THE TYRANNY OF NOISE
Meyer, Ernest L.
The Tyranny Of Noise By ERNEST L. MEYER: Westport, Conn. THE SHACK in which I sleep is in the woods some hundred yards from the main house and cut off from most of its domestic din. After the...
...I made the mistake of beginning to count the number of calls: once, to my amazement, tallying 155 distinct four-noted flutings with but a two-second intermission between each call...
...Fancy...
...I recall the thrill I experienced...
...Only an illusion, however, for even in the woods the "silence" is compounded of an infinite number of tiny noises: the rasping of a dry, twirling leaf on the roof, the rustle of a field-mouse prowling somewhere inside the gnawed baseboards of the shack, the hesitant fiddling of the first cricket at sunup, a soloist in the dawn symphony of birds...
...of the gasoline pump...
...My dear fellow," he said, "I have met many odd cases of neurosis but yours is the most balmy...
...A Wreck Goes To The Country "But I've got only a tiny kitchenette, hang it...
...Not fatal, but wearing on the...
...I'd hear the clatter of the metallic-nozzle in the tank...
...He was wearing a bathrobe over his pajamas...
...Five . . six . . seven . . I'd clench my fist in a desperate hope...
...A sort of tonal phobia, not fatal, but insomnia is beginning to tell on you...
...Twelve...
...Twelve...
...Only 10 trifling, agonizing gallons...
...We tried desperately to sleep...
...But suddenly we both sat upright, straining our ears...
...We squeezed into the cot...
...Now I've got it," he cried, seizing my arm...
...Got what...
...The whippoorwill that I hear these mornings can bust its windpipe, for all I care...
...On the following mornings I was tempted to continue the count through wakeful, tossing moments in bed, hoping that some super-whippoorwill would break the record...
...It required the last resources of self-control, my ears muffled in the pillow, to save me from madness...
...My sleep was ruined...
...I roared...
...We did a little war dance of joy...
...I've been sleepless and in agony for an hour...
...After the ceaseless brawl of the City, I enjoy here at least an illusion of silence...
...He was disheveled...
...Ting...
...I advise that you try sleeping in the kitchen...
...All of these sounds are endurable, even soothing to ears long battered by the medley of Manhattan...
...We were both waiting, waiting, waiting—for a miraculous, heroic thirteen...
...And I found myself waiting, like you, for a triumphant twelve...
...But we couldn't...
...That is the early morning call of the whippoorwill, musical, cheerful, but maddening in its almost endless iteration...
...The Stroke Of Twelve My resolution was fortified by a weird experience I once had in the City...
...I determined on research, to help you...
...I advise that you try sleeping in the back kitchen for awhile...
...Ting . . Ting . . Ting!' Only four gallons...
...Limp, perspiring, I'd fall back on my pillow...
...Ting...
...Eight . . nine . . ten...
...The light of a great hope would dawn on me...
...And then: "Ting...
...Next door to our flat was a filling station, and every time the attendant filled up the tank of a car he turned the crank of the gasoline pump, and a bell rang for each gallon...
...I opened, and confronted my good neighbor...
...Next month I moved to the country, a wreck...
...Ting . . ting . . ting . ." clicked the gasoline pump next door...
...I could hear him chuckling as he left and walked to his own flat...
...One . . two . . three . . four...
...His eyes were wild...
...Twelve gallons...
...As for my old neighbor, I hear that he has taken himself and his tonal phobia to a remote hideaway in the silent spaces near Baffin Bay...
...We embraced each other warmly...
...He heard my story with much amusement and a little concern...
...I began to listen, too, to the gasoline pump...
...Instantly I'd be wide awake...
...Your story amused me—ah what a fool I was...
...nerves...
...Then sleep here with me...
...I'd lift myself on the pillow, cocking my ear at the open window...
...Will the bell ring twelve...
...It's a sort of tonal phobia," I said...
...Then there was a six, and then an eight...
...And after that night I waited for the stroke of 12 as a prisoner in the death cell waits for the fatal midnight chimes of the warden's clock...
...This was in the halcyon days before gasoline rationing...
...It would not have been so bad if the- bell registered always the same amount, but sometimes the purchasers took two, three, five, or eight gallons—and on one gala occasion the bell struck triumphant noon...
...He's a queer bird...
...I will not count its calls, knowing now the tyranny of noise...
...I wonder," said my neighbor...
...Ting . . . ting . . . ting . . . ting . . ting . . ting . . ting...
...I used to lie awake in the long stretches of the night listening to the "Ting...
...We leaped out of the cot and flung open the window...
...We'd heard the sound of a car...
...You gave it to me...
...Ting...
...About midnight, while I was sleeping fitfully on a cot in the kitchen, I was awakened by a thump on the door...
...Yet there is one sound that for a time threatened to reduce my nerves to rasping shreds...
...Staying awake to listen to a gasoline pump strike twelve...
...So do I," I said...
...The gasoline bell jinx," he said hollowly...
...A Tonal Phobia Things grew to such a desperate pass that I consulted a neighbor, a very learned person who lived in the same house...
...Then we went back to bed and tried to sleep...
...howled my friend...
...On the point of dozing off, I'd hear the familiar chug of an auto puffing up the incline to the filling station...
Vol. 8 • August 1944 • No. 32
