also having trouble breathing, and his stomach began to churn. Just as he was about to vomit, though, he and the dog were suddenly showered with cold water and he heard the thud of metal hitting soft flesh. He looked up, and there was Gazelle. Next to Kiku, the mother dog cowered on crushed forelegs, a pale red liquid trickling from her jaw. At the sight of Gazelle grinning merrily and raising the pole to strike again, Kiku closed his eyes and yelled:
“No! Don’t kill the mother!”
*
Hashi named the puppy Milk. As for Kiku, the mother’s teeth had torn gaping holes in his neck, which took a long time to heal. The hardest part was that the sores had to be kept dry so they wouldn’t get infected; Kiku was a cloud of gauze for weeks. Eventually, though, new skin grew to fill in the gouges, and as Kiku healed, Hashi too seemed to return to the world of the living. He had apparently memorized almost every sound the television had to offer without finding the one he’d been looking for.
“You know, I never really thought what we heard back at that hospital could have come from the TV. TV sounds are all the same; there’s no difference between the sound of the wind in Northern Ireland and the wind on a Polynesian island. You can’t tell anything unless the air vibrations are produced directly. On TV, the original vibrations in the air pass through a microphone to tape, then from the tape they’re converted to electrical waves; somewhere in there the real sound dies and all you’ve got left is electricity. The sound they played for us was probably reproduced somehow, but it was more than just taped; there was something special about it. As far as I can tell, it must’ve been a mixture of natural sound, something fixed up electronically, and some kind of electronic instrument. There’s nothing like that on TV. All you get on TV is pigs squealing.”
Having done nothing for three months but listen to sounds, Hashi’s hearing had become extremely acute. He had heard all kinds of things: the wind blowing in the garden, leaves rustling, metals, glass, animals, musical instruments, and human beings—everything had its own distinctive sound, and Hashi could distinguish them all from the tiniest sample. As a condition for going back to school, he demanded a tape recorder, and with Kiku as guinea pig, he began to experiment with mixing sounds together. He had learned two important things about the soothingsound he was searching for: one, that it had to be indirect, refracted or muffled in some way; and two, that the sound had to give the impression that it would continue forever. His test subject, Kiku, found two most comforting: the sound of someone practicing the piano heard faintly from an unknown direction, and the sound of gentle rain outside a window, punctuated by drops falling on the casement.
Nothing changed when Hashi went back to school; he was constantly rooting out new noises, new types of music. He also began to study the fundamentals of musical scales, rhythm, and harmony. Then one day, by chance, he stumbled on a tune that was somehow similar to the sound they had heard at the hospital. He knew the tune from recordings, but it hadn’t clicked until he happened to pick up an old music box in the deserted town. A spring was broken in the music box, so the mechanism had to be pushed around by hand, but as Hashi turned the rough surface against the vibrating bars, it came to him: this was nearly it. Even Milk stopped barking and sat wagging his tail happily. The tune was tantalizing but still not quite right; it only made him more determined to find the real sound, even if it took his whole life, but at least now, thanks to the music box, he had a name to call it: Träumerei.
In the summer of the year they turned fifteen, Kiku and Hashi took Milk to the beach almost every day. Milk loved anything that had to do with water. From the time he was a puppy, he would plant his paws in his water dish, more
“No! Don’t kill the mother!”
*
Hashi named the puppy Milk. As for Kiku, the mother’s teeth had torn gaping holes in his neck, which took a long time to heal. The hardest part was that the sores had to be kept dry so they wouldn’t get infected; Kiku was a cloud of gauze for weeks. Eventually, though, new skin grew to fill in the gouges, and as Kiku healed, Hashi too seemed to return to the world of the living. He had apparently memorized almost every sound the television had to offer without finding the one he’d been looking for.
“You know, I never really thought what we heard back at that hospital could have come from the TV. TV sounds are all the same; there’s no difference between the sound of the wind in Northern Ireland and the wind on a Polynesian island. You can’t tell anything unless the air vibrations are produced directly. On TV, the original vibrations in the air pass through a microphone to tape, then from the tape they’re converted to electrical waves; somewhere in there the real sound dies and all you’ve got left is electricity. The sound they played for us was probably reproduced somehow, but it was more than just taped; there was something special about it. As far as I can tell, it must’ve been a mixture of natural sound, something fixed up electronically, and some kind of electronic instrument. There’s nothing like that on TV. All you get on TV is pigs squealing.”
Having done nothing for three months but listen to sounds, Hashi’s hearing had become extremely acute. He had heard all kinds of things: the wind blowing in the garden, leaves rustling, metals, glass, animals, musical instruments, and human beings—everything had its own distinctive sound, and Hashi could distinguish them all from the tiniest sample. As a condition for going back to school, he demanded a tape recorder, and with Kiku as guinea pig, he began to experiment with mixing sounds together. He had learned two important things about the soothingsound he was searching for: one, that it had to be indirect, refracted or muffled in some way; and two, that the sound had to give the impression that it would continue forever. His test subject, Kiku, found two most comforting: the sound of someone practicing the piano heard faintly from an unknown direction, and the sound of gentle rain outside a window, punctuated by drops falling on the casement.
Nothing changed when Hashi went back to school; he was constantly rooting out new noises, new types of music. He also began to study the fundamentals of musical scales, rhythm, and harmony. Then one day, by chance, he stumbled on a tune that was somehow similar to the sound they had heard at the hospital. He knew the tune from recordings, but it hadn’t clicked until he happened to pick up an old music box in the deserted town. A spring was broken in the music box, so the mechanism had to be pushed around by hand, but as Hashi turned the rough surface against the vibrating bars, it came to him: this was nearly it. Even Milk stopped barking and sat wagging his tail happily. The tune was tantalizing but still not quite right; it only made him more determined to find the real sound, even if it took his whole life, but at least now, thanks to the music box, he had a name to call it: Träumerei.
In the summer of the year they turned fifteen, Kiku and Hashi took Milk to the beach almost every day. Milk loved anything that had to do with water. From the time he was a puppy, he would plant his paws in his water dish, more
Similar Books
