by Roald Dahl
It came at the exact moment when the rose stem was cut.
At this point, the woman straightened up, put the scissors in the basket with the roses, and turned to walk away.
‘Mrs Saunders!’ Klausner shouted, his voice shrill with excitement. ‘Oh, Mrs Saunders!’
And looking round, the woman saw her neighbour standing on his lawn – a fantastic, arm-waving little person with a pair of earphones on his head – calling to her in a voice so high and loud that she became alarmed.
‘Cut another one! Please cut another one quickly!’
She stood still, staring at him. ‘Why, Mr Klausner,’ she said. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Please do as I ask,’ he said. ‘Cut just one more rose!’
Mrs Saunders had always believed her neighbour to be a rather peculiar person; now it seemed that he had gone completely crazy. She wondered whether she should run into the house and fetch her husband. No, she thought. No, he’s harmless. I’ll just humour him. ‘Certainly, Mr Klausner, if you like,’ she said. She took her scissors from the basket, bent down, and snipped another rose.
Again Klausner heard that frightful, throatless shriek in the earphones; again it came at the exact moment the rose stem was cut. He took off the earphones and ran to the fence that separated the two gardens. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘That’s enough. No more. Please, no more.’
The woman stood there, a yellow rose in one hand, clippers in the other, looking at him.
‘I’m going to tell you something, Mrs Saunders,’ he said, ‘something that you won’t believe.’ He put his hands on top of the fence and peered at her intently through his thick spectacles. ‘You have, this evening, cut a basketful of roses. You have with a sharp pair of scissors cut through the stems of living things, and each rose that you cut screamed in the most terrible way. Did you know that, Mrs Saunders?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I certainly didn’t know that.’
‘It happens to be true,’ he said. He was breathing rather rapidly, but he was trying to control his excitement. ‘I heard them shrieking. Each time you cut one, I heard the cry of pain. A very high-pitched sound, approximately one hundred and thirty-two thousand vibrations a second. You couldn’t possibly have heard it yourself. But I heard it.’
‘Did you really, Mr Klausner?’ She decided she would make a dash for the house in about five seconds.
‘You might say,’ he went on, ‘that a rose bush has no nervous system to feel with, no throat to cry with. You’d be right. It hasn’t. Not like ours, anyway. But how do you know, Mrs Saunders’ – and little person a quality of distance, of immense immeasurable distance, as though the mind were far away from where the body was.
The Doctor waited for him to go on. Klausner sighed and clasped his hands tightly together. ‘I believe,’ he said, speaking more slowly now, ‘that there is a whole world of sound about us all the time that we cannot hear. It is possible that up there in those high-pitched inaudible regions there is a new exciting music being made, with subtle harmonies and fierce grinding discords, a music so powerful that it would drive us mad if only our ears were tuned to hear the sound of it. There may be anything… for all we know there may–’
‘Yes,’ the Doctor said. ‘But it’s not very probable.’
‘Why not? Why not?’ Klausner pointed to a fly sitting on a small roll of copper wire on the workbench. ‘You see that fly? What sort of a noise is that fly making now? None – that one can hear. But for all we know the creature may be whistling like mad on a very high note, or barking or croaking or singing a song. It’s got a mouth, hasn’t it? It’s got a throat!’
The Doctor looked up at the fly and he smiled. He was still standing by the door with his hands on the doorknob. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘So you’re going to check up on that?’
‘Some time ago,’ Klausner said, ‘I made a simple instrument that proved to me the existence of many odd inaudible sounds. Often I have sat and watched the needle of my instrument recording the presence of sound vibrations in the air when I myself could hear nothing. And those are the sounds I want to listen to. I want to know where they come from and who or what is making them.’
‘And that machine on the table there,’ the Doctor said, ‘is that going to allow you to hear these noises?’
‘It may. Who knows? So far, I’ve had no luck. But I’ve made some changes in it and tonight I’m ready for another trial. This machine,’ he said, touching it with his hands, ‘is designed to pick up sound vibrations that are too high-pitched for reception by the human ear, and to convert them to a scale of audible tones. I tune it in, almost like a radio.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘It isn’t complicated. Say I wish to listen to the squeak of a bat. That’s a fairly high-pitched sound – about thirty thousand vibrations a second. The average human ear can’t quite hear it. Now, if there were a bat flying around this room and I tuned in to thirty thousand on my machine, I would hear the squeaking of that bat very clear. I would even hear the correct note – F sharp, or B flat, or whatever it might be – but merely at a much lower pitch. Don’t you understand?’
The Doctor looked at the long, black coffin-box. ‘And you’re going to try it tonight?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I wish you luck.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘My goodness!’ he said. ‘I must fly. Good-bye, and thank you for telling me. I must call again some time and find out what happened.’ The Doctor went out and closed the door behind him.
For a while longer, Klausner fussed about with the wires in the black box; then he straightened up and in a soft excited whisper said, ‘Now we’ll try again… We’ll take it out into the garden this time… and then perhaps… perhaps… the reception will be better. Lift it up now… carefully… Oh, my God, it’s heavy!’ He carried the box to the door, found that he couldn’t open the door without putting it down, carried it back, put it on the bench, opened the door, and then carried it with some difficulty into the garden. He placed the box carefully on a small wooden table that stood on the lawn. He returned to the shed and fetched a pair of earphones. He plugged the wire connections from the earphones into the machine and put the earphones over his ears. The movements of his hands were quick and precise. He was excited, and breathed loudly and quickly through his mouth. He kept on talking to himself with little words of comfort and encouragement, as though he were afraid –afraid that the machine might not work and afraid also of what might happen if it did.
He stood there in the garden beside the wooden table, so pale, small, and thin that he looked like an ancient, consumptive, bespectacled child. The sun had gone down. There was no wind, no sound at all. From where he stood, he could see over a low fence into the next garden, and there was a woman walking down the garden with a flower-basket on her arm. He watched her for a while without thinking about her at all. Then he turned to the box on the table and pressed a switch on its front. He put his left hand on the volume here he leaned far over the fence and spoke in a fierce whisper –‘how do you know that a rose bush doesn’t feel as much pain when someone cuts its stem in two as you would feel if someone cut your wrist off with a garden shears? How do you know that? It’s alive, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, Mr Klausner. Oh, yes – and good night.’ Quickly she turned and ran up the garden to her house. Klausner went back to the table. He put on the earphones and stood for a while listening. He could still hear the faint crackling sound and the humming noise of the machine, but nothing more. He bent down and took hold of a small white daisy growing on the lawn. He took it between thumb and forefinger and slowly pulled it upward and sideways until the stem broke.
From the moment that he started pulling to the moment when the stem broke, he heard – he distinctly heard in the earphones – a faint high-pitched cry, curiously inanimate. He took another daisy and did it again. Once more he heard the cry, but he wasn’t so sure now that it expressed pain. No, it wasn’t pain; it was surprise. Or was it? It didn’t re
ally express any of the feelings or emotions known to a human being. It was just a cry, a neutral, stony cry – a single emotionless note, expressing nothing. It had been the same with the roses. He had been wrong in calling it a cry of pain. A flower probably didn’t feel pain. It felt something else which we didn’t know about – something called toin or spurl or plinuckment, or anything you like.
He stood up and removed the earphones. It was getting dark and he could see pricks of light shining in the windows of the houses all around him. Carefully he picked up the black box from the table, carried it into the shed and put it on the work-bench. Then he went out, locked the door behind him, and walked up to the house.
The next morning Klausner was up as soon as it was light. He dressed and went straight to the shed. He picked up the machine and carried it outside, clasping it to his chest with both hands, walking unsteadily under its weight. He went past the house, out through the front gate, and across the road to the park. There he paused and looked around him; then he went on until he came to a large tree, a beech tree, and he placed the machine on the ground close to the trunk of the tree. Quickly he went back to the house and got an axe from the coal cellar and carried it across the road into the park. He put the axe on the ground beside the tree.
Then he looked around him again, peering nervously through his thick glasses in every direction. There was no one about. It was six in the morning.
He put the earphones on his head and switched on the machine. He listened for a moment to the faint familiar humming sound; then he picked up the axe, took a stance with his legs wide apart, and swung the axe as hard as he could at the base of the tree trunk. The blade cut deep into the wood and stuck there, and at the instant of impact he heard a most extraordinary noise in the earphones. It was a new noise, unlike any he had heard before – a harsh, noteless, enormous noise, a growling, low-pitched, screaming sound, not quick and short like the noise of the roses, but drawn out like a sob lasting for fully a minute, loudest at the moment when the axe struck, fading gradually fainter and fainter until it was gone.
Klausner stared in horror at the place where the blade of the axe had sunk into the woodflesh of the tree; then gently he took the axe handle, worked the blade loose and threw the thing to the ground. With his fingers he touched the gash that the axe had made in the wood, touching the edges of the gash, trying to press them together to close the wound, and he kept saying, ‘Tree… oh, tree… I am sorry… I am so sorry… but it will heal… it will heal fine…’
For a while he stood there with his hands upon the trunk of the great tree; then suddenly he turned away and hurried off out of the park, across the road, through the front gate and back into his house. He went to the telephone, consulted the book, dialled a number and waited. He held the receiver tightly in his left hand and tapped the table impatiently with his right. He heard the telephone buzzing at the other end, and then the click of a lifted receiver and a man’s voice, a sleepy voice, saying: ‘Hullo. Yes.’
‘Dr Scott?’ he said.
‘Yes. Speaking.’
‘Dr Scott. You must come at once – quickly, please.’
‘Who is it speaking?’
‘Klausner here, and you remember what I told you last night about my experience with sound, and how I hoped I might –’
‘Yes, yes, of course, but what’s the matter? Are you ill?’
‘No, I’m not ill, but –’
‘It’s half-past six in the morning,’ the Doctor said, ‘and you call me but you are not ill.’
‘Please come. Come quickly. I want someone to hear it. It’s driving me mad! I can’t believe it…’
The Doctor heard the frantic, almost hysterical note in the man’s voice, the same note he was used to hearing in the voices of people who called up and said, ‘There’s been an accident. Come quickly.’ He said slowly, ‘You really want me to get out of bed and come over now?’
‘Yes, now. At once, please.’
‘All right, then – I’ll come.’
Klausner sat down beside the telephone and waited. He tried to remember what the shriek of the tree had sounded like, but he couldn’t. He could remember only that it had been enormous and frightful and that it had made him feel sick with horror. He tried to imagine what sort of a noise a human would make if he had to stand anchored to the ground while someone deliberately swung a small sharp thing at his leg so that the blade cut in deep and wedged itself in the cut. Same sort of noise perhaps? No. Quite different. The noise of the tree was worse than any known human noise because of that frightening, toneless, throatless quality. He began to wonder about other living things, and he thought immediately of a field of wheat, a field of wheat standing up straight and yellow and alive, with the mower going through it, cutting the stems, five hundred stems a second, every second. Oh, my God, what would that noise be like? Five hundred wheat plants screaming together and every second another five hundred being cut and screaming and – no, he thought, I do not want to go to a wheat field with my machine. I would never eat bread after that. But what about potatoes and cabbages and carrots and onions? And what about apples? Ah, no. Apples are all right. They fall off naturally when they are ripe. Apples are all right if you let them fall off instead of tearing them from the tree branch. But not vegetables. Not a potato for example. A potato would surely shriek; so would a carrot and an onion and a cabbage…
He heard the click of the front-gate latch and he jumped up and went out and saw the tall doctor coming down the path, little black bag in hand.
‘Well,’ the Doctor said. ‘Well, what’s all the trouble?’
‘Come with me, Doctor. I want you to hear it. I called you because you’re the only one I’ve told. It’s over the road in the park. Will you come now?’
The Doctor looked at him. He seemed calmer now. There was no sign of madness or hysteria; he was merely disturbed and excited.
They went across the road into the park and Klausner led the way to the great beech tree at the foot of which stood the long black coffin-box of the machine – and the axe.
‘Why did you bring it out here?’ the Doctor asked.
‘I wanted a tree. There aren’t any big trees in the garden.’
‘And why the axe?’
‘You’ll see in a moment. But now please put on these earphones and listen. Listen carefully and tell me afterwards precisely what you hear. I want to make quite sure…’
The Doctor smiled and took the earphones and put them over his ears.
Klausner bent down and flicked the switch on the panel of the machine; then he picked up the axe and took his stance with his legs apart, ready to swing. For a moment he paused.
‘Can you hear anything?’ he said to the Doctor.
‘Can I what?’
‘Can you hear anything?’
‘Just a humming noise.’
Klausner stood there with the axe in his hands trying to bring himself to swing, but the thought of the noise that the tree would make made him pause again.
‘What are you waiting for?’ the Doctor asked.
‘Nothing,’ Klausner answered, and then he lifted the axe and swung it at the tree, and as he swung, he thought he felt, he could swear he felt a movement of the ground on which he stood. He felt a slight shifting of the earth beneath his feet as though the roots of the tree were moving underneath the soil, but it was too late to check the blow and the axe blade struck the tree and wedged deep into the wood. At that moment, high overhead, there was the cracking sound of wood splintering and the swishing sound of leaves brushing against other leaves and they both looked up and the Doctor cried, ‘Watch out! Run, man! Quickly, run!’
The Doctor had ripped off the earphones and was running away fast, but Klausner stood spellbound, staring up at the great branch, sixty feet long at least, that was bending slowly downward, breaking and crackling and splintering at its thickest point, where it joined the main trunk of the tree. The branch came crashing down and Klausner leapt aside just
in time. It fell upon the machine and smashed it into pieces.
‘Great heavens!’ shouted the Doctor as he came running back. ‘That was a near one! I thought it had got you!’
Klausner was staring at the tree. His large head was leaning to one side and upon his smooth white face there was a tense, horrified expression. Slowly he walked up to the tree and gently he prised the blade loose from the trunk.
‘Did you hear it?’ he said, turning to the Doctor. His voice was barely audible.
The Doctor was still out of breath from running and the excitement. ‘Hear what?’
‘In the earphones. Did you hear anything when the axe struck?’
The Doctor began to rub the back of his neck. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘as a matter of fact…’ He paused and frowned and bit his lower lip. ‘No, I’m not sure. I couldn’t be sure. I don’t suppose I had the earphones on for more than a second after the axe struck.’
‘Yes, yes, but what did you hear?’
‘I don’t know,’ the Doctor said. ‘I don’t know what I heard. Probably the noise of the branch breaking.’ He was speaking rapidly, rather irritably.
‘What did it sound like?’ Klausner leaned forward slightly, staring hard at the Doctor. ‘Exactly what did it sound like?’
‘Oh, hell!’ the Doctor said. ‘I really don’t know. I was more interested in getting out of the way. Let’s leave it.’
‘Dr Scott, what-did-it-sound-like?’
‘For God’s sake, how could I tell, what with half the tree falling on me and having to run for my life?’ The Doctor certainly seemed nervous. Klausner had sensed it now. He stood quite still, staring at the Doctor and for fully half a minute he didn’t speak. The Doctor moved his feet, shrugged his shoulders and half turned to go. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we’d better get back.’
‘Look,’ said the little man, and now his smooth white face became suddenly suffused with colour. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘you stitch this up.’ He pointed to the last gash that the axe had made in the tree trunk. ‘You stitch this up quickly.’