Uit de leeszaal (57)

‘At that moment I understood it was not any piano but my hearing that was off-key. I was hearing a C as a C-sharp. That was the beginning. I shrugged and persuaded myself that I could live with it. (…)
If it had happened all of a sudden that I was to lose the last sense that connected me to the world, I would have screamed in terror and found some way as quickly as possible to end my life. But it came upon me gradually, allowing me progressive degrees of acceptance, with hope that every degree of loss would be the last, until, in the growing quiet of my despair, I resolved to accept my fate, having been taken by an odd impulse to find out what life would be like when my hearing was completely gone and, without sight or sound, I had only my own consciousness to amuse me.’
[E.L. Doctorow, Homer and Langley, p. 173-174.]