The Silver Trumpet Brayed

In The Garden of Eden

I suppose I should begin by confessing that I am uncertain as to the ground upon which their relationship was founded. I suspect that it was on a lower level than that at which spoken language is deemed a pre-requisite. They were of "The Beautiful People" and, until they grew bored of each other's beauty, language would be of little importance to them.

I say "of little importance", but clearly they did have some need of it, for they had made the effort, and in doing so had created, I suppose, a thing of beauty, albeit one unappreciated by and, if I may say so, largely incomprehensible to the rest of us.

He was German, she was French and neither spoke nor understood the other's language, but both could speak a little English and it was in this "little English" that they communicated. Herein lay the beauty and horror of their relationship, for when one made a mistake, the other learned it and, as time passed by, they each compounded the other's errors until at length after a period of no more than a month or two, they had created something totally new and totally unique to themselves.

They should have been left to enjoy what pleasures surely awaited them between the sheets of the little bed they knew so well in the flat they had rented together in town and that unending pleasure would have been theirs today had they not fallen to the temptation of Summer in the countryside on a cheap campsite full of Englishmen.

At first we laughed to hear their vain efforts to make themselves understood to their neighbours in a language whose similarity to the Queen's English rested upon one or two odd words incorrectly used. Then the skies grew rather darker in their Eden as each came to recognise imperfections in the other. Words, phrases which meant so much to them meant nothing to the native speakers with whom they had believed themselves to be at one. That phrase he had taught her, that line he had learned from her, all vain, all devalued now, all gibberish and understood by no-one. They were naked and the beauty which had once bound them so tightly together, neither could see any more.

She left first, early one afternoon to catch the train home to her parents house in the country where everyone spoke French He stayed no more than a couple of days after her departure picking up one or two new words of real English as he waited in vain for her return.

And when they had gone we stayed and slithered amongst the apples which littered the campsite for we, after all, were not beautiful.

posted by Weasel @ 10:05 PM