Suzette Elgin - Native Tongue

“I’m concerned about my room, Mrs. Verdi,” she had said.

“But it’s such a nice room!”

“Oh, yes,” she said hastily, “the room itself is beautiful, and I am most grateful for it. But I can’t get to my patient in less than four minutes, Mrs. Verdi, and that’s alarming. I’ve clocked it by three different routes, and four minutes is absolutely the best I can do — it’s that bridge over the Interface that slows me down.”

“Oh, I see!” Sharon Verdi had said, the relief on her face telling Michaela a good deal about the shifting and crowding they must have done to give her the room she had. “Oh, that’s all right… really.”

“But four minutes! A great deal can happen in four minutes.”

For example, you can die in four minutes,” thought Michaela. It had not taken Ned Landry four minutes.

“My dear child,” the woman began, and Michaela guarded her face against any betrayal of how she despised the idea of being a linguist’s dear child, “I assure you it’s no problem. Great-grandfather Verdi has nothing serious wrong with him, you know; he’s just very old and weak. Until the last few months we’ve always been able to assign one of the girls to sit with him, taking turns… he just wants company.”

“But now you think he needs a nurse?”

“No,” Sharon Verdi laughed, “he still just needs company. But he has taken it into his head that he wants the same person all the time, you see, and there’s nobody we can spare on that basis. And so we need you, my dear — but you won’t have crises to deal with. Nothing that requires you to get to his room in ten seconds flat, or anything like that. One of these nights he will go to his just reward peacefully, in his sleep; he’s sound as a racehorse. And until then, I’m afraid that your major problem is not going to be rushing to emergencies, it’s going to be boredom. That man can barely sit up without a strong arm to help him, but there is nothing wrong with his voice, and he can talk any one of us into a coma. You’ll earn your salary, I promise — and want a raise.”

“Ah,” said Michaela. “I understand. Thank you, Mrs. Verdi.”

“You’re quite welcome… and don’t worry. Nothing he needs won’t wait five minutes, or fifteen for that matter. And if he ever should have a touch of something or other that makes you feel you really need to be closer, there’s a very comfortable couch in his room where we could put you up for a night or two.”

Michaela had nodded, satisfied. True, she would be taking the old man out of this world a bit more quickly than the Verdis anticipated; but while she was serving as his nurse, he would have the best care she could provide him, and no corners cut. She was an excellent nurse; she had no intention of lowering her standards. And she was awfully glad to be able to stay in the spacious corner room, where she could lean out like Rapunzel and watch the river.

Stephan Rue Verdi, 103 and not more than 99 pounds dripping wet, lived up to his billing. He was as formidable a talker as she’d ever encountered. But she didn’t find him all that boring. When his great-granddaughter judged the old man’s narrative skill, she didn’t have Michaela’s experience with Ned to use as a standard.

“When I was a child,” old Stephan would begin, and she’d murmur at him to let him know she was listening (but that wasn’t enough, she had to sit down right beside him where he could look at her without effort), “when I was a child, things were different. I can tell you, things were very different! I don’t say they were better, mind — when you start saying they were you’re doddering — but they were surely different.”

“When I was a child, we didn’t have to live the life these children live, poor little things. Up every morning before it’s even light yet, out in the orchards and the vegetable gardens working like poor dirt farmers by five-thirty most of the year… and a choice… ha! some choice!… between running around the blasted roads and doing calisthenics for hours, or chopping wood, come the time of year there’s nothing left to do in the way of agriculture. And then the poor little mites get to listen to the family bul letin while they eat their breakfast… when I was a child, we linguists lived in proper houses like anybody else, and we had our own family tables. None of these great roomfuls of people like eating in a cafeteria and everybody all jumbled in together like hogs at a trough…”

“The family bulletin, Mr. Verdi,” Michaela prompted him. He tended to lose track.

“Oh, the bul letin, now that’s very very important, the bul letin! That’s a list the kidlings have to face every morning while they try to eat, with everything on it they have to do that day and everything they didn’t do or didn’t do right the day before… Poor little mites,” he said again.

“Hmmm,” said Michaela. He would settle for “hmmmm” most of the time, since he preferred to do all the talking himself.

“Oh, yes! ‘Paul Edward, you’re to be at St. Louis Memorial at nine sharp, they’re operating on the High Muckymuck of Patoot and he won’t let them touch him unless there’s an interpreter right there to pass along his complaints.’ ‘Maryanna Elizabeth, you’re expected at the Federal Court house from nine to eleven, and then you’re wanted clear across town at the Circuit Court — don’t take time for lunch, you’ll be late.’ ‘Donald Jonathan, you have three days scheduled in the Chicago Trade Complex; take your pocket computer, they’ll expect you to convert currencies for the Pateets!”

“My word,” Michaela said. “How do these children ever get to all those places?”

“Oh, we’re very efficient. Family flyer, great big thing, revs up outside at 8:05 on the button — the five minutes to let the poor little things go to the bathroom, don’t you know — and runs them into St. Louis to the State Department of Analysis & Translation, where they’ve got a whole army of chauffeurs and pilots and whatalls waiting, pacing up and down for fear they’ll be late. They deliver everybody where they’re going all day long and then bring ’em back again to SDAT at night, and we do it in reverse.”

“Mmmmm.”

“And then, supposing a tyke’s not scheduled for the Patoots or the Pateets, well, he’s got to go to school for two hours… flyer puts him down on the slidewalks in Hannibal, you see, or they run him there in the van. School… phooey. I say the kids that get out of it ’cause they’re scheduled in solid, and then just make it up with the mass-ed computers, they’re the lucky ones. Would you want to spend two blessed hours five days a week with a bunch of other bored-sick kids, saying the Pledge Allegiance and singing the Missouri State Song and the Hannibal Civic Anthem and listening to them read you the King James — not that I’ve got anything against the King James, but the kids can read, you know, in a couple dozen languages! They sure don’t need somebody to read to ’em… And celebrating damnfool so-called holidays like Space Colony Day and Reagan’s Birthday? ’Course, they do Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas and such, too, all that stuff… but would you want to do that? All that truck, I mean? Phooey… I can remember when we still had classes at school!”

“Now, Mr. Verdi,” Michaela chided.

“I can. I can so.”

“Tsk.”

“Well… I can remember when my father told me about it.”

“Mmmm.”

“And when I was a tyke myself, all we had to do was the mass-ed computer lessons, at home, Now, the kids have all that to do AND the damnfool school for two hours! HOMEroom, they call it! Did you ever hear such damnfool stuff: HOMEroom!”