When Imagination Falls Silent
A ventriloquist was hopelessly in love with his wooden dummy. His
wooden dummy was in love with him. At least that’s what he told me.
“But a dummy is a dummy! It doesn’t speak! It is you that speaks!” I
tried to reason with his absurdity. He looked at me with some pity, as
though he couldn’t comprehend my naïveté, and said, “no one in the
world knows her better than me.” And to prove it, he kissed her on the
whorls of her cheeks. “See how she’s blushing,” he said triumphantly.
I didn’t see her blushing.
And the dummy knew everything about the ventriloquist. At least,
that’s what she told me (it really did seem that she spoke). When I
asked the ventriloquist what inspires him, he said one word, “Sweets.”
Before I could ask him to elaborate, the dummy spoke. He likes
cheesecake. He always has mango cheesecake. And it’s not the cake, but
the tea he drinks with it. He wouldn’t admit that it’s bitterness,
rather than sweetness, that inspires him.
As I was scribbling down what she said in my notebook, the
ventriloquist gave me a knowing wink. I still don’t know what he meant
by that.
A few years later, I went to see the ventriloquist again. He called in
the middle of a performance, telling me that he was in trouble, and
had no one to turn to.
“She stopped speaking to me!” he shook me by my shoulders when I
entered his backstage room. He had the dummy put behind a veil. He
said he couldn’t bear her indifference any longer.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Ohhh, the things I didn’t say. The things I wouldn’t say.”
“Maybe you should try speaking to her?” I suggested, feeling a bit
self conscious saying the obvious.
“No!” he glared at me, “you don’t understand. She wouldn’t speak to
me! She wouldn’t speak to me!!”
Then he broke down crying.
He did not finish his performance that night. The next day, he was
dead, and his dummy sold at an auction.
