To Love for the Last Time
What will it be like when there is only one language?
A three-month sabbatical from work. Since I’ve never been outside the country, I decide that I’ll use the time to travel the world.
The geography is stunning. A ship takes me from the woods of Nova Scotia to the purple springs of Iceland. A plane takes me from the glittering Aegean to the caves of Cappadocia. A train, with me in its belly, crawls to the farthest, most mosquito-infested reaches of Siberia. How can all of this exist on a single planet?
The people I meet are a different matter. “They’re all kind of samey,” I text a friend, embarrassed by my impoverished vocabulary. Regardless of what country I find myself in, everyone greets me with the same slang: “How’s kittens?” This is what they say back home. All the accents are eerily familiar. It’s hard to know who’s a tourist — no one looks comfortable, nothing feels lived in. I visit a temple in Kyoto, and the guide’s descriptions remind me of the advertisement for the house that I just purchased back in Halifax.
“I can’t tell if I’m homesick,” I text my friend.
The cities are virtually indistinguishable. I have the same breakfast options wherever I go. The markets sell the same toys. By the halfway point of my sabbatical, even the architecture has started to congeal. The shock of a new skyline recapitulates the shock of past skylines.
In Hillah, Iraq, I meet a linguist who works at the Museum of Babel. We go out for dinner and order, of all things, spaghetti. “Did you know,” the linguist says, “that in the Swedish language, there was a word that meant the road-like reflection of moonlight on water?”
We are at an outdoor café. It’s a weekday, and the mood on the street is tranquil.
“And in several languages of the Americas,” the linguist continues, “instead of saying it thundered, they simply said thundered — because what was the it that was doing the thundering?” The linguist twirls spaghetti on her fork. Abandoned idioms appear to be her specialty, or at least her hobby. When the tactfully folded-over bill is presented, she examines it and mutters, “That’s the whole kit and caboodle.”
“I know that phrase,” I tell her. “My grandparents spoke English.”
“Yes, yes,” the linguist says with a bored look. “Good for you.”
“If I had your job,” I say, “I would study the ways in which people used to be kind to each other in these dying languages. What did they say when a baby was born? What did they say when an old man fell down in the town square and needed help? It’s sad to think about what we may have lost when it comes to being kind.”
The linguist frowns. “I’m not sure if this is quite the same thing, but did you know that in the Boro language, there was a verb that meant to love for the last time?”
“That’s beautiful.”
“It is,” she says. What seemed like boredom in her eyes now strikes me as sadness. “Language was such a gymnastic activity, wasn’t it?”
I smile and nod, although I’m not entirely clear what she means. When we part ways, the sun has started to set, and I feel very small, very alone.