...of omission

They shut the library down today. By day's end workmen had it totally boarded up. I spent much of the afternoon helping Rachalle box up items to transfer to the supply cabinets of Mother's school. Her second graders wore such heart-tugging looks of confusion when the principal confiscated all of the textbooks. Mother spent much of the school day in halt and stammer lest she speak the proscribed letter and found herself brought up on charges. It makes teaching so difficult, she tells me - having to spell out each word in her head before speaking it, to prevent accidental usage, while attempting to deliver a lesson without benefit of any textbook whatsoever! (Mother is having only a slightly better time of it than Mrs. Moseley who, having fallen victim to chronic aposiopesis in the morning, spent the bulk of the afternoon seated in silent defeat behind her desk, while her restless third graders improvised games of catch with a variety of show-and-tell items.)
Mother said her own pupils wanted desperately to talk about what had just occurred.
Many are forbidden by their parents to discuss the matter at home, so great is the fear of where such discussion may lead. She said that she took the coward's way out and would not permit discussion in her classroom either. It is gone, she tells the children. They must think no more of it. We must all learn to accept its departure.

[ella minnow pea, Dunn, M.]

...of censorship

Today The Tribune published the names of fifty-eight of the sixty men, women, and children charged this week with first offense. (Two names were unpublished due to the presence of a particualr letter within.) All were speakers of banned words - words overheard upon the lanes, in schoolyards and church pews, and on the common greens. Neighbor turning in neighbor, perpetuating old grudges and grievances with this new weapon unleashed upon us by the High Island Council. The paper reported thirteen additional names of those charged with second offense. Unlike your brave Master Cheevy, all have chosen headstock in lieu of the lash. Thankfully, no one has yet to receive the dreaded charge of third and final offense. At least one of the thirteen has taken the precautionary measure of taping his mouth securely shut.
Another among their number, the very publisher and editor of our Island Tribune, Asquith Kleeman, is contemplating a suspension of the publication of his newspaper rather than risk a final charge. For the time being he has asked that all staff members tape down a certain key on their typewriters to avoid its accidental usage. The Kleeman family, as you may know, has resided on this island for multiple generations; they were, in fact, one of the first families to settle here. Banishment for them would be both an unfortunate and landish tragedy. Just as unfortunate, though, would be the loss of our daily rag - our solitary news source (now that radio news broadcasts have been suspended.)

[ella minnow pea, Dunn, M.]

...of purpose

Most wonderful news. Mr Warren, who will be arriving on the 18th, is coming to our rescue! I know its's foolish to put stock in any promises of assistance (and while I hope that your underground meetings prove independently fruitful, I cannot count on them - forgive my blunt honesty here - and must parcel my optimism in such a way as to best contribute to the state of my emotional health) but I am nonetheless encouraged by the following: Warren arrives bearing more than simply suitcase and notebook. He brings, as well, the results of chemical analyses performed on slivers of the errant tiles - analyses which prove beyond doubt and wanton denial that the tiles are falling for the simple reason that they can no longer hold themselves to the bandiford. It is as elementary as that. Nollop is not God. Nollop is silent. We must respect that silence and make our decisions and judgements based upon science and fact and simple old-fashioned common sense - a commodity absent for too long from those in governmental elevatia, where its employ would do us all much good.

[ella minnow pea, Dunn, M.]

...of expurgation

My sweet Mittie, it is strange, so terribly strange how taxing it has become for me to speak, to write without these four illegal letters, but especially without the fourth. I cannot see how, given the loss of one letter more, I will be able to remain among those I love, for surely will I misstep. So I have chosen to stop talking, to stop writing altogether.
Perhaps we will see each other soon. That is, if you are still here. Many, as you well know, are leaving us. Perhaps I may come to your house for a visit. (Cooney loves it near the water. He says there is no better fishing on the isle than from the village pier near your home.) We will not speak, we two, but I eagerly expect to pore with you in warm silence over our musty high school annuals, as well as those fox-worn nature scrap-books we spent several beautiful summers lovingly compiling.

[ella minnow pea, Dunn, M.]

...of soliloquy

Tired of being separated from you, I have decided to send you my impressions of this new life. I shall write every now and then, whenever I have the time (and the heart), as a way of conversing with you. To know that someone dear is nearby - a person who understands and who offers communion - is so very comforting, especially when one is participating in life's most critical moments. Such a person hears your thoughts, inwardly, even though he may imagine he is not listening to them at all. You must have observed this sometime. A woman is sitting somewhere with her beloved, sitting with this dear person in a cosy little room, only the two of them present, and nothing else except a few good books, one or two paintings on the walls, a lamp awaiting the night with thumping heart, an inkstand (what an important object that is!), and the chairs in a circle, filled with patience. Neither of them speaks. Each is engrossed in his own thoughts or perhaps is not thinking any conscious thoughts at all. That is the golden moment, because their souls, as free now as two swallows, escape, meet the boundless Oversoul of the cosmos, and disappear, fraternally absorbed inside it. Most often, however, each of these souls converses with its own silence. Yet notice how indispensable to this "conversation" is the very special companion who sits close at hand without speaking, or who now and then utters a few words about current events, words which constitute his rationality's paltry attempt to justify the sweet-voiced silence. As he sits there tacitly, he is an unsuspecting auditor of the others unvoiced soliloquy. But as soon as he decides to rise and leave his lady's side, everything is finished, ended. She finds it beyond the limits of possibility to continue her silent, inward communing with the depths of her being. Sometimes the lady is the first to rise after one of these joint silences. Not a word has been exchanged the entire time, yet when she gets up to leave, smiling at her friend, at that same moment both feel their souls fuller and riper, brimming with strength and freedom - because many many truths have grazed them gently with their wings, like rosy butterflies.
Something similar is happening to me, making me wish to address my thoughts to you. Despite your silence, I assume that you are here, somewhere close to me. At such times i devote myself body and soul to my soliloquy, which your absence fills with presence.

[Life in the Tomb, Myrivilis, S.]

...of blinded soldiers

Imagine a rectangular tent, pure white, standing on the verdant banks of an idyllic little river splendidly appropriate for a picture postcard. This tent is an Italian field-hospital. Along the bank are thirty-two (I counted them) thirty-two young men seated in a long row on the soft grass, beneath aspens whose birdsong and rustling foliage provide a refreshing chatter. The men have their legs stretched out toward the current, which flows by them quickly, happily. All are dressed in hospital blues, and all have a black bandage bound tightly around their eyes.
They listen in silence as the water sings beneath their sandals, the trees and birds converse high above their heads. Their hands caress the grass, or grope with short pitiful movements in an attempt to fill a pipe. One of them strikes a match and continues to hold it absent-mindedly while the flame approaches his fingers and burns them; then with sudden fright he tosses the match into the river and licks his fingers urgently, bathing them in saliva. Occasionally one of these men moves his lips, but we are too far away to distinguish any words. Occasionally one of them smiles pleasantly. All are handsome olive-skinned sons of Italy with raven-black hair and childlike mouths. And all have been blinded by tear gas. All those black eyes beneath he pathetic bandages are dead now, and will perhaps remain so indefinitely...
It was then I understood why they sat there in silence, or if they did move their lips, why they spoke in an undertone as if in the sanctuary of a cathedral. They were listening, listening nostalgically with every portion of their bodies, as the secret whisperings of life in all its sweetness told them tales about light and water, about women (who are like fruit, like roses), about the sun and the flowers that they would perhaps never see again. With their sightless eyes they were gazing in horror at a frigid truth hidden to our sight because our eyes are still in intact.

[Life in the Tomb, Myrivilis, S.]

...of a foe

The darkness commences from the ravine and then continues to rise ever-upward like a turbid blue-purple mist, gradually obliterating faces, blurring lines, dulling colours, and rendering immaterial the distant trees along the horizon. At this point the mountain across the way is clearly delineated: it stands before us with black solidity, stretching upwards, a terrifying pyramid of gloom and silence. (What weighs most heavily upon our souls is not its bulk, but its silence.) It is without a single light, a single sound, a single sign of life. But everything we do not see we nevertheless feel all the more intensely. The hills in this range are called the Peristeri ridges - "the ridges of the dove." A gentle name for a mountain with such a ferocious soul - a living, billowing, ever-watchful soul which astutely circulates feverishly inside this black pyramid: a cunningly prescient, ever-active soul of numerous components. This is a ridge with untold thousands of shifting eyes which see without being seen, which direct their penetrating stare in our direction day and night. Upon this ridge are untold thousands of hearts throbbing with blind hatred and measuring out our lives with their beats. Each of its pits, boulders, caves and trees conceals one heart over-flowing with mortal enmity and one pair of eyes searching out human flesh for a target. These eyes do not see; they merely take aim, sighting along the "rear-sight elevation notch" and the "front-sight bar". Every depression in this mountain is the lair of a cannon which slowly sways its muzzle to the right and to the left, looking for warm weak flesh. These innumerable, intolerably attentive glances crisscross in the air like the threads of an invisible net which we perceive somehow and which wraps itself around our poor trench, almost smothering its spirit.

[Life in the Tomb, Myrivilis, S.]