In English, the silent letter “s” is rare. Island and debris are the examples most commonly given.
Tale I
The (Silent) Scream
Early 19th century illustration of Krakatoa
My recognition was immediate and satisfying. “A cartoon! She has an earache!” Mother bent down to my level and looked at the postcard in the carousel. She laughed and called over my father, my aunt, my grown cousins. They laughed. Behind the counter of the MOMA gift shop, the staff complete a cordon of laughter. Parents should teach their children to swear. Otherwise, the children risk becoming little stones that will not speak or eat until tired enough to soften and sleep. Fuck off giants.
She fears her mouth will open too wide. Her lips fluster around clinched teeth when he visits. The desire to yawn sends her into tears and agitation. For five days, an urgent and cumbersome hindrance failed to funnel out through her ears and now batters her teeth and rags her tongue. Some vile gorge might injure him even if he is elsewhere. Spewing out hot enough to scald the blue-black fjord and traveling on a bed of steam at a furious pace. Boats burst into flame. So too, the bridge.
The doctors tell him that she must release her jaw. They suspect that the pressure in her ears must be harrowingly acute.
The doctors, cognizant of Edvard’s strong sympathy for his sister Laura, tell him that his pain is an imaginary parallel suffering.
He fears her look. Even the windows of her asylum watch him as he crosses the bridge. Tall slits that once reflected cobalt and cerulean blues now glare cadmium red and orange. For five days, his head aches. Her silence quakes from one recess on the side of his head to the other.
* * *
Mahogany, brass and glass, the barographs are handsome. On August 27, 1883, these novel parlor toys record the explosion of Krakatoa, a hat-shaped spit of lava in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra. A final cataclysmic blast has 13,000 (some say 21,000) times the atomic force of Hiroshima. An atmosphere bent by gravity provides the medium for gargantuan waves of sound that circle the globe in 36 hours and 27 minutes. And circle again and again from an absent point to all points. For five days, the barometers of Christiana (now Oslo) record the shock.
The Scream, Edvard Munch 1893