Click here for info on the Print Journal (and to purchase your copy)!

Oddity

By Thomas Roberge

---------------------------------------

Prologue

The memoir that follows is that of a man known to us only as David. His life as David began when he arrived in New York City as an adult man. He is a man without a past, or at least without one that he can remember. But I will allow him to reveal the particular details in his own words, as much as that is possible.

The point of this awkward preface is to draw attention to certain aspects of the English version of the autobiographical account you are reading. For reasons that will be explained at a later time, David was not able to master the English language during his short, six-week stay in New York. Therefore, as you have probably already concluded, he wrote this short memoir in his native language, which someone decided to call Ziggian. When the manuscript was found in the kitchen of Rachel’s apartment, she immediately contacted the team of academics who had been trying to learn Ziggian. When it was decided that they could translate enough of the material to make it legible, the dean of the university, who has granted me permission to write this preface, announced that the university would pay to publish the story in English.

Slowly, eventually, a story emerged. But despite the tireless efforts of the team, some words, phrases, and entire sentences were unable to be translated with any accuracy. They simply hadn’t had the time to learn Ziggian, and now their only legitimate teacher is gone.

Nevertheless, a ramshackle draft was produced, with some sections translated into English and others remaining in Ziggian. The sections in English were agreed upon by all members of the team. The sections in Ziggian had been approached, but because no translation could be certain, they were left unchanged. I have read this version and I can tell you that it was very difficult to get through. It was tiresome and seemed almost pointless at moments. The story moved along, but I have fears that I can say this only because I knew David personally and witnessed some of the chronicled events first hand. The public wouldn’t be able to read the version without the inclusion of a significant number of footnotes.

Many nouns were known and catalogued by the team, as well as a fair amount of verbs. The simplest descriptive adjectives were also known. The real challenges always came with the sophisticated adjectives, the adverbs, and the intransitive verbs. Idioms were anybody’s guess. Speculations and reasonable approximations had to be made as the team pushed ahead, but there were often disagreements. Some members seemed to venture translations based on intuitions that arose from individual interactions with David, which was certainly bad practice but seemed reasonable considering the available resources. I mention these facts only to illustrate the inexactitude of the endeavor.

The publishers grew impatient and compromises were made. The implication I wish to make to you is that you cannot fully trust what you read. He recounts nearly all of the English conversations he had or overheard in Ziggian, which forced us to translate them back into English. The potential for flaws is obvious. Of course we were able to consult with the various people whom David quotes, but this apparent benefit proved to worsen the situation. People’s memories didn’t match David’s. There are exceptions where David did write in English, but usually only when he himself conversed in English, and these instances are sadly infrequent. And even within these fragments that didn’t need translating, there are issues of paraphrasing and misquoting that still cause the reader to suspect a certain amount of misrepresentation. In the translated narrative sections, we may have altered key facts, deleted others, or invented new ones.

Aside from linguistic accuracy, you must also be weary of our interpretation of David’s stylistic intentions. We may have distorted his tone, made certain subtleties disappear, or exaggerated others. The finished product, in conclusion, is far from perfect and we are left regretting that David fled so abruptly.

And one final note on the title. We have chosen it because it goes along with the pattern of names.

* * *

I woke up after a good-sized rock hit me in my side. I was bruised for a week from that blow, but I harbor no rancor. I was confused, to say the least. I was sprawled out, naked, in a small boat, floating in what they later told me was the East River. This fact I could comprehend, but the reason escaped me. Above me, yelling down in a language I didn’t understand, were a plump old man and a thin young woman. I wasn’t sure that they would understand my language, so I didn’t say anything. They spoke to each other and pointed at me and then behind them. The man eventually left and the young woman just stared at me compassionately.

When the elderly man returned, he unfurled a chain ladder that extended into the choppy, grayish water. Without even thinking to distrust these do-gooders, I ascended the ladder and climbed over an unsteady railing to stand in front of them, shivering and ashamed. I could tell that they were asking questions, so I answered in the language that I knew, hoping they might know it as well. They didn’t understand. Then the old man spoke in what sounded like a different language, and the girl spoke still another. Nothing made any sense. The woman had a small dog that was now standing on its hind legs to sniff my crotch. I backed away.

Again they had a discussion with each other, pointing at me and in different directions. They took my hands and led me away from the water and the boat, which no one seemed too concerned with. We had to walk slowly because I was barefoot and the paved ground was littered with broken glass. People stared. I was led to a third floor home and directly into a small room with a crisply made bed in one corner. The girl urged me to lie down, covered me with a thin blanket, and let me fall asleep.

It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness when I woke up, and then I found the girl sitting on the floor, petting her dog. She addressed me again in three different languages, and again I could do nothing but respond in mine. She sat next to me and repeated one word several times, prodding me to venture a try in between. I mastered the short word quickly and this seemed to please her. This word was the first English I learned. It was, of course, “Hello”.

I pointed to my stomach and said that I was hungry, and she caught on easily enough, springing to her feet and taking my hand. I was still naked and the blanket fell to the ground, exposing an erection. She laughed. A search through her dresser produced a pair of shorts. This was enough. It was hot. In the living room I was offered many kinds of food and ate most of them as she watched with intensity.

This woman’s name was Rebecca, and I slept in her bed for six days before anything happened. She tried to teach me English with impromptu, scattered lessons. Television was more effective, but I found English very difficult to learn. As for the language I spoke instinctually, she was unable to identify it after consulting stacks of books. She would show me examples from the languages and hope that I might eventually recognize one, but this approach yielded no results. She also showed me maps and pointed to where New York was. Then she would drag her finger out into the Atlantic Ocean and look at me expectantly. I had no idea. One afternoon she came home with more books and told me that a man that she had talked to at a school wanted to meet me. This would turn out to be Professor Katzeneski, but at the time I barely understood what she meant.

Rebecca frequently showed me photographs of her family. Reconsidering her actions, this seems to have been some half-ass attempt at memory therapy, something she saw in a movie. In theory, I would see her with an arm around her mother and recall my own mother. She seemed saddened when I had a minimal response. I was curious, obviously, about my past, but I was also completely without an inkling. You can’t miss what you don’t remember.

The only times I left the apartment were when we walked the dog, Mia. I enjoyed walking on the busy sidewalks, past stores and noisy playgrounds. The nearby river was particularly intriguing; my road to New York that revealed nothing. I never spoke to anyone when we were outside, not even Rebecca.

We returned one evening to find an older man sitting on Rebecca’s stoop. He rose and moved toward us and I looked to Rebecca for guidance. Her face turned anxious and she pulled me to her, whispering, “The man.”

He wanted to shake my hand but I was following Rebecca’s lead. She was still. Although I didn’t understand what he said, I suppose it’s reasonable to say that he said something similar to this to her: “I’m sorry to have tracked you down to your home, but the cryptic story you told me was simply too intriguing to forget. I had to hear the language that no one can identify. Yes, it’s probably some obscure Basque dialect, but I still wanted to know.” He stepped closer to me, examined my face, and said (which I can report with certainty), “Hello.”

“Hello,” I said, in English, unsure.

(And I’m afraid I must revert to paraphrasing him) “Well, picking up some English, are we? Good, good, I suppose it’s necessary. I wonder how it’s coming. Do you understand everything I’m saying?”

“Okay.” This was not much of an answer to his question, but it was a word I had heard a great deal and enjoyed trying out.

“Can we talk,” he said (or so I presume), “I’m sorry, let me introduce myself. My name is Donald Katzeneski. I study the extinct languages of Eurasia.” He stopped and I took a cue from the word “name”.

“My name is David,” I told him. Because I did not know my own name, Rebecca had given me this one, for reasons I couldn’t understand until only recently. Apparently my appearance and situation reminded her of a musician with this name.

“This is not your real name, I assume. She gave it to you? Like a pet,” he said (according to what he later told me), “But enough English. I can only learn so much from an accent. Speak to me in your native language. What do you call it? Never mind. Say something.”

“You don’t have to, David,” Rebecca said, staring coldly at the professor.

“Why don’t you let him decide, young lady? I can easily see that you enjoy keeping this poor man entirely dependent upon you, but haven’t you considered that he might want to know something about his past?” I’m paraphrasing, of course (again based on his later statements), but I was certain that his tone was reproachful.

“Fine, but can we at least go inside?” She relented.

Rebecca stood, leaning against a wall, while the professor and I sat across from each other. He produced a small audio recorder and held it close to my face. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but I figured out what it must have been doing.

"What to say?” I asked.

"Anything at all. Something short. Tell me your name.”

So I told him my borrowed name again, but in my language this time.

"Fascinating. Now then, tell me…say this: It’s hot today. Do you know the word hot?”

"He knows it,” Rebecca was proud of me now.

So I told him it was hot.

"Amazing. Okay, something a little longer. Can you describe Rebecca’s appearance for me?” He looked at Rebecca. “Explain ‘describe’ to him.”

"David, say ‘She is tall’ or ‘She has black hair’. Describe.”

I understood. I looked at her, she blushed, and I began without much preliminary thought. I told him that she was tall and slim, that her waist was small, and that her shoulders were square and not round. Bony, I called them. I said that she had muscular arms but a flabby stomach. I said that her figure was angular, now that I thought about it. I told him that she had long, straight, dark black hair. I mentioned her pale but clear complexion. I told him that her eyebrows were thick when they were allowed to grow and that her forearms were always hairy. I told him that she had straight, stained teeth and almost non-existent lips. I said that her eyes were a boring shade of brown. I concluded by saying that she was attractive but not beautiful.

I had enjoyed this exercise.

"Incredible. Rebecca, could I ask you for a favor? Would you allow David to repeat what he just said but to point to the various aspects of your appearance as he does so?”

"I guess.” She couldn’t stop blushing.

" David, do you understand? Again, but stand to show me.”

I hadn’t understood, but Rebecca was already pulling me off the couch.

" Describe again. And I will write.” He pantomimed the writing action and then retrieved a small pad and pencil from his briefcase.

When I saw the looks of expectation on their faces, I understood.

Standing very close to and facing Rebecca, I began my description again at a natural pace. I said, “She is tall,” holding my hand above her head and then raising it as high as I could. “Slim as well,” I said, running my hands along the line of her hips without touching them. “Her waist is small.” And I wrapped my hands around it, watching her stifle a laugh. “She has strong shoulders.” I moved my hands to her shoulders and squeezed them. I traced the length of her arms with my finger and made her flex her bicep, saying, “She has lean, muscular arms. Very nice.” I took her hair in my hands. “Her hair is sleek, black, and long, too long for my taste.” I spun her around to point out that her hair reached to the middle of her back. She faced me again and I gently ran a finger across her cheek. “Her complexion is much too pale, but at least her skin is nearly flawless. I consider this fortunate.” I forced the hair of her eyebrows out of place. “These eyebrows are naturally thick and have been thinned unnaturally very recently.” I turned to face the professor and mimicked her nightly plucking procedure. The two of them laughed. “Her teeth,” I said as I separated her lips delicately, “Are dirty and her lips are too thin for a woman.” I pointed to her eyes and then to the hardwood floor. “The brown shade of her eyes is uninteresting, certainly nothing special.” I stepped back and looked at her. This seemed to be all that I had mentioned earlier.

I pointed candidly to her breasts and held my hand very close to one. “It’s okay,” she said shyly.

I cupped one from below and said, “Her breasts seem to be of average size and the firmness of youth has already left them.” I took in her entire appearance again, studying it seriously. My summation was addressed to the professor. “I find her attractive, but do not think she is a beautiful woman.”

" Did you understand any of that, Rebecca?” the professor asked.

" Not a word.”

" I genuinely believe that David speaks an undiscovered language. I thought this might have been some elaborate hoax, but I doubt it. He must meet some of my colleagues.”

I had been in New York for eight days. Rebecca seemed to be angry when the professor returned later that same day to tell her where to bring me for a demonstration that had been arranged and was set to take place on the next day. The following exchange was reproduced by the professor when I inquired about it a few weeks later, so it’s likely that his memory has altered it just as mine is doing so as I transcribe it now.

"He’s not a circus side show,” Rebecca said.

"You have it all wrong, young lady. We are academics, not sensationalist journalists.”

"Don’t call me young lady. I understand what you’re doing.”

"I must say, your complete inability to consider David’s situation is astounding.”

"I am considering his situation, and I understand it perfectly well. You want to exploit him.”

"He will hardly be exploited.”

(When the professor did provide me with this information, it took him several minutes to successfully explain to me what the word “exploit” means. But that is irrelevant, I suppose.)

"You’re going to parade him around New York to all your stuffy academic friends. Show off your big discovery, right?”

"We only want to help him. These are language experts. I don’t purport to be familiar with every extinct or obscure dialect. I know relatively little. But my stuffy academic friends each have their own store of knowledge. With any luck, one of them might recognize it.”

"You said it was unknown.”

"I was in awe. It was a reactionary statement, one that I have thought about and would like to rescind. It is much more likely that it is merely a rare or previously extinct language. There remains the chance that this is all a fraud, but I’m betting against it. We only want to help.”

Finally I understood a word and chimed in, hoping to diffuse the tension rather than participate in the debate. “Yes, help.”

"Yes, David,” the professor said, “We have been presumptuous to ignore your input. Would you like our help?” I remember that he gloated.

"Okay.”

Rebecca escorted me to the building she had been directed to and left me in the lobby. Looking back, I think she must have believed that she would never see me again. The last thing she had said to me was, “Be careful.”

The professor’s colleagues were all very genial, but I hardly understood a word of what they said to me or to each other. Their manner of speaking English differed from that of Rebecca or of the television. Apparently my inability to understand was visible, because one professor broke off and carefully declared, “He’s having difficulty with our accents.”

After a few minutes of chatter, the demonstration began. I was instructed to walk around the classroom and describe the various objects; books, chairs, electrical fixtures, paintings on the wall, and so forth. There were as many audio recorders as there were professors, and they followed me around the room as I ambled. Their eyes were on my mouth. At the time I was still optimistic that one of them would eventually have an epiphany and label me as a member of some nomadic tribe.

I remember that Rebecca had tried to explain to me that white people were descendent from one particular area, that blacks were also from one specific place, and so on with each skin color. She pointed to maps and said the names aloud, but only confused me. At some later point it made sense. Again my writing wanders. The point is that these professors, experts in the field of language and origins, were going to provide me with a home.

I ran out of objects to describe after half an hour. No one had anything to say in response. I sat at a student’s desk and half-heartedly listened to the lengthy conversation that ensued. Expending the effort to understand was pointless. A kindly female professor saw my agony and interrupted the meeting so I could say my goodbyes and make my way to a cafeteria where they had arranged for me to eat. In the midst of my meal, I realized that if I had been eating the same food that I had been raised on, I wouldn’t have known. My optimism was waning, but not entirely gone yet.

The simplified version of their conclusion was given to me by Professor Katzeneski. They agreed that this was not a hoax. (Someone later explained what a hoax was and pointed out that authors have invented languages that people have later taken the time to master.) Furthermore, according to their logic, if I spoke casually for a long enough period of time, I was bound to use a word that was used in another language in a similar enough way to confirm an association of some sort. There was, he conceded, the distinct possibility that false cognates would occur and need to be identified as such. He was confident that perseverance would pay off. Such an association, assuming one would be found, would be a starting point. I didn’t agree with this theory, but that was, and still is, an irrelevant fact.
I had one simple protest that took me time to compose. “But I can no talk always…always me.” I couldn’t carry on a one-sided conversation. I wanted someone to talk to me, and I was prepared to respond to relative gibberish for the sake of an exchange.

"I know. I know.” He was sympathetic but changed the subject abruptly. “Also, David, we will make you go on T.V.”

This made sense to me and I acquiesced.

Perhaps I need to clarify something. If you are reading this and wondering why the technological marvels of New York didn’t astound me, I can tell you that it was because I was already familiar with the concepts behind most of the innovations. The newest advancements dazzled me, I admit, but I was familiar with their predecessors and therefore not confused. I am not an extra-terrestrial alien. Human achievements are intact in my memory, albeit in a rather vague sense. The names and dates surrounding specific historical events mean nothing to me. I have an understanding of the world and it’s intricacies, but no personal past of which to speak. The point I began to make was that the idea of television and being filmed were not abstract to me. I even have a word in my language for television, although no one is able to trace its origins.

"Now?” I asked, fearfully. I was tired. They seemed disappointed by my lack of exuberance for the television aspect of the plan.

" Tomorrow is good I think.”

"I go home?” I wondered if they knew how to contact Rebecca. I will expand upon this matter later, so allow me to mention only that I did not go home to Rebecca’s that evening but instead was housed at the university.

The filming process was tedious. The language and linguistics professors weren’t very dexterous with the various pieces of equipment and I was asked to repeat myself often. Over the next week or so of these day-long sessions, I began to grasp that none of these professors was ever going to identify my homeland for me. They wrote notes furiously and hung on every word out of my mouth, but I surmised that they would only succeed in learning to speak and understand my language.

This hunch was proven valid when they asked me to begin preparing lessons for them. Their excuse, or as much of it as I could gather, was that it would organize the vocabulary and grammar in a way that might more easily facilitate linking it to another language or maybe even identifying it.

My language, by the way, was informally given the name Ziggian, which seems to have something to do with my namesake. The name has stuck.

Now that some time has passed, and after certain conversations have been recounted for me, I can’t help but point out the hypocrisy of Professor Katzeneski. He had remonstrated Rebecca for not thinking of my position. “Your inability to understand his position is astounding,” he had said. And then I am asked to give lessons? I had become a circus freak, to use Rebecca’s term. I was being exploited.

But what was I supposed to do? I had no past, no real home, no means of survival, and few friends. As long as the university provided me with food and shelter, I could consider the lessons a form of employment. I also still hung on to the faint hope that a single idiomatic phrase would jolt my memory back into existence so that I could fly away from New York as quickly as possible. I had given up on the self-indulgent professors and the possibility of identification. They were nothing but nerds. (I use the English word here because Ziggian does not have a word that so succinctly captures their character.) Would you believe that I passed a group of these esteemed professors chatting in Ziggian amongst themselves?

An unwelcome result of these lessons was that my English language abilities began to digress. One of the professors tried to reassure me (in a confusing mix of English and Ziggian) by telling me that a person totally immersed in a foreign language can expect to take up to a month to have a firm grasp on it. The time it took me to understand this information prevented me from pointing out that I was not fully immersed because of the Ziggian lessons. Outside of the school environment, I only spoke to my neighbors with fragments of English, and this happened rarely.

My living situation, as I mentioned earlier, changed. A tenured professor with a great deal of power in the university’s administrative department convinced someone to allow me to live in a building designated to graduate students. I didn’t find it unbearable, but it was far from idyllic. The apartments themselves, nearly all identical, lacked the charm of Rebecca’s, but they were more spacious and cleaner. My neighbors, when they found out who I was, gawked at me in the hallways. When they did speak to me, they did so in exceedingly slow and simplified English. I understand this precaution, but I would have preferred no interaction at all.

One odd boy, a law student who didn’t look as old as his classmates, knocked on my door one evening and asked me to teach him what he called “swears”, but I didn’t know what the word meant. He was visibly shocked by my ignorance, but took the time to explain that they were the vulgar words in a language. It was not as easily done as I have just implied, but in the end I was certain that I knew what he meant to learn from me.

"What word you want to say?” I asked him, offering him a seat on my free furniture.

"Ass,” he said.

"What is ‘ass’?”

"Ass,” he said again, standing. He bent over and slapped his palm against his ass. “Ass.”

"Ass,” I said in English. I provided him with the most vulgar form of the word in my language. He repeated it and looked to me for approval. I repeated, he repeated, and he was saying it very well after a few tries. “Good,” I said.

"Now, ass hole.” He made a ring out of his thumb and forefinger and squinted through it at me. Then he slapped his ass again. I understood immediately.

This process went on for fifteen minutes or so. He asked and pointed to his anatomy. I said the words and he repeated until he could say them. He wrote down the English words and their phonetic translations. Most of the words were easy enough. As I said, parts of the anatomy or bodily fluids. Fuck was easy because I had heard the word many times and asked an embarrassed professor what it meant. Her childish answer was “to make the baby.” The law student’s inquiry to a variation on the word, “mother fucker“, was difficult to understand, not because of the words, but because of their pairing.

"This bad word?” I asked the law student.

"Very bad.”

"Very bad?”

"Very, very bad.”

"Okay. So say, ‘you are mother fucker’ is bad?”

He found this amusing and fell to the floor laughing. “Okay,” he finally said, “How do you say it?”

I told him the literal translation, but knew he would find it too wordy compared to the English phrase, and this was evident in his botched attempt to say it himself. I told him that the correlating insult, in terms of impact and colorfulness, is what would literally translate into English as “sodomite to small animals”. In Ziggian, it rolls off the tongue and is quite an insult. He said it only a few times before he broke into another laughing fit. He snorted as he laughed and I wondered if my shy female neighbor heard him.

"Okay,” he said, leaving, “I can’t think of any more. But can I come back to ask you for more?”

"Yes. Okay.”

I watched television after he left and realized that teaching him, or the professors for that matter, absolute lies would provide me with a personal form of entertainment. I could, for example, let the Ziggian word for “dick” stand in for the English “eraser”. “Semen” could become “fruit juice”. And the reverse could be true for the perverted little law student. “Goose down” could be the word “shit stain” he had wanted to learn but could not explain to me properly.

Disappointingly, however, the juvenile pleasure of this deception was minimal in practice. I misled the anxious professors on occasion for a few days and then abandoned the pursuit. As I think of this diversion again, it seems that my deceit was incomplete because I had shared it with no one. It would seem that metaphorically masturbatory actions aren’t rewarding unless someone else is cognizant that the act is taking place.

But this is enough study of human behavior, especially for a novice such as myself.

Unless you are reading this memoir several hundred years after I wrote it, when it may be possible that Ziggian is a widely studied and known language, it is safe to assume that you are reading a translation. This process may have left my words insufficiently effective in many ways. To this end, I would like to emphasize that I reached a degree of boredom, often indifference, surrounding my strange existence in New York. Because there was no progress, I saw no point in anything the professors had me doing. In the original Ziggian, you would have noticed this sentiment and this detour from the story would have been unnecessary, but perhaps I underestimate my future translators.

I shall make an effort to remain focused.

The professors and the graduate housing community bored me after a month. I still had sporadic conversations with the perverted law student, Gil, and he made an earnest attempt to teach me English, although the twenty minutes every few days wasn’t really helping.

I wondered why Rebecca hadn’t contacted me. It would have been easy for her to find me through Professor Katzeneski. My departure, I realized, had been unceremoniously rude. If for no other reason, I wished to speak to her to thank her for her initial kindness and explain that she had been wise to predict my exploitation.

When I knocked on her door, the dog barked and came to sniff under the door. I sat on the floor and waited.

"Hi, David,” she said excitedly, “I never thought I’d see you again.”

"I hate professors,” I said as she hugged me, “I want to leave.”

"You’re always welcome to stay here.”

"Thank you. But I want to leave New York.”

"How?”

"How?”

"Yes, how will you leave? You have no money, no car, nothing.”

"By…” I looked towards the river, trying to remember a word, “By boat. My boat.”

"Your boat? You’re crazy. That boat can’t bring you anywhere.” She let out a little laugh.

Frustrated, I said to her in Ziggian, “That boat brought me here, so why can’t it bring me home?” She searched my eyes.

"You really want to leave, don’t you?”

"Yes, very.”

"I’ll see what I can do.” I didn’t know what that meant exactly, but her tone signaled the end of the discussion. We went into her apartment and she cooked me dinner; soup and a salad. With the dirty dishes sitting on the small table, we laid on the couch, quietly watching television.

She went to bed and left me there with the dog at my feet, who whimpered every time I shifted. I found a pad of paper and wrote this memoir, which I will end shortly. I am waiting for the sun to rise so that I can find my way to the river and to a boat. The boat I arrived in is probably gone or damaged, but I will take any boat I can find and which I will be able to operate alone. Rebecca is correct; it is very unlikely that any boat will bring me back home, especially if I don’t know where home is. But I also know that something happened to bring me to New York, so I must believe that anything is possible.

* * *

Epilogue

The whereabouts of David, who left Rebecca’s apartment over eight months prior to the completion of this English translation of his memoir, are still unknown. On that morning, there was a sixteen foot fishing boat stolen from a pier beneath the Williamsburg Bridge in Brooklyn. The services of the Coast Guard and several state and local police departments were enlisted, but neither the boat nor David’s body was ever found. The Ziggian manuscript is the only physical evidence of David’s existence. We in the university’s community are very concerned with his well-being and are deeply regretful if any of our actions, as well-intended as they may have been, contributed to his sudden departure.

---------------------------------------

Thomas Roberge laments that he has temporarily moved away from New York to an undisclosed city in New England. He has a menial day job that he would rather not discuss.  He can be contacted at [email protected].

© 2003 Me Three