|
|
2002-05-03 - 8:02 p.m. Once upon a time, there was a woman who lived in Kampung Glam. She had the most beautiful voice anyone had ever heard. But that voice wasn't just good for singing. It was a very special voice. Because this woman had the ability to copy anyone's voice. Even if she had never heard it before. Very soon people discovered her talent. They realised that if they went to her they could ask her to speak like anyone they wished. A couple came to her and brought along a photo of their daughter who had drowned in a swimming pool accident. She took one look at the girl and asked the couple to close their eyes. Then she spoke, and her voice was that of a little girl's. The couple started crying, and started talking to her as if she was their daughter. She spoke very gently to them, and as the little girl she told them that she was happy, that there were people who were taking care of her, that where she was she was a champion diver who could hold her breath for five hours each time. She could even play slow-motion hopscotch at the bottom of the pool with her friends. Sometimes people didn't even need to bring a photograph. A man told her of a woman called Rosemary, who had broken his heart. In the next moment with his eyes shut tight he heard Rosemary talking into his ear, telling him that she had never meant to hurt him. Later, when he opened his eyes the woman showed the man the expression Rosemary wore when she walked away from him at the train station, not a mask of cruelty and haughtiness, but one which was shattered with regret. Sometimes they just had to tell her one thing about this person who they wanted her to be, that the person liked the smell of jasmine, or kept six canaries, or had a mole under her fingernail, and the woman understood immediately what her voice was like. Within a month the woman had become a mother comforting her orphan son, a wife who had gone missing on a backpacking trip in Burma, and even a woman, now deceased, whose rich, stern voice was the only thing that could cure a puppy of its habit of peeing in its sleep.
|