"Bruce Holland Rogers - Something Like the Sound of Wind in the Trees" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rogers Bruce Holland)

Something Like the Sound of Wind in the
Trees
by Bruce Holland Rogers
This story copyright 1994 by Bruce Holland Rogers. This copy was created for Jean Hardy's personal
use. All other rights are reserved. Thank you for honoring the copyright.

Published by Seattle Book Company, www.seattlebook.com.

* * *


1. White Noise
***


I'm not sure. Maybe it was the sound of sand hissing against the windowpane. Maybe it was tires on a
wet road. Maybe it was the sound of paper tearing. Maybe it was the sound of water almost boiling. It
might have been a distant river or the sound you hear in a seashell or a jar: the sound of space contained.
***


2. When the Phone Rings at Three in the Morning
***

You wake up with your heart hammering away, but your jaw and tongue are still numb with sleep. You
say hello, but there's nothing there. Well, there's something. There's the hiss of the wires. You say hello
again. Hello? Hello? But with your tongue so sluggish, it's coming out instead as hollow? hollow? That
sound of an empty line, the hiss and buzz and occasional crackle, is more empty than silence would be.
More absent. You fumble the receiver into its cradle, and a moment later, the phone rings again. Still, no
one. Very insistently, no one.
***


3. The Ovation Lasted a Long Time
***

After the second encore, the musicians had left the stage, returned, gone away again, returned, and exited
for the last time. But the applause did not die down. Finally, one by one, the members of the audience
grew tired of clapping and stood to leave, but the sound of the ovation still hung in the air. Even when the
last person had left the auditorium, the sound persisted like the rush of a waterfall. It remained when the
building manager went home, it had not diminished when he unlocked the place in the morning, and it was
still there even when another ensemble arrived that afternoon to rehearse. Perhaps, the building manager
told these musicians hopefully, the sound would die down by the time of their performance. But it did not.
Their music sounded thin and gauzy through the echo of the previous night's applause. Many in the
audience demanded their money back. When the manager cancelled the next two performances and
hired a team of acoustical engineers, they installed foamrubber baffles and hung strips of carpet from the
walls. These measures seemed to dull the enthusiasm of the applause somewhat, but they could not erase
or absorb the sound completely. The place was now useless as an auditorium. The season was canceled,
the front doors boarded up. For a time the building was vacant. Finally, the owners converted it into a
warehouse. The fork-lift operators complained about the relentless ovation as well as the sloping floors,