When Imagination Falls Silent

A ventriloquist was hopelessly in love with his wooden dummy. His wooden dummy was in love with him. At least that’s what he told me.

“But a dummy is a dummy! It doesn’t speak! It is you that speaks!” I tried to reason with his absurdity. He looked at me with some pity, as though he couldn’t comprehend my naivete, and said, “no one in the world knows her better than me.” And to prove it, he kissed her on the whorls of her cheeks. “See how she’s blushing,” he said triumphantly.

I didn’t see her blushing.

And the dummy knew everything about the ventriloquist. At least, that’s what she
told me (it really did seem that she spoke). When I asked the ventriloquist what
inspired him, he said one word, “Sweets.”

Before I could ask him to elaborate, the dummy spoke. “He likes cheesecake. He
always has mango cheesecake. But it’s not the cake, but the tea he drinks with
the cake. He wouldn’t admit that it’s bitterness, rather than sweetness, that
inspires him.”

As I was scribbling down what she said in my notebook, the ventriloquist gave me
a knowing wink. I still don’t know what he meant by that.

A few years later, I went to see the ventriloquist again. He called in the
middle of a performance, telling me that he was in trouble.

“She stopped speaking to me!” he shook me by my shoulders when I entered his
backstage room. He had the dummy put behind a veil. He said he couldn’t bear her
indifference any longer.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Ohhh, the things I didn’t say. The things I wouldn’t say.”

“Maybe you should try speaking to her?” I suggested, feeling a bit self-conscious saying the obvious.

“No!” he glared at me, “you don’t understand. She wouldn’t speak to me! She wouldn’t speak!!” Then he broke down crying. He didn’t finish his performance that night.

The next day, he was dead, and his dummy sold at an auction.

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