LITMIR.BIZ

       April 5, 1938

       Behalla

      Dear Dr. Benedict,

      I should be composing my notes, but I cannot resist this chance to write to you from the site of my first solo field trip. I arrived yesterday afternoon and shall be here four days—a duration that my husband and I had to negotiate, since he’s in charge of our little Ty while I’m gone. My hope is to build toward longer visits in future, but for now being here at all seems a kind of miracle.

      It’s just after sunrise, and everyone around me is moving sluggishly. The heat and mosquitoes this deep in the forest make sleep a dubious enterprise, in any event, so mornings always get off to a slow start, but last night there was much dancing, and the Biya chief Kuli hasn’t even emerged yet.

      Kuli has a solemn, somewhat sad demeanor despite the rakish way he wears his red headband and shells strung from his belt, but he’s a generous teacher. With his help I’m trying to work up an alphabet that at least suggests the core elements of the old Biya language.

      The rest of the time, while my guide Leyo and his friend Sempe are out gathering orchid specimens for my husband’s botanical research, I try to fold myself into the women’s lives. Sempe’s young wife Imulu and the elder widow Mam Golat let me come along when they dig for roots, and they’ve taught me how to roast grubs! I actually managed to swallow one. It tasted like charred fingernail.

       I’ve also been trying to create a field code for the tribe’s signs and gestures. So little is spoken, but much is communicated. We’ll be sitting around the fire and spontaneously—or so it seems to me—everyone will erupt into laughter as if a joke has been told. Or they’ll all get up as if a bell has rung. Leyo tells me the light and the wind tell them when it is time to start a new task, to leave or return, but I suspect a great deal more is communicated through the mischievous looks they exchange—especially at my expense!

      Sadly, Jodo, the club-footed child we met on our first visit, was killed by a wild pig three weeks ago. From where I sit I can see the small dark hut where his mother grieves, and I can’t help but think that if my pregnancy hadn’t cut short our first visit last year, we might have persuaded her to let Shep take Jodo and operate on his foot, and he’d be alive today. I fear that his mother knows this, for she will have nothing to do with me.

      But it’s the youngest member of the tribe, Imulu’s little girl Artam, who is my greatest interest. A toddler now, she eyed me with suspicion when I first arrived, but the others just laughed and patted her leg, tickled the reddish pads of her toes until she forgot all about me. She rarely cries. When hungry, she still rides in the birch sling so she can suckle while her mother goes about her business.

      Imulu tolerates my presence. She can be sweet and gentle with her husband and Artam, but otherwise she has a gruff demeanor, and I think she finds me ridiculous with all my nosey questions. Still, she answers as best she can and lets me play with Artam, as she lets everyone. And although the little girl seems to trust and respond to us all with amusement, it’s clear that her mother is her base in the world. I so envy their ease with each other.

      Artam calls her mother Amimi and her father Amae. I’m still not sure how she (or I) will learn the Biya’s “spirit language.” So far she seems to be learning to speak as most children do, babbling and imitating.

      It’s my own son, ironically, who remains speechless. He’s ten months old now and has yet to say even ma or pa. Though his tantrums prove that there’s nothing mechanically wrong with his voice, he’s otherwise almost completely silent. I confess that this perturbs me in a way it doesn’t his father. Shep assures me that Ty will speak when he’s good and ready, and I can see for myself that the baby’s otherwise as healthy as he is temperamental. Indeed, as I watch Ty play with the servants’ daughter, a girl of just eight who seems instinctively to understand his every whim, I wonder if the failure might not lie with me.

       Professor Ruth Benedict

       Columbia University

       Department of Anthropology

       New York City, New York

       July 20, 1938

      My Dear Claire,

      When I received your last letter, I had to smile. Did you know that Margaret Mead addressed your concerns in her New Guinea papers? Despite parental encouragement of speech in Pere, she found many untalkative children, but the Manus people attributed this to temperament rather than intelligence. Margaret noted that when the quiet children did finally begin to talk, they displayed as rich a vocabulary as the garrulous infants, and often showed even greater comprehension, not only of the words but also of their environment.

      Margaret and I have often surmised—based on observations in our own culture!—that there may in fact be an inverse relationship between intelligence and the compulsive need to narrate aloud one’s every thought or impulse. I suggest you concentrate on your work—which sounds like it’s proceeding brilliantly—and your most intelligent son will doubtless learn to talk at his own pace and in his own unique way, through no fault of yours.

      

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