Claire de Lune
I can easily remember a Saturday before the accident. A gathering of friends who were really more than friends, who would trade health and wealth and love for one another without a second thought. A Saturday like a hundred other Saturdays before it, in other words.
Raina sat on the piano bench beside Noel, eyes closed and swaying along with Claude Debussy’s Clair de Lune. I didn’t know Debussy from Mozart or Schumann or Chaimovich — classical music never interested me on a deeper level than my own ears — but I could identify Clair de Lune from a single bar, because Noel would play it back-to-back-to-back. It was his singular favorite. It’s a tune that’s happy and sad, relaxed and worried, naive and self-aware all at the same time, he’d once told me. I didn’t have it in me to find that kind of nuance in music, but I could see what he meant by the way he played; his spine slumped when he played certain chords, and straightened when he played others. Some arpeggios he played with just his fingers; others with his whole body.
Noel wasn’t the only creative among us. Raina was a designer, Barry an entrepreneur. Even I had dabbled in photography. But Noel was the only true artist, and he had the temperament to go with it, often hermiting himself in his apartment for weeks or behaving in other eccentric ways. Once he came to Christmas wearing a window drape fashioned like a sari, claiming he’d had no time to do laundry. We all just laughed; nothing about Noel could surprise us.
On the Saturday in question, I vividly recall the circumstances. There was Raina, Barry, Sven, Nina, Noel, and myself. I roasted duck breast on the patio grill. Nina made a salad of cucumber, tomato, cantaloupe, and basil. Barry and Sven were having some debate about postmodernism’s attack on the correspondence theory of language, which the rest of us were all too happy to avoid. And there was Raina hip-to-hip on the piano bench with Noel, the two of them equally lost in the happy-sadness of Clair de Lune.
That was the last time we were all together like that; in a word, carefree. Of course, we saw one another in Noel’s hospital room following the accident, but although we were generally in good spirits and feeling grateful, there was a sort of broody somberness that overshadowed the occasion.
At first we thought that everything would be fine. The accident itself was a terrible one, but Noel seemed — almost miraculously — to have suffered only the mildest of injuries. One deep cut under his right eye would leave a scar, but it was nothing that wouldn’t suit his enigmatic personality, and otherwise life would go back to normal. That illusion shattered just four days later, when Noel had his first seizure.
Even on that day, he was lucky. Raina was with him. She caught him as he fell and drove him to the hospital when it subsided. The tests he received that day told a much different story than the one presented just days before. PTE, the neurosurgeon called it. Post-traumatic epilepsy, induced by physical trauma to the brain. Treatment options were abundant, and spontaneous remission was known to occur in a significant number of cases. We were optimistic. Noel himself was unfazed. Life would go on.
And life did go on, but not in the way we hoped. The medicines prescribed to Noel were ineffective. Not only were there more seizures, but they were more and more severe. There were times when it was simply him staring into the distance, temporarily unconscious of his surroundings, and then there were times when he would collapse in his chair or to the floor, every muscle shaking violently, followed by hours of aphasia. The episodes increased in frequency as well, and we all took to staying with Noel in shifts of days or weeks as our schedules allowed. He welcomed the support gracefully, always entertaining whoever was with him, always thanking them profusely when they left. But no amount of mutual kindness and goodwill could slow the pathology that was pirating away Noel’s health and confidence. He remained himself, however, for as long as he could. His dry humor and practical jokes, his odd habits, for instance attending to dental hygiene in the kitchen instead of the bathroom, and most certainly his playing of the piano. His apartment was roughly one hundred square meters in floor space, and a Bechstein grand took up what felt like a fifth of the place. He was at it every day without fail, and rarely finished a session without playing Debussey’s famous piece at least once through. Although I couldn’t have known what was to come — no one could’ve — I’ve often regretted not listening more carefully to his playing in those days, not memorizing exactly how it felt to be in the room where such great talent and skill was wielded so effortlessly.
How much of our self is defined by what lies inside the mind, as opposed to what influences us externally? If consciousness is indeed computational, what exactly is left of us when the computing machinery fails? Unlike Sven, or Barry, or my father, I had little patience for philosophy, which is why I can’t forget the day on which these questions occurred to me for the very first time. It was the day that Noel called us to his apartment, played us a lively piece of jazz on the Bechstein, and then turned around on the piano’s bench and bluntly explained the state of affairs. The seizures had gotten to be too much, he said. Nearly two years had passed since the accident. He couldn’t drive; couldn’t swim; couldn’t go on long solitary walks; could scarcely be alone at all. The lifestyle was oppressive, to use his words, and of course none of us could disagree. And so, without any of us knowing, he had consulted with four independent neurologists, who all offered the same prognosis: accept the seizures (which would probably continue to worsen) and manage them as best as possible, or undergo a dramatic surgery that would cure the epilepsy but possibly result in a number of undesirable side effects. Noel had made up his mind already; he wanted the operation.
The surgery, called a corpus callosotomy, would transect the tissue binding the left hemisphere of Noel’s brain to the right hemisphere. While typically the treatment involves a partial transection followed by monitoring, and resorts to a full disconnection between hemispheres only if seizures continue, Noel’s was a special case. His corpus callosum had already been severely damaged in the accident. The only thing left to do was to complete the hemispherical divide. The result, according to the neurologists, was that Noel’s left and right brain hemispheres would lose their ability to communicate. The doctors were unanimous in predicting that largely, this would still allow Noel to live a generally normal life, with some small exceptions.
To give an example, the left hemisphere houses the brain’s language processing centers; thus, when an image is presented to the left visual field, that input is delivered only to the right hemisphere of the brain, and if the hemispheres cannot communicate, then the person being shown the image will not be able to describe it out loud. Or, the left and right sides of the body might occasionally be found performing opposite actions, in a phenomenon known as the intermanual effect. Simply put, the operation would leave Noel with two brains for one body.
In a famous case, a man with no corpus callosum had spent 30 minutes trying to put on a necktie; not because he didn’t know how to tie it, but because his left brain (and therefore right hand) was intent on tying the necktie, while his right brain (and therefore left hand) was equally intent on untying it. Noel, who was already a bit abnormal by a great number of reasonable standards, and who had a passionate dislike of neckties, didn’t see these challenges as sufficient reasons to not undergo the operation; an operation, to be fair, that the doctors promised would rid him of the seizures.
The neurologists were also unanimous, however, in their provision that additional side effects were within the realm of possibility. Split-brain patients, as they were called, were few in number, and each case was unique. The potential adverse effects could be debilitating, or even psychosis-inducing, according to the doctors (one warned of permanent aphasia), but admittedly were very unlikely.
Although it sounded extreme to me, I had no experience with neuroscience, nor had I ever been surgically operated on. Both Sven and Barry had, as a result of one or another sports injuries, and generally were willing to put their trust in medical doctors. Raina would simply support Noel in anything he chose. It was Nina who strongly opposed the surgery. It was both too risky and too soon, in her opinion. She argued passionately and at length, although it was mostly one-sided; Noel was an adept listener. Nina even offered to quit her job and move into a shared space with Noel where she could help him full-time. If this stirred up any territorial feelings in Raina, who, out of all of us, shared a particularly strong bond with Noel, she didn’t give it away. In the end, whatever our opinions, I’m sure that we all wanted the best for Noel, even if none of us knew what that was.
The surgery took place on a Monday. By Friday, Noel was at home, having been seizure-free in the interim. In fact, everything about him seemed better. His uprightness, his mood, his outlook. Even his bald head, shaved for the operation, lent him a sort of elegance that I’d rarely associated with him. A week prior to the surgery, Barry had been obligated to move away overseas for work. The rest of us, including Nina, goodheartedly, waited on Noel as much as he let us, which wasn’t much. Instead, he wanted to turn the tables. Out of gratitude for our help and patience over the previous two years, Noel treated us to weekly dinners, surprise gifts, and performances on his Bechstein that were as lively as any I could remember.
Only one oddity stuck with me; in those days, I can’t remember a single instance of him playing Debussy.
Change is the essence of life, and life was in full swing then. Several months after the surgery and Barry’s departure, Sven and Nina were married. It had long been expected, if not anticipated, and following their wedding (the last time I saw them) they took up residence in a remote corner of a southern continent, planning to start both a school and a family. That left Noel, Raina, and myself to carry on the established traditions of Saturday barbeques and informal musical recitals. Without the buffers provided by our now-distant friends, however, I began to feel increasingly like a third wheel. Raina and Noel’s relationship shed more and more layers, eventually reducing itself to the bare essential: love. With them as leading couple and myself as an extra, weekly dinners became bi-weekly, then monthly. This is, of course, how friendships work, and it didn’t particularly perturb me. Less interaction by no means equalled less care or trust or appreciation. None of us were becoming less great friends. We were only becoming great friends who saw one another less.
Much less, truth be told. Monthly gatherings became bi-monthly, and eventually, a year had passed since I last saw the two of them. Some calls were exchanged, but always consisted of small talk. And then I received a different call. One I wish I hadn’t. One that made me wish I could turn back time to the day of Noel’s accident and somehow change it; somehow change the light; somehow delay the car that hit him by just one second. As I sped to Noel and Raina’s new home, I heard his words in my head over and over. There had only been three of them before the call ended:
“I need help.”
When you’ve known someone for as long as I’d known Noel, there was no mistaking desperation in their voice. I threw my car into park in Noel and Raina’s driveway and ran to the door. It was unlocked, so I let myself in. As long as I live, I will never be able to unsee or unhear the scene that greeted me as I turned the corner from the foyer to the living room.
Noel, shirtless, sat with his back to me on the bench that belonged to the Bechstein. For the first time in nearly half a decade, I recognized the sound of Claire de Lune, but not in a way I’d ever heard it before.
Noel’s right hand spun out exquisite arpeggio after exquisite arpeggio, each individual note somehow crisp and defined, yet inextricably connected to the whole of the melody. Noel’s left hand played something very different; something not on the page. In fact, it may paint a better picture if I say that his left hand was not playing at all; rather, it was doing everything but playing. It banged on the keys with a rageful violence. It drug its nails along the key slip and fallboard. It pulled at Noel’s hair. Between the sight of Noel’s spasmodic behavior and the execrable sound of a broken and dismembered Claire de Lune, a knot rose in my stomach the size and weight of a cinder block.
Where was Raina?
In the split second when those words rang in my head, Noel’s left hand used one swift motion to reach down, grab a leg of the piano bench, and pull the whole thing out from under its occupant. His body turned as he crashed to the floor, and that’s when he saw me. Only moments had passed since I walked through the door, but I felt as if it had been hours. The bizarre action of having violently unseated himself from the bench was immediately forgotten in my mind as I watched something unfold which could only be described as more bizarre. One of Noel’s arms reached for me, clearly straining from the clavicle all the way down to the tips of the fingers. The other arm coiled itself around a leg of the piano — I remember it was the treble-side leg — and held on for dear life. The harder he struggled to reach with the one arm, the tighter he squeezed with the other. The sight made me weak in the knees. I’d never — nor since have I — seen someone in such a pitifully traumatized state.
I went to him–no matter how hard he tried, he could not come to me — and knelt. I tried to hold him, but he pushed me away.
I spoke to him — shouted at him–and it was as if neither of us could hear me.
I did not understand what was happening. Noel needed help, and so did I, in order to help him.
Where was Raina?
Like a mind-reader, or perhaps just in the way of someone possessed by mania, he let out a great sob and craned his neck toward the other side of the Bechstein, where stood open the tall French doors that led to the patio, and past it, the backyard.
I got up and walked to them, and before I was fully onto the patio, I stopped, and was suddenly and involuntarily sick to my stomach. I looked up from retching, hoping I’d hallucinated, wishing I was in a nightmare. But there was Raina, a few feet from the patio.
The right side of her body was totally visible from head to toe, but the left half was neatly buried in the yard. The highest point on her body was at the shoulder, which pointed toward the sky, and her limbs and hair fell across the grass in a relaxed pose. It was like one half of him had wanted to hide the evidence, and the other was intent on Raina being discovered, and her killer brought to justice. I threw up again.
I never knew if her killer was brought to justice, because I never could fathom what justice would look like. What happened to Raina was unjust, but so was what happened to Noel on the day of his accident. I was vaguely aware that he was charged and sentenced, but not to where or for how long. I left that day and never looked back. I never spoke to Nina or Sven or Barry. I didn’t know what to say. Nothing would ever be the same, and so I severed every tie I had to that part of my life, not knowing if I would one day painfully regret doing so.
How much of our self is defined by what lies inside the mind, as opposed to what influences us externally? All I know is that when what influences us externally comes to roost permanently inside the mind, there can be no escape.
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