Translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman.
25.
Amid the background noise of the bus home, I tried to isolate the tires鈥 screech, the engine鈥檚 whine, the cars鈥 honking, the voices, the shrill cries. I narrowed my focus on these irregular breaks, these gaps in meaning. The shrill barrages met thrumming. Hacking and slashing my way through, I cleared so much around a rhythmic sound pattern that I deduced had to be a conversation between two people. Then my ear zeroed in on this particular subspace. The thrumming subsided and all that remained was the sharp staccato that alternated with throatier tonal ranges. I鈥檇 been told that high tones made it pos颅sible to catch consonants, that they gave words heft, propped them up like stakes that the vowels climbed up. The tone, the singsong rhythm led me to assume a woman鈥檚 voice. Guessing the age was the second step. It wasn鈥檛 a teen鈥檚 voice; it struck me as too level. The thrumming started up again; a chimney pipe on a stormy night was clearly responding to this woman in her golden years. I was leaning toward short, two-颅syllable words punctuated with pauses. A small sharp cry escaped her mouth, the bus鈥檚 wheels squealed, and I turned to see them head off: a fifty something woman accompanying an old, wizened man. My guess had been spot-on. I could get to like this game. I鈥檇 learned how to dial my focus in and out, how to make myself at home in the city鈥檚 soundscape.
Anna called me. I felt too cowardly to pick up; being alone was easier. I did play her rambling message where she was telling me that she鈥檇 noticed she was only dreaming of two颅-syllable words, that all the other words had disappeared. She felt like her soul was shriveling up. I stopped listening. That image alone was enough to remind me of what I was losing, this feeling I couldn鈥檛 shake that my ears were now a choke point for the soundtrack of my life. Yes, Anna, my soul felt like a shriveled-up thing floating in formaldehyde.
I suddenly recalled Victor Hugo鈥檚 words: 鈥淲hat matters deafness of the ear, when the mind hears? The one true deafness, the incurable deafness, is that of the mind.鈥 Some help he and Anna were!
That night, in the darkness of silence, the soldier and the dog were at the foot of the bed. Fear had me sitting bolt upright, staring at the horizon traced by our triad of eyes and mouths wide open in the night.
Only reading, only seeing the ink-black words intact in my hands, could assuage the dread of disappearing.
30.
Who was I? Someone uprooted from language. When Anna was in her phase of throwing out 鈥补谤谤颈惫别诲别谤肠颈鈥 and 鈥baci鈥 and 鈥tutto bene鈥 left and right, showing off her love of Italy due to some vague connection to the country on her mother鈥檚 side and some vague memories of Italian lessons鈥擨 figured she was mainly summoning up fantasies of a sun-drenched Italy, villages buckling under the summer heat, with distant cadences of mourners wailing at length鈥攁nd she was telling me, her hand over her heart, 鈥淚 miss Italian,鈥 I got the feeling that I could just as easily say in turn that I missed the French language.
I鈥檇 never experienced the comfort of hearing a familiar language鈥檚 soft rumble within a crowd, the warmth of feeling at home amid strangers. On the street, in the hubbub, the French language struck me more as the murmuring of factory颅-farmed chickens. When I was young, I must have been a plucked chick, quivering among the other babies with mouths dribbling language like drool.
I didn鈥檛 have any memory of that.
Well, I didn鈥檛 have any memory of words, of intonations, before my hearing aid, meaning before I was five. Did the world before then simply not have any acoustic contours? As I thought about it, I realized that I didn鈥檛 have any memories at all.
Had I needed sound to activate memories?
33.
In the speech therapist鈥檚 waiting room, magazines with garish covers faced off on the table: For the Deaf, All Ears, Hearing Research, Silence & Sound, the most heavily leafed-through ones standing strong at the center of the waiting room鈥檚 side table. I picked up Hearing Research, at the top of the pile, a scientific journal that seemed to have articles about tinnitus and genetic disorders that resulted in sudden loss of hearing. It also had some touching accounts of teenagers and older people who urged readers to choose their treatment carefully and not to be afraid to seek support.
I quickly set it aside and picked up the magazine that was, sure enough, For the Deaf, but as I dug in I felt eyes on me. When I looked up, I saw a thirty-something sitting across from me on the other side of Silence & Sound鈥斅璉 hadn鈥檛 heard him arrive. He looked away immediately. I observed him: Did he have an implant? A hearing aid? One or two? His mass of blond curls ensured that nothing was visible. I squinted to activate my zoom, hoping for some movement on his part, but he stayed stock still, his eyes fixed on the ground between his feet, then it was his turn to look up as I dropped my gaze and busied myself with 鈥淒eaf Agriculture Festival at the Filleti猫res Goat Farm鈥 while staying alert to what I could sense: the heat of his stare on my carefully combed hair.
Footsteps entered my field of view. I stood up and said 鈥渉ello鈥 to a slim, hunched颅-over young mother whose arms held a baby with an implant. The blond man didn鈥檛 wave; he kept on staring at the ground between his feet. I sensed his curiosity about me evaporate. All the tension was gone, and he didn鈥檛 look up again, as if he鈥檇 found what he was looking for. He must have figured out where I fell on the deafness scale. I wanted to strike up a conversation with him but he ignored me, until the speech therapist opened the door. A sudden breeze ruffled every颅one鈥檚 hair and I saw a glimmer. Maybe the cord of his hearing aid? When the doctor waved to him, he didn鈥檛 respond, simply smiled embarrassedly, his cheeks reddening, then got up as briskly as an insect and gave me a sidelong glance before the door closed on his curly hair full of secrets.
I stayed put, settling into my unease. I鈥檇 sensed in the man the same shyness and the same avoidant gestures that I sometimes had with hearing people, and I realized that this visible discomfort was something I could provoke in other hard-of-颅hearing people. So I was less deaf than him鈥攈ad he heard it in my voice? I was looking for someone like me, we all were, but it wasn鈥檛 him and it wasn鈥檛 me.
The newborn鈥檚 implant seemed too big for such a frail ear and the drain plug jammed in the skull protruded from the peach-fuzz layer of downy hair. This baby鈥檚 fate was playing out there: a life shaped in part with this implant, nothing like me, nothing like that man. This baby would grow up to be someone with an implant, a boy whose trajectory would be the opposite of mine: he was entering sound right as I was entering silence.
Ad猫le Rosenfeld聽lives in Paris where she runs writing workshops.聽Jellyfish Have No Ears was a finalist for the 2023 Prix Goncourt聽for a first novel.
Jeffrey Zuckerman is an award-winning translator of French writers, including Jean Genet, Herv茅 Guibert, and Ananda Devi. He lives in New York.
This excerpt from was published with the permission of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Ad猫le Rosenfeld copyright 漏 2022 by Editions Grasset and Fasquelle. English language translation copyright 漏 2024 by Jeffrey Zuckerman.
Photo Ad猫le Rosenfeld 漏 JFPAGA. Photo Jeffrey Zuckerman 漏 Julia Sanches.
Published on August 15, 2024.
