The Listeners

by Jordan Tannahill

  3

  PAUL’S GOODWILL AND PATIENCE RAN OUT. AFTER THE first month, he moved me into the guest room, saying he couldn’t afford nights of insomnia either, which was fair enough, though it still felt a bit like I was being put in some kind of quarantine, or asylum. Paul called the guest room The Gym, because that’s where his exercise equipment was; whereas a more appropriate name would have been The Storage Closet, or perhaps The Room of Failed Resolution. It had bare white walls that we never bothered decorating. Needless to say, it didn’t help my sleep.

  After two months, I had to make a decision whether to return to work or go on extended disability, which would have seen a major reduction in my pay—something we really couldn’t afford. So I returned to class, no more rested than before, still hearing the noise, but much better at pretending that I didn’t.

  At lunch on Thursday of my first week back, as I was packing up papers at my desk, I looked up and noticed a student of mine, Kyle Francis, standing in the doorway. He was wearing an oversized sweatshirt, and an earbud in his left ear. His hair was so blond it seemed almost white. It had the effect of making him look at once like a baby and an old man. One had to really study his face to find his eyebrows. He had always been something of a phantom in class. He never spoke unless I called on him, though the few times I had, his insights were genuinely disarming: a specific interpretation of a Ray Bradbury short story, for instance, or a reading of a Langston Hughes poem, that I had truly never considered in all my years of teaching those texts. His mind worked differently, when it was working—he was becoming increasingly checked-out in class.

  Sorry. Do you, uh—have a second?

  Hi, Kyle. What can I do for you?

  He canted his head down. I’m not really sure how to talk about it, he said.

  Well let’s not do it across the room, I replied.

  He made to close the door, but I told him to keep it open. It was school policy; no teacher can be alone with a student behind a closed door. I proffered a chair, he crossed to me and sat down. I leaned back against the edge of my desk and crossed my arms.

  So.

  He cleared his throat and stared down at his hands. I know I’ve been uh—pretty distracted in class recently, he said.

  Yeah. You have.

  And I just wanted to let you know I’m sorry. And I want to try harder.

  Okay. I appreciate that.

  I’m not trying to disrespect you. When I was sleeping … I didn’t mean to like … He trailed off, looking pained as he glanced towards the door.

  I know, I said, pulling the chair out from behind my desk, and sitting down beside him. I’m just frustrated because I know what you’re capable of, I said, and he nodded. What’re you listening to? I asked. He apologized and pulled out his earbud.

  What was it?

  Just some old school stuff.

  Mozart?

  A smile flickered across his face. Exactly, he replied.

  Knowing you, I wouldn’t be surprised, I said.

  Kyle put on a bit of a brooding, tough guy act, but I always suspected in another life he could just as easily have been a band geek. He handed me one of his earbuds. I listened for a moment, before pulling it out with incredulity—Missy Elliott is not old school!

  Get Ur Freak On?

  It’s like—

  From 2001! That’s the year I was born, he said.

  This gave me a feeling akin to vertigo. I still hadn’t quite wrapped my head around students having no memory of the Twin Towers falling. I told him that I thought he was talking about Public Enemy.

  Miss, that’s Smithsonian, he replied.

  I handed the earbud back to him. But seriously, I said, I don’t want any Secret Service in my classroom, okay? It makes me feel like you don’t give a damn about what I’m saying, and that you don’t care. And I know that’s not the case. Or maybe it is.

  He looked slightly pained, and said no.

  And it makes it impossible for you to concentrate, and then you fall asleep.

  I know.

  So what’s going on? I still don’t have your proposal. The essay’s due Monday.

  I’m stuck, he said.

  What’s your book?

  He reached into his bag and pulled out a massive, dog-eared tome. He flipped it over to reveal the cover—The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann. I laughed.

  He shifted his body under his sweatshirt, self-conscious. I know it’s a little ambitious, he said.

  Uh … yeah. No wonder you’re tired, walking around with this brick in your bag.

  I took the book from his hands and started to leaf through it. The font was minuscule. It’s set in a hotel in the Alps or something, right?

  Hmm. So, this young engineer named Hans travels to Davos—

  Hans? I said, affecting a German accent.

  Yes, Hans, Kyle replied, smirking, with a yet-thicker accent, goes to visit his cousin in this, like, secluded sanatorium in the mountains for people with tuberculosis, but then he ends up getting this fever and becomes convinced, well the doctors convince him that it’s the early signs of tuberculosis, and what was supposed to be a short visit turns into him living there for seven years. But it’s probably all psychosomatic.

  And you’re going to write a thousand-word essay on this—I flipped to the back—seven-hundred-and-twenty-page book?

  I’m trying.

  You were assigned The Catcher in the Rye and Of Mice and Men—

  Or a book of your own choosing, he interjected.

  Right, but, lemme just—I placed The Magic Mountain down on my desk and retrieved copies of both The Catcher in the Rye and Of Mice and Men from my top drawer. I proceeded to stack them beside the Mann. Combined, they barely made up a third of the height of The Magic Mountain’s spine. I asked him whether he saw my point.

  Kyle shrugged and leaned back in his chair. Most people are illiterate, he said.

  Or you’re a bit of a show-off, I said, and he cracked a half smile. But really, I think you’ve bitten off way more than you can chew here. What’s your thesis?

  He pinch-wiped his mouth with his thumb and index finger. I wanna write about the dualism in the book between, like, a skepticism towards both belief and disbelief, he said.

  Okay.

  I could tell he was trying to impress me, and I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of showing him that I was. Do you have that written down somewhere on paper? I asked.

  Not yet.

  Do you have anything written down yet?

  He shook his head. I was irritated, but I also couldn’t help feeling a bit charmed. He knew he was bright, and he knew that I knew he was bright. Perhaps he had psyched himself out about actually following through and delivering on that promise, lest it turned out not to be quite so impressive as we had imagined his squandered genius to be.

  Okay, I replied. Remember, I’m not looking for a PhD here. One thousand words. It’s really not that much.

  He looked back down into his hands and nodded. I told him that I wanted him to show me what he had by next Monday and handed him back his book. And no more Rip Van Winkle in class, okay?

  I know, I’m sorry.

  As he packed away his book, I noted the dark circles under his eyes. You really do look tired, Kyle. He ignored this comment for a few seconds as he zipped up his bag, then looked up at me.

  I’m not sleeping, he said. He was about to say something else but stopped himself.

  Why’s that? I asked. He shrugged. I asked him if he was having problems with friends, and he said no.

  Luke and Mohammed?

  No, those guys are cool.

  You sure?

  It’s not that.

  He was bouncing his leg nervously. He saw me notice and stopped.

  Because you could tell me if it was, I said. I’m always here. But you gotta give me a chance. I pointed to the earbuds sticking out of his sweatshirt pocket. None of this, okay?

  It’s just sometimes I feel like I need it to b
lock out the noise.

  Oh thanks.

  I don’t mean you.

  Seems a bit of a contradiction, no? Needing music to block out the noise.

  He wiped his hand across his face. I know, I’m messed up, he said.

  I didn’t say that.

  I can’t sleep because of it. The noise keeps me up.

  He gave me a pointed look, and my heart started to beat a little faster. What was he saying, exactly? Does your family stay up late? I asked.

  No.

  Your neighbours?

  I’m saying the noise is all the time. Everywhere. It’s like—He twirled his finger above his head. We stared at one another, not breathing. At least I wasn’t breathing. I didn’t realize you could forget how. He then said that, ever since I had asked about the sound in class a couple of months back, he realized that he could hear it too. His eyes darted about my face, searching for some reaction. Do you still hear it? he asked.

  I swallowed and nodded. All the time, I replied.

  Almost like … a kind of rumble.

  Yes.

  Almost like—

  He tried to imitate the sound in his throat. Like a man groaning, after being stabbed. There was no human voice low enough to mimic the hum. It was an impossible sound. But I was strangely moved by his desire to try. I recognized the desire, viscerally. To give voice to the noise no one else heard. And yet someone finally did. Someone sitting a few feet away from me. It was hard to put into words what it felt like; to resign oneself to living invisibly, and then to realize you actually could be seen, by one person alone in the world. The intimacy of that. The relief. And for this person to be a seventeen-year-old boy, a student, and not just any student but Kyle Francis of all people, with his sullen precociousness. And though Kyle fell far short of imitating the hum, he somehow captured the feeling of being haunted by it. I could tell his sound was mine. I recognized it immediately. It made every hair on my body stand on end. He fell quiet, and then asked me what it was. I shook my head and told him that I wished I knew.

  At first I thought it was a concussion, he said. I was playing ball and this guy hit me in the head with his elbow and I started hearing it. And it just never went away. But I went to the doctors and like—no concussion or anything.

  He glanced towards the door of the classroom again, and then back down at his hands. You’re the first person I’ve told, he said.

  Nobody else can hear it, I said. My family, my neighbours, they have no idea what I’m talking about. None of the teachers here.

  Yeah, all my teachers are like hello wake up, he said, snapping his fingers. My friends think I’m high. I can’t concentrate. I’m getting in trouble.

  I felt my face flush. I reached out and squeezed his shoulder, which I hoped he read as some kind of apology.

  At night it’s worse, he added.

  Oh my god.

  Right?

  So much worse.

  Between, like, midnight and six in the morning, he said, rubbing his eyes, leaving them red. He was tearing up. I became aware that I was wiping mine with the back of my hand. When it’s quiet, he continued. No traffic or planes passing over. If it wakes me up that’s it, I can’t get back to sleep. I’ve tried earplugs.

  Sure.

  They help a bit.

  Not me.

  No. Because you can still feel it.

  Exactly.

  He glanced over to the steady flow of students passing in the hallway outside the classroom and asked if he could close the door. I pursed my lips, but didn’t say no, so he stood up, crossed the room, and shut it. When he sat back down we started talking about the migraines. The brain fog. I mentioned the nosebleeds. I conceded that it was hard to imagine a sound causing nosebleeds, but he said he didn’t think it was at all.

  Sounds can cause damage, he said. Those sound cannons they use in protests? And there was that stuff at the American embassy in Cuba, did you read about that?

  I shook my head. I was stirred to see this side of Kyle; passionate and invested.

  There were these sonic attacks against the embassy workers, he continued. They started hearing these strange, high-pitched sounds at night and started having all these symptoms and eventually had to be sent home. Some of them had permanent brain damage.

  God.

  It can mess you up.

  Maybe we’re being attacked by the government, I said, sitting back, eyebrow arched.

  Right, he deadpanned. The Cubans are after us.

  I chuckled, though I was still tearing up. I exhaled slowly, trying to gather myself. And then I just began to tell Kyle things. I confided in him about my struggles with Paul and Ashley. My confusion and isolation. I don’t know why I felt I could be so open with him. It wasn’t appropriate, and yet, it felt profoundly comforting.

  Paul’s your husband?

  Yeah.

  What’s he like?

  Like?

  What’s he look like? I laughed, caught off guard. Never mind, don’t answer that, he said. Was just trying to make a mental picture. I told him that Paul was a good man, though thought I was probably crazy.

  Kyle looked at me with intent—And are you?

  Sometimes I think I am, I said.

  He nodded and leaned forward—Well I don’t think you’re crazy.

  And for the first time in weeks, I didn’t feel like I was. And it didn’t feel crazy for me to lean in and hug him. In fact, in that moment, it felt like the only reasonable thing left to do. I felt his body release ever so slightly into mine. And something passed between us. A secret. A synchronicity. A silence, which communicated everything that we could not yet know or say.

  Just then there was a knock on the door, and Cass walked into the room holding two boxed salads, in the midst of saying something about her cat Ricardo, but stopped short as she saw Kyle and me pull away from one another. I left a hand on Kyle’s shoulder to indicate to everyone that I was comfortable with what just happened, but he was flustered, and stood up, out of my touch.

  Sorry, I said, to Cass. We were just having a difficult conversation.

  Of course, sorry, I didn’t mean to barge in.

  We—

  Rain check on lunch?

  No, no, we’re finished here.

  Okay. I can—why don’t I just wait for you in the hall. Cass smiled, and walked back out of the room, keeping the door open.

  Kyle was looking down at the floor. He seemed angry, or perhaps embarrassed; it was difficult to read his face. I expected him to walk out, but he lingered.

  Maybe we can talk about it some more sometime, he said.

  Of course. Yes.

  When?

  I’ll be staying after school to mark some papers.

  Here?

  Yes.

  He looked up at me and nodded. He then slung his backpack over his shoulder and made to leave.

  Kyle, I said, and he turned back around. His jaw was set; his face neutral. He was already returning to a world beyond my reach. A world far from unguarded vulnerability.

  I want to see something for next Monday, okay?

  4

  YOU MIGHT NOT BE AWARE OF THIS, BUT THE WORLD IS full of untraceable hums and drones afflicting thousands every day, driving people to madness and despair. I wasn’t. I had no idea. Not before I became one of the legions affected, and found the chat rooms and message boards filled with people pouring out their plight, long having lost hope in doctors or science or the media to help make sense of their suffering. Hundreds of neighbourhoods around the world seem to suffer from various local sources of noise pollution. Irresponsible industry, lack of government oversight, sloppy urban planning. Except, as much as I searched, I never found anyone living in my area who described my sound. I was sure a few sensitive souls in Auckland or Bristol weren’t being kept awake by the same hum that I was, and yet, I still found solace in reading their posts. Yes, I began to take comfort in the company of anonymous lunatics. But then why else was the Internet invented? Ca
t videos, and the comfort of anonymous lunatics. I found myself spending hours getting lost in different theories of possible sources. The electric grid, wind turbines, submarines, insect noise, meteors, wind passing through underground caverns, the vibrations of waves slamming into the continental shelf, the mating calls of midshipman fish, government mind-control technology, alien transmissions, distant volcanic eruptions—the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 left the Earth vibrating for days on end. The US military, of course, was a favourite culprit, and many posts talked at length about the very low frequency radio signals used to track vessels deep under the ocean; sonar from which nothing could hide, which turned the ocean inside out like a pocket. And of course there were those who bypassed geology and meteorology altogether and headed straight to God. In the end times the stars will sing, and the great horns of heaven will sound! We were the harbingers of revelation.

  Before this, I had never considered all of the unknowable sounds in the world. Sounds we could only see graphed or measured. The deep sounds of the Earth that no one hears. The eruption of volcanic vents thousands of metres below the water. The scraping of icebergs along the ocean floor. The mysterious bursts and burbles of the Earth that even science couldn’t fully explain. The skyquakes that boom like cannons on calm summer days over the Bay of Fundy, or cause kitchen plates to rattle on Lough Neagh in Ireland. Or the gas escaping from vents, from vegetation rotting at the bottom of lakes or released from limestone decaying in underwater caves; the explosive and volatile digestive system of the Earth, bubbling, burping, expelling. The concussing of continental shelf fragments calving off into the Atlantic abyss. The roars from solar winds. From magnetic activity. From avalanches. From distant thunder that, through some anomaly in the upper atmosphere, managed to throw its voice across valleys, across mountain ranges to different cities and different states.

  Before this, sound was something I took for granted. It was always there, providing pleasant texture and useful information to my day-to-day life. I liked music, but I have never been an aficionado like Paul. I could never tell the difference between the sound quality of a CD and a record. But once this all began, all I could think about was sound. And not just my sound—for I came to think of it as ‘my sound,’ as if I owned it, or it owned me—but the mysterious dimensions of sound more generally.