The Voice Test

Letter 28 of the Book of Forgetting

The town hall clock read 2:07 when Noa Hadar came through the side door, a pair of headphones in one hand and a small recorder in the other. I was at the long table, my stopwatch laid flat, the paper from this morning's board still folded in my pocket.

"Fernando," Noa said. "I've got the setup. Click series, same as before, but she'll say 'now' into the mic instead of tapping."

"You asked Garrin to be the control?"

"He's coming. He said he'd finish his rounds first."

The door opened again. Liesl Kfir came in with her canvas apron still tied, her dark hair pulled back loose. She looked at the headphones, then at me.

"This is the one where I say 'now' for each click," she said.

"Yes," Noa said. "Same track, both the click and your voice. No stopwatches."

Liesl pulled out a chair and sat. "And if my voice is a second late on pure clicks, then it's not the well and not the fog. It's me."

"Or something about how you hear," Noa said. "That's what we're testing."

Garrin Zohar came in, his grey cardigan buttoned to the neck. He nodded to Liesl and took the chair across from her. Noa handed him the headphones.

"You tap this time," Noa said. "Liesl says 'now' out loud. We record both."

She set the recorder on the table between them and pressed a button. A row of lights blinked once.

"Starting. Three seconds between clicks. Listen for each one."

The first click came through the headphones. Garrin tapped the table. Liesl said "now."

Noa watched the recorder's display. She made a mark in her notebook.

The second click. Garrin tapped. Liesl said "now."

Noa made another mark. She looked at me, then back at her page.

The third click. Same pattern.

Noa let the series finish—twelve clicks total—then pressed stop. She played it back through the recorder's small speaker. Click. Tap. "Now." Click. Tap. "Now."

She counted the gaps on the waveform, her finger moving across the screen.

"Garrin's taps land right on the click," she said. "Every time."

"And mine?" Liesl said.

Noa was quiet a moment. She played the track again, slower.

"Your voice is about a second after the click," she said. "On every one. Not just the well. Not just the splash. Pure clicks, no water, no fog."

Liesl sat back. Her hands were still on the table, flat.

"So it's me," she said.

"Or your hearing," Noa said. "But it's not the well. The well was never doing anything."

Garrin took off the headphones. "I'm not a control for hearing, though. I'm a control for tapping. If the test is about how she hears, we'd need someone else who hears the babies."

Dalia Shalev appeared in the doorway. She had a cup of coffee in each hand.

"I heard about this," she said. "Can I listen?"

Noa nodded. Dalia set the cups down and stood behind Liesl.

"Play the track again," Dalia said. "I want to hear her voice against the clicks."

Noa played it. Click. "Now." Click. "Now."

Dalia closed her eyes. "Now I want to try it. Same headphones, same clicks. I'll say 'now' too."

Noa set the recorder to record. She handed Dalia the headphones.

The clicks ran. Dalia said "now" each time. When Noa checked the waveform, her voice landed on the click, like Garrin's tap.

"So it's not everyone," Dalia said. "It's not even everyone who hears the babies. I heard that girl's voice twice—the echo—but my timing is clean."

Liesl picked up one of the coffees. "So I'm the one with the lag. And the second splash. And the babies' words—I don't hear those, do I."

"No," Noa said. "You've said that from the start."

Liesl drank. "Then maybe the lag and the second sound are mine alone. Not the well. Not the fog. Just me."

She set the cup down and stood.

"But I still heard that second splash clear as day," she said. "And it wasn't on any recording. So there's something in my ears that isn't in the air. And I want to know what it is before I trust anything else I hear."

She walked out. Dalia watched her go, then looked at Noa's notebook.

"Mark me down for the next test," Dalia said. "Whatever it is. I want to know if the echo and the lag are the same thing."

Noa wrote it down. The clock read 2:31.