{"id":147429,"date":"2020-09-08T09:00:25","date_gmt":"2020-09-08T13:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=147429"},"modified":"2020-09-14T15:32:41","modified_gmt":"2020-09-14T19:32:41","slug":"all-the-better-to-hear-you-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/09\/08\/all-the-better-to-hear-you-with\/","title":{"rendered":"All the Better to Hear You With"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sabrina Orah Mark\u2019s column,\u00a0Happily<\/a>, focuses on fairy tales and motherhood.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Arthur Rackham, Aesop’s Fables, 1912<\/p><\/div>\n

For days Foryst, my cat, seems to have something caught in his throat. I bring him to the vet. \u201cIt might be a twig,\u201d I say. \u201cOr a pebble.\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s the cat\u2019s name?\u201d she asks. \u201cForyst,\u201d I say. \u201cForest,\u201d I say again, \u201cbut with a\u00a0y<\/em> where the\u00a0e<\/em> should go.\u201d The vet is quiet. \u201cHow old is Foryst?\u201d she asks. \u201cThirteen,\u201d I say. She looks in his mouth. \u201cIt hurts when he swallows,\u201d I say. Foryst is still. The vet sees nothing. She listens to his heart, his lungs. She hears nothing. It suddenly makes no sense to me that she is a human. Why isn\u2019t she a wolf with great big eyes and great big ears that are all the better to see him with? To hear him with? \u201cI recommend blood work,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

I put my face in Foryst\u2019s fur. \u201cPlease tell me what\u2019s wrong.\u201d He is silent. There is something in his throat. A word or a dead leaf. I am sure of it.<\/p>\n

The vet wants blood work. She wants the cold, definitive clink of numbers. I want Foryst to talk so he can tell me what hurts. I want him to cough up a dry spooked O<\/em> and be suddenly healed. I want him to tell me the future. I call my mother. \u201cThere\u2019s something stuck in Foryst\u2019s throat.\u201d \u201cOf course there\u2019s something stuck in Foryst\u2019s throat,\u201d she says. \u201cWhy wouldn\u2019t there be something stuck in his throat? There\u2019s something stuck in all of our throats.\u201d She hangs up. I swallow once. I swallow twice.<\/p>\n

When we get home, I open Foryst\u2019s mouth and shine a flashlight down his throat. Something shines back, like a diamond in a cave. His teeth are hieroglyphs. I want to jot them down so I can read what\u2019s inside him. I want to reach all the way in, but he snaps his mouth shut and growls.<\/p>\n

I tell my husband there is something stuck in Foryst\u2019s throat. \u201cWhat?\u201d he says. He lifts his left headphone from his ear. \u201cThere is something stuck in Foryst\u2019s throat.\u201d My husband is always wearing headphones. I say everything twice.<\/p>\n

In fairy tales animals are always talking. Even when they are dead, they are talking. <\/p>\n

\u201cGood night, Pinocchio,\u201d says the ghost in \u201cThe Talking Cricket.\u201d \u201cMay heaven protect you from morning dew and murderers.\u201d Animals in fairy tales are feral poets. Their words are overgrown and have the scent of soothsayer and pelt. When an animal speaks it\u2019s often to spill the guts of the fairy tale. To leak the plot and indict the antagonist. To clear up the past or tell the future. Animals are tattlers and whistleblowers. \u201cMy mother, she killed me, \/ My father he ate me\u2026\u201d tweets the bird who is the dead boy in \u201cThe Juniper Tree.\u201d \u201cRoo, coo, coo, roo, coo, coo \/ blood\u2019s in the shoe \/ the shoe\u2019s too tight, \/ the real bride\u2019s waiting another night,\u201d sing the doves in \u201cCinderella.\u201d \u201cIf this your mother knew, \/ her heart would break in two,\u201d moans the horse\u2019s head nailed beneath the dark gateway in \u201cThe Goose Girl.\u201d<\/p>\n

First there is an h-u-m. Then there is an h-u-m-a-n. And then there is an a-n. And then there is an a-n-i-m-a-l. Inside fairy tales hum<\/em> and human<\/em> and animal<\/em> gather like mist. Like humanimals who share a single language.<\/p>\n

Outside fairy tales the mist separates.<\/p>\n

The first talking animal, as I was taught by the rabbis, was the snake. \u201cIf you eat the apple your eyes will be opened, and you\u2019ll be like God,\u201d says the snake, \u201cknowing good from bad.\u201d And so Eve ate the apple and knew what God knew. I ask Eli, my seven-year-old, if he would ever want to know what God knows. \u201cOf course not,\u201d he says. \u201cYou would know so much it would be like knowing nothing at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

The only other animal who talks in the Bible is a donkey who sees an angel in the path of a vineyard. The donkey kneels down, and his master, who does not see the angel, hits him with a stick for kneeling. The master doesn\u2019t see the angel because now that we know so much it\u2019s like we know nothing at all. Now that we know so much we can barely see the angels.<\/p>\n

Foryst surrounds me. He maintains his ability to speak without words. I talk, and I talk, and I talk to him. One of his ears tilts toward me, and the other tilts backward as if catching something the soil just said to the soil.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you think,\u201d I ask my husband, \u201cthat fairy tales are riddled with talking animals because they\u2019re riddled with so little God?\u201d \u201cWhat?\u201d he says. He lifts his left headphone from his ear. \u201cOr is there so little God in fairy tales because they\u2019re riddled with so many talking animals?\u201d<\/p>\n

As the outbreak continues to spread, many of us are bringing animals home. This is not only because we are lonely, but because we know, as Kafka teaches us, that animals are \u201cthe receptacles for the forgotten.\u201d Their silence evokes the silence of mourners. Nature, it seems, is trying to forget us. And if we must be forgotten, let us bask in the glow of our animals. Let our fade be warmed by their fur. May the animals beside us keep us upright as we hobble into the future. What has climbed inside Foryst\u2019s mouth might just be something trying to ward off oblivion. It might be something reminiscent of us all.<\/p>\n

Kafka called his cough \u201cthe animal.\u201d His herd of silence. As if Kafka\u2019s cough was all of Kafka\u2019s stories slowly forgetting Kafka.<\/p>\n

Every night I ask my husband, \u201cWhat is going to happen?\u201d And every night he says \u201cWhat,\u201d and lifts his left headphone from his ear. And then I say again, \u201cWhat is going to happen,\u201d leaving the first \u201cWhat is going to happen\u201d suspended over our bed. And my husband says, \u201cWith what?\u201d And every night I say, \u201cWith everything.\u201d And every night he says, \u201cI cannot tell you,\u201d which sounds like he knows the answer and also sounds like he doesn\u2019t know the answer. I wonder if prophets, like animals, must un-name the present to see visions of the future.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sorry. I meant to write a happy essay about what we learn from talking animals in fairy tales only to realize we learn nothing from them because in fairy tales animals remember everything. And now I\u2019ve ended up writing about oblivion instead.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d says my husband. \u201cI\u2019ve ended up writing about oblivion instead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Close to my house is a path called Rock and Shoals. It\u2019s been raining forever and I am worried about what\u2019s in Foryst\u2019s throat and the end of the world and our democracy and illness and money and hate and so I decide to take a walk with my sons. The ground is thick with red and yellow and bright-white mushrooms, and the trees are covered in giant snails. One tree seems so swollen, and its bark is shedding such big flakes, that I am not surprised when a child bursts out. She shakes off the tree from her white hair. She doesn\u2019t speak because she is from a future fairy tale where no one speaks, not even the animals. The girl, my sons, and I walk along the misty path. Her hands are badly rusted and her mouth flickers on and off. \u201cTell me how this ends,\u201d I want to say, but my words aren\u2019t words anymore but limp petals softer than powder. My sons open their mouths to speak, but where their words should be are pale-green animals with long, spindly newborn legs and round ancient faces. On the ground is a small blue feather, but it isn\u2019t small or blue or a feather because this is a fairy tale with no words. I put it in my pocket to bring home, but there is no I or pocket or home because this is a fairy tale with no words.\u00a0 This is a true story, but there is no true or story because this is a fairy tale without words.<\/p>\n

When my sons and I without the girl return home, whatever was in Foryst\u2019s throat is gone. He looks at me and says, \u201cThis is how the story<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Read earlier installments of Happily here.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Sabrina Orah Mark is the author of the poetry collections\u00a0<\/em>The Babies\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>Tsim Tsum.\u00a0<\/em>Wild Milk, her first book of fiction, is recently out from Dorothy, a publishing project. She lives, writes, and teaches in Athens, Georgia.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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