The Lost Word

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‘Do They Kill Children with Tiny Bullets, Mummy?’

I was looking for a word and I heard a voice.

I was in pursuit of the word. The word that I had used roughly, spent recklessly, blown into bubbles of soap and used up: that first sentence that would begin the story, carry it along and conclude it. The sentence that somehow could never be put down in words, that merged into the nebulous lightness of thought just as I thought I had got hold of it … The missing word…

I heard that voice; I forgot the word and followed the voice.

The man who plays with words, the acrobat of language, the word wizard…

Empty words of praise attached like labels to his name, laying siege to his identity. To the trite question ‘Is there anything in the pipeline, master?’ asked by his admiring, well-meaning and somewhat simple readers, the enthusiastic, ambitious art and literature correspondents and the critics, the arbiters of one’s writing and fate, the curt answer given with an icy, insincere smile, a slight twitch of a muscle: ‘There are a few things started. They are coming along. You’ll see them in the near future.’

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