A Slip Of The Tongue

Joanna had no choice – she had to ask her neighbours to keep the music down for her baby’s sake . . .

JOANNA felt like screaming, too. Her three-month-old baby was emptying his lungs, his wailing mingling with the screeching of the violin next door.

Since she had moved to Singapore, noise had been a constant background. Train noise, car noise, building works noise – two gargantuan blocks of flats were growing by the day, opposite her windows – pneumatic-drill noise and tropical-rain-lashing-at-thewindows noise.

But by far the worst was from her neighbour’s violin. She had once met the likely culprit: a little Chinese girl with pigtails, six or seven years old, dainty as a doll and polite as an air hostess.

The school holidays had started and Joanna could no longer bank on violinfree mornings.

The scales, études and exercises started at eight o’clock sharp, were interrupted at lunchtime and resumed one hour later, to last – with short and unpredictable intervals – until ten p.m.

“Of all the flats in Singapore, we chose to live beside the next Vanessa Mae,” Joanna had moaned to Mark, her husband.

“All Chinese children work hard at their musical instruments. You’re just suffering from culture shock,” he had replied.

“Talk to your neighbours and see if you can agree a protected baby nap time,” her mother had suggested.

So one afternoon, she had picked up her screaming baby and walked across to the next-door flat.

She had rung the bell and an elderly lady had opened the door, looking at Joanna with frightened eyes.

“I need to ask you if you could please put off the violin practice until after four o’clock? You see, my baby and I need to sleep now,” Joanna had said.

The old lady had smiled nervously and muttered something in Chinese.

“OK, don’t worry. Thank you” Joanna had replied, before returning to her flat and mingling her tears with her baby’s.

“Our neighbours are likely to be newly arrived and don’t yet speak English. Your best bet is to use my electronic translator if you want to communicate with them,” Mark had offered.

That night the baby had been colicky and restless. Joanna, too tense and upset to sleep, had drifted in and out of nightmares until the early morning train had woken her up for good.

When the violin had sprung to life straight after lunch and the baby was wailing, exhausted and hiccupping, Joanna had torn open the box of her husband’s translator, pulled out the device and typed frantically.

Please stop this horrible noise. My baby and I need to sleep. We can’t sleep with this noise.

Then she put her screaming baby on her hip and, with the machine in one hand, she knocked on the neighbour’s door.

This time, the violin stopped and the little girl, and the old lady, appeared at the door.

They smiled at Joanna. She pressed the button and words in Mandarin poured out of the little machine.

Much to her surprise, instead of furrows on their foreheads, she saw two faces beaming at her.

“Xiè xie! Xiè xie!” they said, which Joanna knew meant thank you.

Then they smiled at the baby and scuttled back into their flat.

Joanna trudged back to her flat, puzzled. Shouldn’t they have been offended? Embarrassed, perhaps?

Two minutes later, the violin started again.

Joanna was about to break down in tears until she recognised the gentle tune of “Brahms’ Lullaby”. This time the violin’s notes were slow, clear and clean.

She was playing for the baby! They had understood!

Joanna shed a tear of exhausted happiness and fell asleep in her bed, with her arms wrapped around her slumbering baby.

Mei Ling had hoped for bigger and better things when she had graduated from drama school.

She had accepted small advertising jobs and voice recordings for books, talking toys and – just

today – for an electronic translator.

“Again, please! Keep the same intonation for all the words,” the European recording manager said.

How could she possibly use the same intonation when Chinese was a tonal language? So she ignored his request and carried on, hoping somebody else would tell him that it was impossible.

“No, no. You’re changing it again. Carry on with the same happy intonation. Like when you said má. I liked that one.”

Mei Ling looked at him. “I’m sorry, but má and

mà mean different things,” she replied.

He looked puzzled. “What I mean is that sometimes you sound gloomy. And you change pitch all the time.

“Keep it high and happy all the time and we won’t have to stay in this room until midnight.”

The man had proven himself too ignorant and arrogant for Mei Ling to think about trying to explain any further.

So she used a happy and high tone all the way. And because pronouncing “love” happily was easier than pronouncing “hate” happily, she changed not only the tone but the syllables, too.

Mark had taken his translator into the office.

He noticed the torn box and remembered that Joanna had borrowed it.

He turned on the machine, curious to find out what she had typed in. He could only see the translation in Chinese characters.

He pressed the button and the machine spoke. It was well beyond his knowledge of Chinese so he walked to one of his colleagues and played it aloud.

“James, can you tell me what this means?”

James listened with a puzzled and amused look.

“It means, ‘Please continue this marvellous music. My baby and I need to sleep. We can’t sleep without this music’.” n