Author: Stuart Wilson
The Art of Learning a Language
̈Japanese must be easy. ̈ I had to shout over the traffic.
And the person to whom I was shouting was quite far below now. ̈ ̈There are not so many unusual sounds, ̈ I continued, trying to twist my neck into the sort of angle that would allow the words to reach my audience.
The Japanese woman listening to me shouted back with sound waves beating in the opposite direction to mine,
̈Yes that is true but we have one sound at the beginning of the word ́Satan ́ nothing the like of which you have in your language. ̈
I must have had a calm expression on my face because the woman seemed perfectly composed despite my situation.
I was tied to a chair 35 meters above the ground and the Japanese woman was winching me up ever higher, turning the handle using all the strength she could manage.
Ïn order to make that noise, ̈she went on, ̈You have to blow up your cheeks like a hamster, and even force your forehead to also expand. She began to demonstrate the supposed technique of making her face bigger and rounder in order to produce the weird sound, at the same time letting go of the crank of the winch.
Immediately the earth was racing towards me, with all the apodictic force of gravity,
I wondered if the horrific pain of my legs splintering would register before my skull splattered and my brain pulp was sliding down into the drainage system like one of those throbbing and sentient alien blobs that always have an escape plan.
The woman spat out the word ̈S,hSz atan. And grabbed the unwinding winch just before I hit the pavement.
̈Gotta keep her talking, interested in keeping me alive, but not too interested so she needs to demonstrate something. ̈I thought to myself.
̈Do you use that word often ? ̈it was the only thing I could think of saying.
She replied, winding me back up again, ̈It depends. It means ́breadcrumb ́ in English. I’ve used it only a few times in my life and each time my head nearly exploded. My grandmother says it quite fluently though without unwanted side- effects. Maybe because ….. ̈ She didn’t finish her sentence.
Instead, the woman suddenly looked up not at me, now 50 meters high, but just up, past the clouds right into the heart of the sky. I observed her face – so pure, innocent like a polished pearl, almost without features, and I realised she was thinking hard; or preparing. The pearl seemed bigger.
̈No!!* I screamed.
̈S-ss- atan, ̈shouted the woman, and perfectly pronounced, despite this, her head exploded.
If you’re reading this it means somehow I survived.