It's Still Life

THE OLD WOMAN AND A MOUSE NAMED MARCEL

The Forbidden Word

The Old Woman sits at the kitchen table, looking distinctly cross. Marcel is extracting a raisin from a slice of fruit loaf.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“Someone wants my poem deleted,” she says.
“Was it very bad?”
“No.”
“Did it rhyme?”

“That’s beside the point, Shoelace.”

“Then what have you done?”
“I referred to Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece in my poem.”
Marcel stopped pulling at the raisin.

“Shakespeare?”
“Yes.”
“The dead guy?”
“Yes.”

“And Shakespeare complained about your poem?”

“No, Marcel. A reader has complained that the word rape should be on the banned list for the competition.”

“Ah. Is the poem about rape?”

“Shakespeare’s poem is about violation, the struggle between lust and conscience, moral duty, control, and the consequences of violence.”

“That sounds serious.”
“It is. It’s an old tale that’s still relevant today. “
“And the reader objects to the violence?”
“She hasn’t read it.”

Marcel blinked, “She hasn’t read Shakespeare?”

“No, Shakespeare’s poem, and says she has no intention of reading smut.”

Marcel pauses, “So she’s decided that a poem about the consequences of a violent act is smut because the terrible act is named in the title?”

The old woman nods.

“And she wants your poem deleted because you mentioned a poem she hasn’t read?”

“Yep.”

Marcel returns to his raisin, “Tell me something. If you remove the word murder from a history book, does anyone come back to life?”

“No.”

“Perhaps the reader believes that if nobody names a terrible thing, nobody will have to think about it.” Marcel pulls the raisin free.

“Perhaps.”
“Does that work?”
“Not in my experience.”

“Nor mine. I once refused to acknowledge the cat for an entire afternoon. It remained a cat. And there’s something else.”

“Of course there is.”

“If a word is forbidden, what happens to its book?”
“It’s still a book.”
“Then how are people supposed to know what’s in them?”

“They could read them.”

“But this woman refuses,” Marcel stares, “so she won’t read the book because she knows what’s in it, and she knows what’s in it without reading the book?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“I should like to know if she forbids the word or the act it describes, because one is vocabulary, and the other is a matter of conscience. I’d hate to think humans have confused the two.”

The Old Woman smiles, “Maybe she’ll start with the dictionary. It’s absolutely FULL of objectionable things.”