"He that has eyes to see and ears to
hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are
silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every
pore."
Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (1905) Ch. 2 : The
First Dream by Sigmund Freud.
"At these words a false
truth dawned upon Oswin Bretwit ...The fingers of his left hand involuntarily
started to twitch as if he were pulling a kikapoo puppet over it, while his eyes
followed intently his interlocutor’s low-class gesture of satisfaction. A
Karlist agent, revealing himself to a superior, was expected to make a sign
corresponding to the X (for Xavier) in the one-hand alphabet of deaf
mutes...'Give me the sign,' he avidly said....Gradus, deciding to risk it,
glanced at the hand in Bretwit’s lap: unperceived by its owner, it seemed to
be prompting Gradus in a manual whisper. He tried to copy what it was doing
its best to convey ...Gradus tried again — but, like an expelled puppet, the
wild little prompter had disappeared. Sheepishly contemplating his five stubby
strangers, Gradus went through the motions of an incompetent and half-paralyzed
shadowgrapher and finally made an uncertain V-for-Victory sign. Bretwit’s smile
began to fade..."I know who you are," cried Bretwit pointing. "You’re a
reporter!"
Pale Fire, V. Nabokov.