Flora:
Ada:
The voice you hear is not my speaking voice---but my mind's voice. I have
not spoken since I was six years old. No one knows why---not even me. My
father says it is a dark talent, and the day I take it into my head to stop
breathing will be my last. Today he married me to a man I have not yet met.
Soon my daughter and I shall join him in his own country. My husband writes
that my muteness does not bother him--and hark this! He says, "God
loves dumb creatures, so why not I?" 'Twere good he had God's patience,
for silence affects us all in the end. The strange thing is, I don't think
myself silent. That is because of my piano. I shall miss it on the journey. ADA
(VOICE OVER) THERE
IS A SILENCE WHERE HATH BEEN NO SOUND (Thomas
Hood)
One
day when my mother and father were singing together in the forest, a great
storm blew up out of nowhere. But so passionate was their singing that they
did not notice, nor did they stop as the rain began to fall, and when their
voices rose for the final bars of the duet a great bolt of lighting came out
of the sky and struck my father so that he lit up like a torch. And at the
same moment my father was struck dead my mother was struck
dumb! She never spoke another word.
What a death!
What a chance!
What a surprise!
My will has chosen life!?
Still it has had me spooked and
many others besides!
At night! I think of my piano
in its ocean grave, and
sometimes of myself floating
above it. Down there everything
is so still and silent that it
lulls me to sleep. It is a
weird lullaby and so it is; it
is mine.
THERE IS A SILENCE WHERE NO SOUND MAY BE
IN THE COLD GRAVE, UNDER THE DEEP DEEP SEA.