She Sells Silence in Her Sad Shop

There was a shop down the High Street that sold silence. All the usual types, and more. That was Susan’s Shop of Silence. By the butchers.

I used to wander down there on Saturday afternoons and look in the window – not that I could afford anything. It was an expensive shop. And I was anxious about going inside – scared she might chase me out because she’d know I couldn’t afford anything and she would think I was a shoplifter.

She was a young slim woman, very elegant and tasteful, with her blonde hair in a bob, and immaculate in a blue dress that caressed her like the sky or a gentle sea. She could be a bit dreamy, I guess. I would look in the window and see her sitting in a chair staring into space. Day-dreaming. Listening to the silence.

Sometimes I’d see her on the phone. I couldn’t hear what was being said but I guessed she was doing some deal to buy some new silence from somewhere. Spanish silence, perhaps, or Arctic silence, or maybe some silence that was recorded at the bottom of the Caribbean. Maybe silence from the present, maybe silence from the past.

So I would be outside in the street, with the noise and the traffic and the kids shouting at each other for a hot chip, and the people coming home from work and the people going to work and an aeroplane hanging low in the sky and dogs chasing each other and barking and all that stuff, and she would be inside with her mouth opening and closing as she tried to either buy, or sell, some recording of silence.

The first time I plucked up the courage to go inside the shop I overheard her on the phone. Again, like I said, I was nervous about going in but I desperately needed to find out what the silence was all about.

The door was heavy, like it was solid oak and the hinge was stiff, like it was deliberately made that way, maybe to discourage kids like me from getting a look-in as to what was going on.

As I closed the door behind me she involuntarily glanced over at me but she was too busy on the call to give me much attention.

She said to the caller, ’I’ll have to talk to my American dealer about that. He might be able to get hold of some American sixties silence, is that what you’re after? All peace and love – I think he said it was recorded in a field somewhere outside San Francisco, about ’67 or ’68. It’s the real thing, it’s not an official copy and it’s not a bootleg. It’ll cost you, though. Obviously. With being original.’

I looked at the racks. I was self-conscious and awkward. Wanted to keep my back to her so that we couldn’t make eye contact.

There were all these reel to reel tapes stored in these white boxes. Hundreds of them. I looked at the one closest to me. The label was handwritten, I just assumed it was her writing, all loopy and delicate, in a blue fountain pen I guess, and it read, ’Eiffel Tower silence – March 1973 – high above the city – at midnight – with the lights of the streets shining with no noise to distract.’

I wanted to touch the box. Take it off the shelf. Open it. Look at the reel-to-reel tape and feel a confirmation in looking at it that the silence was embedded in the magnetic spool.

It felt like there was something holy in that box – well, in all of them. Something holy, otherworldly, special, something above me and bigger than me inside each box. All these silences from around the world and from different years. Goldmine.

I overheard her again. She said, ’Well, Mr Bourne, I was speaking to my Japanese dealer yesterday and he said he’s trying to track down some Moon silence. How about that? Yes, that’s what I said, the Moon. Obviously we’re talking very rare. Very hard to come by. There were some bootlegs of this floating about a few months ago but they were proved to be fake.’

This made me break out into a sweat.

I’d heard about this years ago. There was a rumour that when one of the Apollo missions reached the Moon, the astronauts recorded the silence on the surface.

Only a few minutes, but it was enough.

Lots of people dismissed this out of hand and said it never happened, but others – particularly some of the collectors in London, in Knightsbridge - they claimed they had it on good authority that the tape did exist.

It was hard to know who to believe. I’d have thought that the tape would be kept deep in some vault in the NASA archives, but then again I’d read a rumour in the trade magazine, Silence is Golden, that someone – an engineer working on a contract – had actually managed to switch the Moon tape with their own tape of some silence recorded on a New Jersey beach on a winter’s afternoon, and that the original Moon tape was free, out of the vault and up for grabs for whoever could afford it.

And here she was, this Susan, in her shop on my High Street, claiming to be able to get her hands on it.

I couldn’t believe it.

Even just a bootleg tape of the Moon silence would be hugely expensive.

She finished off the call, and I could hear her put the phone down. There was a grandfather clock in the corner ticking ominously away and I could feel her eyes on my back.

’Hi,’ she asked. ’Can I help you?’

She sounded very posh, very cultured. She had one of those warm and detailed voices where you are always sure of each word the person is saying. One of those people who never seem to mumble or stumble over their words.

But in this moment I wasn’t sure how to read her tone. Was she being genuinely friendly, or was she gently mocking my inability to buy anything in the shop?

I turned around, and my mouth was dry.

She got up, smiled sweetly and walked from around her desk. She moved gracefully and slowly on her long legs, like she glad to be alive.

’We’ve had some new arrivals today,’ she said. She picked up one of the white boxes on a table by the window, and without any fuss opened it up and took out a reel. The huge spool of tape was looking back at me – it was the first reel of silence I had ever seen in my life.

If it had been me opening the box I would have done it slowly, full of humility, but she did it so quickly and effortlessly you could tell that she was used to dealing with silence. She was obviously some expert who had dealt with thousands of boxes.

I thought I was going to pass out with the excitement. The reel of tape looked back at me in her delicate hands, laughing at me, gloating over its own worth.

’This is German silence,’ she said. ’You want to hear some?’

I couldn’t believe it.

She tilted her head to one side, invitingly, smilingly, with one corner of her mouth higher than the other. Her eyes were a beautiful calm blue.

’Yes,’ I stumbled.

I still couldn’t believe it. I’d dreamt about this moment but never really thought it would happen.

I was actually going to hear some silence.

She walked elegantly on her high heels over to a large reel-to-reel machine, put the spool on and threaded the tape through the playback heads. Her hands were very graceful and her fingernails were painted a respectable red.

There were a few black leather armchairs, looking very expensive and probably laid out for connoisseurs, and I took the courage and sat down on the nearest one, feeling like I was sitting somewhere that I shouldn’t. Almost conning myself that I was this hot shot who spent his time travelling the world in order to buy and sell silence.

She pressed the play button, and the two reels started to move quickly but gracefully as they fed the tape from one reel to the other.

She turned the volume up and then it all started to happen.

The silence filled the shop.

It was incredible.

You couldn’t hear a thing.

I couldn’t hear the grandfather clock anymore, or any of the cars outside, or the people, or the birds or aeroplanes or anything.

It’s hard to describe. It was a bit like being in a vacuum. There was just this nothingness, this void.

It was like there was nothing going on, nothing to hear.

There were no objects around you, no people, no activity, just nothing, just this silence.

She stopped the tape after about thirty seconds – it seemed a lot longer – and I had to force myself to breathe slowly as the sounds of the clock, and street outside, the town outside, the world outside, came back into the room.

She was perched on the table beside the tape player. I sensed she was smiling to herself, like she enjoyed playing with me.

’When’s it from?’ I asked.

’Can’t you tell?’ she said. ’Listen to it again.’

She pressed the button and the same thing happened.

The silence hit me like a roar this time, and I was glad I was sitting down to be able to take the force of it. I closed my eyes and let it wash over me, and wash into me, like it was a water, a wave, an ocean that could seep into my brain and elevate my mind.

And in my mind, the thoughts and sensations that were whirling around gradually slowed down, and pieces of this and that which were too hard to pin down started to gather together, to take shape and form and arrange themselves into new forms. And I could hear a phrase in the distance in my mind, a small phrase at first, and as I concentrated on it the phrase got gently louder and clearer.

And the phrase was, ’There are no guns firing. And no men screaming.’

She switched the tape off again and I opened my eyes, trying hard to adjust myself as the sounds of the world around me flooded back into me.

’Have you got it yet?’ she asked politely.

’It’s from the Somme, isn’t it?’ I said slowly, piecing together the sensations inside me.

’Very good,’ she said, obviously impressed. ’Yes. The Somme. After 1918. After the ceasefire. It’s a good recording, isn’t it? Can you hear how there are no guns firing? And can you hear how there are no men screaming?’

I nodded. Glad that I had got it right.

’No dying,’ she said. ’No killing, no fighting, no fear, no pain – the war is over. No more nightmare. It’s the aftermath. It’s beautiful.’

’Yes,’ I said. ’It’s wonderful. I could really hear that.’

She stood up and pressed the rewind button. The tape we had heard began rewinding back onto its original reel.

’Not only is it a good recording, it’s a decent length as well,’ she said over her shoulder. ’Goes on for over an hour. You can really get into it. Takes you out of yourself, takes you out of your home, takes you out of your street, takes you out of the present and right back to 1918, and you can feel all that relief. All that huge release.’

The tape collected onto the original spool and she switched it off. She turned around and smiled, folding her arms in front of her and hunching her shoulders up with the joy of it all. ’It’s gorgeous, isn’t it? Exquisite.’

I felt foolishly brave and said, ’How much does it cost?’

She laughed to herself then, like I was a fool asking for something I couldn’t afford.

[end of extract]

Copyright © Paul Badger 2008

~ by Paul Badger on 25 April, 2008.