Читать книгу Fleeting Snow - Pavel Villikovsky - Страница 17

4.b

Štefan’s book was well received in scholarly circles. Well, scholarly circles may be a bit of an exaggeration, there is just one circle, and a very small one at that, but that doesn’t detract from the book’s scholarly value. Either way, the book won’t sell in Slovakia where there are no native North Americans; and even in America it sold only two copies. The buyers were students of Štefan’s professor. As far as I know, neither of them has a Menominee background, and the professor doesn’t either. (He didn’t need to buy a copy since he was the one who had recommended the book for publication and edited it.) You may well ask what significance and impact Štefan’s oeuvre might have on the Menominees’ life and language which, as he informs me, is a member of the Algonquian family.

The Menominee tribe is on the verge of extinction and so is their language. Apparently, the only person still alive with full command of the language is a very old native American woman, who is actually deaf and dumb. Even if she went to the trouble of studying the role of bilabial consonants it wouldn’t be much use to her as she can only communicate in writing.

It is always a great loss when a language becomes extinct; every language is unique. I am sure that if the story of my life were told in the Menominee language it would be a different life. I would like to hear this version of the story but there is nobody to tell it, and I wouldn’t understand it anyway.

To be honest, it is highly unlikely that the Menominee would be interested in my life. They have other things to worry about. An avalanche started rolling towards them a long time ago and now only a single, lone arm is left sticking out of the snow. Petawawa, Maniwaki. Beautiful cries. Cries for help.

‘Congratulations’, I said to Štefan after browsing through his book. ‘Hats off. You might as well stick it up your arse, though you won’t be able to fit all ten copies in there anyway.’