IT didn’t matter at all that she had no legs. I just loved her with all my little heart. Actually, I thought that legs were irrelevant because where she lived she had no use for them.
I did not know then that she was 124 years old, but it would not have mattered one bit if I had known. She was the prettiest thing ever and I was so obsessed with her.
To be sure, there were several attractive girls in the village but none was as pretty as her. In fact, as far as I was concerned no girl was as good-looking as her.
The first time I set eyes on her was in 1961 when I was in Primary 2. It was love at first sight. Oh, how my little eight-year-old heart adored her.
She was on the cover of a book inside a little bookcase that was newly placed in our classroom. It was among several other books that our teacher hoped would encourage us to read English.
In the mid-afternoon after school was over on that fateful day, I did not rush home or played football as usual. With the classroom all to myself I took the book and gazed lovingly at the image of the lovely little being on its glossy cover.
Unfortunately, I did not know what the book was about because I was unable to read English yet. The more I flipped through the pages, forward and backwards, the more I wanted to know what the story was about. I wished I could read English well right there and then. And so, at that moment, I swore to teach myself the language.
The next day, I learned from a teacher that a Danish man, Hans Christian Andersen, wrote the book in 1837, and he named its main character ‘The Little Mermaid’.
We were not allowed to take any of the books home, so before I went home from school that day, I copied into my notebook the words ‘The Little Mermaid’ and the name Hans Christian Andersen. I also copied with great difficulty the first paragraph and part of the second paragraph as reproduced here:
‘FAR out in the ocean, where the water is as blue as the prettiest cornflower and as clear as crystal, it is very, very deep; so deep, indeed, that no cable could fathom it: many church steeples, piled one upon another, would not reach from the ground beneath to the surface of the water above. There dwell the Sea King and his subjects. We must not imagine that there is nothing at the bottom of the sea but bare yellow sand. No, indeed; the most singular flowers and plants grow there; the leaves and stems of which are so pliant, that the slightest agitation of the water causes them to stir as if they had life. Fishes, both large and small, glide between the branches, as birds fly among the trees here upon land. In the deepest spot of all, stands the castle of the Sea King. Its walls are built of coral, and the long, gothic windows are of the clearest amber. The roof is formed of shells that open and close as the water flows over them. Their appearance is very beautiful, for in each lies a glittering pearl, which would be fit for the diadem of a queen.
The Sea King had been a widower for many years, and his aged mother kept house for him. She was a very wise woman, and exceedingly proud of her high birth; on that account, she wore twelve oysters on her tail; while others, also of high rank, were only allowed to wear six. She was, however, deserving of very great praise, especially for her care of the little sea princesses, her granddaughters. They were six beautiful children; but the youngest was the prettiest of them all; her skin was as clear and delicate as a rose leaf, and her eyes as blue as the deepest sea; but, like all the others, she had no feet, and her body ended in a fish’s tail.’
Later, in the afternoon, instead of playing football or playing in the river behind our house as I tended to do most days, I began committing to memory what I had copied by re-writing them down so many times until my fingers and wrist hurt, and my eyes became watery.
The easiest to spell was the word “the” because it was among the most common. We used it every day in class. “Hans” was also not difficult since there was a boy in the village who had that same name, but without the “s”.
Despite being quite long, I found “Christian” easy. After all, ours was a Christian village and everyone knew that. ‘Andersen’ was not so easy, though. It took me five tries to get it right.
The most troublesome words were crystal, cable, fathom, dwell, pliant, agitation, glide, coral, gothic, glittering, pearl, diadem, exceedingly, account, oysters, deserving, and delicate. They were beyond me and I resolved to get help to understand them.
Keep in mind that dictionaries were among the rarest things in our school in those days. In fact, I never saw a dictionary until I started attending a boarding secondary school in 1966. Anyway, even if I had a dictionary then, I don’t think I would know what to do with it.
Be that as it may, I now know that with lots of patience, perseverance and a bit of creativity, it is not impossible to learn without a dictionary. After all, if you come across a new or strange word in a sentence, but you know the meaning of the parts of the sentence before and after the word, you can sort of guess the meaning of the unknown word. It’s mainly about context. Not very exact, I must say, but you can get by until you have a dictionary.
With great determination, some luck, and lots of guesswork, I found to my surprise that I could make some sense of many of the words in the opening paragraphs of ‘The Little Mermaid’.
For, example, I knew ‘cornflower’ because my parents planted corn and I was familiar with the flowers. I put the words ‘corn’ and ‘flower’ together and realised how two words could become one with a different meaning.
‘Church’ was, of course, familiar. We had one next to our football field. Not only that; it had a little ‘steeple’ on the roof.
‘King’ and ‘queen’ were easy because we often heard about Queen Elizabeth II whose husband was King Phillip.
The word ‘singular’ was drilled into us in class when we learned about singular and plural nouns.
The Sea King, being a ‘widower’ made no sense, so I marked it and promised to ask a teacher about it.
By the time I went to bed that night, I was able to spell many of the words mentally without resorting to pencil and paper. I didn’t tell anyone (not even my parents) about what I was doing because I did not want anyone to think that I was queer for being in love with a picture on a book cover. I felt that nobody would understand what I was going through.
And so, unbeknownst to anyone, I had the satisfaction of prevailing over a challenge that initially seemed to be insurmountable.
Also unbeknownst to others, I felt a pleasant sensation in my heart each time I managed to read an English word and learned its meaning. I didn’t know and couldn’t explain what it was, but the process was quite addictive. The more I read and learned new words or phrases, the more I wanted to go on.
Still, although ‘The Little Mermaid’ is a short story, it took me a whole month to finish reading it. Later, it was so gratifying to see the look of amazement on my little brother’s face when I shared the story with him.
I was so happy that one day after school I took a little hammer and knife, went to a tree near our house and carved on its trunk both the title and the image of ‘The Little Mermaid’.
However, the tree didn’t seem to love her as much as I did for it was only a matter of months before it healed itself by growing new bark over the cuts.
Eventually, all traces of her disappeared from the tree, but by then her memory had been permanently embedded in my heart and mind.
I shall forever be grateful to Hans Christian Andersen for having created such a wondrous creature that somehow managed to drive me to learn how to read English at quite an young age.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune.
