F-0026 Homes where the alarm rings with a nice voice get a circle

(Said to be a copy of a private notebook. No year is given with the dates.)

April 9

Packed too much in before the holidays. The housing complex in Funabashi, two buildings today and tomorrow. Five stories, no elevator — it really gets to the knees. Press the smoke alarm button, hear “Normal,” get the stamp, on to the next unit. Never counted, but on a heavy day it must be close to two hundred times. Lunch was liver and chives. The large serving was a mistake. Regretted it on the afternoon stairs.

April 16

The condo in Matsudo. In the building around eleven, one unit and one only had a nice voice. A man’s voice. I said to the wife standing by, it rings with a nice voice, and she laughed. Circle in my list. First one this year.

April 17

For the record: there is no individual variation in the machine voice. Line up ten new units at the office and ring them, you get ten of the same voice. Even so, out in the field, once in a while, there is a nice voice. Ten-odd years in this trade, and at some point I started putting a small circle in my own list for the homes with a nice voice. Don’t ask me why. The closest I can get is: there’s nowhere on the inspection sheet to write it. Never told anyone. Don’t teach it to the new hires either.

April 25

The homes that get a circle are mostly quiet. They let you in, you set up the stepladder, and all that time not a sound from beyond the entryway. Shoes for a whole family at the door, and you meet only the one person standing by. There are plenty of homes like that in the world.

May 14

One unit at the Kawasaki site, a nice voice. This one wasn’t quiet. Two kids looked up at me from under the stepladder through the whole inspection. I hesitated a little about the circle, then put it in. A quiet home — maybe that was just my own idea. Couldn’t work it out, so I stopped thinking about it.

May 29

Mine is just the machine voice. When I get home I press it sometimes. Habit. Fifteen years alone in this apartment, and the one that talks most in here is the TV, I think. I don’t use my voice at home. No occasion for it.

June 11

Mine sounded different. Thought I was tired, pressed it again the next morning. A voice I’ve heard somewhere. Someone from a site, someone on TV. It’s almost there and it won’t come. It doesn’t feel bad. Somehow that snags at me.

June 20

Called the office at noon, nobody picked up, and I got the answering machine. That greeting is the one they made me record years ago. I heard it and I knew. My alarm rings with that voice.

The nice voices in the field — so that’s what they were, I thought on the drive home. Were they all, every one of them, the voice of someone in that home. I have no way to check.

June 27

It is a machine that hangs from the ceiling all day listening to the voices below. Even so, mine being my voice doesn’t add up. I don’t talk at home, so the most common voice in here should be the TV’s. Maybe I only think I don’t talk. How much voice a man lets out alone in his own home — I had never given it a thought.

After the bath, I let my voice out on purpose. Just a “hey.” I didn’t say it under the thing in the hallway.

July 4

I tried to remember the last time I used my voice at home, and I can’t. I never use it, so of course I can’t.

At the bottom of this year’s page in my list, I wrote my own address and put a circle by it. Habit of the trade. It wouldn’t have sat right otherwise.