The Forgetting Time(17)

“Oh, my—is that Ratner? I’ve been trying to get a hold of him for weeks!” Hoisting the tray scattered with his half-eaten lunch, he scurried away from Anderson’s table in search of more favorable climes.

Anderson pulled the Ravel article from beneath his plate, smoothed it, and began reading again. He bent his head low over the text in what he hoped was the universal sign for “bug off.” He’d tried three times that week to read it, and had found his mind oddly resistant to completing the task.

… Hemispheric lateralization for verbal (linguistic) and musical thinking offers an explanation for the dissociation of Ravel’s ability to conceive and to create …

Perhaps he was in denial, and that’s why he couldn’t get through it. Or perhaps the aphasia was interfering with his attempts to understand different aspects of its progression. If he wasn’t so frustrated, the irony of it might have tickled him.

Swimming at Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Ravel—an expert swimmer—suddenly found that he could not “coordinate his movements”…

Saint-Jean-de-Luz. He’d been to that beach once, years ago, on his honeymoon. He and Sheila had driven down the French coast. He had two weeks off and had promised not to talk about the lab or the rats. Without his usual topics, he had been both flummoxed and free. They ate and spoke of the food; they swam and spoke of the water and the light.

They’d stayed in a large white hotel on the beach. The Grand Hotel Something or Other. Bobbing fishing boats. The light on the water, in the air, bouncing off Sheila’s white shoulders. There was nothing like that light, as the painters all knew.

He tried to focus on the words again.

… Ravel—an expert swimmer—suddenly found that he could not “coordinate his movements” …

What had that been like—that moment when he suddenly found he could not control his own body? Did he think it was the end? Was he flailing, sinking?

Ravel’s was a Wernicke’s aphasia of moderate intensity.… Understanding of language remains much better than oral or written abilities.… Musical language is still more impaired … with a remarkable discrepancy between loss of musical expression (written or instrumental) and musical thinking, which is comparatively preserved.

A remarkable discrepancy, he thought. They should write that on my tombstone. He made himself go through that paragraph again.

a remarkable discrepancy between loss of musical expression (written or instrumental) and musical thinking, which is comparatively preserved …

Which meant—the words finally sinking into Anderson’s consciousness, as if he were recognizing words he himself had written—which meant that Ravel could continue to create orchestral works, he could hear them in his head, but he couldn’t get them out. He couldn’t mark the notes. They were locked inside forever, playing for an audience of one.

In spite of his aphasia, Ravel recognized tunes easily, especially his own compositions, and could readily point out errors of incorrect notes or rhythm. Sound value and note recognition were well preserved.… Aphasia made analytic deciphering—sight reading, dictation and note naming—almost impossible, hindered especially by an inability to recall the names of notes just as garden-variety aphasics “forget” the names of common objects.…

The sounds in the cafeteria, the rumbling of voices, the ding of the register, the clattering of trays—these sounds slowed down, and underneath them he heard the incessant staccato drumbeat that was his future, coming right at him. Perhaps Ravel had created another masterpiece, a better Bolero. Perhaps he had built it in his mind, bar by bar, and yet found himself unable to write a single note, to mark a single melody. All day long those melodies would loop through his mind, interlocking and separating with a precision only he himself had mastered, and no one knew. All day long, melodies steamed up out of his coffee cup, poured from the faucet into his bath, hot and cold, intertwined and separate: imprisoned, unstoppable.

Wasn’t that enough to drive anyone mad?

Wouldn’t it have been better if he had died out there in the ocean?

If he hadn’t cried out—if they hadn’t seen him—he would have started to sink. His limbs would have stopped flailing eventually, the natural impulse to fight easing out of him by the lull of the waves, the glory of the light sifting down through the water. He could have relaxed, then, let his body take him down—take, too, all the unwritten concertos … all of them gone, at once.

It wouldn’t have taken much, Anderson thought. He could have simply loosened his hold on life. He could have given up.

For a moment, Anderson felt relief flooding through him, cooling his anxious mind. He didn’t have to read the article, he thought. He didn’t have to do anything.

He could simply let it all go.

But the desire to continue beat on in him, like a boxer who was losing his hold on the floor but couldn’t orient himself enough to get the hell out of the ring. He spread out the pages in front of him, focused his mind, and began, again, to read.





Seven

The gas lamp flickered in the wet March mess like a beacon of far-off sanity as Janie half-dragged, half-cajoled Noah down the block. He had lost his mitten somewhere along the way and his icy hand clutched hers and pulled her down, like dead weight.

She grabbed a hunk of damp, unexciting mail from the box (more bills and second notices) and shut the door fast against the snow.