“It’s only place where always happy,” he confessed.
Floating on pale blue surges and swells, while mesmerized by the pool’s lozenges of light, Paul found access to a mystical realm, an out-of-body weightlessness that, before the stroke, he always blended with the nonstop purl of music. Classical music, especially that of the Impressionists and Romantics, had not only filled his life with pleasure, it had stirred memories of his mother, a splendid pianist who had taught piano to every child in his boyhood village. After his stroke, though he could still sing simple songs like “Happy Birthday,” Paul abruptly lost his emotional response to music, and the pleasure of swimming no longer included the shimmery trances of Claude Debussy, the melodic quilts of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Fritz Delius’s lush pastorals.
The house was quiet now, where previously music had seeped from his study, and although I liked being able to hear birds throughout the day, the soundscape had pointedly changed and I sometimes found myself startled by the silence. Why no music? Different elements of music (pitch, rhythm, emotion, etc.) are widely distributed around the brain, and there are many anecdotal accounts of cases such as Paul’s, in which music suddenly loses its appeal after a stroke (this happened to me briefly after a concussion). Paul seemed actually irritated by music now; it may just have been sensory overload for his bruised brain.
The CAT scan of Paul’s brain hadn’t offered many clues. We knew he’d had a big clot in the left middle cerebral artery, with multiple areas of “subtle decreased attenuation,” within the frontal and parietal lobes—that is, a thinning or weakening, so that neurons now spoke to one another less often and with less intensity. And there were other tracts of tissue which had withered from lack of blood supply. That sited the damage in a few general areas, without revealing an MRI’s details, which could be read as one person’s fingerprints of loss. But it’s hard to judge exactly what happens where, because just as all people have feet, with the same basic parts, though no two are exactly alike, we all have a brain, but its folds and grooves may vary wildly. Because brains are wadded up tight like too many clothes jammed into a gym bag, everyone’s brain looks a little different in its shape and pattern of folding. All the basic landmarks may be the same, but a small eventful area might lodge halfway up a groove in one person and nearer the ridge in another. During imaging, one zone may show activity when the brain is doing something—but that only means it’s more focused on the task than its neighbors; other widely distributed neurons could be equally involved.
If it was hard to pinpoint where Paul’s brain had been injured, it was harder still to guess the full results, because a healthy brain stages elaborate checks and balances. In that strange tug-of-war, injury to one lobe can affect the dominance of another lobe simply by not putting up a struggle. For instance, some neuroscientists propose that artists have more activity in the rear of the right hemisphere to begin with, in areas that orchestrate our complex sensory response to the world. As a result, artists are born with sharper, more easily aroused senses, the theory goes. That tangle of smells, tastes, touches, sights, and sounds is usually strained and restrained by the dominant frontal lobes of the brain, but if the front is damaged during a stroke the balance of power shifts. With nothing to curb the sensory fantasia, the back of the brain may zoom with sounds and colors, and a torrent of creativity may ensue. That can be good or bad, depending on degree—bad if it overwhelms (maybe a bugbear of some schizophrenia); good if it offers heightened awareness (the mainstay of art). Would that happen to Paul? A stroke in Broca’s area meant frontal lobe damage. Without a doubt, Paul was finding the world noisier, brighter, and spikier to his senses.
When Impressionist composer Maurice Ravel wrote his famous Boléro, he had reportedly sustained just that sort of brain damage. Boléro captures the signature of Broca’s aphasia: seventeen minutes of compulsive, repetitive, simple staccato phrases. It contains just two bass lines and two melodic themes repeated obsessively over 340 bars, accompanied by mounting volume and thickening, layered-in instruments. Some say it captures the tempo of sexual intercourse, which is how it was employed in the male-erotic-fantasy movie 10. But it was written to accompany a ballet in which a female dancer leaps onto a bar in a Spanish inn and swirls with abandon, her petticoats foaming and flouncing over the dark wood, until they stir up a froth of longing in the carousers. Ravel described his piece in a 1931 newspaper interview as “consisting wholly of orchestral tissue without music—one very long, gradual crescendo. There are no contrasts, and practically no invention. . . .” Ravel felt proud enough of his work to have it performed, and yet recognized that its source might be partly “without music.”
As an adolescent, Paul had bought a recording of Boléro and played it endlessly, much to his mother’s distress. But Boléro hadn’t been Paul’s favorite Ravel to swim by before his stroke. As a lifelong champion of the moody and picturesque, Paul had much preferred the plush harmonies of Daphnis et Chloé, Ravel painting the rich watercolors of orchestration that gave his lyrical work such passion and poignancy. Combining technical virtuosity with a childlike sense of wonder, Ravel excelled at conveying a shimmering, dynamic sense of nature, including the many moods of water, leaves rustling, cats meowing, the moon rising like a cold white god. Creating perfect miniatures, he adopted “complex but not complicated” as his motto, which echoes violinist Albert Einstein’s dictum that physics “should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Like a wood sprite, Paul had submerged in waves of Ravel, waves of water, and waves of light as he swam.
I relished how readily Paul had sung “Happy Birthday” and Jerusalem with Oliver—it was like stumbling on a hidden sliver of the old Paul, one who hadn’t lost quite all of his own musicophilia. Even if the nonstop classical score to his life was gone.
CHAPTER 13
ONCE AGAIN WADING FOR HOURS IN A SUNNY TRANCE, Paul scanned the surface of the water for errant bugs or leaves or evergreen needles, which he dutifully scooped up. It gave a sort of tai chi rhythm to his afternoons. This was one of the few ways he could restore order to his surroundings, like a monk raking perfect rows of gravel in a Zen garden (where waves of stones represent water). But Paul’s stroke-humbled eyes didn’t always see the slight “water maid” bees that fell in thrashing, stingers armed. The bees were on a harmless mission—collecting tiny buckets of water with which to cool their hives in a corner of my neighbor’s backyard, but they had about 90,000 siblings, and some apparently didn’t care for the neighbor’s lovingly installed, bee-friendly water fountain.
I waded beside him, supervising, no longer sharing the blue undulations in a mystical dreamtime of my own. I was the one now skimming away bees and wasps. In the pool, as I floated while keeping Paul in eyesight, I felt my life spanning time. I slid my mind into being at summer camp as a thirteen-year-old, learning lifesaving skills for fun. Now I was relieved I knew them, lest Paul venture too quickly into deep water.
To my surprise, the stroke had brought Paul unexpected sensory bonuses. Everything looked brighter than before (though he was easily dazzled), sounds seemed louder (though noises could be more distracting), and his sense of touch actually improved. Diabetes and dermatitis had so dulled the nerves in his fingertips that for years he couldn’t judge whether things were hot or cold, sharp or dull, rough or smooth. The skin on his fingers had peeled as if sunburned, becoming quite raw, and in time his fingerprints simply sloughed away. But they serve a purpose, those loopy weather systems. Detecting life’s finer textures, they report on a minutely sculpted world of geography and architecture too small to see. As a finger glides across a fabric, a tribe of touch receptors (for pain, pressure, shape, temperature, etc.) fire and fade, filtering information as they go, providing the brain with a vivid three-dimensional map. Silky, warm, springy, wispy, corrugated like bark: a shawl of ruched cashmere fine enough to pass through a ring. A receptor will only fire when the surface is perpendicular to
the fingerprint ridges, but since they ripple and swirl, it doesn’t matter which direction a finger moves in, at least some of the receptors will be activated. Hence the amplified delight of caressing almost anything. Criminals who erase their fingerprints, hoping to make no impression, sacrifice pleats of delicate awareness in the process. Pre-stroke, Paul could still divine many textures, but not all, and not with the same finesse as healthy fingers. After the stroke, his whole brain grew so agitated that his senses perked up, and he would touch things reverently, appreciating the sheer feel of life.
“Skin . . . so . . . soft,” he said one day, stroking my freckled arm as we basked in the sun. “Sun . . . so . . . hot.” And later, in the pool, “Air . . . so . . . smooth . .. water . . . so . .. so . . .”
“Furry?” I offered. Trying to second-guess him was a mug’s game. But it’s hard to resist completing an aphasic’s sentence when it’s fluttering like a kite tail. Especially if he’s struggling fiercely to communicate.
He shook his head no.
“Velvety?”
“. . . Silky!” he blurted out at last.
Admiring the blooming pink hibiscuses beside the house, he asked if they were new—they’d been there for at least a decade. He studied their flouncy petals with lingering delight. He rejoiced in hearing the birds singing, especially the tuneful wren in the evergreen next to the back door, which serenaded without letup. Paul whistled back to it in encouragement. Still, the garden, the water, the sky—out of the wintry white of the hospital, he beheld nature with an unspoiled eye, as if he were on an expedition to a planet orbiting a distant star.
A fresh concern: walking the few yards to the pool one day, he tripped and fell into a flower bed, fortunately cushioned by a mattress of phlox. Another time, climbing up the pool ladder, he lurched after the last rung and sat-fell down on the grass. Try as he might, he couldn’t get up by himself. Fearing for his safety (What if he fell when no one else was home? What if I didn’t hear him?), I contacted a garden service to install a railing, one that led from the back door to the pool ladder. It would have been easy for me to tell the workmen what height to make it, but then Paul would have had to watch passively while his sense of liberty weakened even more. A subtle shade of difference separates a crutch you design and the one imposed upon you. So he mutely oversaw the installation of the solid, pipe-like railing, taking his time to judge the absolutely perfect height for the grip bar, and demonstrating it to the workmen.
When the weather was nice, he insisted on walking down the driveway to fetch the mail, but on one occasion he fell, bruising himself badly, unable to get up. Hearing him cry out, I ran outside to help. So now I hurried to the front window whenever the screen door gave its telltale slam, and kept a watchful eye on him as he negotiated the short walk. Indoors, he bumped into furniture and caught his toe on the wall-to-wall living room rug, falling several times, not always telling me, until I noticed a new bruise or rug burn on his knees. I learned that this was not unusual. According to many studies, a frightening two-thirds of stroke patients fall during the first six months, and they’re four times more likely to break a hip, whose sequelae can include another stroke. And so a new assassin shadowed him: falling. When a stroke weakens the body, it also sears the confidence. No more insouciant striding of the cricket player across the lawn. No more breezy upright ape.
“Use your eyes as searchlights,” I urged, thinking he might respond to the WWII image from his childhood as we navigated the front walk.
He seemed to understand, fixing his eyes sharply on the ground before him, but instead of sweeping his head back and forth, he was staring right in front of his toes and inching forward.
“No, like this.” I demonstrated, moving my head side to side in an exaggerated sweep of the ground about a yard in front of me as I walked a little, turned, and did the same returning. Paul watched intently. Didn’t move, just watched, clearly puzzled. I repeated the exercise.
It reminded me of how a bird teaches a chick to fly. Wings cupped and tail feathers spread wide, it stalls into the nest with a Like this! Then hops onto the squishy rim of twigs, tilts forward, and drops clear before flapping. Over and over until nightfall, the same Watch and do as I do, sometimes for days. And all the while that coaching whistle to the chick. I’m here. You can do it. I’m here.
“Try again,” I whispered. “You can do it. I’m here.”
Paul mumbled to himself, walking, scouting some, walking a little more. Then he stared at me with a look that said: What kind of man has to be taught how to walk?
Our next lesson was indoors. By now we knew that Paul had to relearn how to pick himself up from a fall, and after much cajoling, he finally agreed to practice.
Together, holding on to the couch, we lowered ourselves to the rug.
“Not bad so far!” I joked.
“Hrrumph!” It was less an attempt at speech than a comment on the likelihood of his succeeding.
“Okay. Let’s give it a try. Lie down like you just fell.” I felt a bite of foreboding at the words.
He lowered himself onto the rug, face up like a stargazer. Struggling to find the words for something, he finally made do with a gravelly “. . . Woof!”
“Woof?”
“You know . . .” He swept a hand parallel to the ground, and with a flourish pointed to the brilliant sunlight spiraling in through the picture windows.
“Oh, you want to spaniel.” Spaniel was the term I’d coined for curling up in a warm pool of sunlight on the rug, with pooch-like dereliction, on a chilly day. We’d often spanieled together in the fiercely cold upstate winters.
“Sorry, no. The art of standing, please.”
“Ah,” Paul sighed, eyes brightening in recognition. The strum of a familiar chord. I heard it, too.
“Or the heart of standing,” I said, alluding to a poignant poem by British poet and literary critic William Empson. About a brief affair in wartime, it kept chiming the refrain “The heart of standing is you cannot fly.”
“Remember Empson?”
“Oh yes!” He laughed.
Many years before, Cambridge-educated Empson had been a visiting professor at Penn State, where Paul was teaching. Empson had arrived in town without his false teeth, which were being repaired, he’d said, and would be sent by sea mail. At least that’s what we thought he’d said, since he gummed his jaws together as he spoke, and did a Cambridge lisp, pronouncing all rs like ws. Students were finding his garbled diction hard to follow, and in any case, he spent most of each day up to his gills in sherry. Paul had spotted him staggering to campus through deep snow one afternoon—a thin tousle-haired figure in tweed coat, college scarf, and bedroom slippers—and felt sorry enough for him to purchase a pair of galoshes, which he dutifully delivered to Empson’s office, a few doors down from his own. As he arrived, he witnessed something only slightly more shocking than sad. On first glance, Empson appeared to be holding office hours, with one young man seated beside him at a large oak desk. Empson still had on his coat and scarf, and was reciting something drunkenly, with surprising affability, as the student playfully spun him round ever-so-slowly in his chair. The boy fled when Paul knocked on the doorjamb with the galoshes.
One evening we’d invited Empson to dinner, and since he told us he could only eat “slops” until his teeth arrived, I’d made vegetable soup, haddock fillets baked until they flaked apart, and English trifle (a layered dessert of sherry-soaked ladyfingers, vanilla pudding, strawberry Jell-O, and whipped cream). He arrived tipsy. To my dismay, he drank the soup by sucking it up off his spoon, cooling it in his mouth, and spitting it back out, then drinking it again. I couldn’t interest him in anything else but scotch, while he reminisced about Paul’s old mentor at Oxford, Freddy Bateson. After dinner, noticing our telescope, Empson had asked if he might see Saturn’s rings, and we were happy to oblige, since it was a clear night
, with Saturn a diamond-yellow spark above the rooftops. At first he had trouble balancing over the eyepiece, so Paul held his shoulders steady.
“There! Saturn—it’s beautiful! I see the rings!” he’d gushed excitedly. And we were delighted to provide this small glint of the universe, a cold sherbety world as a digestive, until I realized that he wasn’t looking through the eyepiece at all, but below it, at the porch light across the street.
Oh my god, I’d thought, catching Paul’s eye. With a tilt of my head, I directed his gaze to the porch light, and Paul’s brow lifted, though he said nothing.
Before leaving, Empson stood at the door, wearing his new galoshes, and slurred: “I’m going up to Hartford by bus next week, to pay a call on Wallace Stevens.”
Paul and I had exchanged looks that said something like: It would be laughable if it weren’t tragic. Poet Wallace Stevens had been dead for many years.
Not wanting to embarrass Empson and not knowing what on earth to reply, Paul had said only: “You’ll find him changed.”
I remembered the pain of witnessing the wreckage of a once-great mind. Had Empson been ill? Senile? At the very least, he was being pulled down by a whale of an addiction. I thought: Poor soul. Why wasn’t I more compassionate?
All I said was: “Remember Empson at the telescope?”
“I see the rings!” Paul chuckled. “Hey . . . look for p-planets? If we s-stare at ceiling . . .”
“Sorry, no more stalling. Time to practice.” I visualized the diagram I’d studied in the doctor’s office, depicting the easiest way to rise from a fall, and began coaching:
“Turn your head to the side, honey. Other side. Now, roll your shoulder in the same direction, and let your hip roll, too. Great. Now bring your right arm across like this and put your palm on the floor.” I demonstrated, feeling a bit overwhelmed, as if I were coaching a giant sea tortoise how to right itself. But with a little effort, he followed suit.