Palaver

​Submitted by: Kevin Hannigan (Bio at end)

“Mamihlapinatapai,” I mumble aloud.
 
Maybe to myself, maybe to her.
  Neither of us can be sure.
  The word just came out.
 
She sits opposite me at the back of the bus. Her auburn hair is tucked neatly and snugly into her wool hat. Her pale eyes flicker between shades of green and blue as they steadily make their way across the page of a book I can’t see the title of. Her lips move indiscernibly in mussitation as she reads.
  It’s early on a Tuesday morning. Dawn comes with rosy fingers, and each digit rakes at my whiskey-raw corneas. I’m sure she can smell the cheap whiskey from last night.
  The bus driver certainly could.
 
She looks up at me after my utterance. There’s no curiosity in her eyes, nothing in them to suggest that I should follow up my feeble pronouncement with anything but silence.
  It’s too late though. The acidic cyclone of alcohol, insomnia, lack of food, and pre-interview nerves churns noisily from within the pit of my stomach.
  And, as if I’ve suddenly been drenched in unassailable waves of satori, my mouth opens.
  I start to talk.
 
“Mamihlapinatapai… You see, in Yaghan – a language from Tierra del Fuego – it means… Well, look, it's often cited as the world's most succinct word. Very precise. An embodiment of a feeling, you know? A photograph of an exact moment and emotion.”
  The words tumble forward more as a burst of logorrheic anacoluthia as opposed to an actual sentence. Each letter falls out of my mouth and, like automated jigsaw pieces, struggle to arrange themselves into some meaningful order.
 
In response, I receive a gentle cough into her fist.
  She breaks eye contact and goes back to her book. The bus has paused momentarily outside a newsagents where an elderly man is securely tying his dog's leash to a bin's metal casing. The dog is as old as the man and lies down with a sense of apathy at the prospect of being left alone for a few moments. His eyes are weary, a sense of cynicism maybe.
  Whilst I wonder why I'm trying to analyse a dog, I catch her in my peripherals as she shifts in her seat. I look up and our eyes meet for a second. Probably nothing. Almost certainly. But now I feel more encouraged to speak – not that that works in my favour:
  “That dog. You see the look in its eyes? I'm no animal psychiatrist, but I’d say that dog looks worn out. Kind of sick of everything. Maybe even lost, no?”
  No response, but she glances at me again.
  “Mamihlapinatapai,” I repeat softly, looking away to focus on the dog.
  Then –
 
“You know, there are lots of words in other languages that we don't have in English. Words that represent things we don't have the ability to describe in one word. Isn't that mad? I mean, just think about that for one second. There are feelings and emotions and situations and experiences and highs and lows and – well, there's just no possible way we could confine them into one single word. It seems impossible, doesn't it?”
  I nod my head vigorously, agreeing with myself. Then a thought hits me.
  “I'm contradicting myself now, aren't I? I just said it's impossible to encompass all of these experiences into one simple word and then I did it myself. Splitting the atom, flight, space travel, the Internet, even – all ideas with conceptions that surely must have stretched the limitations of rational thought at some stage. Many more exist – travelling to other planets, other dimensions, eternal life. We’ll figure them out. But for now, just like their predecessors, they all fit under the title of impossible.”
  I lift my hands and make air quotes as I say the word.
  “Ideas and notions that cross different borders of thought, physics, chemistry, biology – whatever – and yet they all fit into the constraints of one word. The way we’re going though, maybe we should change the definition to mean inevitable; what do you think?” I laugh to myself and sit back more comfortably, straightening my back and not giving her a chance to answer.
 
“So, although we have words that follow similar ideals, other countries have perfected just how concise these words can be. For example, the Germans have a famous word that we use here, too: shadenfreude. You know it? Well, it essentially means to take pleasure from the pain of others. Not a very nice thing, you may think; why would anyone feel happy to see someone else miserable? Not only that, but why would we even need, let alone want, a word to describe that elated feeling we get when we see someone else fail?”
  I lean forward.
  “And yet, we have a pretty similar word in the English language. Pleasure as a result of the pain of others? Add a sexual element to that and you're a sadist. So, is it inappropriate to have a word for what is essentially a guilty pleasure? Possibly, yes. But is it ok to have one when sex is involved? Of course it is. That makes it all right with us.”
  I lean back in my seat again and exhale slowly. I swallow hard. She looks taken aback. I take a breath. I should apologise. Maybe I’m being intense.
 
Maybe I’m talking to her. Maybe at her.
  I'm not quite sure.
  The words just flow.
 
“The German language has another fantastic word that we don't have in English: Waldeinsamkeit. Isn't that wonderful?” I pause for a moment to wet my lips, pronouncing the word again in my head, separating each syllable, each one standing alone as something tangible. Yet, strung together, it sounds almost beautifully clumsy.
  “Waldeinsamkeit, translated as best as we can, is a sense of being lost in the woods. Think about that for a moment. At some stage in the evolution of the German language, somebody must have gotten turned around in the woods one night, and thought that the words lonely, stranded, scared and lost just weren't good enough to describe this feeling – this sense. Sure, combined, those words paint a picture, but it doesn't seem to quite fit in its frame. So, instead a new word is coined – something that can pull of these other words together and give them that little extra bite. It's just fascinating...a journey to find a word that's wholly sufficient.”
 
At this point, I realise she hasn't said a single word. There’s a look in her eyes, but I can't unravel its meaning. Almost vacantly, she begins to pull on a thread on her jacket.
  I feel like I'm losing my audience.
 
“Sufficiency, actually, is another word that can be drawn into debate. We say that things are sufficient or adequate, along with other synonyms, but we don't usually give a meaning to each one. That is, we don't define what can be sufficient and what can be adequate.”
  I notice that my forehead has become quite damp with perspiration.
  “In Sweden, they have a synonym that does define its adequacy, to an extent at least. Lagom is their word for absoluteness or perfectionism in terms of whatever they're referring to.”
  I struggle with this sentence whilst I pat at my forehead with my jacket's sleeve.
  “Say if you're in a restaurant and the waiter asks if you want black pepper. You nod and he keeps going until you know that the amount of pepper that’s on your dish is the exact right amount. It transforms your meal from something delectable to something perfect. That. That is lagom.”
 
The frenzied assault of words comes to a sudden halt, and I take a deep breath to collect myself. She's staring at me, her eyes wide with an ice-cold silence that I hope to melt with my next few words. I take care over them, picking them carefully and, one by one, I utter them, knowing that this would be my only chance to win her favour – as I now finally figure out that that’s what I’m trying to do.
  There are beads of sweat rolling down the sides of my face, entering the natural canals that tears take, before rolling over my lips. I get the tangy taste of salt when I lick my lips, but I know it’s all been worth it.
 
“Then,” I begin, slowly forming each vowel and consonant so that they appear sharp and crisp, “there is that feeling that you get when you meet someone. The feeling when you know that there is a connection – you can just sense it in the air. Vision is thrown into soft focus as if Vaseline has been smeared across your eyesight.
  “Sound is muffled except for the quickening of two hearts beating in unison as if it's the most natural thing in the world. Everything goes dark, and there is just you and that one other person. In that moment, you both want to throw caution to the wind, both of you want to deny the social norm and, if only for a moment, make a fool out of yourselves. Both parties wish to initiate something, for some type of move to be made, but neither of them wants to be the first person to take that step. Instead, they hope that the other person will be the one with enough confidence to do it.
  “Mamihlapinatapai is the word for that feeling.
  “Two people mutually hoping for something to happen, but both wishing for the other person to get it started.
  “We don't have a word for that gloriously scary feeling.
  “I'll be bold for both of us. I’ll make that move.”
 
And I hold out my hand to her.
 
Heavy silence.
 
Then, the corners of her eyes begin to twitch, almost involuntarily. And those lips, that I’ve recently realised I’m so eager to kiss, split open to reveal two rows of porcelain teeth. Behind them, her tongue rises slightly, her mouth widening into a grin. Her throat utters the faintest of sounds before she erupts.
  Into sheer, uncontrollable laughter.
 
I'm frozen in time. A photograph of a statue with its hand held out.
  Reaching. Waiting.
 
Her laughter continues, gets louder, her head cocks back, her mouth opens wide, her eyes squeezing shut, tears rolling fast.
  I get to my feet. I'm suddenly dizzy. I make my way towards the front of the bus, my brain swirling.
  I need to ask the driver to pull over.
 
The laughter follows me, surrounds me, wraps me up and constricts me like a worn blanket. With these cacophonous, Kafkaesque cachinnations crippling me as I collapse to my knees, I suddenly realise that we do in fact have a word for Mamihlapinatapai.
 
We have many of them.
 
I struggle to my feet.
  Pathetic. Cowardly. Afraid. Intimidated. Anxious. Petrified. Spooked. Scared.
 
 The bus suddenly brakes at a red light and I am launched forward, scrambling, landing heavily back down on my knees.
  Meagre. Miserable. Useless. Worried. Pitiful. Worthless. Wretched. Timid.
 
The driver's eyes are locked onto mine in the rear-view mirror. I swear a smile creeps onto his face as he slams his foot down. Caught off balance, I’m now sprawled on my back.
  Terrified. Suspicious. Feeble. Petty. Inadequate. Melting. Panicked. Retiring.
 
The ceiling above me begins to spin clockwise, and I’m spinning the opposite direction. I try to judge the rotations, try to stay balanced, sweating profusely, laughter invading every pore.
  Want. Tender. Touch. Skin. Taste. Kiss. Palpitate. Need.
 
Maybe she’s laughing at me.
  I'm not quite sure.
  The laughter just resonates.
 
The bus finally pulls over and the bus driver is yelling at me and the spins continue and I get to my feet somehow and I'm at the front of the bus and I'm outside and the bus is gone.
 
Desire.
 
And I crumple to all fours and I heave and wretch and struggle for air as I vomit onto the pavement and I stare into the putrid mess spewing from my mouth and I’m confused because I don't remember eating alphabet soup.


By Kevin Hannigan 

Kevin Hannigan has hands and feet. He draws comics about anxiety starring Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, and other rather outlandish comics, on Instagram. He's also readily available to officiate your wedding.

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