School of Velocity

by Eric Beck Rubin

  Lena was giddy as she watched the buzzing around the baby grand, and after the workers left she and I closely examined the instrument itself. The light colour, walnut inlay, carved legs. Going from a Kawai upright to a Bechstein was like moving up a major fifth, the sound that blasts from the trumpets when the king is crowned, when the winner is announced; the flush of triumph.

  But that feeling only lasted a short time. It must have been coincidence, there’s no possibility the Bechstein itself made me sick, but soon after it took over the practice room, the auditory disruptions I was hearing became more acute. They’d start in the morning, before I was even seated at the keyboard. Contractions and minor spasms that seeped down the back of my head, to my neck, shoulders, and arms. There were times, while practising, when confused and clashing notes seemed to buzz across my eyes and catch in my throat. Taking a break to work on scales or other technical warm-ups, I’d hear a piece I’d played a week or month or even years before return at full volume, opening the door to a slew of other vagabond sounds. My response was to play through it, to overrun it with work. I practised more hours and booked more dates. I cleaved ever more closely to my routine. The more I had to do, the less possible it was for me to pause, never mind stop, and this was meant to keep the threatening sounds under my control.

  There was another thing that troubled my success at the time, also bothersome, also out of my control. The more I toured, the more I seemed to run into old friends and acquaintances from the Sint Ansfried years. Members of the diaspora who were in orchestras or crews or management, or simply in the audience on a given night. Now that I was a name, they wanted a piece, and took every chance to press themselves on me. Which in its own way brought Dirk back because after hellos and how are yous, I’d always get asked the same question. “How is the old Noosen?”

  I had a tactic for this: smile at the question, then wait till the person asking told what he or she had heard. And that person, whoever he or she was, had always heard something. “He was in New York City,” they’d say. Or “Buenos Aires.” “The Edinburgh Festival,” said another. “What? No! The London Academy.” One year he was teaching at the Sorbonne. The next it was apprenticing with Greenaway in the West End. Assisting Stoppard, on Broadway, they said. No, off-Broadway. No, off-off-Broadway. He’s riding the back lanes of some godforsaken country in an overstuffed jeep. Some pilot project that involved hacking away at jungle vines just to scrounge out a stage for his latest production. He was acting, directing, and producing. One person was aware, first-hand, that he was artist-in-residence at one of those Hudson River colleges. “Or was it the Southwest?” “Certainly in America,” someone else said. “Certainly not.” They’d heard he was doing three productions of Gargantua Redux on three continents, simultaneously. Workshopping a musical parody of Hair called Hairy. Then there was that television interview that caused such a scandal. “He was talking about New Theatre and late-stage communism—did you catch it?” “Yeah, that one,” I’d say. “Amazing, eh?” “Typical.”

  I treated these bits of unbidden news like grace notes, no less or more important than the other noises whizzing through my head at the time. A dusty prelude, the snap of a Sam and Dave drumbeat, high notes from a Vaughan Williams suite, and now Dirk in some far-off jungle. I filed the information away, but didn’t go further down the trail. Didn’t want to. Sometimes a detail, the name of a production he was working on, or city he’d last been seen in, replayed itself in my mind during those short but wild moments while I scanned the rows before a performance, but when the stage lights rose I turned my focus exclusively to the first bar, which always came to me, if only at the last minute.

  My life on tour consisted of stretches like Hanover on a Tuesday, Paris on Thursday, Lisbon on Friday. Then San Francisco, Minnesota, Rio de Janeiro, and Tel Aviv in the next ten days. Whenever I checked in with Lena, I always had some bit of news to offer, but onstage it was the same pieces, same instruments, and offstage, the same routine. Hours at the bench, keeping up my schedule no matter where I was, turning down the invitation to go out with other musicians because tomorrow was an early day.

  As busy as I was, as little time as work gave me to think and reflect, I began to see, as I turned forty, that the bubbling, roiling sounds that were with me day and night were not the same noises that followed me in the conservatory and during the early days of touring. These new disruptions were not yet curbing my ability to practise, and they didn’t follow me onstage or disrupt my performance, but they were growing more demanding at other times. Midday, when I got up from the bench to make myself a snack in the kitchen. Afternoons, when I left the apartment to walk along the Maas. In the evenings I could hear them while Lena and I were eating at the dinner table. In bed, while she was asleep, I lay listening to what sounded like a radio with poor reception, or a fight in the apartment next door, even though there was no radio on and no apartment next door.

  With every passing month, I began to worry a little more. I started to consider the possibility that these were symptoms of a condition that needed attention. I considered telling Lena, but remembered the reasons I had long ago decided against it. If I brought it up now she’d ask why I’d kept it for so long to myself. I didn’t want to explain, and I was sure I could take care of whatever was the matter myself.

  I started to “take care of the matter” by experimenting with simple, obvious changes. I cut down on alcohol, took sleeping pills, and bought noise-cancelling headphones for flights. While away from the keyboard, I put cotton balls in my ears and turned the kitchen radio to a murmuring low. I took showers rather than baths because of the soothing clatter of falling water. And when I stayed in hotel rooms while on tour, I played white noise tapes on a portable stereo. Calming Javanese Waterfalls, Trickling Rivers of the High Andes, and my preferred, Dishwasher Cycles. I kept a diary, making notes of when the symptoms got better or worse. Was it a certain season? A type of weather?

  Finally, when I needed perspective, I reminded myself I played from a set repertoire I had performed dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of times, which I could play backwards and forwards, skipping every even or odd note if need be. I reasoned that so long as I was intact onstage, I could go on keeping my condition to myself. And from my old discussions with other musicians who put up with all kinds of exotic symptoms and ailments from broad travel and stressful schedules, it seemed entirely possible I would wake up one day and find everything in its proper place. A day when I’d get out of bed to a quiet breakfast with Lena, and calmly read the morning papers. When I’d sit at the Bechstein and find an immediate balance between the force from my fingers and the response from the keys. When what I’d hear in my head would combine effortlessly with the notes coming from the piano.

  I waited for that day to come. I waited longer. Months passed. Soon it was years.

  One by one, the cotton balls, white noise tapes, and other homemade cures stopped working. The diary told me nothing. My noise-cancelling earphones no longer made a dent. My answer was to get Taub to concentrate my dates and cut down the amount of travel because each time I boarded a plane I felt the pressure change was doing me harm.

  When Lena noticed the cancellations and alterations to my schedule, she asked what was up. I told her I was taking a short rest. At first she didn’t understand. Then she thought I was kidding. Rests, pauses, even during a concerto movement, were not part of her Jan. She asked if I was going to take up a hobby instead. Watercolours or knitting. When she saw her jokes irritated me, her smile fell, which is what I had wanted to avoid. I tried to calm her down.

  “The travelling,” I said. “It’s been heavy this past year.”

  “That’s all it is?” Lena said.

  “Yes. And maybe the business side, too.”

  “What are you telling me?”

  “I’m starting to feel wiped out.”

  Her voice rose. “Are you saying you want to quit?”

  I had tripped myself up. Said too much. “That
’s not what I mean,” I said. I looked away, but could feel Lena’s eyes on me. “Just, a break would be nice.”

  “All right, Jan. Just so long as that’s all it is.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  She was still frowning at me. Uncertainty.

  “I promise,” I said, thinking of what I might say to change the subject.

  With more time between tours, I tried to slip into my old life. The one before I was booked solid, with a preplayed future. The days when Lena and I would sleep in on weekends, visit the patisserie together on Sunday morning and spend the rest of the day trying, and failing, to cook something in the kitchen. I see I was looking for her, in some way, to be the solution to the problem. And for the first months I expected she would be, that her love for me and my love for her would take me back.

  At Christmas, during the lucrative Ode to Joy season, I made an appointment at the audiology department of the Academic Hospital. The testing centre did not require referrals, so I could keep the visit to myself.

  The clinic’s waiting room was as anonymous looking as the lobby of an insurance office. If it hadn’t said Head and Neck Surgery on the door across the hall I wouldn’t have known I was in a hospital. I checked myself in and recited the basics to the receptionist. Jan de Vries, forty-three, musician, no allergies, here for range testing. I signed at the bottom of the completed form.

  A nurse led me to a room with a small desk, on which there was a tape recorder. Sit there, sir. Put these headphones on. Lift your left or right arm to show me which side the sound’s coming from.

  I went to a room with a foam-lined booth, the same foam as in the practice room at my apartment. “You will hear beeps,” said a voice coming through speakers hidden behind the foam. “Lift an arm when you stop hearing them.”

  In an examination room, a technician used an otoscope to look into my ears while asking if I had had any infections as a child. None that I know of, I said. He changed the setting on his instrument and checked again.

  “The good news,” he said, though without much joy, “is that nothing is jumping out. According to the printout from the tests, you’re within normal range.” He put his tools away, filed some papers in a folder, and gave me a plastic syringe. “In case it recurs,” he said, “fill the tube with a solution of sodium bicarbonate and glycerine, which you can get at any pharmacy, and slowly empty it into your ear canals.”

  Despite the technician’s unpromising tone, I felt better instantly. I’d scientifically tested my fears and the results were fine. Good. Normal. The buoyancy lasted a month. Blissfully peaceful, one Ode to Joy after another without any symptoms. Then the trouble returned, worse than before. It came in the form of all kinds of noises now. A kettle on the boil. A child’s piercing scream. An impatient driver blasting his horn. It was as though they were all turning against me.

  I went back to the clinic and was referred to the doctor in charge. This man, an ear, nose, and throat specialist, reviewed my case, did some cursory examinations, then asked if I was familiar with the term “auditory attacks.” I said I wasn’t, and that it sounded bad.

  “‘Good’ and ‘bad,’” he said, “don’t come into it.”

  He scheduled more tests. Different tests, he said. They’d have to be done in a series. On the way out the door I took some pamphlets. Each was slightly different, but all were about how a normal brain screens everyday noises behind internally generated sounds, and how sometimes the screening mechanism overreacts. They emphasized, repeatedly, that nobody’s sure why this was so, and that brain activity is not fully understood.

  For the first time I was scared. I started to hear a persistent whine, like a child scratching at a violin. The harmonies I wanted to latch on to while practising would break into clashing parts, and the random disruptions started to eat into my confidence at the keyboard. What exactly was I playing if I couldn’t be entirely sure what I was hearing?

  One afternoon, I sat at the computer. A mostly neglected piece of equipment in the house. As useless as the pamphlets from the audiologist were, they got me wanting more information. As the son of a doctor I knew not to trust what I found on the internet, but I decided to take a quick look anyway. My idea was to visit a couple of reliable-seeming sites, but I was instantly drawn in. A single search on “auditory attacks” led to pages on oversensitive membranes, infections, tinnitus, cancer of the acoustic nerve, lesions, vertigo, brain damage, damage to the cochlea, the labyrinth, the eardrum. Apparently any of these could be the cause of my problems, and further complications could include seizures or strokes. I found virtual communities where people described symptoms, suggested remedies, and charted their decline. I recognized myself in many of the symptoms listed and grew afraid of others. Inability to sleep, problems with eyesight, frequent loss of balance. Partial or complete deafness. After logging off I could barely rouse myself. What was the point? I only snapped back to life when, minutes before Lena was due to come home, a corner of my brain remembered to erase my tracks on the computer.

  Over the coming months I went back to the clinic for more advanced tests. I was passed to a neurologist at the Academic. In the following year of consultations, spread between my concert dates, the number of doctors multiplied. ENTs, radiologists, surgeons, and internists. A neurosurgeon who consulted with the neurologists; a radiologist brought on as an advisor; a psychiatrist who wanted me to try medications. Each had his or her own diagnosis and solution. I went back for more in-depth testing. The results came back, calling for more tests, which I attended, always alone.

  Secrecy, firewalls, containment, bright white lines notwithstanding, it was only a matter of time till Lena picked up on something, and it happened when she heard a message left by a doctor’s secretary on our answering machine. I heard Lena play it and my heart sagged. When we were in bed that night she asked about it. An appointment at the hospital? I told her I’d been having headaches that weren’t going away. There was a GP who was going to take a look. Right away I regretted saying it.

  “I thought your slower schedule was doing you good,” she said.

  “It is. I’m getting better. I don’t think this thing’s connected.”

  “Describe it,” she said.

  I waved at her. “Like I said, headaches,” I said. “And sometimes a ringing afterwards.”

  “Is it bothering your playing?” she said, sounding more alarmed.

  “Nothing like that, no. I just wish it weren’t there so often.”

  “How often?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Now and then, or all the time?”

  “Not all the time, no. Sometimes it just feels like that.”

  She was quiet. I resisted the urge to elaborate or to soothe her with words; too many had already come out wrong. All the while I feared her asking the question: how long has this been going on? But in trying to avoid it, I’d led myself into another corner. Lena turned to me and said that someone at the firm, one of the partners, had seen a specialist. “The partner did a lot of research to find this doctor. Apparently he’s at the top of the field. I don’t want you to worry about this, Jan, but he’s a neurologist.”

  “A neurologist,” I repeated. “I don’t think I’m there yet but, out of curiosity, did he help the partner?”

  “Yes,” Lena said. “A number of specialists told him there was nothing to be done about his headaches, but this doctor found something. I can’t remember the name of it. A neuroma, maybe? The doctor saw it before others did, had it operated on, and now he’s better.”

  “That’s good,” I said.

  “The doctor’s name was Weetman. If I get his number, I want you to make the appointment, okay? Even if you don’t need it now. There’s a long wait list, so just sign up. People come to him from around the world. So call as soon as you can, yes?”

  “Yes,” I said, trying to seem offhanded about it.

  When I mentioned Weetman’s name to my other doctors, they said he was excellent and
they would have referred me to him in time. Outstanding, world-class; risk taking but frequently right. The waiting list for an introductory consultation was actually eighteen months, but I had strings pulled on my behalf and would see him within the year.

  In the meantime, I kept to my reduced performance schedule. Made fewer plane trips. Did a lot of “drive-by” concerts, with minimal rehearsal before going onstage. Lena saw I was working, which seemed to reassure her. When she asked how I was feeling, I told her it was better. I had made the appointment with Weetman, I said, though I’m sure I’d be fine by the time I showed up at his office. “Like when you call a repairman and the problem solves itself while he’s on the way over.”

  I started seeing Weetman at his offices on the Sporenstraat later that year, shortly after I turned forty-four. The first thing to do, he said, is to start over. Establish a new baseline. All previous tests would be retaken, samples resubmitted, old analyses run alongside new. If you think this is a waste of time, he said to me, a real waste of time would be proceeding on the basis of previous results. Over the following months I would be hooked up to sensors, placed in chambers, prodded, measured, expanded, contracted, high, low, top, bottom, left, right, come and go. Move this way; now that. Hold still. Keep holding.

  I went back, again, to picturing the perfect day I had laid out for myself. The one where I woke up to a noiseless solitude, and the only music playing inside my head was what came from the piano. Weetman was young and brash, but not unkind. In the minds of his peers, he was the best of the best. For me, he was the last stop.

  Still, I can’t say what course I might have taken had I not run into Pirm. Skinny Pirm from Sint Ansfried, who had since grown a pot-belly and wore his hair slicked back. He’d climbed the rungs at the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, where he sat on committees and boards, travelled as an attaché, and appeared in cultural programs on TV. I had run across him several times over the years, and each time he was bigger and swarthier. Talk between us was usually limited to school days, parties, and his adventures using and dealing drugs. This time, I ran into him at a restaurant in the old city, where I’d been having dinner with Lena. Lena was paying the bill and I was collecting our coats from a stand by the door.