what they were talking about, that there had been an abrupt, immense discontinuity in comprehension. At first I blamed it on my poor grasp of the language, but it was more than that. There were gaps. Suddenly the Hennebet were on the other side of the gap, totally out of reach. This happened particularly often when I talked with my fellow boarder, old Mrs. Tattava. We'd start out fine, chatting about the weather or the news or her embroidery stitches, and then all at once the discontinuity would occur right in the midst of a sentence. "I find leafstitch nice for filling odd-shaped areas, but it was such a job painting the whole building with little leaves, I thought we'd never finish it!"
"What building was that?" I said.
"Hali tutuve," she said, placidly threading her needle.
I had not heard the word tutuve before. My translatomat gave it as shrine, sacred enclosure, but had nothing for hali. I went to the library and looked it up in the
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment