I was singing on the stage of the Musiktheater im Revier in Gelsenkirchen when it happened. It was the eighth song of the first act, and I was, thankfully, only singing as part of a chorus. It was the sixth night of the show, to an audience of around three hundred, and what happened was this:
We were three spirits, guiding the prince to a temple as we sang the line, Zum Ziele führt dich diese Bahn (This path leads you to your goal). Only, when I went to sing the first word of the verse, no sound came out. It was the feeling of lying on your back with your ears submerged in water or wearing noise-cancelling headphones—although I knew I was singing, I could not hear any evidence of my own words. I could hear everything else—the other spirits, the strings and the woodwind, even the rustle of programs in the audience—just not myself. I kept mouthing along, waiting for my voice to come back, but it never did.
Two weeks later, I still couldn’t manage so much as a whisper. For obvious reasons, I’d had to leave the show and return to London, where a range of teachers and doctors took me through various exercises before each promptly gave up on me when none of it worked. After one fruitless session with Myrtle—the singing teacher I’d been with the longest, since first arriving in London at eighteen—she handed me an envelope, which I opened excitedly, thinking it might be the answer, only to find it was a refund of my remaining lessons for the year.
‘I’m just not sure there’s anything more I can do for you,’ she explained, expression pained as she steered me gently towards the door. ‘Perhaps you could take up dance.’
At home, I binged on lozenges and lemon-ginger tea and lowered my face over bowls of hot water with a towel draped over my head. My flatmate, Belinda, with whom I’d never got on particularly well, watched from the doorway with arms folded and said, ‘So is this just, like, what you’ll be doing from now on?’
I couldn’t speak back, so I stared viciously into my bowl until she went out, and then emailed her and our landlord to give them both two weeks notice. Finally, I texted my parents, asking them to book me a one-way flight back to Sydney.
When the lights dimmed on the plane after the dinner trays had been cleared, I cried. There was no need to muffle my sobs; they made no sound anyway. I was twenty-four and retired, going back to live with my parents as if the last six years of my life had never happened.
*
Back home, my mother held me in an embrace before diagnosing me tenderly with depression. My father surveyed me from across the table and asked if I’d thought yet about a plan B.
‘Paul,’ my mother said reproachfully. ‘She just got off the plane.’
‘I’m just saying,’ he said. ‘What, have you given up on your voice entirely?’
I resented the inference—my voice had given up on me. Still, there was no way of pointing this out, so to fend off further criticisms, I started researching vocal specialists and found one in Mosman.
Virginia was a tall, no-nonsense lady with a short grey bob. She made me open my mouth and say ‘ah’ like a dentist while she prodded my tonsils with something cold.
‘There’s no visible damage,’ she told me accusingly. ‘Clearly this is a psychological issue.’
I frowned at her. That was entirely unhelpful.
‘If you want to speak or sing again,’ she said, ‘you will need to do the work. Do you think you are capable of that?’
I wanted to know what the work was.
‘Digging in deep, to the heart of the issue. You will have to get uncomfortable. You will have to really want it. So ask yourself—do you?’
I gave her my best incredulous look. The consultation cost two hundred and thirty dollars. She didn’t bulk bill.
*
Being back in Sydney was like trying on old clothes, except they had changed and I hadn’t. Friends who had been setting off on gap years with overloaded backpacks when I last saw them were now lawyers at high-rise firms in the city. Noni was a political adviser; Mish, a lesbian. The girl I used to catch the bus with to netball training on Wednesdays had published a non-fiction book on neoliberal street art.
Catching up with them all proved difficult. I’d made little to no effort to stay in touch with anyone since leaving Australia, and the space I’d left behind had slowly closed over like a flesh wound. As a result, nobody appeared overwhelmingly thrilled by my return, and it took several messages of feigned enthusiasm to generate any interest at all.
To my surprise, Noni was the first to crack. She had been interested in singing too, back at school, though the common ground had divided us more often than it brought us together. I remembered lunchtime concerts in the music room, our friends gathered round as we took turns to perform. I sang opera, of course, while she preferred jazz, but it didn’t quell the tension that simmered between us. I thrived off it. Perhaps it was the stark difference in our abilities. I never liked to compare, but it was obvious, even then, that my voice was stronger, more captivating. My voice left our friends speechless; hers generated a polite round of applause after each crooning Ella Fitzgerald ballad. Mine carried me to London, to music college, to Gelsenkirchen. Hers took a ninety-degree turn and landed her in politics.
Now, I sat opposite her, nursing half a mocha, and listened to her warble on about her work as a junior staffer. ‘It’s interesting,’ she kept saying before recounting some story that wasn’t. I couldn’t understand how anybody could be inspired by a job that mostly involved sitting at a computer making edits to documents before emailing them to somebody else to check over. Where was the rush? The glamour, the drive, the sense that what you were doing actually meant something?
None of this could be said aloud, of course. All I could do was nod back at her. At one point, she stopped herself and told me she wanted to know all about Europe. I went so far as to take out my phone and start writing something—sifting through six years of life in London as if it could be summarised in a bullet-point list—but by the time I had begun to type, she was checking her watch and saying she needed to get back to the office.
‘This was so nice,’ she said as she left. ‘We should do it again soon.’
A few weeks later, she invited me to drinks at a bar for her twenty-fifth birthday. While in line outside, I ran into Mish, who squealed and pulled me into an embrace.
‘Noni told me about your voice,’ she exclaimed, as if it were a delicious piece of gossip and not a life-altering affliction. ‘That’s awful. And so early in your career!’
I nodded bleakly as a man pushed past us. Mish called out ‘hey!’ with annoyance before apparently recognising him.
‘That’s PJ,’ she told me as he turned around.
PJ, I knew from my catch-up with Noni, was Noni’s boyfriend. He looked back at us and grunted hello.
‘Evelyn doesn’t have a voice,’ Mish told him, though he hadn’t asked. ‘Such a shame. She was going to be the next Dame Joan, probably.’
Later, by which time I was inside and trying to catch the bartender’s attention without much success, PJ appeared next to me again, considerably friendlier after a few drinks.
‘Which one are you after?’ he asked, and I pointed at the beer tap second from the left. He ordered me a cider.
‘You’re the singer, right? With no voice or whatever?’
I nodded.
‘I’m Noni’s boyfriend,’ he said.
I felt like it was polite to act as if this was new information. There was a pause, the silence hanging awkwardly between us as we waited for our drinks. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and then went on.
‘It feels weird, saying boyfriend, don’t you think? Like, at what point do people start saying partner? Thirties?’
I shrugged.
‘Or maybe it’s to do with how long you’ve been together, rather than age.’
I nodded hesitantly.
‘Although we’ve been together five years, so you’d think that was getting into partner territory, wouldn’t you?’
Another shrug. There wasn’t an enormous diversity of ways to respond when you couldn’t speak.
‘Well, almost five,’ he corrected himself. ‘Four and ten months, technically.’
I raised my eyebrows.
‘I know—it seems like a long time, right? Like, considering we’re just in our twenties. Most people are still out there, playing the field, and I’m just…’ He waved his hand vaguely, then stopped himself. ‘Not that I’m complaining. Obviously.’
I smiled. My cider had arrived, so I took the opportunity to take a sip. It was awful.
‘You know,’ PJ went on, lowering his voice. ‘People reckon we’re gonna get married.’
I widened my eyes and glanced across the room at Noni, who was watching us curiously from her conversation with Mish and some others.
‘Guess they just assume that we’ve been together that long, we must be perfect for each other. But I’m just, y’know, how do you even know if someone’s perfect for you?’
He wasn’t even looking at me anymore; his eyes were fixed on the rim of his own glass. ‘I suppose when you’re with the right person, you don’t have to wonder. You just know.’
He got halfway through raising his beer to his lips and then interrupted himself as he appeared to remember I was standing there.
‘Don’t repeat any of that, by the way. This is just…I’m just off-loading. You’re getting a real stream of consciousness right now.’
I’d noticed. I watched him drain the glass and then place it on the counter.
‘You’re a really good listener,’ he told me. ‘Noni’s lucky to have you as a friend.’
Noni grabbed me later and asked what the two of us had been talking about for so long. I started typing out an answer on my phone, but by the time I had finished she’d lost interest and gone off to speak to someone else.
She and PJ broke up two weeks later. Everybody was beside themselves.
*
At my next appointment with Virginia, she took one look at my throat and deduced that I had done none of the work since our last visit. ‘Clearly,’ she said, ‘you are becoming too comfortable. Where is the pain?’
All over and in me, I wanted to say. I wrote down on a notepad that I had been busy. Dramatically, she screwed up the page and tossed it at the wall.
‘Life is busy!’ she shouted. ‘It’s not a question of busy. It’s a question of what you want. What do you want?’
I wrote that I wanted my voice back. She stared at me long and hard, and then told me I needed to go back to the beginning. I nodded as if I knew what she meant, and then went out into the waiting area and paid another two hundred and thirty dollars.
*
About a week later, I received a message on Instagram from PJ.
Hey,it said. Was really great talking to u the other night at nonis.
The message surprised and confused me, and I was quite certain he had meant to send it to someone else.
I replied: This is Evelyn.
His response was fairly instant: haha i know
And then, a minute later: would be great to catch up and talk more some time if ur free?
I thought about my plans (or lack thereof) for the week. I thought about what Noni might say. I thought about the work.
I replied: Ok.
*
PJ worked in an office in Martin Place, something to do with stock trading and banks that presumably paid a lot because he wore a Rolex and took me to the sort of bar that had a grand piano in place of a jukebox. He found us a table on the second level and was gentlemanly enough to pull out my chair before his own.
‘So,’ he said, once we were seated. ‘How have you been?’
There were a lot of ways I would have answered that: miserable about the state of my future, irritated that I was back living with my parents, bored out of my brain from going to lunches with friends who rambled on about their meaningless lives while I was forced to sit and listen and surrender my own dreams.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘I broke up with Noni, as you might’ve heard.’
I had.
‘It was for the best, though, right? I mean, talking to you, I just…you helped me realise it just wasn’t what I wanted.’
I wasn’t sure that was something I was pleased to be credited with. By all accounts, Noni had taken it very badly.
‘I guess I just haven’t been myself lately,’ he went on. ‘Noni was great, but there was something about the way she…well, I just feel like she never asked me how I was. It was always about her. You know?’
Oh, how I knew.
‘And, well, to be honest, I’ve really been in the shit. Um, like, I don’t know if you know this, but like, a couple of years ago, my, ah…my mum died.’
I didn’t move.
‘I mean, sorry, I don’t know why you would know. No one does, really. I mean, people do, but I don’t really talk about it properly. Like, ever.’
A waiter brought over our drinks. PJ had ordered me another cider, proud of himself for remembering. I looked longingly at his beer.
‘We had a fraught relationship,’ he went on. ‘Mum and I. We fought constantly.’
I nodded, trying to fix a look of mild interest on my face.
‘To be fair,’ he said, ‘I was always a bit of a brat. A real dickhead, actually. I used to go out and not tell her where I was on purpose because I knew it stressed her out. I dunno why. And I used to get home and she’d be sitting on my bed and I’d just tell her to fuck off. And then…she did. Well. She killed herself, so…’
He gasped after saying the last bit, as if the words had been forced out of him against his will, and there were tears in his eyes. He reached out across the table, and I didn’t know what to do, so I let him take my hands and clutch them as he told me, through staggering breaths, that he’d never told anyone that before.
‘Not even Noni,’ he admitted. ‘I guess I just thought she wouldn’t get it.’
I knew what he was going to say next before he said it. I had time to weigh up the options in my head, evaluate each potential consequence. I decided Noni was probably better off without him, and what she wouldn’t find out couldn’t hurt her. And so when PJ asked me, shakily, if I wanted to go home with him, I nodded that yes, I did.
*
At some point during those first few months back, my mother decided that the cure to my depression was a night at the opera, and so she bought us tickets to a matinee performance of The Marriage of Figaro. It was showing at the Sydney Opera House, and we ate in silence at a restaurant on the water before going in. I thought I would enjoy the nostalgia of it—the grandeur of the stage, the familiar thrum of the orchestra—but the minute Susanna appeared for her opening lines (Ora sì, ch’io son contenta / Sembra fatto inver per me) I was consumed by such an incapacitating envy that I could hardly sit upright. The power of her voice, the rich purrrrrr of her Italian accent, the tremor of her vibrato. If she sang well, I was resentful; if she missed a note, I was furious.
At interval, I bought a program and saw that the singer playing her was only twenty-three. A soprano prodigy, her biography boasted. Australia’s most exciting rising talent. I asked Mum, using my phone’s Notes app, if we could leave.
‘Oh, darling,’ she said. ‘We paid for these tickets.’
In the second act, I found myself praying that God would swap my voice out for my hearing, or take both—at least that way I wouldn’t have to bear witness to my own torment.
*
PJ wanted to see me again. He didn’t ask—he just told. We got breakfast in the city before work (his work) and he told me he’d never felt a connection as deep as the one we had the other night.
‘I want you to be my girlfriend,’ he said. ‘I think we could really be something.’
And there was no way to argue why not, so I didn’t.
*
I’d never been a girlfriend before—the demands of my career hadn’t allowed for it. I started attending corporate events where I stood by PJ’s side holding glasses of champagne and going out to extravagant five-course dinners with his extended family, all of whom took it in turns to tell me stories of their interesting boy and his interesting high school rugby games and his interesting university debating career, and the interesting deals he’d brokered since getting his interesting investment job. Nobody asked about me—there was no point. I sat and smiled until my face hurt, and when I stopped smiling nobody noticed anyway.
PJ’s stepmother said I was a ‘dream’ and that I was ‘welcome back any time’.
When Noni discovered I was with PJ, things got complicated. ‘It’s just disrespectful,’ she told me in a lengthy voicemail. She said worse things, but I stopped listening. Still, I decided that perhaps being PJ’s girlfriend wasn’t quite worth it, so after some careful thought (I had a lot of time to do that kind of thing), I texted him.
Me: I don’t think we should see each other anymore.
PJ: what? why not?
Me: It’s just a bit complicated, with Noni and everything.
PJ: fuck noni shes just jealous
Me: I mean it’s true though
Me: It has been very quick.
PJ: hmmmmmmm
PJ: can we talk about this in person?
Me: Why?
PJ: idk haha
PJ: i just feel like we resolve things better that way
*
We met at a petrol station because his car needed a top up. I sat in the passenger seat with the door open while he pleaded with me from the gas tank.
‘We would be crazy,’ he said, ‘to let what we have fall apart just because of some fucked-up, socially constructed obligation. Noni was never it for me. You are. I feel like you know me better than she ever did, and we’ve been together, what, six weeks?’
Five and a half, I thought.
‘Look.’ He finished filling up the tank and replaced the nozzle, then came over and crouched down in front of me. ‘Maybe you think you’re a rebound, but for me, this has always been more than that. I knew from the first time I met you. All that stuff I said about how when you know, you just know. Well, I know. You…you make me a better man. You make me feel seen. Heard. You make me happy.’
I stared at him.
‘Let me show you,’ he said, ‘how serious I am.’
He ran his fingers over his shirt until he found a loose thread and yanked it cleanly off the hem. Then, he took my left hand and tied the thread around my fourth finger. It cut too close to the skin and I winced, but he didn’t notice.
‘Evelyn,’ he said. ‘I have never been more sure of anything in my life than of wanting to be with you. Forever. And I’m not necessarily saying we have to get married right now or anything, but just so you know, that’s where I think this is headed. And I want it. I actually do.’
I stared at him. I stared at the thread around my finger, which was too tight. I thought about getting out my phone to write something, but I didn’t know where to start. Besides, my finger hurt.
‘Don’t worry,’ he added quickly, perhaps sensing my hesitation. ‘The actual ring will be way more expensive than this.’
*
PJ’s family were very excited about our hypothetical wedding. His stepmother took me through prospective colour schemes and told me how people often trivialised the importance of a good floral arrangement.
‘But it’s actually very serious,’ she informed me over the top of her binder. ‘I mean, it sets the tone for your whole future.’
I thought about my whole future, and what kind of tone was being set, and felt sick. I tried making an excuse to leave, but nobody would look at the lie I had carefully crafted on my phone, so while they were all distracted by table centrepieces, I slipped out the back.
PJ didn’t text. I suppose he just didn’t notice.
*
That night, I got out my computer and I decided to do the work. Virginia had told me to go back to the point where it first started, so I went through my files and found my original audition tape for The Magic Flute, the show I’d done in Gelsenkirchen. The video was a bit glitchy, and for a moment I thought it might not play; however, after a short period of buffering and one restart, it began.
I listened to myself, knees tucked into my chest, through the tinny laptop speakers.
Zum Ziele führt dich diese Bahn. Was it just me, or was that off-key? I rewound, played it again. Zum Ziele führt dich diese Bahn. It was definitely off. My voice was feeble on the first note, a slanting tremor that continued throughout the verse. I listened to the rest of the tape, but it didn’t improve from there. Perhaps my vocal issues had begun earlier, then.
I clicked back to an earlier file, my audition for a production on the West End. I had sung Puccini’s ‘O mio babbino caro’, a tragic aria about star-crossed lovers. I remember bringing myself to tears in my performance. I hadn’t landed the role; I’d always assumed I just didn’t have the right look. But rewatching it now, I noticed the same thing—my voice seemed weak, trembling, flat in some parts and sharp in others.
I went back further. Auditions dating from college, then recitals, concerts, rehearsal tapes. They only seemed to get worse. I dug deeper, flicking through files until I reached the earliest one I could find saved on my hard drive. A lunchtime concert. Year Nine. I remembered it well, each moment emerging from a buried past in my head half a second before it occurred on screen.
Noni sang first. Her voice was sultry, smooth. It danced, and the audience, our friends, swayed with it. I remembered thinking it was lazy singing: sliding notes, forgoing clear enunciation for the sake of soul.
When it was my turn, I stood up and gave Noni an overly encouraging thumbs up. Then I moved past her and pressed ‘play’ on the CD player, thrusting my shoulders back as the piano welcomed me in. I took a deep breath, my smugness palpable through the screen. And then—I began.
Listening to it now, it was as though somebody had dubbed my memory with a different voice entirely. This one wavered and strained, ducking and weaving between notes. I took gulps of air at the wrong moments, mispronounced words, gesticulated too much and yet not enough, and when the song finished, the speechlessness of my audience was not—as I’d always imagined—one of awe, but rather of awkwardness. With burning cheeks, I realised that I was the emperor, stark naked in the town square. I was the butt of the joke. I was devoid of talent. I was not the next Dame Joan, probably.
I deleted the file. Then I deleted all the others too, and took my laptop to the sink and drowned it for good measure. Lastly, I texted Virginia, thanking her for her time and explaining that I no longer required her services.
She didn’t reply.
*
Just now, I woke up with the strangest sensation in my throat.
It is dawn. Autumn in Germany, the first official morning of our honeymoon (if you don’t count the flights to get here). As though steered by an invisible hand, I slip silently out of bed, careful not to disturb PJ, and creep down the hall, out onto the balcony of the apartment his stepmother booked for us. We are staying in the heart of Düsseldorf, just over fifty kilometres south-west of Gelsenkirchen, and the air is bitingly cold.
Alone in the frost, overlooking the cobbled streets, I clear my throat and feel it there.
My voice.
Gingerly, I taste the words as they emerge for the first time, aloud: ‘Zum Ziele führt dich diese Bahn.’
There it is, as tangible as if it had never gone at all. I revel in the feeling of it, the feeling I have missed so much, and then I look around, careful to confirm I have been the only one to bear witness to it.
Once sure, I swallow the words again, packing them away tightly in a compartment deep in my chest, the place where secrets are kept. I return to bed and slip back inside PJ’s sleepy embrace, and he wraps me up and holds me safely until I am asleep again.
But the words still echo around my head in the silence.
Zum Ziele führt dich diese Bahn.
This path will lead you to your goal.
