In so doing Most Senior Council Member Willingham and his four fellow counciliteurs left themselves scant room for the possibility that the tile fell simply because, after one hundred years, whatever fixant had been holding it in place, could simply no longer perform its function. This explanation seemed quite the logical one to me, as well as to my fellow laundresses.
I have, in scanning the text of my epistle to you thus far, discovered only three merest of uses: in the words “gaze,” “immortalized,” and “snooze.” Would you have lost my meaning should I have chosen to make the substitutions, “looked,” “posteritified,” and “sleep”?
The books have all disappeared. You were right about the books.
We will have to write new ones now. But what will we say? Without the whizz that waz.
For we cannot even write of its history. Because to write of it, is to write it. And as of midnight, it becomes ineffable.
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 unpublishable due to the presence of a particular 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.
While we still receive the weak signal of the limited island radio broadcasts, music is almost all that is sent up to us these days. Music without words. The station management, I assume, does not wish to examine song lyrics for words containing the outlawed letter. Besides making us all fearful, this edict has turned some among us into shameful indolents.
I do respect Mr. Kleeman for his protest, yet am disappointed by the cowardly exit. He has left this town with a yawning communicational chasm—a great lacuna which I see no one stepping forward to fill.
And so Mum and Pop and I stood and watched the harrowing and loathsome sight of children being ritually beaten, and the commensurately disturbing picture of frightened onlookers—“the town baa-baas,” as Pop has taken to calling our dear neighbors—doing what they do oh so very well, and that is: absolutely nothing.
Nollop is not God. Nollop is silent. We must respect that silence and make our decisions and judgments 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.
7. The falling tiles can represent only one thing: a challenge—a summons to bettering our lot in the face of such deleterious complacency, and in the concomitant presence of false contentment and rank self-indulgence.
8. There is no room for alternative interpretation.
9. Interpretation of events in any other way represents heresy.
10. Heretics will be punished, as was, for example, Mr. Nollop’s saucy stenographer, who was cashiered for flippantly announcing to her employer the ease with which she could, herself, create such a sentence as his.
When I bake, I do not have to speak. When I bake, I do not have to make sense of anything except the ingredients summoned by memory that I have laid out in front of me. Sometimes the children offer to help, but I do not accept. This is something best done alone. Something I do well. One of the few things I can actually do.
In taking “ed” away (Goodbye, Ed!), the most useful tool to express the past tense in the English language, we are being robbed of great chunks of our very history.
But we were lucky in that when such a misspeak took place, there were no ears pressing themselves against the portals or fenesters to overhear.
A little not-so-positive news: Amos has been caught in offense number two. In last night’s poker game. It was such a foolish mistake. It might have gone without report except that Morton who owes him money chose to employ outright extortion against poor, hapless Amos. Amos’s preference was for not playing along. Imagine the effrontery: Morton attempting to ignore the offense in exchange for clearance of a rather large financial obligation. Amos thought, of course, that Morton was bluffing. Unfortunately, in this particular game, it turns out, Morton was not.
You’ve given me the scientific reason for why the tiles are falling, Mr. Warren. But might not Nollop be working through the science? Have you ever thought of this? The science, in point of fact, actually serving his specific purposes. Therefore, that of which I must have positive proof—the single fact that I must know for certain is that the Great Nollop isn’t working at all!
The prospect of actually being able to control the outcome of this ghastly assault on our collective spirit, let alone our very humanity, by turning this offensive upon its cephalus, has sent some among our subterra movement to heights of unencompassable ecstasy.
The Council representative—his voice: even, treacly polite—gave his response again, with slight elaboration: “Mr. Cummels, it is the Council’s earnest conviction that there is no other Supreme Being but Almighty Nollop. None whatsoever. Praise Nollop. Nollop eternal.”
I value, nonetheless, your going to the learny-house to help my son. Little Timmy values it as well.
He is gone now. Timmy. This morning. With Nash, my spouse. I must remain. I must remain, as I am without violation.
Please exonerate me. In your heart. I am so sorry that I was the one to report your violations. I’m so sorry that I was to learn what is truly important in our lives too, too late.
This is to inphorm ewe oph Statoot 28-63 past this morning with implorment phrom high elter R. Lyttle. Hensephorth, sitisens may—in graphy only—espress themselphs when warrant, threw yoose oph proxy letters, yet only as hear-twins.
How it happen is not easy to tell: he yoose an illegal letter in interphew aphter poleese see him ant Tom going threw wintow into yew-niphersity hall— trespassing. He yoose the letter, then when the poleese go to tie his hants to transport him to Pier 7, he ant Tom try to phlee so teportation will not happen.
The poleese shoot him. They shoot him in the het.
He is immetiately tet.
I am, again, sorry to tell yew this. I most say, tween we two, that I helt high hopes phor his sassess.
Alto I no tat Nollop isn’t trewlee going awae. Tee reason: I am not going awae. I will learn to tawg in noomerals. I will learn sign langwage—anee-ting to stae in Nollop.
[…]
Insitentallee, ewe are propaplee reating mie last letter to ewe. It is now simplee too tiring to write. To sae watt I most sae in langwage one mae onterstant.
No mo Nollop pomp!
No mo Nollop poo poo!
No mo 4 pop/1 moll Nollop looloo poop!
No no no mo plop, plop, plop, plomp!
No mo Nollop!
No, mon, no! O Noooooooo!
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
— “LMNOP”
All the Council members save Lyttle have tendered their resignations. Immediately thereafter Harton Mangrove attempted suicide with his necktie. It was a clumsy attempt and quickly foiled. Following our excursion to the vault, Lyttle, Tom and I proceeded to the cenotaph, climbed to the top, and with sledgehammers in hand, initiated, in earnest, an act of destructive revisionism.
