The Folded Clock: A Diary

Chapter 81: October 8

Today I heard a terrible noise. I was in my office and I was talking to a student. She’d written a story about a semi-neurotic woman trying to buy salmon at a fish shop. We were both, this student and I, cognizant of the fact that we are somewhat like this character. We are subtextual, and sub-subtextual, and sub-sub-subtextual readers of the world.

Suddenly, in the middle of our conversation, we heard the terrible noise. From somewhere on the quad, where there is always a landscape maintenance crew performing destructive acts of beautification, a vibration jostled the air. Not just the air, the buildings. The sound it produced was of a very low frequency, and nearly inaudible. It registered in my molars.

I covered my ears until it stopped.

“Wow,” I said.

“Wow,” she said.

“That was crazy,” I said.

“Yeah,” she agreed.

“What was that?” I said.

“What?” she said.

“That noise,” I said.

“What noise?” she said.

“Didn’t you hear that noise?” I said.

“No,” she said.

“You really didn’t hear that noise?” I said.

She hadn’t. We continued talking about her short story, but now I was distracted. How had she failed to hear that noise? At a different point in my life, I might have congratulated myself for hearing what she did not hear. I was so sensitive I might qualify for extrasensory perception status. I detected what no one else detected. But I am no longer at that point. Now when I see or hear something that no one else sees or hears, I worry that a part of me is failing. I am not extra-anything, I am less-something. I am reminded of my less-somethingness when I cannot find pleasurable a book or TV show that everyone else finds pleasurable, even brilliant. Am I the only person who can’t perceive the genius of this book or that TV show? I used to believe my failure was proof of a refined intellect; that I refused to see genius where lesser people, with lower genius standards, found gobs of genius. But now my failure to find the genius makes me worry that I’m missing something, not receiving something. What do all of these people understand that I don’t?

Regardless: the noise. The student suggested that maybe I had something wrong with my inner ear. This seemed plausible. I have children who yell and who cause me to yell. Who knew what frequency contusions the invisible chambers of my ear had suffered.

I made an appointment with an ear doctor. Just the act of making the appointment reassured me: something was failing, but that something could be fixed. I should have seen a doctor when I could not understand how anyone found that multi-prize-winning novel remotely good. My inner ear, it must have been my inner ear.

Then I told my husband about the terrible noise, and how I’d made an appointment with the doctor to discover why I’d heard it and my student had not.

“Interesting,” he said. “So there really was a noise?”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“The noise you heard actually existed?”

“Yes,” I said. “It actually existed.”

“You didn’t just hear it in your head?” he said.

What noise don’t you hear in your head? I wanted to ask. But his question freaked me out. I heard a noise, but had there been a noise? How many people have to hear a noise before it becomes a noise?

I promised him: there was a noise. It existed. I really did hear it, and my student really did not.