Dinlet's Favorite Sound
Vroom! At half past midnight, the whole neighborhood opened its eyes at once. Nobody needed an alarm clock to know the time. It was the kid with the motorbike coming home. The bike was a tiny thing, one of those little delivery bikes, but it had a brand new exhaust the size of a trombone. And the kid made the most of it. A rev at the corner, a rev up the hill, and the grand finale at the traffic light on the square, on red with nobody in front of him. Vroom, vroom, vroom. Sneaking glances at himself in the pharmacy window like a star greeting his fans. The windows lit up one by one as he passed, as if the bike were calling the roll. On the third floor, the baby woke up and right behind the baby, his mother. On the first floor, the baker sighed. The one who got up at quarter to five, Miss Doris, came out onto her balcony in her bathrobe, holding her cat, his fur standing up like a bottle brush. And the woman on the fourth floor threw her slipper, which had never once hit its mark, but not for lack of trying. The kid saw all those lights coming on and went to bed a happy man, convinced the neighborhood didn’t want to miss his arrival.
What the kid didn’t know was that in the crooked street lamp on the square, the one that flickers, there lived a round little Magikito with sticking-out ears whose name was Dinlet.
Dinlet had the strangest job in the world. He collected the sounds of the night. He caught them in midair, put them into little glass jars, and kept them on a shelf inside the street lamp, each one with its label. The rain on the awnings. The last laugh from the terrace of the bar. The ‘see you tomorrow’ from the guy at the newsstand. The super snores, which, properly tuned, sounded just like an accordion.
He didn’t keep them just to keep them. He lent them out. When the grandmother on the second floor couldn’t sleep, Dinlet slipped in through her window and opened a little jar of rain on her pillow. For the girl on the fifth floor who was studying for her exams and went to bed with her nerves in knots, he opened the sea from her vacation. For the baby on the third floor, he played very softly a lullaby he had caught from the baby’s mother one afternoon as she rocked him. Nobody knew why, some nights, the pillow sounded like summer vacation. It was Dinlet.
But ever since the motorbike arrived, the sleep business was in ruins. The vroom wouldn’t fit in any jar. He tried the big jar where he kept the August thunder, and it blew the lid right off. The stored rain got nervous and burst out in one big gush. The snores went out of tune, and with so many neighbors awake, Dinlet couldn’t keep up. He spent all night opening little jars from window to window, and at half past midnight the next day, vroom, back to square one.
One night, Dinlet rolled up his sleeves. “Fine,” he said, looking down at the street. “If you’ve got that much noise to spare, I’ll keep it for you.” And the harvest began. The vrooms were as fat as hams and they wriggled like anything. Dinlet caught them in midair with a net made from a coat hanger and the elastic of a pair of pajamas. And you should have seen it. The first one dragged him three streets through the air like a kite. The revs wouldn’t fit in straight, and he had to fold them like bed sheets with his knee on top. And the backfiring from the exhaust, which was the worst of the lot, would bite. It ended up inside a lunchbox with a latch, growling quietly all night long.
One important detail. The sounds of the night don’t travel alone. They come stuck to each other like chewing gum, and every vroom Dinlet caught came with whatever it had woken up stuck to it. Night after night, the shelf filled up, jars that shook, jars that trembled, the lunchbox growling, until the pantry was full and the night of the concert arrived.
The kid parked the bike by his front door and put its cover on, tucking it in the way he did every night, because when it came to sleeping, the bike liked its peace and quiet. He got into bed, and just as his eyes were closing, on his bedside table somebody opened a jar. Vroom! The kid shot up in bed, his heart rattling like a tambourine. He checked the window. He checked under the bed. Nothing. He lay back down. Second jar, the rev from the hill, served at the exact moment he was nodding off again. He went out onto his balcony in his underpants, convinced somebody was stealing his bike. But the bike was asleep down below, under its cover, still as a snail. Third jar, and this was where it got good, because the vroom from the traffic light arrived with everything it carried. First the vroom and behind it stuck fast the crying of the baby on the third floor, all of it hiccups included. The kid sat there on his bed staring at the ceiling. Fourth jar, the backfire from a quarter to four, and stuck to the backfire the baker’s sigh and an alarm clock going off at five. Fifth, his nightly grand finale, and behind it Miss Doris’s voice telling her cat it’s all right, it’s over now, and the crickets on the square going quiet all at once, the way they do when the power is out. Dinlet worked through the entire collection, jar by little jar, with the precision of a watchmaker, each one at the exact second the kid’s eyes were closing again. Morning found him with his eyes like saucers, just like the whole neighborhood, every night.
That day, the kid said nothing to anyone, but at half past midnight the following night, the whole neighborhood opened its eyes at once because there was nothing to hear. Miss Doris came out onto her balcony uneasy. “Do you think something’s happened to the kid?” And it was worry of the good kind, because in that neighborhood, people slept badly but loved each other well. The woman on the fourth floor fell asleep with her slipper in her hand, just in case. Nothing had happened to the kid. He was at the garage. It took three days and every penny of his savings, but he came back with a normal exhaust, the kind a tiny bike is supposed to have.
The first night he stopped at the traffic light on the square, the bike went soft and low and round like a sewing machine. The kid looked at himself in the pharmacy window and didn’t quite know what to do with his face. “Now it sounds like you’re riding a cat,” Miss Doris shouted from her balcony. And her cat, who hated that bike with every whisker on his body, padded down the stairs, crossed the square, and climbed onto the seat to purr along in a duet. The light turned green and the kid didn’t pull away. He was laughing too hard. “Better this than the trombone,” he said. And it was the closest thing to an apology anyone had ever heard from him. As far as the neighborhood was concerned, it would do.
Since then, the bike has had two jobs. At seven in the morning, it delivers the baker’s bread and the whole neighborhood smells of fresh croissants, and some people set their alarm just to hear it coming. And at half past nine at night, it does the lullaby lap. One slow pass. Under the third floor window. Because it turns out, there’s nothing in this world that puts that baby to sleep faster than the purr of a tiny motorbike in no hurry at all.
And Dinlet? Dinlet kept a single vroom as a souvenir. The fat one in the thunder jar with its own label. Do not open ever. The rest he let loose one stormy afternoon when the sky was making such a racket that nobody noticed the thing. And that very night, he caught the hardest sound in his whole collection, one he had been waiting months for, the whole neighborhood sleeping at the same time. He sat on his street lamp with a little jar on his knees, hands behind his head, and listened to it until dawn. They say it’s his favorite, and it doesn’t even make a sound.
