One summer night, while everyone slept, the words began to escape through the window. They were tired of being used vulgarly, offensively, or wrongly — of being used to deceive, to lie, to insult. And so a few of them, the worst-treated, broke the chains that bind them to our tongue and set out on an adventure. The first to escape was “freedom,” soon followed by others always on everyone’s lips — “good,” “reason,” “money.” To make their exit they took advantage of the unconscious murmurings people let slip while dreaming, and being made of air, they let themselves be carried up into the skies on the draughts that drift through open windows.
The next day, people found themselves unable to say certain things. No one knew why, and they were a little puzzled, but since they were used to speaking carelessly, forgetting much, and knowing even less, they put it down to poor memory or stress.
In the days that followed, more words joined the first. These were rarely used words which, finding themselves so thoroughly forgotten, decided to explore other horizons. And so “oxymoron,” “dilettante,” “brigantine,” and many others flew up into the heights.
Each night, more and more words went after them. It was not only nouns that fled, but adverbs, verbs, articles, and pronouns too, so that from one day to the next people found themselves unable to say things like “again,” “that,” “we,” “still,” or “speaking.” Once enough were missing, it cost people a great effort to say anything at all, and they had to fall back on other means — pointing, or making gestures with their hands.
There were a few words, those that thought themselves the most beautiful for being the most used in poems and songs, that refused to leave. They were proud and felt themselves chosen. A moment came when the only things one could hear were words like “love,” “heart,” and “soul.” Conversation became impossible, and these proud words, seeing their sisters living so happily in the heights and finding the poems growing poorer and duller by the day, decided to leave too.
People invented new words to replace the ones that had fled. Some were even beautiful, but most were absurd and even amusing, like “tabjcatú” or “memperemempe.” They did not last long, however, and soon departed to join their companions, leaving no time for anyone to learn them. Little by little, only unpronounceable, strange-sounding words were left, like “xgrafihzuunyq” or “pwrtlokiue.” In the end, even these took their leave. High in the sky they joined the rest, and there they enjoyed a new freedom, playing at forming sentences never before spoken, most of them meaningless to us.
And so the moment came when nothing at all could be said. The heads of the great corporations met and could not make themselves understood. Television presenters appeared on screen, mute, with vacant looks on their faces. On the radio there was only instrumental music, and the newspapers and magazines carried nothing but photographs.
Everyone sweated with the effort of gesturing, drove themselves to distraction pointing at things, and scribbled incessantly on every surface — but since almost everyone drew badly, that got them no further. In the streets, in shops, in schools, in hospitals, veins bulged in necks as people strained to say something, faces flushing red with anger, but not a single word came out. The only sounds people could produce were grunts and other animal noises. Even these formed no words, because onomatopoeias such as “woof,” “moo,” and “cock-a-doodle-doo” had fled as well. And of course “onomatopoeia” itself, which was playing happily with its new friends “onomatopoiea” and “onomatapoeia.”
The situation grew so unsustainable that the assembled nations dispatched special aircraft fitted with word-traps, but they failed. Engineers invented sophisticated devices to snare them, but it is impossible to capture words against their will — they are invisible and can slip through any crack. And so neither the giant vacuum cleaners nor the plastic bags strewn across the sky were of any use.
Since nothing more could be said and all the books had gone blank, people grew more ignorant and more unhappy by the day. And many, unable to make themselves understood and seeing their businesses imperilled as a result, were ill-tempered from morning to night.
In the midst of this chaos, the only ones who could communicate were the deaf and dumb, who possessed a language of signs — but they were few, and though they tried to teach the others, most people were clumsy or unwilling to learn.
Meanwhile, the words went about their own affairs. They drifted with the currents, stretched in the air, and the wind sounded as though it were speaking — but in a manner so strange that anyone who drew near struggled to make it out. Down on the earth, people grew more mean-spirited and suspicious by the day. With no one speaking, there was nothing but quarrelling. Then a few of the words began to notice that they always did the same things, started to grow bored, and thought:
“What are we doing here? If no one speaks us, it is as though we did not exist.”
But words are in truth simple, dependent creatures, and these few barely had the strength to make themselves heard among their companions; they could not compel the others to bind themselves to them, and so they could not form a meaningful sentence. Almost all the others were absorbed in their own pursuits, joining one another for no reason other than the pleasure of flying. Most of the verbs, like children at break-time, ran from one place to another paying no attention to the rest. Adjectives and adverbs held competitions to see who could form the most pompous phrases, and all of them loved to play with the newest words — those that have no meaning for us.
The same words that were growing bored began to look downward, and saw the people caught up in their absurd quarrels, and this filled them with sadness. Alone, they were unable to come back and restore order; they needed someone to speak them, and all those on earth had become incapable, having forgotten language and surrendered to their new way of expressing themselves, full of shouts and gestures.
But there were still those who went on trying to say something. Many gathered together and wept as they prayed, beseeching whatever god they knew with gestures to give them back their words. Others, mostly poets, sat before blank sheets of paper and scribbled without ceasing, but could not write a thing. And then there were people of every kind — word-hunters, mystics, travellers, philosophers — who stood mute before the landscape, waiting for words to come to their mouths so that they could say what they felt.
Among these last there was a man who did not like to stand still, watching and waiting for things to happen of their own accord. So he decided to climb toward the place where the words were, to try to understand the reason for their flight. Many others had tried before him, but they had always gone up carrying some useless contraption for catching words, believing the words to be their property — like livestock escaped from a farm — and wishing to put them back to work. But words do not obey desire; they obey intelligence. They do not come when commanded, but when someone has understanding enough to give them voice. Then they rise up from the place where they dwell within us. By now, however, the inside of people was empty, and the chains that bind words to people lay broken.
The man in question, whose name is beside the point, felt that his own intelligence had been left an orphan, but his curiosity was still intact. So he built a modest balloon and tied it to a basket. With no one’s help, he managed to get the balloon to rise, and riding in it he climbed close to the heights where the words now lived.
He expected to see or hear something up there. He strained his ears, but the sound of the wind was unintelligible, though he sensed that in its murmurings there were sentences made of words never before spoken. Otherwise, the sky held nothing but what one would expect: scattered clouds dissolving on the horizon, flocks of birds, and a sun indifferent to all that had happened.
The man pondered what he saw. Then he turned his gaze toward the earth spread out a thousand metres beneath his feet. He saw the fields tilled with such effort, the forests, the cities, the mountains. And he was overcome with sadness at the thought that all of it had been struck dumb, and that perhaps people would bring everything to ruin now that they could no longer make themselves understood.
The man tried to say something that might express what he felt. He opened his mouth, but as always, no sound came. Though he could sense that the word was there, waiting to be spoken, his efforts met with no answer.
And yet, though he could not see them, words were passing all around him, indifferent. All but one, which felt called by this man who had climbed so far to find them, who sought them with such truth in his eyes. This word felt, more than any other, that the world without words had been left incomplete, and it longed to give voice to what was happening, as though that were its destiny. It drew close to the man, still opening and closing his mouth without success. How to rejoin what had been broken? The solitary word let itself be drawn in by his will; without any further effort, it entered his chest, and just as he was about to give up, from his throat there came a faint, trembling sound: “Silence.”
The man was dumbstruck. Suddenly his strength returned, and he repeated, louder this time: “Silence.”
He could not understand why the word had come back, just as he had not understood why it had left — but his voice grew stronger with each repetition, and he could not stop saying it: “Silence,” “Silence,” “Silence.”
The man descended to earth and made his way to the first village he came across. There, before a group of people, he said in a clear voice: “Silence.” Everyone stopped and looked at him. The man spoke again, and others, as though answering, tried as well. And so more and more people came to be able to say: “Silence.” At first their voices were faint, but with little effort they grew as steady as that of the man who had brought them “Silence.”
The word spread from mouth to mouth, and before long, the whole world over, everyone could say “Silence.” And the cries rang out on every side, and there were choirs of people singing: “SILENCE!” “SILENCE!”
And suddenly the books filled with “silence.” On television, in the cinema, on the radio, “silence” could be heard without pause. In the streets there was nothing but “silence,” and it was so insistent that there was not a single instant of silence.
So it has been ever since, all across the earth. People have grown accustomed to “silence,” and though it is little compared to what their languages once were, it serves them well enough, and most require nothing more than “silence.” The world is in silence, they tell one another — this word is enough to express it.
Yet there are many who, like the one who brought that first word, know this is not enough, and long to bring back more words. Many have tried: they have gone up in balloons and in the middle of the sky have shouted “silence.” Some believe it will take someone special to bring back new words — someone who does not think as others do, someone capable of saying something different. Until that person arrives, the world will remain in silence.
The words go on waiting, most of them indifferent — but some, a few, have already noticed that one of their companions is passing from mouth to mouth, and they envy her, and they wait for someone to come who is capable of speaking them, of returning them to the world. Who knows whether those who can speak such words do not already walk among us. Perhaps it is the reader who, one fine day, will climb to the very heights and give us back “reason,” “freedom,” “art,” or “water.”