The voice you hear is not my speaking voice. but my mind's voice. I have not spoken since I was six years old. No-one knows why. Not even me.
One day. When my mother and father were singing together in the forest. A great storm blew up out of nowhere. But so passionate was their singing that they did not notice nor did they stop as the rain began to fall. And when their voices rose for the final bars of the duet. A great bolt of lightning came out of the sky and struck my father, and then he lit up like a torch. And at the same moment my father was struck dead. My mother was struck dumb. She never spoke another word.
- Does your mother prefer to come on with us to Nelson?
- She says no. She says she'd rather be boiled alive by natives than get back in your stinking tub.
I'm quite the town freak, which satisfies. I am learning to speak. My sound is still so bad I feel ashamed. I practise only when I am alone and it is dark. At night I think of my piano in its ocean grave. And sometimes of myself floating above it. Down there, everything is so still and silent...that it lulls me to sleep. It is a weird lullaby, and so it is...It is mine. There is a silence where has been no sound. There is a silence where no sound may be. In the cold grave under the deep deep sea.