The Karnau Tapes (19 page)

How are the flying foxes faring, I wonder. What sort of state are they in, the descendants of the creatures Moreau brought back from Madagascar and presented to the zoo? They're the last of their kind, now that the Dresden brood has been wiped out together with Moreau himself, who was buried with his charges beneath the ruins of the Chiroptera house on the morning of 14 February, when a bomb pierced the roof.

We had taken leave of each other only a few days before. I shall never forget that scene: the flying foxes' darkened enclosure, Moreau's gaunt frame, tremulous with privation, and the patient way he proffered slices of blood sausage to his debilitated bats, which ignored them, in a last attempt to keep them alive — canned blood sausage procured from who knows what secret store; canned blood sausage proffered in mute desperation, for want of anything else, because it was obvious, even when Moreau ran the cans to earth, that animals accustomed to fresh fruit would never touch blood sausage. There would be no more fighting over food, no more furious squeaks when one of them, with wildly beating wings, chased another off a peach or an apple and sank its teeth in the juicy flesh. But Moreau did not give up. He broke into the main post office at night in search of food parcels that could no longer be delivered, but the flying foxes spurned their contents too, possibly deterred by the scent of incipient, invisible mildew.

I made a resolution as soon as I learned of his death: the next time I visited Berlin my first step would be to check on the flying foxes, regardless of prevailing conditions and the risks involved. And now I've been summoned back into this sea of ruins. Clouds of smoke are drifting across the city in an easterly direction. The air trembles whenever a shell lands near by, and shots can be heard not far away. Trees lie uprooted on the paving stones, the main gate is pockmarked with shell splinters, a bent sign on the ground reads
DO
NOT
FEED
THE
SQUIRREL
MONKEYS
, and charred tree stumps border the path on which an injured dove is striving, with outspread wings, to drag itself in the direction of some neglected flower-beds.

Dead ducks are floating in the pond. Seated motionless on a park bench, each propped up against the other, are two wounded, combat-weary soldiers, one with a cocked submachine-gun across his knees. They're both staring blankly at the sky, but the latter suddenly stirs. He keels over sideways, the gun slides off his lap, and his heavy, limp-armed frame slumps to the ground. The other man, deprived of support, follows suit.

Cigarette lighter flickering, I make my way down into the cellar reserved for nocturnal creatures. This is evidently where members of the zoo staff sheltered during air raids. A flying fox flutters towards me through the gloom, skims my head and makes for the exit, where, bewildered by the bright spring sunlight, it circles in an untidy, haphazard way and quickly disappears from view. Someone has opened the cage, it seems, and as the lighter's feeble flame approaches the spot I'm overcome by a terrible presentiment. Another step, a faint splintering sound. Crouching down, I make out a tiny thorax and spinal column, both picked clean. I examine the floor round about, singe scraps of fur and surface hair with my lighter flame. A severed, membranous wing, residues of black and inedible matter. Not far away lies a peeled head with the eyes still open. Then darkness. The lighter has run out of fuel.

*

'Any news for Radio Werewolf, anyone?'

Papa smiles as he says that, but you can tell it's a strain. Radio Werewolf is his big thing nowadays. He goes out into the passage and asks someone else the same question. Papa spends the whole day collecting items of news for his radio station. 'The Werewolf needs feeding,' he says, and he expects all the grown-ups to submit bright ideas. Heroic deeds, that's what he collects. If Mama thinks of something, or his secretary, or even his receptionist, he makes a note of it at once. He never used to ask his receptionist for suggestions, not in the old days.

The Werewolves — yes, all our hopes are pinned on the Werewolves now. 'They must gobble everything up,' Papa says, meaning the power lines, the maps and street signs. They've all got to be destroyed so the invaders can't find their way around our country.

'There's plenty for the Werewolves to sink their teeth in,' Papa says. 'They can create as much havoc as they like. The Werewolves won't rest till they've bitten off the enemy's ears.'

What does he mean? Werewolves are half animal, half human. They're something out of a horror story.

'No,' Papa says, 'Werewolves are partisans, guerrilla fighters. Radio Werewolf broadcasts to them from somewhere in enemy-occupied territory.'

'Don't pretend to the children,' Mama tells him. 'The radio station isn't far from Berlin. They're figments of your imagination, these news items.'

Papa looks disappointed. 'I'd prefer to call them products of poetic licence,' he says. 'They're simply the news as it
ought
to be. Don't you realise that our reports are bound to come true? Don't you realise that we broadcast them so that, somewhere out there, the Werewolves will
make
them come true? All our news items will become a reality if only we put them over in the right tone of voice. The Werewolves will act with firmness and fanaticism as long as they're worded in the pithy, punchy style I've devised to meet the requirements of this exceptional situation.'

Mama shrugs her shoulders. 'Besides,' says Papa, 'I want every German youngster to dread being the last to join the Werewolves.'

Helmut is staring at the floor. Did Papa look at him sternly as he said that? 'Children,' says Mama, 'you'd better go to your room now.'

Poor Papa, he's so proud of his Radio Werewolf. Sometimes you'd think it was all he had left. We shut the bedroom door. Mama and Papa are bound to start arguing and we don't want to hear them at it. The younger ones try desperately to think of some way of helping Papa. What Papa needs, what he needs really badly to make him feel better, they say, are stories about Werewolves performing heroic deeds. They dig out an old exercise book with plenty of room in it — we don't need our exercise books, not now we've stopped having lessons — and sit down in a corner and start making up Werewolf reports, and when every last page in the book is full they're going to give it to Papa as a present. Hilde lets herself be talked into taking down the stories even though she doesn't feel like it. So there they all sit, whispering together: 'Werewolves are tearing the enemy limb from limb .. . Werewolves are tirelessly stalking the enemy and attacking them from the rear ...'

That's Holde, with her love of horror stories, but Hilde interrupts her: 'It's got to be snappy, we need really short sentences, like "All street signs to be painted over." '

'Radio Werewolf should broadcast marching songs and fanfares,' Hedda says in a loud whisper, 'with news bulletins in between.'

Helmut, who has been thinking hard, says, 'Papa also said you can stop American tanks by putting something in their petrol at night.'

The others rack their brains in vain. It would be nice if they really could think of something that would bring the war to an end. 'We must dream up some nastier things,' Hilde says. 'Acid, for instance. Acid's horrible stuff, it eats away your eyes and blinds you. All right, I'll put that down: "The Werewolves are blinding enemy soldiers." '

'Or hacking off their hands,' says Holde, but Hilde can't keep up. 'Or stripping them naked and chopping them up, in that order. Or spreading fire and destruction. Or shooting all traitors on the spot. Or drinking the enemy's blood.'

The others break off and look at each other as if surprised at their own thirst for blood, but they're sure they've been a great help to Papa. He'll feel much happier once they've given him their collection of news items.

*

But this darkness affords no protection, neither from the memory of those shrill, cracked, mutilated voices, nor from the noise of the bombardment. The crash of shells exploding above ground penetrates the Bunker walls, even at the very deepest level. It won't be long before the walls crack under the impact. They'll cave in and kill us — we'll be crushed to death by rubble just as Moreau's sleeping bats were crushed to death in the dark after being exposed to a momentary, blinding flash when the bomb ripped through the roof of the Chiroptera house and flooded their cage with daylight, the dazzling, agonising light that finally destroyed the defenceless creatures' nocturnal world.

So one form of darkness has absorbed the other: black is immersed in black, in a darkness unconnected with the night-and-morning world where safety resides. Such darkness fails to act as a shield against glaring light because it does not recognise light as its counterpart: in such darkness, light is inconceivable.

Stumpfecker stands facing me in uniform. It was he that ordered me to report to him forthwith, here in this sunless, subterranean world, in order to record the voice of his very last patient. He puts a finger to his lips. We have to be as quiet as possible in the Bunker, especially here on the lowest level, because one never knows, at any time of the day or night, whether the patient is asleep, presiding over a secret meeting, or simply sitting in his quarters, saying nothing but intolerant of any sound, however faint, in the passage outside his door.

The patient is far more sensitive to disturbances of human origin than to the thunder of the guns overhead. Stumpfecker believes that the patient's sensitivity extends to his own vocalisations: the voice that used to be so loud and clear is growing steadily fainter. 'You've yet to see this for yourself, Karnau, but what really dismays me is the fact that sometimes, in the last few days, the patient has been incapable of making any sound at all. It's happening more and more often, too. He'll bid a wordless farewell to subordinates who are leaving the Bunker for good, and his only response if they say something while shaking hands is a silent movement of the lips.'

There's a whole set of blank wax discs on the table in my cubicle, and a portable recording machine is permanently at the ready. Stumpfecker has gone off to see how his patient is. All that mitigates the oppressive silence is the hum of the overtaxed air-conditioning system. The telephone rings. It's Stumpfecker: 'Come quickly, Karnau, it's the patient, a very serious situation, he's been yelling at his subordinates in conference, hasn't strained his voice so badly for ages, it'll give out at any moment, so get your equipment down here fast.'

The stairs and the narrow passage are thronged with people listening with expressions of alarm. The patient is clearly audible now, even though all the doors are closed. It's possible to hear every word he bellows in that maltreated voice, which does indeed sound on the point of giving out. I can already detect rents in his vocal cords, laryngeal lesions, but the eavesdroppers seem unaware of this: their whole attention is focused on the wording of his furious accusations and invocations of doom.

Stumpfecker, crouching outside the door from which the noise is coming, nervously fidgets with his medical bag. We continue to wait, unable as yet to enter the room but poised to do so once the tantrum has run its course. 'He'll be slumped in his chair, utterly exhausted,' Stumpfecker murmurs. 'Stay in the background to begin with. Then, when I've checked his blood pressure and given him his medication, hold the microphone to his lips. You must start recording at once. It'll be my job to coax a few words out of him. You can't afford any slip-ups, Karnau. We don't know if he'll ever get his voice back. This could be our very last chance to record it.'

But the red, raw, worn-out throat fails to emit another sound. We sit in Stumpfecker's consulting room on the lower level and listen to the recorded silence. Stumpfecker tries hard to retain his composure. 'Let's hope this difficult phase will soon be over,' he says. 'There may be light at the end of the tunnel. After all, he's undergone several polypectomies, for instance in May 1935, on the advice of the doctors at the Charité Hospital. Having listened to one of his speeches on the radio, they inferred from his raucous voice that someone who could bellow so loudly for two solid hours must either have a larynx made of steel or be doomed to vocal paralysis. To the best of my knowledge, the last operation took place in October last year, shortly before my posting to East Prussia. It entailed the removal of another growth on the vocal cords.

'Many people regard the situation as hopeless,' Stumpfecker goes on. 'They think we're all condemned to look on idly at close quarters while the patient's physical condition deteriorates. There have been medical men who mistakenly believed that he was suffering from Parkinson's, but mark my words, Karnau: once the war is over — and it won't be long now — the patient's constitution will soon be restored by doses of fresh air, prolonged exposure to glorious summer sunlight, and rigorous detoxification.'

It's only two days since Stumpfecker was promoted to become the patient's personal physician in succession to the man who could neatly insert cannulas into any vein he chose. Dr Morell, renowned for his miracle pills, quit the Bunker in a hurry, and no one reckoned with the possibility that Stumpfecker, of all the numerous doctors present, would replace him — least of all Stumpfecker himself. The truth is that the end of our joint research had cast a shadow over his career. Although the authorities tolerated the failure of his transplant experiments at Hohenlychen, where he attempted to graft slivers of bone taken from inmates of Ravensbruck concentration camp on to patients in the SS hospital — a procedure that resulted in the growth of proud flesh, gangrene, and, ultimately, death — they did not feel able, in the light of military developments, to fund our research any longer. Having embarked on it with the aim of exploring the foundations of a radical form of speech therapy, we had ended up with a collection of mutes.

Instead of purposefully eradicating vocal defects, we had erased whole voices. This meant, in the end, that all our efforts were expended on reversing the process, on trying to adjust and repair damaged voices — on conducting futile breathing exercises and clearing asthmatic tubes, on directing the course of these only moderately successful experiments — when there was no real hope of repairing organs already given up for lost. This fact was, of course, concealed from our guinea-pigs, who would only have panicked and rent the air with countless aberrant sound waves.