A Conversation of Signs.

A friend and I were at a restaurant, when my eyes strayed to another couple not so far away. My friend pouted a little, as she does when she is not the center of attention.

“Hello?” She said, tilting her head, ever so little, that her nose looks a little crooked and makes me laugh. To her chagrin of course!

“Helloooo?” She said again, not having received any response from the most often used word, prolonging it so it might elicit reply.

“Ah, I am sorry. I was watching their conversation.”

“They are talking in sign language, and you don’t know any sign language.” She was visibly pouting. She blames me for being worst sign reader in the world. I don’t, for example, understand her get-me-out-of-her sign when she is pilloried in a odious conversation. Nor do I understand her various signs that some particularly big day gift is due.

“I don’t understand it, but I sure can enjoy it, can’t I?”

“That is silly. You can’t enjoy something you can’t understand. You were just trying to look at her ass, you old goat.”

I wasn’t. Looking at her ass, I mean, not from where she was sitting, not from my point of view. I would have liked to, but that is not for now.

“Darling, you can perfectly enjoy any good conversation, whether it happened or not. Twain told me so himself.”

“You are being silly.”

“No I am not, to elucidate, let tell you of the conversation so far.”

“If you must.”

Which I must, I love the sound of my voice. Put me on a stage, I freeze; in a company of three, I might hem and haw but in a two people table I like to talk.

The couple had shared some joke, I told her, as they came in laughing, the mirth on her face belied the sadness of never having to listened to Beethoven or read aloud lines from Hamlet.

“So, what shall we talk about?” The man asked, nodding happily.

They ordered cups of coffee and toasted bread.

“Whatever,” she laughed.

“God, Devil or Pak Lah’s wedding.” He ventured, throwing signs in the wind.

“Who wants to talk of weddings, anyway, old folks should never get married again.”

“That is a bad thing to say, girl, very bad. What has age got to do with love.”

“What has love got to do with marriage?”

“I am shocked! We have been married for thirteen years and you say love and marriage don’t mix.”

“For old people, no. If I met you now I wouldn’t have married you, just shacked up with you. Old folks getting married just add to the property dispute.”

“That is meaningless, Ipse Dixit comment. Something asserted but not proven.”

“Say what you want, but why talk of that.” She picked up the plastic laminated menu and began to fan herself.

“God?”

“God’s on vacation; has been since United States of America got independent. He relinquished His duties to its president. Why do thing they act like they own the planet?” She rolled her eyes. “God, sorry, Mr. President, you are so out of loop.”

“Then let us talk of Devil.”

“Been there and done that. He isn’t working for himself anymore since he got the job of Secretary of Defense.”

“God and Devil in cahoots, that is interesting. Books, then. I know I like to talk of book.” He said eagerly and bobbed his head up and down. “Shakespeare, maybe. Could I read a few lines? How do I love thee? Let me count…”

“Stop, stop.” She taps the table to convey the urgency. “Not Shakespeare, darling. I have been stuffed with him from age twelve to age twenty-two. I think the best way to enjoy Shakespeare is remove him from all syllabi. Let people – readers - discover him by themselves, unexplained and without flatulent professors telling them what he meant.”

“Joyce then? Bloomsday is coming.”

“I love Joyce. I would dump you for him anytime. Always wanted to be Molly and say yes and yes and yes and yes. But it is futile talking of Joyce. Hardly anyone understands him.”

“Who then? Maugham, Greene, Rushdie?”

“You are trying to piss me off aren’t you, with that last one?”

“Most certainly not.” He looked indignant.

“Rushdie excited me when I first read Midnight’s Children, I confess. What voice, what brilliant writing. Every book has got to have a voice, peculiar to it. Mockingbird had, Moby Dick had, and every damn good book had a voice peculiar to itself. Rushdie took it and overextended it, used it in other books too. In the Moor book he managed to get the right pitch but failed in all others.”

“You are just being a bitch, are not you?”

“Call a reader by any other name…. Seriously, try reading Labours of Hercule Poirot like it was Hamlet. Damn! Look at three books of a writer I love; compare Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden and Winter of Our Discontent. You can recognize the man’s style but his voice changes with each tale. Or take Maugham’s Razor’s Edge and Of Human Bondage.”

“I get it, you don’t like Rushdie.”

She was smiling broadly. “I didn’t say that. I love the old coot. I just don’t much care for his books after Midnight’s…”

“Bosh. I loved his Shame.”

“That is because you are you. You love Kafka too, do you know what his problem was?”

“Rushdie’s?”

“Kafka’s. He never got a good blowjob. That was his only problem.”

The man guffawed; pieces of breadcrumbs flew in all directions. “As opposed to?”

“Paulo Coelho. Got a few too many, I guess, have you read his Witches?”

My friend stopped me, regrettably. I thought the sign language conversation was soon going to veer to Malaysian writers… Even though in its infancy, Malaysian literature had found a fine one in Kam Raslan. Some of her comments on the others, though, might have been insightful.