The Karnau Tapes (10 page)

She comes to do Mama's hair every other day, and Mama goes to the salon every Saturday to have it cut. I wonder when Papa gets his hair cut. It always looks so neat whenever we see him and whenever he speaks in public or gives a party, but when does he find the time? Perhaps someone comes to cut it at the office. Except that he's always so busy there. He goes from room to room, checking on things, supervising his staff and listening to their reports.

Does he have it cut while he's dictating his diary? No, he walks up and down while he's dictating. He looks at his notes, thinks of the right words, puffs at his cigarette, screws up one piece of paper after another. Nobody's allowed to disturb him then. Papa told us once that his diaries are very important. Every word must be just right because he's going to publish them as a book later on, and they'll be a great success. The money they make will be for us children, Papa says. We'll be able to live on it, all six of us, after he's dead. Everything's settled, he says. The contracts were all signed long ago, and no publisher will be able to wriggle out of them.

While he's at the map table? No, snippets of hair would fall on the war map and alter the position of the front line. It wouldn't do during one of his radio conferences, either. How would it look if Papa criticised the broadcasters with his hair all mussed up? The hairdresser couldn't stand behind him and cut his hair then, not when he's cursing the war and calling people cretins and imbeciles. He couldn't keep his head still, not when he's doing that, and the hairdresser would have to give up. But his hair is always so neat and tidy. Perhaps that's Papa's secret.

*

Where am I? What am I doing on this hard, creaking bed? It's just a narrow plank bed, not my own. Why is the air so strangely still, why is it so light, what's become of the darkness, is it morning already? And this acrid, penetrating smell, what is it? The stench of humanity, the tang of cheap disinfectant and surgical spirit, that's what it is. The air in this unfamiliar room, with its two chairs, table and locker, is heavy with hospital effluvia. And no, it isn't still, the air, I can hear a muffled, intermittent rumble from far away: shellfire, it's the war, I'm behind the lines. What are those voices in the distance? What woke me? There, someone quite near me is speaking in a voice that sounds vaguely familiar: 'So now describe what happened.'

It's Dr Hellbrandt, the medical director of this hospital — this field hospital, to be precise. Have I been wounded? I feel my knee, my chest and arm: no wound, no pain. Now I put a face to that cold, crisp voice: Dr Hellbrandt, who greeted me yesterday surrounded by casualties of whom I've yet to see a single one today. Casualties . . . People back home say that many are horribly mutilated and scream in agony day and night. They're nothing like the war-wounded cripples who parade their gallantry medals through the streets: black leather hands, eye-patches, crutches, empty sleeves in jacket pockets, baggy, pinned-up trouser-legs.

Dr Hellbrandt is speaking again. He must be quite near, right next door in his office. Now another voice joins in, faltering and hesitant as if struggling to reply. I can catch every word. The walls of the hut are so paper-thin, even the man's laboured breathing is clearly audible: 'So we dug in and settled down to wait in our muddy foxholes. The position was impassable, blocked by tree-trunks . . .'

Silence once more. Where's my Magnetophon equipment? I've got to record this. A voice as distraught and exhausted as this could be heard nowhere else, it'll make an important addition to my vocal map. I jump out of bed, hurry to the table, automatically run through the routine I've learned. First I unwind the power cable. The man next door sighs and goes on in a weary monotone: 'Suddenly we came under fire. The sentries out front must have been half asleep. Either that, or they bought it before they could raise the alarm . . .'

The cable gets tangled up. What's the matter with me? I can do this with my eyes shut as a rule. The blitzkrieg voice inside me issues the next order before I've carried out the first: Plug in microphone lead. Which is the right socket? The plug mustn't come adrift. Now thread in the tape. Thread it in so enough of it appears on the other side of the recording head: six centimetres precisely. Thread the tape in quick, up to the mark, and secure it so it doesn't slip. But it does slip as soon as the driving spindle begins to turn, and blank tape flutters from the rotating pay-off spool. I'm close to despair. In training I could do everything perfectly, ready my equipment and install the microphone in double-quick time, even in the dark. My inner voice issues a confused babble of orders while the one next door drones on: 'The din was diabolical, whining bullets, screaming shells. A report came through on my walkie-talkie: "Unit wiped out after fierce firefight." Just then the flames reached the driver's cab. They ignited the camouflage netting and set it on fire. The driver was flailing away at his jacket with hands like blazing torches of flesh . ..'

The tape is finally secured. Last of all: Operate microphone switch. The tape is running past the head, recording is in progress: 'Then I was thrown clear by the blast, found myself lying in the ditch with earth pattering down on me. A fiendish racket, intense pressure on my eardrums, a piercing whistle. Above me, comrades were running away with their hair on fire. One of them came rolling down on top of me, slammed me across the face with his limp arm. I shut his eyes, which were already caked with mud. Then silence, utter silence until I came to in the midst of another diabolical din from the men in bed around me, the bedclothes, the breathing. And the breathing turned out to be my own ...'

The man emits a low, throaty sound and breaks off. I've now recorded my first front-line voice, recorded it through this thin partition wall. My hands are still trembling. Only now does it strike me that the voice must have an owner: one of Hellbrandt's patients — an exceptionally serious case, no doubt. I sneak out into the passage, eager for at least a glimpse of my sound source. The door of Hellbrandt's office is ajar: I see a pathetic, grimy figure, bare feet in boots with the laces undone, knees trembling, trousers spattered with mud. An allegory of squalor with shirt buttoned askew, lips quivering and cheeks unshaven, the patient has red-rimmed eyes and his matted hair is singed in places. He doesn't notice me. The fingers of one hand are stiffly clutching a fold of filthy trouser-leg, the other hand is kneading his groin.

'What, still in your pyjamas? Did we wake you? I apologise.'

Hellbrandt stations himself behind me. 'The MPs picked him up quite near here last night,' he explains. 'A malingerer? A deserter? That's what they want me to find out and certify. He can't go back into the line in any case, the war has robbed him of his eyesight. It's immaterial for the moment whether his blindness is only hysterical. He certainly acquired a good dose of shell-shock at the front. He'll be going home with the next batch of wounded.'

Hellbrandt turns back to the patient. 'I'm sending you home,' he says. A sudden thought strikes me: What if my departmental chief notices that I've misappropriated a whole reel of precious magnetic tape? Does it still matter, though? They mean me to get myself killed out here, Berlin means to see me slaughtered, that's clear as daylight. The new generation, they said, but they didn't mean young soldiers, the youngsters with contorted, steel-helmeted faces who are quitting their short lives in the cut and thrust of trench warfare, or simply in the barrages laid down by their own side; they were referring to the new generation of portable tape-recorders. Premagnetisation, that's the magic word. The tape is premagnetised, so the hiss can be almost entirely eliminated while recording. A revolution in sound, that's what they call this machine. Its appreciably greater acoustic spectrum enables very faint and extremely loud sounds to be recorded for the first time in human history.

I know what happened. The children's father ran a test, as he does with every new technological development. He demanded a demonstration of this portable tape-recorder and was delighted with the result: 'A genuine breakthrough!' he is said to have exclaimed. And then: 'If we can put this new technology into widespread front-line use quickly enough' — or words to that effect — 'I foresee immense potentialities.' His idea was seized upon by some ingenious desk-warrior like my room-mate in the firm, who promptly devised a programme for testing the machine in action. Every last item of enemy radio traffic was to be recorded with crystal clarity — crystal clarity, no less — and sent back at once to the rear echelon for decoding. Why? Because it's obvious to any rational person that, unlike yours truly, cipher clerks are too valuable to be exposed to the perils of the front line.

'Harnessing science to the war effort,' my head of department told me, 'that's the prime requirement, Karnau, you know that yourself. Each of us must serve where he's needed most. Think of the vast, state-sponsored research projects we'll be given if we make a worthwhile contribution to final victory. We have to compile data based on practical experience, Karnau, I'm sure you agree. And that, Karnau, as I've no need to tell you, means getting closer to the enemy.'

What he omitted to say was that, by selecting me for frontline duties under the auspices of this programme, he was killing two birds with one stone and ridding himself of an unwanted subordinate. He's only waiting for me to wind up like everyone else out here: felled by a hail of bullets, blown to bits by a shell, or simply crushed to death by a tank. The whole firm still laughs at my blunder in Alsace. Someone only has to say the word 'Strasbourg' and my colleagues' faces light up. Then they're off: 'Poor old Karnau spends his nights keeping company with horses' heads and listening to records of people panting and groaning, and he's so dozy during the day, he goes and wipes important tape-recordings. Horses' heads are hot stuff — try swapping your old woman for a horse's head some night and you'll never look back.'

So now the die is cast. My first brush with the enemy is imminent and inescapable, and lying here in the wards are the wounded who have already seen everything that's in store for me. The front line: that's where inward experiences are abruptly externalised, for instance when a shell splinter or a bayonet severs your stomach muscles and your guts spill out over your genitals, thighs and feet.

Hellbrandt knocks on my door after his morning rounds: 'Karnau, come with me. There's something you should see — something that ought to interest you, being a sound engineer.'

He ushers me into a room off the main ward with only three beds in it. 'These are my favourite patients,' he says. 'They don't make as much noise as the others, don't keep calling for me or the nurses. These creatures in here are always quiet. It's a positive pleasure to treat them, especially after a spell of fierce fighting, when bloody shreds of humanity are brought in and groans and screams ring out on all sides, when the corridors are jam-packed with stretchers because there's nowhere else to put them. Then it's a case of operating, operating around the clock, digging out splinters, sewing up wounds, et cetera, so that at least the severest cases give you some peace. Men with badly shattered faces have very little hope of survival. The most you can do is remove the lower jaw and patch up a hole or two. Other than that, it's just a question of keeping them quiet until the end comes. Trouble is, as soon as you've dealt with one ward, the caterwauling starts up again in another. This is the only place where silence always reigns.'

The occupants of the three beds are staring at me. Slightly flustered, I say good morning. 'Save your breath,' Hellbrandt tells me, 'but if you do speak, make sure your mouth movements are clearly visible.'

He nods at the men in turn, and they all nod back. Then he produces some cigarettes from his pocket and inserts one between each patient's lips. The dry, loosely packed weeds burn down in no time, and no wonder, the way the deaf-mutes puff at them. Hellbrandt beckons me closer. 'The deaf-mutes' battalion was my own idea,' he says. 'A special unit capable of carrying out operations to the letter, even when the noise level is extreme.'

He perches on the edge of one of the beds and converses in sign language with its occupant, a man whose head is bandaged. 'Most of them are also in possession of highly classified information,' he tells me, without taking his eyes off the patient. 'There's no danger of their divulging secrets or military objectives that could be of assistance to the enemy, even if subjected to the most rigorous interrogation methods.'

The man in the next bed slowly raises his hands and begins to gesticulate in a similar fashion. Hellbrandt's eyes swivel from one man to the other. 'You'll have to excuse me for a moment, Karnau. It's all I can do to follow them when they get into an argument.'

He interprets their gestures in a low voice, producing a delayed translation of the visible into the audible. The picture and the sound-track are out of sync: 'It's days since we went into action, he says, but my stomach's still churning. It's almost like it's getting worse, becoming unendurable. You'd think the enemy had invented some ultra-special weapons designed to deal with deaf-mutes. Not shells but lethal soundwaves ...'

The man puffs at his cigarette, so his next signed sentence is only fragmentary. The other patient waves to attract Hellbrandt's attention. 'No need for any ultra-special weapons, he says. Crouch in a trench when a tank goes roaring over the top of you, that's good enough. Our battalion is always first in line for unpleasant assignments up front. That's because none of us can afford to dodge them .. .'

Such are a deaf-mute's ordeals in the audible world, and such are the audible world's assaults on the deaf-mute. The rest of us are also subjected to these assaults, but we completely fail to perceive them because we're so inattentive, so busy listening that individual sounds escape us. The death cry of a comrade may go unnoticed amid the thunder of the guns, just as the sound of a barrage may be temporarily ignored by those awaiting the order to advance. Noises are merciless assailants of us all, but whereas eyes are always required for the perception of light, tongues for tastes and noses for smells, noises are not dependent on the ears alone. They eat into every part of the body, protected or unprotected: they can set up vibrations in a steel helmet and deliver a fatal shock to the entire skull.