The Listeners

by Jordan Tannahill

  Oh my god, I murmured, astonished.

  Inside, the tent was fully furnished—an air mattress, quilts and pillows, makeshift shelving made out of bricks and boards, stacks of books, two lamps complete with fabric shades, pots and pans, bowls and cups, a portable stove, a metal basin, plastic jugs of water, an old traveller’s trunk, an amateurish painting of a horse in a gilded frame, and a tattered Persian carpet on the floor.

  Cozy, isn’t it, he said.

  How did you do this? I asked, marvelling, stepping inside, hunched over.

  Luke and me built it in grade eleven, he replied. We’d come and smoke during our spares. But I just kept adding to it.

  Look at all these books, I said, marvelling at his collection. At the top of one stack was his weathered and beaten copy of The Magic Mountain.

  Did you ever finish it? I asked, picking it up.

  The essay?

  No, I know you never finished the essay.

  I did so, he said, indignant but smiling. I suppose it would’ve been nearly impossible for him to pass the class had he not. He and I had never talked about my replacement at school, or really anything to do with school. We had a sort of unspoken agreement to avoid the subject altogether. Perhaps I let myself imagine he had never finished the essay as it was just easier for me to believe that. The thought of another teacher reading it caused a kind of jealousy-limned sadness to come over me, which I knew was ridiculous. Perhaps sensing this, he told me that it wasn’t very good.

  I’m sure it was.

  No it really wasn’t, trust me. I just phoned it in.

  I told him that I was still working my way through the book. He looked surprised, and said he didn’t realize I was reading it.

  Didn’t I tell you? I sat down on the air mattress, my back already starting to ache from bending over. I’ve been listening to the audiobook, I said.

  Really? he said, crouching down beside me.

  Well. I’ve slowed down a bit lately.

  I told him that I had listened up to the passage where Hans Castorp gets caught in the blizzard and slips into a kind of death-bound reverie. His disoriented visions grow progressively darker until they culminate in the ritualistic slaughter of a child by two ancient, cultic priestesses. That’s where I stopped, I said.

  Oh but that part’s so good.

  Yeah, well—there isn’t always an overlap between good literature and what I wish to put into my head before bed.

  Kyle said that sequence made him think about how nature is neither kind nor cruel, but simply a force which is. It sustains life and destroys it, and is beyond our capacity to comprehend or control. And yet we always try. Again and again.

  I smiled at his philosophizing, and told him that maybe I should try listening to the book when I wasn’t half asleep.

  Speaking of listening—He walked over to the trunk and pulled out an old battery-powered CD player. He sat it on the makeshift shelf, put in a disc, and pressed play. A jazz song kicked off with a plucky piano and a punchy trumpet line.

  Well you’ve really thought of everything, I said.

  Just the essentials.

  Who is this? I asked.

  Charles Mingus. Do you know him? I told him yes, I did, my grandmother was a jazz fanatic. This is his album East Coasting, he said. From 1953.

  Kyle extended his hand to me in an invitation to dance but I declined, with a laugh—there was no room!—so he did a dorky and endearing little jig. I caught glimpses of the old man and the young boy who both inhabited him. He appeared to know the track by heart, anticipating its ebbs and flows. I couldn’t imagine he had ever dared show this side of himself to any of his friends; at least not the ones I knew. Though sometimes I wondered how many friends he really had, or good ones, at least. He seemed both well-liked and utterly aloof. Had anyone even been calling around, wondering where he was? Was anyone worried about him? He dropped down beside me on the mattress.

  Please tell me you’re not living here, I said.

  He looked around, like a proud homeowner—I think it’s rather nice.

  This is not—My chest felt leaden. For how long?

  It’s been a while now.

  I shook my head. It’s not right. You can’t—

  What? What can’t I do? he asked, with quiet defiance.

  I was suddenly outside of myself, looking at us sitting in that tent, in the thicket behind the back field of the school where I was once a teacher, and he was once my student, back in a time when both of us had families, and I was suddenly struck by just how much The Hum had stripped from us.

  I landed a summer job at the Best Buy, he said, flatly. I’m making money. I have what I need.

  Yeah, except running water.

  I can shower at the gym.

  I told him that was madness, considering I lived in a practically empty four-bedroom house just six blocks away. He could have an entire bathroom to himself. He looked down and picked at a bit of fluff on one of the ratty wool blankets we were sitting on—I can’t just move in with you.

  I’m not asking you to.

  So then what happens tomorrow night? And the night after that? You going to kick me out? he asked, and I shook my head. Exactly, so then I’ll just be living with you.

  Would that be so bad? I asked. He gave me a wary look. What?

  It’s not appropriate, he said, and I smiled to hear my own word echoed back to me.

  And letting you sleep in a park, is that appropriate? I asked. He shrugged. It’s also not safe, I said, and he laughed dismissively.

  Wolves?

  Drug deals, I said, for instance. He batted away the suggestion. Kyle, I’m worried about you.

  Then go, he said, suddenly cross, and gesturing to the half-opened tent flap. I don’t need you to be my fucking mother.

  Okay.

  You’re going?

  I won’t be your fucking mother.

  We sat there in strained silence, letting the piano and trumpets do the talking.

  I like it here, he said, eventually. I actually prefer it. And listen.

  He leaned over and turned off the music, and we sat there listening. The Hum penetrated the night. The air seemed to vibrate with it. It’s strong out here, isn’t it? he said.

  I can almost feel it in the ground, I replied.

  Though even more noticeable to me in that moment, more than The Hum or the crickets, was the sound of our breathing. Kyle glanced at me and then slowly stood up. Stooped over, his head pushed into the top of the tent. He kicked off his shoes, and then casually pulled his t-shirt over his head to take it off.

  I’m still soaked from the tuning, he said. He rooted around the tent for something to change into. His chest was smooth and ivory white. I could see the indents of each of his ribs. I heard Ashley’s words scrawny stoner in my head. His abs were clearly definable, but more from virtue of his sheer skinniness. With his back turned to me, he unbuttoned his jeans, pulled them down, and sort of awkwardly stomped out of them, until he was wearing just his baggy navy boxer shorts. I looked down and picked up the record sleeve to read.

  My posture isn’t very good, he said. I looked back up, as he pulled on a pair of grey sweatpants, still shirtless. He tried to straighten his back a little, pushing his head further up through the tent. I’m working on it, he said. I’m worried I have scoliosis.

  I smiled and reassured him that I highly doubted it. He then lifted his left arm, sniffed, and apologized—One downside is the shower situation. It’s hard to keep up my usual … freshness.

  You’re usually fresh? I asked, eyebrow cocked.

  Wouldn’t you say?

  That’s not the word that comes to mind.

  He laughed. Oh yeah, what is?

  Mmm … musky.

  What, like a-a dusty old attic?

  No, not musty. I chuckled. Musky.

  Oh, I was going to say …

  Like the smell of the earth.

  Or maybe more like the air after thunder. Or a birch, peeled of
its bark. A thing can only ever be described in relation to something else. One body described by another. He stood there in front of me shirtless, neither performative nor self-conscious, as if daring me to study him. I suddenly felt as if I was in a different Mann novel altogether, on a beach, considering a beguiling Polish youth. Without another word, Kyle knelt down on the carpet facing me. And I moved off the air mattress and down onto my knees on the blanketed ground, facing him. And without ever touching one another, we closed our eyes, and gradually relinquished ourselves to the frequency of the Earth; to the most intense and bracing pleasure I have ever known.

  Afterwards, I lay awake trying to gather myself until morning light began to seep through the tent’s translucent walls. Another night with barely any sleep. But I was not tired. I had never felt more awake. Strangely, I felt little guilt or approbation over what we had done. It was not sex. It was an intimacy unlike any I had experienced. To say sex and tuning were akin because they both invoked intimacy and pleasure was to say rain was akin to an ocean, or breath was akin to wind. Lying there now in my sports bra and pants, without shoes and without a shirt, basking in a night’s worth of accumulated body heat—the scene had all of the trappings of violation, transgression, obscenity. And yet I felt none of those things. I lay there in a wholly different kind of afterglow, thinking about limits. The limits we imposed upon ourselves, and the limits nature imposed. What were the limits of nature? I was aware of Kyle’s chest slowly rising and falling beside me. We were cocooned in separate, mouldering sleeping bags that smelt of bygone camping trips. Mine had some sand in it; probably from some childhood excursion to a canyon, or a beach.

  Kyle took a deep breath and stirred; stretching as far as his sleeping bag would allow before opening his eyes. What time is it? he asked, with the groggy languor of a bear cub.

  I checked my phone. Just after six, I said. I sat up and suddenly felt very light-headed. I rubbed my face, reached for one of the plastic jugs of lukewarm water, and took a sip. I looked down at Kyle; he was lying there, eyes half closed, on the verge of falling back asleep. He smiled up at me and I smiled back, and sank down into my sleeping bag. We lay there for a long while, watching the shadows of bugs fly over the tent. I could hear a bee buzzing and gently thwapping the sides of the tent with its bulbous body. Performing its sacred, life-sustaining duties. Using the Resonance for its intricate, internal navigation system. Kyle told me that you could cure hay fever by ingesting honey made by bees from the local pollen affecting you.

  Really? That astounded me, and yet, the natural world was full of miracles. Miracles we once knew, and had forgotten or mislaid.

  He then turned his head to look at me, across a mountain ridge of quilts and pillows—Last night was surreal.

  It was, I replied. And very—

  Intense.

  Very.

  He reached over and wiped sleep away from my eyes. He then asked if we had done something wrong. I considered how to give words to what I had spent the last few hours turning over in my head. I told him no. We didn’t hurt anyone. We didn’t break any law.

  But tuning, without the others … are we keeping something from them?

  As I lay there, considering his question, it struck me that the world was filled with an almost unbearably beautiful and limitless grace, and it was only we who were limited, in our capacity to perceive it. And just as no one possessed that grace, no one possessed our capacity to perceive it.

  It’s ours to do with what we want, I said. He nodded and seemed satisfied with this answer. I eventually rallied myself out of my sleeping bag. He sat propped up on his elbows, watching me pull my shirt and shoes back on. I tried to convince him to come back to my house for a shower, and a proper breakfast. He refused, as I knew he would. I took a step towards the tent flap and unzipped it. Well, I said, you know where to find me if you need me.

  14

  THE YOUNG POET DEPARTS ON A QUEST AND FINDS HIMSELF in the Otherworld. There, he is seduced by a fairy, or a goddess, and experiences the ecstatic transports of the enchanted realm. Tannhäuser finds Venus in her mountain paradise. Oisín is whisked off to Tír na nÓg by Niamh on her white horse. But eventually the poet grows homesick, and longs to return to his former life. When he does, he realizes that years have passed. The world he once knew is unrecognizable. Hans Castorp finds himself in the Otherworld of the mountain sanatorium, and like sand through his fingers, seven years of his life slip away. When he finally emerges from his reverie, Europe is on the brink of catastrophe.

  I’ve been thinking about how variations of this story exist through history, through cultures, because the force it speaks of must exist. A force in the wild that operates out of time, that seeks to lure us, fevered, into a state beyond reason; beyond the commitments that otherwise bind us to our lives and the people we love. What is this force, and why does it seek to enjoin our souls with itself? Is it just a blunt phenomenon like gravity, acting with no purpose or intent? One star devouring another in the vacuum of space? Or is this wildness somehow conscious? Seducing us to abandon as revenge, as corrective, for the order we have imposed upon it.

  The question I have is—Does the poet always know when he has left the mortal world, and entered the enchanted realm? And what if he doesn’t remember the way back?

  In the afterglow of the tunings, a profound and untrammelled joy came over me. The house felt empty and cavernous without Ashley and yet somehow, after the tunings, I was no longer concerned with my solitude. I loved Ashley, more than anything on Earth, and I loved Paul, but I also loved my life, for the first time in ages. I felt wonder again at being in the world and in my body, and at the limitless pleasures that existed beyond it, in transcending my body and reaching into yet unknown folds of existence and sensation. I was still only managing a couple of hours of sleep a night, and the headaches persisted, but at least now I felt there was a greater purpose at hand. A greater mystery to which to commit myself.

  After breakfast I drove to the supermarket, and it felt good to be seen, and good to see others. The thing I realized was—no one cared! No one cared about who I was or what I was doing. They were completely consumed by their own solipsism. I felt genuine wonder at the bounty of the Earth as I moved amongst the produce, lightly squeezing grapefruits to gauge their firmness, and taking a full minute to assess the optimal ripeness of a banana bunch.

  Each and every piece of fruit, each and every piece of animal in the cellophane-wrapped Styrofoam trays of the refrigerated meat aisle, every single stalk of wheat, millet, and rye rendered into the loafs stacked in their paper sleeves lived and died under the Resonance. While in line at the checkout, I smiled to see a grown man in front of me pluck a small pink pack of Hubba Bubba Bubble Tape from the rack of chocolate bars and candy on display beside the magazines. And then I realized the man was Damian! I said his name and he turned. It was almost surreal to see him outside of Howard and Jo’s living room, and judging from the surprised look on his face, he felt the same. There was something electric about the two of us standing there together in public, both of us possessing the most extraordinary secret. We made some small talk and then, anticipating my remark, he lifted the Hubba Bubba Bubble Tape and said—This is for my son, by the way.

  I lit up—I didn’t know you had a son.

  He’s four.

  Wow.

  His name is Elijah.

  He pulled out his phone and showed me some pictures of the two of them together—on the couch, at a fairground, eating pancakes. In one photo, a young woman in sportswear was holding Elijah. Damian explained that she was his girlfriend, Crystal; not Elijah’s mother. I wondered for a moment why Damian had kept this part of his life private, but I got the sense that the situation was complicated, and I couldn’t help but admire him for feeling protective of these two, and resisting the group’s tendency to excavate the deepest parts of our personal lives.

  We’re headed to the splash park today.

  I smiled and thought that, f
or the first time since I had known him, Damian looked genuinely happy. I told him as much, and he brightened a little.

  Thanks, he said. I feel good.

  I told him that I did too, and I asked him if he thought it was the tuning. He nodded as he began unloading the rest of his cart—cans of tuna, cereal, jumbo bag of toilet paper, protein powder, chocolate milk mix—and then looked back at me to say, You know, I think it is.

  I didn’t tell him that I had tuned again with Kyle; that we had plunged deeper into the Resonance than maybe even Jo or Howard have ever dared go, and we saw how truly vast it could be.

  I don’t know quite how to describe it, he said after a moment, but it’s like, since we tuned, I feel a little less … I feel a little bit more immaterial, or something.

  It was probably a little unfair to Damian to say that I was astounded by this observation, but I was. In a word, he perfectly articulated the sensation. I felt somehow immaterial. As if, caught in a certain light, you could glimpse right through me. It was almost dizzying to feel untethered to the things that once bound me to my corporeality, my mortality; the things that had burdened and worn me down, and reminded me I was a limited, flesh-bound event on the planet. I felt somehow beyond myself, beyond time, beyond death; or at least those containers didn’t seem to concern me the way they once had.

  But it’s dangerous, Damian said leaning towards me, voice lowered, suddenly serious. Because now we know. And you can be sure that they know that we know.

  His words unsettled me as I unpacked my cart. He stood beside me waiting, as the cashier ran my items through. I couldn’t quite seem to dismiss his concern as I might have in the past. What if there were people, or forces in the world, that would seek to limit my access to this pleasure; this unlimited way of being? And if there were, who were they, and how would they intervene? It did seem to be the nature of our system that limits were imposed. Limits must always be imposed. Because something unlimited risked dismantling everything else that hemmed us in.

  Hi, Ms. Devon. I looked up and realized the cashier was a former student of mine, Rory. He was a close friend of Kyle’s, or at least he was when I was still at school. He had a ratty face and demeanour, though he was probably a sweet enough kid out of class. He gave me a polite, perfunctory smile.