Norman Invasions (8 page)

Yes,
bamohee
.

That is the word,
bamohee
.

It may sound to you like a mere colligation of meaningless syllables, So, too, did it to me, once.

I first heard this word from my grandson, Thomas, who was verging on three at the time. That is, approximately, as I have later discovered, the bamohee time, that is, the time in which that unusual combination of syllables, the mighty, pregnant “bam,” the arresting, startling “oh,” hinting of awesome, infinite wonder, and the sudden, devastating “hee” of insight and revelation, in a sudden synergistic burst of cognitive fury and illumination unlock the meaning of a species, the mysteries of time and space, the secrets of the universe and the riddle of being itself, itself.

But allow me to begin at the beginning, as far as these things have a beginning.

First, as far as I know, no other animal species says
bamohee
. It seems idiosyncratic to the human species. There is no record of its utterance, at least insofar as I am aware, by any other mammal, the cat, the horse, the dog, the mongoose, and so on. It is true that it may be mindlessly repeated by certain unusual birds, most notably the gaudy, nut-savoring parrot, but, as far as we can tell, it carries no special significance for our avian friends. To them it seems a mere nonsense word, as far as we can determine. Certainly, when Polly beaks the syllables her beady eyes do not suddenly mist and glow, her claws do not clasp her perch with alarmed fervor, her feathers do not lift, ruffle, and shudder with ecstasy, no more than when she says ‘kitchen sink' or ‘vacuum cleaner', two of her favorites, though lagging far behind the communicative “I want a cracker, stupid.”

At one time, shortly before his third birthday, Thomas began to say
bamohee
frequently. It seemed to be a universal word, which might have stood for almost anything, a cookie, the neighbor's dachshund, a soiled diaper, the binomial theorem, anything. How naive we were!

Thomas would approach his parents with all the love, trust, and sincerity of a child raised as he was, raised in such a manner as to expect the best and noblest of the world into which he would soon be precipitated, a world he would soon discover, alas, as do we all, not designed expressly for his benefit. But the bamohee time of youth precedes normally the period of being pelted and punctured with “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” The lacerations and bruises of existence, at the bamohee time, lie around the corner, far from the crib and that mysterious, inexplicable artifact in the parents' bathroom, the potty chair. Thomas would approach his parents, look at them earnestly, and say, “Bamohee.”
Bamohee
, of course, is not the first word a child is likely to say. That word seems to be “No,” at least in English and Spanish, “Non” in French, “Nein” in German, “Nyet” in Russian, and so on. To be sure, “No” is often followed by another word, for example, “No, Mama,” “No, Dada,” and so on. It seemed as though Thomas, in his innocence, with his fresh view of the world, was honestly interested in communicating something, in telling his parents something, something important, that he was benevolently interested in sharing something with them, something which they might find of great significance, but they, alas, representatives of the insouciant, careless generation, so unlike that of their own parents, depression children, that splendid generation, mine, honed to nobility by sacrifice, tutored in adversity, brought to greatness by paucity, took little note of Thomas' offer. Rather they tried to distract him from
bamohee
, and lure him into the groves of ‘kitchen sink' and ‘vacuum cleaner', countries which might be trod even by ill-tempered parrots. If they had only listened. You see, the bamohee time is brief. It seems to be a tide which comes but once in a child's life. Its gift might have been immeasurable.

All human children begin by making similar noises, rather like all puppies and kittens make noises of a similar sort, appropriate to their kind. For example, the puppy or kitten in Tokyo or Moscow, or Mombassa, or Scranton, New York, makes very similar sounds. It is only later that English dogs learn to say “bow-wow,” German dogs “wow-wow,” Polish dogs “hou, hou,” and so on. Similarly, the Japanese baby, the Iroquois baby, the German baby, the Eskimo baby, the Scranton baby, and so on, make similar sounds. A bit later babies begin to babble, but now the babbles differ, as the babies begin to pick up phonemes from their environment, liberally provided by significant others, in this case, parents, nurses, guardians, etc. Now the Eskimo baby babbles in recognizable Eskimo phonemes, the German baby in good German, of one sort or another, and the Scranton baby in Scrantonese, so to speak. Later, of course, these babies learn to speak, and their troubles begin. The Eskimo baby speaks Eskimo, the Japanese baby Japanese, and so on, and soon, like an absorptive sponge, with a quickness and fluency that will impress, but dismay, generations of adults struggling to master a tongue not learned at this marvelous time, they become insolently adept native speakers. Thomas' Uncle John, for example, has no difficulty in teaching Thomas words such as “
Achtung
, baby,” “
Bon jour
,” “
Hola
,” and other useful phrases which may prove of use in nursery school, and in later life.

But
bamohee
, obviously, is Thomas' own word. Certainly it is not yet carried in the Oxford English Dictionary, in Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, or other such familiar reference works.

Thomas Wolfe, another Thomas, a remarkable writer sometimes alleged to have been in desperate need of an editor, spoke of the forgotten language, a leaf, a twig, a pebble, or some such. One might add, a shred of paper, a piece of glass, a scrap of tin, as more characteristic of the contemporary urban landscape much beloved by devotees of the outdoors. But with all due respect to Mr. Wolfe, his editor,
et al
, leaves, twigs, pebbles, and such, are not a language. They are, rather, leaves, twigs, and pebbles, and as such, vegetables, minerals, that sort of thing. This is, too, not to deny that there is much to be said for a living, enchanted world, a human-friendly habitat. When the sprites, nymphs, centaurs, and satyrs picked up stakes and moved out, the neighborhood was never again the same. It is not all that much fun living inside a big clock, an inexplicable, inscrutable, indifferent, alien, meaningless foreign country, not knowing its language, or if it has one, dodging moving parts, and such. It does not seem much of an improvement over a magic world. Of course, the trains run on time, except when they don't. The fact that the clock may not tick when expected, or might tock when not expected, is not much comfort. It is bad enough living in a clock, let alone one that can't keep time.

But this brings us back to
bamohee
.

Wordsworth seemed to believe that the infant enters the world trailing clouds of glory. One gathers from this that Wordsworth was never present at a birth, and that any midwife with normal vision would have been well ahead of him on this score. On the other hand, there is expressed a belief here that the young child, before it gets around, soon enough, to forgetting momentous truths of inordinate importance, does, for a time, have such things in mind. It comes from some place and, for a time, is in touch with that place. It lies there in its bassinet, it seems, recollecting vistas, truths, and treasures, which will soon vanish, diaper by diaper.

One of the greatest of the strange philosophers is doubtless Aristicles of Athens, descended on his mother's side from Poseidon, the god of the sea. This is the fellow we know as Plato, a nickname, which suggests width, though of what is not clear in the tradition. Perhaps there is a great contemporary philosopher who to future generations will be known as Red, Curly, Shorty, or such. In any event, Plato, like millions of others, believed in reincarnation. He also seemed to believe that knowledge was essentially recollection, and that one, under suitable conditions, remembered seeing forms in some sort of previous existence, probably while waiting between bodies for a new reincarnation. There was a form of man, and hopefully of woman, of shuttles and bridles, of beauty, of justice, and so on. Perhaps there were also forms for kitchen sink, vacuum cleaner, pocket watch, can opener, sport utility vehicle, lawnmower, and such, but, if so, they do not seem to have been recollected until later on.

I would not have thought much about
bamohee
, despite Thomas' earnestness in bringing it to our attention, in the family, had it not been for an international congress of linguists held in Belgrade, to which I had been invited to submit a paper. Late in the conference, late one evening, after we had refuted one another's papers to our mutual satisfaction, we had adjourned, as is the wont of linguists, to a local bar, and were exchanging gossip. Having recently attributed, to our satisfaction, Dr. Emily R.'s appointment to H. University's linguistics department not to her superb work on the affinities between Hebrew and Cree, but churlishly to her liaison with senior professor William B., chairman of the department, we smugly returned our attention to our beverages, nuts, and pretzels. The thought of Thomas crossed my mind, perhaps because I had not seen the little tike in several hours, something in the neighborhood, roughly, of 252 hours. You know how grandparents are. Doubtless Thomas, too, was counting the hours till we should meet again. You know how grandchildren are.

Well, thinking of Thomas, I said, absently, “bamohee.”

To my amazement, my colleagues, from diverse backgrounds, immediately looked up, startled, and evinced intense interest.

“Did you say ‘bamohee'?” asked Professor Stein, from Munich.

“He did,” confirmed Professor Nagaso, from Yokohama.

“I heard him, as well,” said Professor Red Feather, an authority on Late Middle Gothic.

A variety of races, classes, ethnic backgrounds, creeds, ideologies, sizes, shapes, tastes in automobiles, and such, were present. We were short on proclivities, as we were all grandfathers, but other than that I think it fair to say that our group was fairly diversified and representative, at least with respect to most of those groups which must needs appear in any group appropriately diversified and representative. (To achieve this diversity and representation, it had been necessary, at the last moment, to add to our group a poet and two sociologists.)

And the attention of all, inexplicably, from my point of view, seemed suddenly, bemusedly riveted on my normally, calculatedly low-profile persona.

“Where did you hear that word?” demanded Professor Ngumba.

“From my grandson, Thomas,” I admitted, hoping I had not thereby risked too much. Professional reputations are fragile, precarious. One
faux pas
in the right place can be seriously damaging. One intelligent remark in the wrong place can undo the work of a lifetime.

“Your grandson is between two and one-half and three years old,” said Professor Ngumba, regarding me intently.

“Yes,” I said.

“Yes!” said Professor Igluk, our only polar attendee, a specialist in all five inscriptions in pre-Doric Greek.

“Your experience, as well?” asked Professor Ngumba of Professor Red Feather.

“
Ja
,” said Professor Red Feather, lapsing in his consternation into Late Middle Gothic.

My colleagues regarded one another.

We soon began to compare notes, easy as we were all of a splendid generation, and grandfathers, and it turned out that
bamohee
was a word familiar to us all, though most of us had not realized it until that moment.

We soon discovered that our grandsons and granddaughters, regardless of the background languages of their area, and the cultural backgrounds of each, had, all of them, independently, inexplicably, apparently originally, come up with the mysterious utterance,
bamohee
.

“Interesting,” said Professor Stein.

At a conservative estimate there were surely more than twenty articles in this.

Naturally the first question had to do with the geographical location, so to speak, of
bamohee
on the linguistic map. As nearly as we could determine it did not occur in any natural or artificial language, past or present, known to adult man at least, nor was it a technical term in any science, discipline or
Wissenschaft
with which we were familiar, ranging from Renaissance alchemy to advanced string theory, two disciplines which have much in common. It was, of course, possible that it was in an alien language, a lingering relic of extraterrestrial visitation, perhaps dropped in conversation on the banks of the Nile, while the extraterrestrials were inexplicably tutoring natives in architectural subtleties, or on the landing fields of Nasca several hundred years ago, perhaps while the extraterrestrials were attempting to discover where they were, but this seemed unlikely, given the cross-cultural prevalence of the expression, and its odd window of usage, generally being discovered betwixt the second and third year, and then, in a few weeks, mysteriously vanishing, as though it were a light from another reality flickering briefly, and then going out.

“It is clearly a word,” said Professor Stein.

“Agreed,” said Professor Nagaso, less inscrutably than was his wont.

“But in what language?” I asked.

“That we do not know,” speculated Professor Igluk, helpfully.

“I once had a course in philosophy,” said our poet, noted for his reindeer cycle, who had been added to the group because otherwise there would have been no representative from the indigenous native peoples of northern Europe.

His remark put us all on our guard.

“It has been speculated, though most commonly by physicists and lunatics,” said the poet, “that there are other lands, other realms, other forms of existence, novel spaces, unusual times, strange dimensions, which may impinge upon ours. What if there are doors, or windows, or transoms, between these realities and ours, through which things might occasionally enter, crawl, or wriggle? What if the child, before sneaking into a fertilized ovum, thereby cleverly concealing his real point of origin, came from such a realm? Would he remember it? Or, perhaps better, perhaps the natural child, at a certain moment, or brief time in life, as his little brain develops, when he is open to so much, and so little critical, can see or touch these mysteries? Perhaps
bamohee
is a word from that world, overheard, so to speak, by a naively eavesdropping babe. Or perhaps, for a moment, the mystery, in its ironic benevolence, with jocular insouciance, offers the moppet a glimpse into the meaning of it all, the point of the pointlessness, an exquisite insight into the origin, the significance, the meaning of the meaninglessness, a chance which for us would be the chance to grasp the key to the universe, to learn the secret, the first name of being, but for the child is no more than gazing in awe at the stripe on a shirt, or smiling at a pretty bird perched on a window sill?”