This sound of a siren at the cemetery has lingered in my mind since I caught it a few days ago. It sounds sweet, the siren, and stately as it passes into the distance. Listening to its passage I found myself trying to interpret its slow-moving progress, and I imagined that my fantasy sirens-savant really exists, and that maybe that savant is me.

Some time ago I imagined a young boy with a unique skill. He could read siren sounds. By simply hearing a siren he could identify it as “Police, Berlin, 1960s,” or “Ambulance, South Africa, 1940s.” He was a prodigy, this fantasy child of mine, though in fact I knew a kid in grade school who recognized sirens from around the world, and perhaps that kid inspired this character.

Sirens were a thing of mystery and evocation in my youth. Certain “codes” of the siren were common knowledge, however accurate they may have been. I grew up believing that an ambulance’s siren is turned off when the patient inside has died. I also grew up believing in the superstition that one should hold their breath when they hear an ambulance approach, and not exhale until the siren sound is fully gone, lest the patient inside will die. I believed there was significance to sirens switching from slowly-alternating howls to more rapid-fire sounds, and there I also thought there was symbolism in which side of a car a siren was placed when a portable siren is stuck to the roof of a vehicle.

My fantasy savant goes beyond the superstitions and beyond the parlor trick of merely identifying the type of siren. I imagine him in a room crowded by acoustical researchers and scientists, listening to tapes of sirens recorded in places all around the world, in countries the youngster could never possibly have visited. A typical analysis of his might be “Fire truck, Canada, probably Montreal, 1990s, it’s raining, the firefighters think the blaze is too dangerous, they can’t see 3 infants in the upstairs room, their mother set the fire and gassed herself, they’re going to let the house burn itself out!” Or, “Ambulance, Ireland, 1960s, only one paramedic, the patient was hit by a truck and is looking around the inside of the ambulance, making eye contact with the paramedic…”

The siren sound is not just a warning to other drivers but a physical surface to be interpreted and even handled.

Eventually this strange ability to read deep into the contours of siren sounds drives the boy mad. He never finds another person with his ability to interpret sirens and on account of this he becomes convinced that every siren he hears is sending cryptic messages which only he can hear. In time he becomes paranoid, believing that every ambulance and police car siren he hears is warning him that they are coming for him, or that grave danger looms.

That siren last week, cutting through the hot, windy air of the cemetery, entered my mind as an object for interpretation. Why, indeed, was the vehicle moving so slowly when there was virtually no traffic on the highway? The sound itself has a strange texture. It is bright and I see it smiling, but the sound is mournful.