A Simple Ringing in the Ears

It simply appeared one morning. He could not shake it from his head nor rub it away with a finger. He knew the name for it. Tinnitus. The persistent ringing, buzzing, hissing, swooshing, whooshing—like an enraged insect molded to the eardrum, a moth beating frantically against a porch light but with even more commotion. His was a hiss, low at the moment, like the noise of radio static.

Noise usually caused it. Soldiers got it from being too close to gunfire. Firemen picked it up from the wail of sirens. Waldrep, though, was sure his came from music. He liked his opera loud and could listen to Pavarotti sing “Nessun Dorma” turned to its highest volume at home or in his car; there was nothing more moving in all the world, as far as he was concerned, than that singer and that aria combined.

With luck, the hissing would be gone in a matter of hours or days at the most.

A week later, it had evolved into a slight squealing before turning back into a hiss, as though the tinnitus were experimenting with what permanent form to take. Waldrep washed out his ear with store-bought solutions, hoping impacted wax caused the noise. He took long walks around his neighborhood and the city park, hoping nature, fresh air, bird song, whatever, might perform a restorative miracle and give him back silence in his left ear. But no such miracle surfaced, of course. His doctor told him that all he could do was learn to live with it and prescribed him Effexor, which Waldrep tossed into the garbage, almost insulted at such indifference.

After a month, however, Waldrep’s tinnitus took on a new, startling, even fascinating permutation. Instead of hissing or squealing or ringing, he could hear music! Melodies familiar and obscure came to him in that left ear when no other sounds were present around him. Some he recognized. Famous stuff, almost clichéd in the ear’s choice of listening material. “Eine kleine Nachtmusik.” “Für Elise.” “Nessun Dorma.” Yes! Pavarotti! The sweet conveyor of his tinnitus in the first place made an encore as though either to taunt Waldrep or to soothe him. Other music he did not know but was intrigued to hear anyway. Some of it was atonal but interesting nevertheless. Waldrep had heard of these tinnitus cases in his research, but they were extremely rare, and he took a kind of odd pleasure, a kind of pride, in knowing he was such a medical anomaly. He also worried less about the tinnitus, almost looking forward to that evening’s “concert.” The only time the music really bothered him was when he tried to sleep and some propulsive piece landed in his ear and would not let him rest. He found himself napping a lot in the afternoons.

But the tinnitus was not satisfied with its own new transformation. It continued to evolve in the most astonishing way of all.

The music ceased, replaced by voices. Human voices! Bits of conversations. Snatches of talk that Waldrep “tuned” into in their midst as they were preceding. Men’s and women’s voices engaged in normal exchanges—humdrum, intimate, esoteric, and enraged. They discussed everything under the sun. They talked of their jobs, their children, their love lives. They cussed, cajoled, cooed, pleaded, laughed, and baby-talked. Had these voices been manufactured by Waldrep’s imagination, or had his brain become some kind of transmitter, picking up the voices which, so far, he could not identify? None of them. He knew none of the people to whom the voices were attached. They were all strangers until . . . Until they began identifying themselves during their conversations—sometimes with first names only that nevertheless sufficed for identification, other times in more official capacities that required a last name. Soon, Waldrep knew that at one time or another he had listened to Mayor Belknap, Joe the Jolly Plumber, Mrs. Heatherly next door, one of the Hollingsworth twins (and maybe both, given the similarity of their voices), and the naughty Patrone couple down the block. Whether the talk was actual or just the figment of his fancy, Waldrep listened to it attentively and with the appetite of a voracious town gossip. He learned of broken romances, business frustrations, personal vendettas, and hopes for happiness. He knew he shouldn’t listen. But how could he help it? He had not asked for this “gift” of other people’s gab. It had just come to him in the night; he could not rid himself of it, try as he might, no more than he could the initial hissing or the music.

***

“He’s hearing voices now,” Waldrep’s wife told his best friend, Stan Norman. Norman laughed.

“He has to be different, doesn’t he?” Norman replied. “Can’t have regular ringing in his ears like any other Tom, Dick, or Harry with tinnitus. Has to hear voices.” He laughed again.

Lyda reached for her bra and panties. She left the bed for an adjacent chair and lit a cigarette.

Norman rose up some in the bed on his elbow. “You think he’s making it up to get attention?”

Lyda let loose a long ribbon of smoke into the air. “How should I know? Only the person with the tinnitus can hear things. So I can’t exactly call him a liar.”

“He always was a hypochondriac, and he always had to be sicker than the next fellow. I remember we got chicken pox at the same time as boys. He swore he had more spots than I did!” He chuckled. Lyda let out a big sigh, a kind of wordless summing-up of the frustrations of her married life.

“It’s time. I can hear it in your voice and see it in your face. Time to cut loose and fly free.” Norman held out his arms to accept her back into bed.

Lyda stubbed out her cigarette. “I can’t divorce him. On what grounds?”

Norman half-smiled. “Go ahead and tell him about us.”

This time she laughed. “He’d stay just to spite the two of us. I know him.” She paused. “No. With a divorce, I’d only get half of what he has. And I’m a greedy girl,” she went on as she rose and returned to Norman’s embrace. “I want the whole thing.”

***

Waldrep took advantage of his wife’s absence to enjoy a nap at a time when the voices were not so vociferous. She was at a friend’s house helping the woman pick out patterns for wallpaper. He lay down on the brocaded couch in the den and shut his eyes. But the voices would not permit sleep. Actually, he had begun to hear music again in the last couple of days, but only intermittently. Mainly he heard people talking, but the tones had diminished some, so he must strain at times to get the gist of the conversation.

Then a woman’s voice came through softly.

“Leave it to me to be married to a freak who hears voices,” she said, sounding awfully familiar.

A man spoke. “Too bad we can’t put him in a freak show. Make some money off him.”

Then followed what sounded like a long, passionate kiss.

He knew them. They sounded like . . .

Lyda!

Stan!

He began to sweat.

He would swear it was them, his wife and closest friend, talking in a mocking way about him. He strained to hear more of what they were saying, but “Rite of Spring” drowned them out.

An hour later, Lyda walked through the front door. Waldrep eyed his wife with suspicion. She sighed before speaking.

“Well, that was a waste of an afternoon. Tracey couldn’t make up her mind to save her life.” Waldrep did not respond. She pursed her lips sympathetically and said, “The tinnitus bothering you? Of course it is. Voices today? Or music? Poor baby.” She turned toward the kitchen. “I’ll make you a nice supper. That’ll help, I bet.”

***

In time, Waldrep’s mind cleared of all noises except the sounds of his wife’s and his best friend’s voices joined in conversation.

“I married him,” Lyda told Stan, “because he was high up in the company—a real company man—and I was a lowly secretary. He was a bachelor and famous as a pinchpenny, so I knew he had money, lots of money. That’s a very attractive prospect for a girl looking to get out of a rut, you know?”

“I have money, Lyda,” Norman replied. “I’d rain you with it.”

“He’s not a bad man, just dull and peculiar with his classical music. That stuff drives me mad, turned up so loud. Especially Pavarotti!” There was silence. “But you, you’re the kind of man every girl should end up with. You’re the real thing.”

“To hell with divorce, Lyda. Let’s just go. Make a life for ourselves far away. Hell, the other side of the world. Just vanish.”

“I don’t know.”

“Why?”

“Living with him the last ten years, I feel a kind of obligation to him. At least some sympathy. We’ve just worn each other out, except he doesn’t know it yet. And I know he won’t give me a divorce.”

“Divorce? Hell, at this point, I’m ready to kill the miserable SOB.”

There was laughter and then silence followed by a Chopin nocturne. Waldrep turned over onto his back, realizing for the first time without doubt that his marriage was a sham and that he was being lied to by the two people he trusted most.

In the days to come, all of this, the unceasing, changing tinnitus and the revelations of adultery worked a disastrous effect upon Waldrep’s mental state. There’d be no cure for the tinnitus. He would live with that forever. His marriage, the one rock upon which he thought he could rest, was shattered. Nothing remained except deep, dark despair. He came to a decision: “I will kill myself and let Lyda and Stan pick up the bloody remnants.” He had a .38 upstairs, locked away in a drawer, fully loaded. It would take the back of his head off nicely. He spent the next few days contemplating his own demise and seemed satisfied by the prospect. Then a streak of reason showed through the darkness: if he died, Lyda would be free to remarry; she would have his retirement pension plus all his savings. She and Norman would emerge from the tragedy, unscathed, go off together in the moneyed sunset of connubial bliss. He could not have it, would not have it. By God, he would have some satisfaction from what had become a farce of a life. He would turn the weapon elsewhere. Meanwhile, Lyda, whom he now despised, flitted about him in fake wifely fashion, kissing, barely, the top of his head and inquiring, oh so insincerely, about the state of his hearing.

***

“I think we should have Stan to dinner one night,” Waldrep told Lyda two days later over coffee. “Don’t you?”

“Any particular reason, Ralph?” Lyda asked.

“He’s my best friend. Yet I hardly get to see him these days. We talk on the phone once in a while, but that’s it. And I imagine he gets tired of eating his meals alone, being a bachelor and all. I imagine he would like your cooking very much.” He watched her face, which remained impassive.

Waldrep could hear some reluctance in his former friend’s voice when he called, and it pleased him. He wanted to produce as much discomfort as he could before the end.

***

Lyda prepared a fine meal, worthy of the condemned. Lyda and Norman appeared very uncomfortable around each other.  The talk was small. Waldrep attempted to embellish it by discussing that upcoming season of the Met Opera and enumerating which performances he would most like to attend, although he doubted he would make it to any of them, given his condition and all. Lyda and Norman nodded placidly, dutifully. Lyda attempted a joke by telling him that he could always listen to the concerts in his head. It was poorly-made humor and only seemed to agitate Waldrep further, giving further impetus to that night’s plan. Lyda went for coffee. When she returned, Waldrep brought out the gun and pointed it at his two new enemies. Lyda dropped the coffee tray, making a tremendous crash.

“Ralph!”

“What in the world, Ralph?” Norman wanted to know, half-smiling. “Is this some kind of joke?”

“Ralph, that thing is loaded! Put it down now! This isn’t funny.”

“I know about the two of you,” Waldrep replied simply.

“About what?” Lyda asked plaintively.

“Your little thing together.”

“There’s nothing between Stan and me.”

Norman smiled. “Where did you come up with that nonsense, Ralph?”

Waldrep pointed to his head. “I heard all your sweet talk, your talk of contempt for me.”

“Ralph, you’re sick.  You’re imagining all this. I begged you to keep taking the anxiety medicine, but you refused, saying you would deal with the noise in your own way. But you haven’t dealt with it. We’ll find a way. This isn’t the way!”

“I loved you, Lyda. You were the one good thing that ever happened to me. And I simply imagined the whole thing. Fooled myself.” He aimed the gun first at Norman. At the exact same moment, the opening bars of Beethoven’s 5th struck his skull like hammer blows: DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH!  He winced. The gun tilted ceiling-ward. Norman left his seat and tackled Waldrep to the floor. The gun scurried out of reach. Norman held Waldrep down until he felt the other man drained of fighting energy. Then he let him go and went over to Lyda. He took her into his arms.

She screamed. “He’s got the gun! Oh, Stan!”

Norman turned in time to be met with the first bullet. Others followed. Lyda ricocheted off the dining room wall and fell. Norman, a former college linebacker, took longer to collapse. Waldrep then stood from the floor. He saw his bloodied wife crumpled in a corner, still so very pretty even in ignominious death, and her lover lying near her. But Norman moved. He had not yet died and he had a gun of his own. He aimed it at the startled Waldrep and fired twice. Fire blossomed in Waldrep’s chest and stomach, an exquisite burning, so good, so welcome, he had to sit down at the table to enjoy it. Darkness began a slow descent around him. He asked for one last thing before he went, and he got it. The great tenor singing the great aria from Tosca. It had never sounded richer, more heart-piercing than it did then, and soon all the music he ever loved gathered in his head into a melodic ball and drowned out any pain, any remorse, any regret.

And then the curtain fell.