Chapter 9 — The things you hear without listening

The day after the stadium, I worked badly.

Not horribly badly.

Quietly badly.

A professional way of working badly.

I opened the file.

Corrected a detail.

Saved.

Looked at the correction.

Undid it.

Saved again, out of respect for my most concerning traditions.

The client still wanted the cabin to feel more intimate, less sad, and now “perhaps a little more breathable.”

I had almost replied that cabins did not have respiratory systems.

Then I remembered money was useful.

“Of course. I’ll explore that direction.”

Direction.

Very funny.

My brain had apparently decided to become unbearable.

I stared at the screen.

The blue forest. The cabin. The small light beside the door.

The child’s silhouette, which I had moved three millimeters to the left.

Three millimeters.

A decisive act in the grand history of children’s illustration.

Eugène was asleep on the couch, deeply enough to snore occasionally.

The rabbit was eating a leaf with great seriousness.

Everything was normal.

The studio had returned to its usual proportions.

The coffee table. The sketchbooks. The lamp. The rug.

The guitar in its corner.

The hum of the fridge. The city beyond the windows.

And despite all that, something continued circling the room.

A rhythm.

Not musical.

Well, maybe.

Footsteps on the track.

That sharp, regular, nervous sound. The way Liora had waited on the bend before accelerating. Not because she couldn’t go.

Because she wasn’t supposed to yet.

I didn’t particularly like that the idea could be applied to anything beyond a track practice.

I picked up the stylus again.

The cabin became slightly more breathable.

Or blurrier.

A difficult distinction to defend in front of a client.

A sound came from the other side of the wall late that afternoon.

A door. Footsteps.

Slower than usual again.

I recognized Liora before I heard her voice.

That wasn’t new.

But now it wasn’t simply “the neighbors.”

Before, the sounds had been background information.

The apartment next door was occupied.

The walls were thin.

Liora spoke quickly.

Her father had a deep voice.

Someone placed objects too forcefully on probably innocent pieces of furniture.

Now there was an image behind every sound.

Her sports bag.

Her shoes covered in red dust.

Her hand wrapped around her water bottle.

The coach telling her not to start too soon.

The way she listened in silence when everything about her seemed built to answer.

A drawer opened behind the wall.

Then her muffled voice.

Impossible to understand.

I took off my headphones anyway.

There was no music playing through them.

An aggravating detail.

I remained still for a second.

Then put them back on.

Still without playing anything.

Fine.

At this point, professional evaluation might be necessary.

I worked until the light had faded completely.

The sky shifted from gray to blue, then black. The windows reflected the studio with the unpleasant precision of evenings when you could see yourself living.

I made rice.

Simple.

Nutritional.

With no apparent emotional stakes.

Eugène immediately positioned himself in the middle of the open kitchen to supervise.

“It isn’t for you.”

He looked at me.

“It’s rice.”

He blinked slowly.

“You don’t like rice.”

He stayed.

Important feline principle: something did not need to please him in order to belong to him.

The rabbit received fresh hay. A leaf. Clean water and even an apple branch as a bonus.

The routine unfolded.

And it worked.

A little.

I ate in front of my computer, which was a bad habit, but at least a stable one.

At seven, the client replied that they liked “the intention,” but felt the cabin could be “less isolated.”

I looked at the cabin in the middle of its forest.

“It is literally in a forest.”

Eugène opened one eye.

“Thank you for your support.”

I saved the file.

Once.

Twice.

Then closed the program before I did something irreversible, like adding a welcoming patio to a cabin lost in the woods.

The studio became quieter again.

Not completely.

Never.

There were pipes. The street. A door somewhere in the building.

And fragments of life on the other side of the wall.

At one point, Liora’s father’s voice came through, low, calm, serious. Then Liora answered with something shorter than usual.

Fatigue, maybe.

Or dinner.

Or both.

I couldn’t know.

That limit should have reassured me.

It didn’t.

I put away my plate. Wiped down the counter. Returned a mug to the cupboard.

Then stood in the middle of the studio.

Too early to sleep.

Too late to start working intelligently again.

Too quiet for my brain to remain reasonable.

My gaze went to the guitar.

No.

I didn’t need to play.

I could read.

I could do laundry.

I could answer the email from an old client requesting “one quick little adjustment,” a phrase that had already destroyed several civilizations.

I picked up the guitar anyway.

The wood was slightly cold.

I sat on the couch without switching on the main light. Only the lamp beside the bookcase. A low light. Enough to see the strings, not enough to give the scene any significance.

Eugène, asleep at the other end of the couch, lifted his head with an offended expression.

“Sorry for living in your apartment.”

He put it back down.

Approximate tuning.

The E was slightly off. I corrected it.

Then let my fingers search without deciding.

A few notes.

Not the melody.

Not yet.

I played things without shape. Simple chords. A progression I knew too well. Another that I abandoned after three seconds because it sounded like an insurance commercial.

Then a melody returned.

A sequence of chords I had begun several weeks earlier.

Still incomplete.

Still with that gap in the middle.

I played it quietly.

The beginning worked.

Not perfectly.

But it had a shape.

A line.

Something moving forward without hurrying.

Then came the place.

The missing step.

The hole.

I stopped.

As usual.

I began again.

The first notes cautiously filled the studio. They didn’t travel far. They stayed close to the wood, my fingers, the couch, the rug, the plants surviving through stubbornness.

It wasn’t meant to leave the room.

I played the passage a second time.

At the gap, I tried a different transition.

Too pretty.

I erased it immediately.

Another.

Too sad.

Another.

Too predictable.

I exhaled through my nose.

“Fine.”

Eugène didn’t react.

Neither did Lapin.

Ideal audience.

I tried again.

This time, without immediately trying to fill it. I left a longer silence between the two sections. An almost uncomfortable silence.

Then played the next chord.

It was better.

Not good.

Better.

I repeated it.

The silence in the middle felt a little like a breath.

I thought about the track.

Mistake.

Or not.

Liora waiting.

Liora not moving.

The coach shouting, Not yet.

I played the beginning again.

The gap.

Then the chord.

Maybe the problem wasn’t the missing transition.

Maybe I was trying to reach the next part too quickly.

An irritating hypothesis.

I rejected it immediately.

Then played it exactly that way.

The beginning.

The pause.

Not too long.

Just enough.

The return.

This time, something passed through.

A small piece of continuity.

Nothing spectacular.

Nothing final.

A possible way through.

I remained still, my fingers resting on the strings.

The studio seemed to hold the moment one second longer than I did.

Then a sound came from the other side of the wall.

Very faint.

Movement.

I turned my head.

Nothing unusual.

The neighbors were moving around.

People were allowed to move inside their own apartments.

A fundamental concept.

Still, I began playing more quietly.

Almost without realizing it.

The melody continued.

The same passage.

Again.

Again.

The gap in the middle had changed shape.

It hadn’t disappeared.

Maybe that was better.

Not everything missing needed to be corrected. Some things only needed you to stop rushing through them as though they were a mistake.

I placed my hand over the strings to silence them.

Quiet.

I didn’t particularly like that thought either.

Far too available for personal interpretation.

I rested the guitar against the couch instead of returning it to its stand.

Bad sign.

It meant I might pick it up again.

I stood and opened the glass door slightly.

The balcony was secured.

Well, secured enough for an optimistic human and a temporarily supervised cat.

Cold air came in.

Eugène lifted his head.

“No.”

He lowered it again.

Progress.

I stepped onto the balcony with my cup of tea.

The city had the low murmur of an ordinary evening. Cars. Voices in the street. The distant sigh of a bus. The windows of the buildings opposite formed squares of light, each containing its own small version of a life.

I leaned against the railing.

Not too far.

Four floors quickly reminded you of the limits of urban poetry.

Liora’s balcony was dark.

Well, not completely.

A faint light came from inside.

The curtain was partly open.

I looked away.

Immediately.

Too immediately.

Very discreet, and therefore entirely obvious to myself.

I took a sip of tea.

Too hot.

Obviously.

A glass door slid open to my right.

I froze.

Liora appeared on her balcony.

Oversized sweatshirt. Hair tied up any old way. Thick socks. A mug held between her hands.

She stopped when she saw me.

So did I.

Even though I had already been standing still.

“Oh,” she said.

“Hi.”

“Hi!”

Silence.

The city continued.

Indifferent.

Liora approached her railing, then leaned against it carefully, as though her legs were still negotiating terms after the previous day.

“I didn’t know you were outside.”

“Neither did I.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“You didn’t know you were outside?”

“I mean... I’d only just come out.”

“Dangerous phrasing, Aurèl.”

“I know.”

She smiled into her mug.

Not loudly.

Not brightly.

An end-of-day smile.

I hadn’t known she had those.

“How are your legs?” I asked.

“They hate me.”

“Stable relationship?”

“For several years.”

“Consistency is good.”

A faint breath escaped through her nose, then she looked toward the street.

The silence returned.

Different from the one on the landing.

The balcony made us speak more quietly. Made us let the air carry what it could. We were close, but not in the same space. Separated by the railing, the drop, the night, that ridiculous boundary my cat had once regarded as a minor detail.

Liora turned her mug between her hands.

“Was that you?”

My body knew what she meant before I did.

It tensed.

Very slightly.

“What?”

“The guitar.”

I looked down at my mug.

Nothing in the tea could help me.

“Yes.”

One word.

Very small.

Very exposed.

She nodded.

Not triumphant.

Not surprised that she had caught me.

Simply as though one piece had found its place.

“I thought so.”

“You heard me?”

“Yes.”

I looked at the wall between our apartments.

Absurd.

As though the wall might justify itself.

“How much?”

She seemed to think about it.

Which was a mistake on her part.

Or an act of unintentional cruelty.

“Sometimes.”

“What does sometimes mean?”

“Sometimes when I come home late. Sometimes when I’m working in my room. Sometimes when I’m trying to sleep and my father is watching political videos in the living room at what he considers a ‘moderate’ volume.”

“I sometimes hear the political videos.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I haven’t found a way to vote against the sound.”

She smiled.

Then her gaze returned to me, calmer.

“At first, I didn’t know it was you.”

The sentence did something strange.

Not pleasant.

Not unpleasant either.

Like discovering a window that had been open for a long time.

“Who did you think it was?”

“I don’t know. Someone else in the building. Or a television. Or the neighbor downstairs having a much richer inner life than his sneezing suggests.”

I smiled despite myself.

“He sneezes very loudly.”

“It sounds like he’s fighting a curse.”

“I thought I was the only one who heard him.”

“The walls are thin, Aurèl.”

She used my own words with far too much calm.

Fine.

I deserved that.

I took a sip to buy time.

Bad idea.

Still too hot.

I almost coughed.

She noticed.

Obviously.

“You okay?”

“Yes.”

“You drank too quickly.”

“Thank you.”

“That was an observation, not a criticism.”

“The two are often close with you.”

She smiled again.

Then looked toward my studio behind me.

The guitar was probably visible, resting against the couch in the light from the lamp.

Wooden traitor.

“There’s a passage you repeat a lot.”

I didn’t answer.

Impossible.

She had said it simply.

Like saying, You often leave your light on late, or, Your cat sometimes looks into our apartment.

Except it wasn’t the same.

Not at all.

“You always stop in the same place,” she added.

There.

That was worse.

Much worse.

I placed my mug on the inner ledge of the balcony so I wouldn’t hold it too tightly.

“Do you listen?”

The question came out too sharply.

Liora didn’t step back, but her expression changed slightly.

“Not like that.”

“Then like what?”

I heard myself.

I didn’t like my tone.

Not aggressive.

Tense.

The kind of tension that appeared when someone touched a drawer you thought was locked, only it had never had a lock at all.

Liora placed her mug on the railing too, between both hands.

“Like you hear whatever comes through a wall,” she said.

I didn’t answer.

She continued more softly.

“I’m not sitting against the wall with a glass pressed to it, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You almost thought it.”

“I think many absurd things.”

“I’m beginning to learn that.”

The silence returned.

I looked down at the street.

A car drove past too quickly. Someone laughed near the bus stop.

“I hear it because it’s there. The same way you hear me when I come home, or drop something, or close a door too hard.”

“I didn’t mean...”

I stopped.

Because I didn’t know what I meant.

Because she was right.

I had heard her.

For months.

Before her name. Before her face. Before Eugène on their balcony. Before Demitrius. Before the stadium. Before the way she described the 800 meters as something that destroyed honest people.

I had heard her living.

And it had never felt like an intrusion on my part.

Only a consequence of the building.

But the guitar wasn’t a sound like the others.

It didn’t come from a door slamming or a bag falling.

It came from somewhere I didn’t put outside myself.

At least, that was what I had believed.

“I thought you could barely hear it,” I said.

“It isn’t loud.”

“But you can hear it.”

“Yes.”

“Perfect.”

“Aurèl.”

I closed my eyes for a second.

My name in her voice was becoming a deeply irritating mechanism.

“It isn’t bad.”

“I didn’t ask for an opinion.”

“I know.”

“I don’t play so that...”

I stopped.

Tried again.

“I don’t play to be heard.”

“I know.”

I looked at her.

“You can’t know that.”

“Yes, I can.”

“How?”

She lifted one shoulder.

“Because you stop as soon as it almost becomes something.”

I remained still.

The sentence crossed the railing without effort.

It entered.

Settled.

I had nowhere appropriate to put it.

“That’s a very elaborate analysis for someone who isn’t listening.”

“I said I wasn’t listening like that.”

“A convenient distinction.”

“An important distinction.”

She looked down at her mug.

“And then you begin again. Always the same passage. You aren’t doing that to impress anyone.”

“Maybe I’m simply very bad at impressing people.”

“You are.”

I looked at her.

She raised her eyes, a smile at the edge of her mouth.

“Sorry.”

“No. I deserved that.”

“A little.”

The laugh escaped me despite myself.

Brief.

Almost nothing.

It got out before I could stop it.

Liora saw it.

Of course.

She looked pleased, but not victorious.

“It’s pretty,” she said.

I tensed again.

She immediately raised one hand.

“I’m not going to make a grand speech. I’m only saying it’s pretty.”

I didn’t know what to say.

Thank you, probably.

A simple word.

Readily available.

Extremely difficult to use.

“It isn’t finished,” I said.

“I noticed.”

“Obviously.”

“Not in a bad way.”

“Is there a good way for something to be unfinished?”

“Yes.”

She looked out into the night.

“Some things look alive because they haven’t been put in order yet.”

I didn’t move.

This time, she had crossed a line without realizing it.

Or while realizing it.

I didn’t know which was worse.

The sentence sounded far too much like her standing inside my studio, looking at the drawings. Like what she had said about the pages waiting to be seen. About things that remained. That way she looked at objects as though they weren’t simply evidence of disorder.

“Do you have a theory about everything?” I asked.

“No.”

“I’m not convinced.”

“I have impressions about many things. That’s less serious.”

“Not necessarily.”

She turned toward me.

The balcony was dim, but I could see her eyes. The fatigue was still there. The track too, maybe.

Or perhaps I was putting the track everywhere now.

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” she said.

The sentence was simple.

Direct.

It unsettled me more than a joke would have.

“It isn’t...”

I searched.

Again.

Still nothing in the right place.

“Drawing is different,” I finally said.

She didn’t answer.

She waited.

That technique was becoming unacceptable.

“Even when drawing is personal, I can show it. I know what to do with someone looking at it. I can say it’s a study, a project, an experiment, a commission. Anything. I can hide behind professional words.”

I looked at the guitar through the glass door.

“With the guitar, I don’t know.”

The silence that followed didn’t push me.

It only stayed there.

Calm enough that I continued despite myself.

“I don’t need it to be useful. Or good. Or something I can show. It’s just... for when there’s too much noise in my head.”

Liora didn’t smile.

She didn’t call it beautiful.

She didn’t put on the grave expression some people used when they wanted to prove they understood your inner depths after three sentences.

She only looked at the guitar.

Then at me.

“Okay.”

One word.

Dangerous, in the end.

Because it asked for nothing.

It didn’t force me to continue.

It left the thing intact.

I looked away first.

A scooter passed below.

Far too loud.

A mechanical blessing.

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Do you make noise when there’s too much in your head?”

She looked surprised.

Not for long.

Then smiled.

“I run.”

“Yes. Makes sense.”

“Or I talk.”

“I had evidence of that too.”

She gave me a look of false offense.

“I talk a normal amount.”

I looked at her.

She sighed.

“Fine. A lot.”

“With precision.”

“Thank you.”

“That wasn’t necessarily a compliment.”

“I take whatever works for me.”

Obviously.

She picked up her mug, took a sip, then grimaced.

“Cold.”

“You talk for too long.”

“You ask exhausting questions.”

“Isn’t that my line?”

I shook my head.

The balcony seemed to relax slightly.

So did I.

Not completely.

Enough to breathe normally.

Liora leaned on one forearm, turned toward me.

“Do you hear me a lot?”

An expected question.

Terrible anyway.

“No.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“Aurèl.”

“That depends on what you call a lot.”

“See?”

“The walls are thin.”

“Guilty answer.”

“Neighbor answer.”

She watched me with amusement.

I gave in.

A little.

“I hear things.”

“What kind of things?”

“Footsteps. Doors. Bags. Your father.”

“My father can be heard in apartments that don’t even share a wall with ours.”

“His voice is very... structured.”

She laughed.

“Structured?”

“Architectural.”

“He’ll love that.”

“Don’t tell him.”

“I’ll tell him our neighbor thinks his voice carries well.”

“I’ll move.”

“You can’t. Eugène is attached.”

Inside, Eugène chose that exact moment to jump onto the couch with a heavy thud.

We both turned our heads.

He settled in the light without looking at us.

“He knows we’re talking about him,” Liora said.

“He always thinks we’re talking about him.”

“He’s often right.”

“Unfortunately.”

She spent a few seconds looking at my cat through the glass.

Her expression softened in an almost comical way, because she was clearly trying to maintain her dignity despite her allergy and guilty admiration.

“And me?” she asked.

“What?”

“Do you hear me?”

I looked at my mug.

Empty.

No help.

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

“I mean, not the words. Not always.”

She smiled slowly.

“Not always?”

“Very rarely.”

“That’s already different.”

“I heard myself say it.”

“And?”

“Bad choice.”

She laughed, more softly than usual.

“What do you hear?”

I turned the mug between my hands.

The truth was delicate.

Not because it was shameful.

Because it was precise.

“Your rhythm,” I said.

She didn’t answer.

I already regretted it.

Too late.

“I mean, you start recognizing people. Even without words. The way you walk when you’re late isn’t the same as when you come home from practice.”

“I have a way of walking when I’m late?”

“You mostly have a way of being late.”

“Personal attack.”

“Observation.”

“That word is dangerous in your hands.”

“I know.”

She was smiling, but more quietly.

So I continued, very carefully.

“Before I met you, I already knew you spoke quickly when you were in a hurry. That you sometimes came home late. That you dropped things. That you rarely laughed quietly.”

She opened her mouth.

Then closed it.

“I don’t drop that many things.”

I looked at her.

“Okay.”

“Don’t make that face.”

“It’s my normal face.”

“No. That one says, ‘I possess evidence.’”

I lowered my eyes.

This time, I genuinely smiled.

Not for long.

But long enough.

So did Liora.

Then something calmed between us.

Not awkwardness.

Not exactly.

A realization, perhaps.

We hadn’t chosen this.

The building had done it for us, with its walls that were too thin, its pipes, its balconies too close together, its general inability to preserve anyone’s anonymity.

I thought about all the evenings when I had heard her footsteps without knowing her face.

Then all the evenings when she had heard the guitar without knowing it was me.

It was strange.

Like a construction defect that had turned into a kind of connection.

“This is strange,” she said.

I turned toward her.

“What?”

“We could hear each other before we spoke to each other.”

I didn’t answer.

Because yes.

Because she had said it before I could.

Because answering too quickly would turn it into something.

She didn’t seem to expect any more.

“Well, mostly you heard me, apparently, because I drop things.”

“And you heard me because I get stuck on four chords.”

“It isn’t four chords.”

I tensed.

“You counted?”

“No.”

“Liora.”

“I have an auditory memory.”

“Since when?”

“Since it became convenient.”

I let out a laugh.

She smiled into her cold tea.

Then the silence returned.

Denser this time.

Not uncomfortable.

Or not only.

It contained too much information.

The footsteps.

The guitar.

The stadium.

The studio.

The drawings on the table.

Her forgotten hair tie.

The silhouette in my sketchbook.

Eugène crossing a diplomatic border.

The rabbit becoming a teacher of civility.

All of it, inside a few yards of air between two balconies.

Liora looked toward her apartment.

Someone called something from inside.

Her mother, perhaps. Softer than her father’s voice, harder to distinguish.

“I have to go in,” she said.

“Yes.”

She picked up her mug and took one step toward the glass door.

Then stopped.

Obviously.

That moment was becoming recognizable too.

She could leave.

She added something.

“Will you play someday?”

I looked at her.

“I just played.”

“You know what I mean.”

Yes.

Unfortunately.

“No.”

Immediate answer.

Solid.

Almost.

She nodded.

“Okay.”

No pressure.

No sulking.

No dramatic disappointment.

She accepted it too easily.

Which, with her, was never quite proof that she had given up.

“It isn’t really meant to be listened to,” I added.

I didn’t know why I added that.

Maybe to make the no less harsh.

Maybe because it wasn’t entirely true and I needed to hear myself say it.

Liora looked at me.

Her smile appeared very slowly.

Not wide.

Not victorious.

The smile of someone who wasn’t filing the subject away despite her apparent agreement.

“Not now, then.”

I frowned.

“That isn’t what I said.”

“No.”

“Liora.”

“I heard you.”

The phrasing was obviously deliberate.

I stared at her.

Her smile grew slightly.

“Good night, Aurèl.”

“Good night.”

She went inside.

The glass door slid shut behind her.

The neighboring balcony became almost dark again.

I remained outside with my empty mug, in the cold, far longer than necessary.

Inside, Eugène climbed down from the couch and positioned himself in front of the glass door. He stared at me through it as though my presence on the balcony represented a waste of heated space.

I went inside.

Closed the door softly.

The studio welcomed me.

The lamp.

The couch.

The guitar resting against it.

The rabbit beside his corner, motionless.

I placed my mug in the sink.

Then looked at the guitar.

It looked exactly the same.

Pale wood.

Strings.

A small mark near the bridge.

The strap wrapped around the base of the stand.

An ordinary object.

An instrument.

Evidence.

I returned it to its stand.

More carefully than usual.

As though it had been moved without going anywhere.

I had thought the guitar remained inside my space.

I had thought its notes died against the walls, inside the rug, the cushions, Eugène’s vaguely guilty fur.

But part of them passed through.

For weeks, perhaps.

They crossed the wall.

Went to the other side.

Not loudly.

Not clearly.

Enough for a girl who made too much noise to recognize the place where I stopped.

I sat on the couch.

Eugène immediately jumped up beside me, then placed one paw on my thigh.

A rare gesture.

Therefore suspicious.

“You want something.”

He purred.

“Of course.”

I petted him anyway.

Footsteps sounded on the other side of the wall.

Slower.

Then a voice.

Liora.

I couldn’t make out the words.

I didn’t try.

Not really.

The guitar was silent in its corner.

And yet the studio wasn’t entirely silent anymore.

It now contained what I had refused.

Or hadn’t accepted yet.

I hadn’t played something for her.

Not directly.

Not for her.

I had even said no.

A real no.

Well.

A no with a crack in it.

I rested my head against the back of the couch and closed my eyes.

A brief laugh crossed through the wall.

I recognized it.

Without listening.