Peter and the Wolf

Peter and the Wolf is a musical work woven into Smilla and Isaiah’s private routines. Smilla moves speakers close to Isaiah’s damaged ears and turns up the volume so he can listen; afterward, he may hum fragments of what he has heard while half asleep. The music gives their companionship a recurring, physical form: listening together, drifting off, being carried to bed, and waking into a faint attempt to sing.

Listening Together

When Smilla reads aloud or plays Peter and the Wolf, Isaiah listens closely. If her attention strays and her thoughts run away, he clears his throat in a friendly, gently remonstrating way. The sound tells her she has begun daydreaming and brings her back to the shared activity. The music is therefore not merely something played for him; it belongs to a small exchange in which Isaiah listens and, in turn, attends to Smilla.

The Ritual of Sleep

Smilla brings the speakers over to the sofa, close to Isaiah’s damaged ears, and raises the volume. Isaiah leans back, closes his eyes, and often falls asleep. At times he slumps quietly to one side without waking; Smilla gathers him up and carries him downstairs. If it is too noisy there, she takes him back upstairs and puts him to bed. The instant she lays him down, he wakes, then hoarsely hums a few bars of the music he has heard. The sequence gives the work a particular afterlife: it persists not as a conversation or a performance but as a tune carried into Isaiah’s half-sleep.

Intimacy and Recollection

The adult Smilla recalls these occasions while listening to a voice on a recording fade into white noise, with distant music remaining in the background. The recollection links the present sound to an earlier pattern of attention and care. Isaiah’s throat-clearing and his sleepy humming mark opposite ends of that pattern: one draws Smilla back toward him, while the other suggests that the music has stayed with him after listening. Peter and the Wolf thus serves as a modest but distinctive emblem of their closeness, shaped by Isaiah’s hearing impairment and by Smilla’s attentiveness to his needs.