Earworm

The earworm is singing. It’s four days now it’s singing, singing about toads, and I’m not happy, not at all. The stupid song makes the days elide, turning all thoughts, and tenses, into the present. It starts in a restaurant. Someone, whom I know better than to trust, tells me to come here for dinner, and here I am. C’est infect. The food stinks, the service is not what anyone should have to endure, even in the trendiest—that is to say, the dopiest—restaurant in Paris. The waiters mumble and don’t know the menu. My stomach hurts, and so do my ears. 

There’s music—canned, of course, in the background and all I can say to its credit is that it is not so loud that it hurts. Not yet, anyway. But it’s persistent and going in loops and it intrudes on the synapses too much to let my mind wander or entertain an impure thought by way of distraction. The place looks a little bit like an airport bar—chilly and styleless, which, I guess, is supposed to pass for high style, but it’s plain ugly.  

I am about to be out too many euros, have a rough tummy when I leave, and am feeling as sour as you can imagine and then some. Bad enough, but the worst of it is the old-time music: Piaf, Montand, Patachou, Brassens, with a whiff of Gainsbourg: the 1950s and ’60s in spoiled aspic. I guess I can be happy that they’re not treating us to the assertive creepiness of Maurice Chevalier or the latest French Europopper. I have no idea what the point of this is. Postmodern drab and contemporary cuisine spiced—I think that is not the right word—with the sounds of the good old days which, I imagine, had their good old time and expired before the proprietors of this awful restaurant were born.  

Deciding to console myself with the luxe of a pousse-café—and I’m not going to waste the pleasure of a nice Calvados, even at these prices—I make up my mind to hear another song in my head. It’s unkind to substitute a song in English or German—I’m feeling hostile only to this resto, not Paris or the French—and somehow what starts serenading me is a children’s song called Les Crapauds, which at most uses half an octave and repeats itself endlessly. It’s the kind of song kids sing around campfires while roasting ’smores, though I can’t imagine French children roasting marshmallows—maybe truffles. I can’t figure how I even know it let alone why this of all things pops into my head in this restaurant.  

But it works, this song about toads. It gets the background music out of my head, helps me enjoy my drink, then follows me out into the street, down the steps to the Métro, back up more stairs and down my street, up in the elevator, and into my apartment. It won’t leave: it’s an ear worm now, lodged in my head four days later and singing for all it’s worth—which is also not quite right, since I think it’s worth less than nothing, but still, there it is, singing away, without breathing or getting a scratchy throat. 

The toads, poignantly, sing that men hate us because we disturb their sleep with our songs. I don’t know about that, though I’m not sleeping well, but they disturb my waking, and if nasty boys throw rocks at them, as they complain, let me lend them a few. Any time. Music helps a little, but only if I crank it up. And so does singing as tunelessly as I possibly can in hopes of throwing the toads off kilter. I don’t mind disturbing my neighbors on the left side, considering the noisy rehabilitation of their apartment is going on longer than the building of the pyramids and is now devolved from saws and drills into what sounds like someone tapping with a tack hammer for hours every day. But I have a soft spot for the very old couple on the right side, and Madame, I know, has the ears of a lynx. 

I figure street noise might help and out I go, but I’ve been doing this since the morning after the ear worm took up residence with no improvement. Still, it beats sitting around indoors without distractions. The streets in my quartier are annoyingly quiet this afternoon, no grinding gears or badly muffled scooters—le parisien excels at both and is justly proud—no little children squealing in the playground at the end of the street, no garbage collection, which seems to take place around the clock in Paris, no sirens, no lost tourists talking too loudly, no construction even in the three buildings I pass that have netting over the façades. I’m keeping to the busiest, big streets, hoping for buses or an accident, and it’s not doing me any good. I turn off and start down a smaller street, heading toward the Observatory. 

This isn’t the brightest part of the City of Light, but it doesn’t have the darkness that astronomers like. All I conclude is that it’s been here since 1667, and what was good enough in the century of Kepler’s death and Newton’s birth is still holding its own. And anyway, it has a beautiful building. I keep going toward it. Coming toward me, there is a pack of people. They look young from a distance and all dressed the same. Dark green shirts with a yellow-and-blue scarf around the neck fastened with a ring, and shorts—and it’s just not warm enough for that. Maybe the leaders of les Scouts de France read about Japan’s naked babies, infants who are sent to daycare even in the middle of winter wearing only a diaper, presumably to toughen them up. And I could swear I was lectured once on the color of Scouts’ shirts, moving according to age from brown for the youngest to yellow to blue to red to green. Perhaps my information is out of date or this meute—no, too big for a pack, must be a troupe—has committed en masse a fashion gaffe of inordinate proportions, but that is how the Scouts are dressed. 

As they get close, I can see that they are walking, not quite marching, but walking almost in step and looking a little the worse for wear. They’re coming, I guess, from a tour of l’Obsérvatoire, probably following another exciting field trip—you can’t spend all the daylight hours looking at telescopes and the history of astronomy, with particular emphasis on France, when you’ve got the whole day to put to good use—so this is stop number two or three on their itinerary with more to come. Maybe they’re heading off to scavenge wood for a cookout. I can’t tell. But here they come, not quite marching, and they are singing, no doubt to keep their spirits up and everyone in key if not step. 

Alors, symbolique 
Et mélancolique, 
Notre lent cantique 
Sort des nénuphars. 

“Our slow song,” they sing, “melancholy and symbolic, rises from the water lilies.” A song only a toad could sing or someone sympathetic to their status, and les Scouts everywhere love animals. I suppose my mouth drops open, and I do not care if it does. They walk by singing and I take in every syllable. Their diction is faultless. I can hear every word of Les Crapauds even more clearly than it is in my head, and stare after them as they, and the toad song, fade away, completely away. Away from the inside of my head, taking the ear worm along to keep company with the toads. Gone. 

The scouts have done their good deed for the day, whether they know it or not, and an unknown good deed is probably better for the soul and more sure of a reward in heaven. I’ll be glad to put in a good word when the time comes. The siege is over and now lodged where it belongs, in the past tense. As I fell asleep, the last image of the song drifted across my mind—a splendid sky under a golden crescent—and the rest was, and is, silence. 

© Joseph Lestrange