page 8

My great-grandparents must have survived the first great seismological crisis with a sense of relief. And then it began, the thefts of language. All over the country, in small numbers at first that rapidly increased, men and women began to lose their voices. At the same time, books began, mysteriously, to disappear. Nobody knew why. It was as if they had simply dematerialised, melted into thin air. There were theories, of course. Some people said that there were thieves of language hiding in the hills, the mountains, the bush that had continued to lie just beyond the fringes of the tartan. Some said that it was a virus that had been lurking all the time in the swamps, with the sandflies and the moa bones. Whatever the reason, it was clear that something was being stolen. Or, perhaps, merely lost.

One morning, my great-grandmother woke up and discovered that she was mute. How upset great-grandfather must have been! He, a collector and defender of words, a self-appointed guardian and advocate of fragile and endangered meanings! To have the thieves of language strike at his heart, in the centre of his home. He raged, impotently. For how can you rage against an invisible enemy? The nightingale no longer sang about the house. Silently, her sorrowing family cut up sheets of wrapping paper and left them, with pencils, in strategic places throughout the homestead. Communication went on, although the difficulties were greater than before.

*