
He turned back to the beginning and read the introduction. Sundry gentlemen and men of affairs have turned to me in indignation over the truculence of their Mercian servants and day labourers. Their refusal to understand the simplest instructions in English. Pernicious influence of religious tracts in their own language. Ideas above their station. My answer is invariably the same: in the simplicity of their hearts and souls, they are as much God’s children as you or I. If you are to claim mastery over them, must you not demonstrate your superiority by learning their tongue, just as they have demonstrated their ignorance by failing to learn ours? Cannot all pretend to the erudition of a Milton or a Pope. Many may feel reluctant to turn once again to the syntax and parsing of their youth for an aim somuch less elevated than the enjoyment of Virgil. Yet Mercian is not a difficult language. Anglo-Saxon roots. Baltic influences. Celtic strands. Pleasing rustic airs. Young children will recite their epics with unaffected simplicity. With no more than an hour’s application each day, six months will be sufficient for reasonable profiency. The Reverend G. R. Wiley.
One day the sound Cate’s shoes made when she threw them down and they hit the skirting board was harder, and the padding of her stocking feet to the kitchen, and her shoulders in a white blouse against the black of the window, her back to him when he came in.
He’s going into hospital tomorrow, she said.
For the operation.
I don’t think there’s going to be an operation.
Why’s he going into hospital?
I don’t know. She turned round and took the tissue away from her soaking face. She looked into his eyes and sniffed. She looked down at the ground and said something to him in Mercian.
What does that mean? he said.
It means how’s it going, she said. You should know that by now.
It’s not that kind of book. They start you off with 200 different sentences starting I am a.
What are you? she said.
I am a haberdasher. Sorry, that’s the only one I can remember.
She smiled and sniffed and put out her hand to stroke his chest. It’s two months now you’ve been studying that book, she said.
I know.
I thought you wanted to speak it.
I do, but your dad. Unless I speak it like a native he doesn’t want to know.
Just for him? It wasn’t him who bought the book for you.
But when you thought you spoke the same language and then you have to start again, and one of you is super eloquent and the other one can hardly put a sentence together.
How d’you know I’m super eloquent if you don’t understand what I’m saying?
I can tell.
What does it sound like?
It sounds like the sounds the wind makes things make, or a river, or heavy rain on the street.
And what does it sound like when I’m speaking English?
Like words. Like hospitals, and bus timetables, and cups of tea, and a bit short this week, and anything good
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