The Babbler

There once was a man who was losing his voice. No one could realize this, except one very wise woman. The way she knew was because suddenly he had started talking a lot – to almost anyone who would listen to him. Formerly he had been quite quiet, shy really, and kept to himself primarily.

It turns out there is a strange disease that can strike such a man that will steal his voice away in stages, leaving ultimately only senseless babbling in its place. In the first stage, before he is even aware that this is happening to him, his silence is transformed into radical talkativeness.

He seeks friends out for long conversations, after which they sometimes feel exhausted, but he has only really just gotten started. He may wander to his house, where he begins continuing the conversation, only with himself now.

The wise woman observed that this man’s brain was growing so restless he literally could not shut up. She hovered outside his door one night and she could hear the sounds of him talking energetically. At first she thought he might be on the phone, or Skype, or something like that; but no, through a part in his curtains she could peek and see he was totally alone, in his boxer shorts only, walking around, gesturing forcefully exploring the same ideas that hours earlier he had been sharing with a friend across a table in the coffee house nearby.

***

The woman moved in with this man to take care of him, and this made him so happy. Finally, he had a companion who would let him talk to her all day and all night long, spilling every story his brain could locate and release. She knew instinctively he was vacating.

She mastered the art of napping while sitting up, so she appeared to be attentive as he rambled on. After several weeks of this, he started calming down, reassured there was still enough time. They began to lie in bed together in the night, and she relaxed as he slowly moved his hands over her body, every inch of her. He lingered in strange places, for a man, at her left elbow and her right ankle. He traced the line from the middle of the part in her long, dark hair down over her forehead, and then, ever so gently, down between her eyes along her nose, and over that onto her lips.

His hand softly caressed her long arms from shoulder to the last little tip of each finger. He followed her spine up and down her back, and he stroked her long, smooth legs much as he addressed her arms. He liked her limbs. This was their time of greatest calm.

***

One morning, she woke up at the usual time, around dawn. Since autumn was coming, it was a little later every day now, but only by a few minutes – a gradual loss of sunlight, barely perceptible, but perceptible nonetheless. The man did not wake up that morning at all, and at first she thought nothing of it.

When he finally awoke, around noon, he was very groggy, so his speech was slurred and difficult to discern his meaning. It wasn’t until that evening that she began to see that his deterioration had certainly begun. He didn’t seem to notice it yet, which was a blessing, but he had passed over the hill where he could verbalize his thoughts – often brilliantly – to a place where all he had to offer now was an indistinct mumble.

As his speech evaporated completely over the coming months, a strange thing happened. His caresses of the woman’s body became more and more sensuous, extended and pleasureful. She found herself anticipating the arrival of night, less that his incoherent babbling would cease than his evermore delicate and expert touch would begin.

One day he did not get out of bed at all. She did get up and went about their daily chores, but when she saw he would not be rising at all, she crawled back into bed next to him early that afternoon, and she did not rise again until the following morning.

They didn’t eat much food anymore. Over time, his babbling ceased entirely; now you could say he had truly lost his voice. Once that had happened, he closed his eyes and rarely opened them again. He never got out of their bed again. She stayed with him night and day, until, inevitably, he shuddered and released one last, painful breath and fell to his permanent sleep.

Up until the last night, he patted and stroked her for hours at a time, night after night, and day after day. He touched every part of her, slowly and softly. She had never felt so loved and cared-for. His last night of life, he awoke and regained his voice. He told her of a vision: That an angel would arrive shortly, and wrap her in a dress made of the softest material imaginable. When this happened, she was to arise and leave this place, because her work here was done. He spoke in the same, clear articulate voice she remembered from before he got this condition, this losing of voice.

It seemed like a miracle.

In the night, he shut up about his vision finally, fell silent for the last time and began his touching. This night, the final time, it was different. His arms kept circling her body, enveloping her in like a wrapping. By the middle of the night his work was finished, and she felt herself dressed in the softest of all materials.

He was in a coma. She arose and prepared to leave. Once he was dead, she closed his door behind her, and emerged out in the world; naked as the day she was born.