Listening in the Dark

"I love you!" he shouted. "I really do!" Hurried footsteps followed the sound of a woman's voice. She was laughing--flattered or surprised was hard to tell.

"Come on," she said, "you're drunk."

"Not that drunk," he swore, and footsteps and voices faded.

It was after 3 a.m. and I, an early riser, was attempting to get to bed. From the window I could see two blurry black coats disappearing around the corner.

I write this as a warning to all eloquent, drunken lovers. My window opens onto a particularly busy path circling Lowell House and facing the Fly. By construction that would make the sonic ancient Egyptians proud, conversations spoken at ordinary volume drift upward with perfect clarity. Our protagonists can hardly guess they're involving an entire Lowellian wing in their declarations.

My room, among others, is a lucky recipient of this 24-hour programming. Even I, a self-avowed philosopher more interested in the Scandinavian excursions of Wittgenstein than the continuing saga of inebriated strangers, find such eavesdropping hard to avoid. My desk and bed are away from the window and my shade is drawn. I've tried playing music, but not at 3 a.m.--as has been said, the walls and windows are thin.

I have heard declarations of love, drunken ballads, political arguments and a Grammy-worthy Mariah Carey impersonation. Inevitably, there are voices I recognize, stories whose beginnings I've heard. Occasionally, feeling guilty, I've opened the window noisily or turned off the light; sudden noise is enough to move the epic along. Twice I've even left the room.

But this is hardly characteristic. Most of the time we don't know each other and the effect is less one of secret divulgence and more of trying to get work done in the cafeteria. My closed winter windows are little insulation: the rising volume levels that come with alcohol consumption more than compensate for a thin layer of glass--not to mention the efforts of nightly Tommy's pilgrimages, Fly partygoers and the 9 a.m. recycling crew.

Does it matter to our protagonists whether or not they are heard? Probably not. Does it matter if I, tired and slightly intoxicated myself, catch the end of a declaration between half-sleep and sleep--or if everyone on my floor does? Probably not. But would they have had the same conversation if we were all visible?

Our notions of privacy are marked by sensory inconsistency. Out of sight, out of mind--is it so simple? Human beings, I would like to think, have progressed beyond the level of the ostrich in this respect. Yet sight, we feel, is much more embarrassing than sound. Why else would we insist on three-quarter stalls in public bathrooms? Why do walls keep our neighbors feeling private, even when aural clues leave little to our visual imagination?

I refer all interested readers to the brilliantly remastered version of Hitchcock's 1954 thriller Rear Window, in which a bored and bedridden Jimmy Stewart (in a full-leg cast after a run-in with a racecar) witnesses what he thinks is a murder: his salesman neighbor's wife disappears the night that the salesman makes several early-morning trips out of the apartment, carrying a suitcase, in the rain. The movie itself is shot entirely from Stewart's vantage-point at his rear window and is a fascinating exploration of voyeurism, inference and 1950s haute couture.

Of course, there's a reason Hitchcock didn't use "Window Overlooking the Path Around Lowell House" instead of the movie's New York tenement. Here there are no suspicious Aryan costume-jewelry salesmen, few wives, no wardrobe like Grace Kelly's, no Yorkshire terriers and no soundtrack to speak of.

But the principle itself translates. At some imperceptible point in the middle of the movie, Jimmy Stewart's snooping shifts from being the forgivable voyeurism of a bored man waist-deep in plaster to the important surveillance of a concerned citizen. As soon as he and Grace Kelly convince themselves they've seen a murder, scruples are thrown to the wind.

I, for one, am willing to leave sleuthing to the movies. I have no desire to involve myself in sorting out the trysts which are negotiated and trumped under my window, or join in the rousing ballads of my musically gifted neighbors. I find the world of people I legitimately know to be complex and interesting enough.

Of course, if I spot a costume jewelry salesman or meet a man like Jimmy Stewart, it may be a different story.

(Rear Window is now showing at the Brattle Theater.)

Maryanthe E. Malliaris '01 is a mathematics concentrator in Lowell House. Her column appears on alternate Tuesdays.