An Earnest Parable By Merlinda Bobis

As it was his turn that day to lose his tongue, he had for breakfast the
creamiest latik, a dish of sticky rice in coconut milk, served with a large,
ripe mango. Then he sang two serenades about love and volcanoes in the
Philippines. He was making the most of his chance for taste and speech,
because, an hour later, his Sri Lankan neighbour would be at the door,
awaiting her turn. Already, she would be dreaming of pappadums and
hot curries, not quite as spicy as her dialect which would melt on the
muchawaited tongue. Their communal tongue.
Bessel Street’s most precious possession. Last week, it lodged with the
Italian butcher who earlier had picked it up from the Australian couple.
The butcher was not one to waste time. Immediately, he laid this soft,
pink flesh, moist with the previous owner’s steak and peppercorns,
inside his mouth. Then he ran to the mirror with his wife and three
daughters and began savouring his first words after weeks of silence:
“bellisima, bellisima!” The whole family marvelled at how, like a pink
animal, the tongue rolled its tip to the roof of the mouth in an intimate
curl—“belllllllllisima...” Then they passed the tongue around, taking
turns to relish old, native sounds, after which they dined on homemade
pasta in a piquant marinara sauce.
The residents of Bessel Street were kin in tongue. The pink flesh toured
up and down that street, went into homes, into mouths of different
origins. There was the baker from Turkey, the Filipino cook, the
Australian couple with the fish shop, the Italian butcher and the Sri
Lankan tailor.
One tongue for five homes. Not really an inconvenient arrangement,
mind you. Of course, when the tongue was accommodated elsewhere,
one could not eat with the usual joys of the palate. But the pleasure of
the ear was enough compensation. Every tongue-owner’s soundings,
especially those that were heard as foreign noises, seemed to orchestrate
in everyone else’s middle ear into something intimate and comforting.
This was inevitable for, muted at different times, they learned how to
listen intently to whoever had the chance for speech or song—and how
they spoke and sang and even told stories, usually with words of beauty
and kindness. The moment of speech was too dear to be wasted on loose,
heart-less talk. It was a shame not to do justice to the little, pink animal
in the mouth.
Thus everyone spoke, ate and listened with care and passion, and shared
various languages and delicacies. Last week, for instance, the word
“bella” found its way into a Turkish ditty whose refrain would later
inspire the new name of the Australian fish shop, which supplied the
mussels for the butcher’s marinara that sneaked into the Filipino chef’s
kitchen, where it was blessed—Dios mabalos!—as an afterthought, with
a dollop of coconut cream and some red chillies, well, to give it teeth,
the Sri Lankan tailor reckoned, before the dish was resurrected among
the pides of the Turkish baker.
Indeed, on their respective days of owning the tongue, each of the
neighbors could not help but echo the mouth of the previous owner. The
Italian family eventually developed a taste for the occasional cardamom
tea, the Filipino adventurously spread some Vegemite on his pan 2
/WHITE TURTLE de sal and, at one time, the Australian couple stirred
fish heads into their sour soup. Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan began hosting
summer feasts by the barbie, and the Turkish baker even serenaded his
wife with songs about love and volcanoes as he prepared a tray of
almond biscotti for the oven.
You see, the tongue had an excellent memory. Even when it had moved
to a new mouth, it still evoked the breath of spices, sweets and syllables
of the former host. It was never known to forget anything, least of all the
fact that it was once the soft, pink flesh of a South Coast mollusc; it
yielded itself to a higher good one winter night when the ocean was
formidably wild. The six households understood this origin in their
mouths. The tongue was a gift of the landscape. The pides and gulab
jamuns, the daily bonjournos and even the highly spiced curries and love
serenades could never drown the unmistakable tang of Australian surf
and grit—and,
truly like surf, after this home truth was dramatized on TV’s latest
culinary show, the heart of one viewing nation swelled and swelled with
pride.