Well before Alice learned to call him “Word-Eater,” he found her dating profile and asked, Do you know what alice means in Italian? She didn’t. So he told her: anchovy!!
Much later, Alice would also learn that the Word-Eater was hunting for brainy women who spoke languages he hadn’t yet eaten.
They met at a bar a few days later. The Word-Eater drew a little tin out of his pocket, set it on the table, and slid it toward her like a black velvet box. Alice knew what the tin contained even before she read the label and she laughed until her gut twitched in complaint.
Alice said, “Di kats hot lib fish.”
The Word-Eater waited.
Alice explained, “That’s Yiddish. ‘The cat likes the fish.’ I forget how the rest goes—something like, ‘But she doesn’t want to wet her paws.’”
“Meaning?”
Meaning: The cat wants what she can’t have? The cat is lazy and will not struggle for a meal? Who is responsible if the cat starves but the cat herself?
The Word-Eater asked her to repeat the phrase in Yiddish; he mimicked her and absorbed her syllables, made them his own.
