Bendithion, A Pushcart Prize Story*
An excerpt…
Vulcans have an inner eyelid.
In one of the episodes of Star Trek, Mr. Spock is invaded by a fatal parasite on a remote planet. Exposure to high-intensity light appears to be the only cure — a treatment that would blind humans. Because of Vulcan physiology, however, a hidden ocular membrane descends to shut out intrusive rays, and Spock emerges intact, undamaged by his contact with an alien world.
It turns out that y Cymry (1) have an inner eyelid as well. More like an obfuscatory veil than a solid barricade, it allows the Welsh to see out, but effectively shades the inner self from the eyes of the inquisitive, casting all that is behind it in shadow. It is a dusky looking-glass, presented innocently enough to the stranger, deceptively luminous and reflective, its transparency clearly controlled by time and measured, in nanobytes, by trust.
Take the matter of the sandwiches.
Some time ago, I was writing an article on our postmaster Timothy who also happens to be a world class tenor (2), and whose longstanding habit was and is still to have sandwiches sent in (a rather grand term for one of the postmen walking down the road two hundred yards and picking up a paper bag) from The Sosban Fach (3).
“Sosban,” as most people call it, is a tiny restaurant in our village, staffed by a bevy of ladies (in aprons patterned with teapots) with exceptional Cymreictod (4) and an uncanny radar for the “news” so cherished by our postmaster. Every morning someone from the post office phones in an order according to the number of people on duty that day, and at about 11:20, someone, usually Alun, picks it up.
In trying to inject a little human interest into this article, and to round out the very limited information I had theretofore been given, I sat down with these formidable ladies late one afternoon, in the post-lunch lull, with a cup of tea, to elicit what I mistakenly assumed to be some innocuous information on our mutual friend (5).
It doesn’t take much to get a story out of a Welshwoman. Or man either. The oral tradition is strong. So, I prepared comfortably (and somewhat smugly, I see now) for the cornucopia of tales my simple query, “Can you tell me a little about Timothy?” would undoubtedly engender.
“Lovely voice, hasn’t he?” is the first comment — soon to become a refrain.
“Yes,” say I, “Extraordinary. But what would you say, apart from his voice, are his main characteristics? I’d like to know more about his personality — how you see him.”
“Oh, he’s lovely, really, isn’t he?” is the next response — met by a general chatter of agreement and vigorous nods.
“Like, how?” I ask.
“Very good to his mother, he was,” one of them says, sagely.
As a number of vicious criminals have been documented to be good to their mothers, this doesn’t seem to be anything significantly illuminating to put into an article, but the little silence that follows this in deference to his recent loss makes me hesitate. In their silence, my own silence rises to enclose me, my connection to Timothy reforms and I once again feel his grief.
My heart beats more slowly. More heavily. More insistently. More collectively. I feel myself losing identity. One or two of the women stare at me as if to absorb — or as if to detach — me from the group. I am not sure which. No one yet knows my identification with Timothy. I decide to keep neutral. I shake myself free.
“Yes, I’m sure he was,” I say briskly, as if that knowledge and that loss weren’t beating in my veins, “But I’m trying to describe him in himself so to speak — do you know what he feels strongly about — either positively or negatively?”
“Oh we haven’t got anything negative to say about him,” says one. They all shake their heads firmly.
“No — no — I don’t mean that. I mean does he have strong feelings or opinions for or against anything that you know about?”
“He likes glass. He has a lovely glass collection. Pink. Have you seen it?”
“No, but that isn’t quite what I meant.” Still, I make a clear tidy note on my pad: collects pink glass? “You see, that’s the sort of thing I can ask him about, actually, but thank you for telling me,” I try to clarify, though I am beginning to see that they all know exactly what I mean. “I need your impression of him — any stories you can tell about him that would show what kind of a man he is.”
“Cranberry,” a voice at the corner of the table sings out. It sounds like “Crrrrrrahnbuddy” — a musical, multi-textured sound that seems to consist of many more syllables than it actually has. I stop for a moment — take pleasure in this small Welsh song and then say:
“Cranberry what?”
“Glass,” she says, again with multiple resonance. “Cranberry glass. He collects it.”
“Look . . .”
“He was on Sunday Request yesterday,” Bronwen interrupts. “I put down my brush straightaway and sat right down there in the kitchen and listened. Gives you a lump in the throat, doesn’t he?”
Having had to stay inside for a whole day while my swollen eyes returned to normal on more than one occasion after listening to Timothy sing, my “yes, he does” seems inadequate, but I know if I recount my own experiences, then the conversation will dive into waters I would prefer to stay out of at the moment, so I just add, “I want to know what he is like as a person — not just a singer. Does he have any passions or causes, or personality traits that you would think of in describing him?”
Silence greets that little question. I think it must be the word “passions” and I instantly regret my vocabulary.
They all look into their teacups.
“Well,” comes a voice from the middle of the group. “We don’t know him very well.”
This is a bit much for a Californian who is used to five-minute friendships. Ten-minute commitments.
“Come on! You’ve all known him for decades — you talk to him almost every day! You know his family, friends, the organizations he belongs to — his church, the town — his interests. I’m not going to say anything bad about him. I just want to know what he is like — quiet, funny, energetic, political . . . that sort of thing.”
They raise their heads. In six pairs of eyes, that inner eyelid has descended. Almost translucent, but filtering out any real visual communication, a cloudy opacity has replaced the usually warm, communicative, merry eyes of my companions. Oddly, they all seem to have turned into one collective person.
“He’s not quiet,” someone says timidly. I am not sure who.
“But not a loud man,” someone else replies. Again, though I am right there in front of them, I can’t quite distinguish individuals from the group. It is uncanny.
“No, no,” they all agree. “Not loud. He’s lovely, really. Lovely voice.”
____
Read the entire story is on the AGNI website: http://www.bu.edu/agni/essays/print/2007/66-solow.html
Bendithion was first published in AGNI, with an accompanying CD, the first ever in the history of the magazine. Bendithion was later published in the Pushcart Anthology and received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly.
“Bendithion” means “blessings” in Welsh.
(1) Y Cymry is pronounced “uh Cumree” and means “the Welsh people.” (2) Implausible but true. Long story. (3) Fach is pronounced vahch with the “ch” as in the Hebrew “challah” or the Scottish “loch.” (4) Welshness (pronounced “come — rike — toid.” Sort of.) (5) I use the phrase “mutual friend” with some reservation, since there are minute and invisible gradations of friendship and none of them have anything to do with the sort of tribal connection that the people in my village have with/to each other. My connections are more diverse, isolated. I am not part of that matrix. My connection to Timothy is explained elsewhere.
