Story: Tourmaline (part four)

Tourmaline

(part four)

The first woman was telling him a story, chattering as they climbed the hill (the old man and his younger daughter had got ahead, and seemed to be leading Anton to his own house). He couldn’t listen for agitation. Her father had taught the peninsula’s tribal language. A private tutor in a private home. The client fleeing on the last boat…

“So we’re out of employment, all of us.”

“I’m sorry.”

And she said it too. He was embarrassed at this inadvertent comedy. He had been going to ask, again, what was her name.

She asked, “What is your name?”

“Anton.”

“Oh, are you Anton?”

Was her tone sly? Or could she have thought he was… He was sure he couldn’t be, but let it drop. In that way, he had not learned her name.

“Where the adjectival phrase takes the place of a noun, where we grammarians employ the hyphenated construction, which is, of course, a bit of shorthand for us… I mean for us alone. They, while officially, the nomads use our alphabet…” Professor Swisshelm removed his plug of tobacco and placed it on a glass saucer, the sealing cap of a canning jar. Where had he got tobacco? Anton alone ate a surprising omelet, from real egg. The daughters gave their guest a cup of cocoa, watery—and they all sat watching him drink it.

“In fact, the Hidtha use no written means of communication. Ah! I was going to say… The curious aspect is that the noun, rather than the adjective, changes case depending on the actor.”

“A thing has only the properties it takes from its observer.”

“Not quite. You’re a poet, did you say?”

Probably he hadn’t. But Palma might. “Please, professor, will you write some of these phrases down, that you think I should know?”

They were staging the transfer of tourmaline, Anton’s eyes on every tap of the ringed fingers, waiting to force into memory any key spoken. But there were two daughters, moving, handling things. Swisshelm was nattering, possibly only that, because today he had an audience.

It was a luxury to have anything on paper, and Swisshelm might refuse.

“I will do you one better,” he said.

Some lightening in the lowering damp of the coastland suggested spring. Anton’s mood was not lifted. Rated unfit and unplaced, what did he have to do but study this foul book in depth? Peculiarities in the Hidtha: the Autochthonous Speech of the Eastern Peninsula.

(“Yes, keep that. I have three or four.”)

4

Tourmaline

Tourmaline (part five)

(2016, Stephanie Foster)