The Karnau Tapes (3 page)

Most of these pressings are unique. I've brought home some recordings of speech, but also some unusual sounds of human origin. I'm even fonder of the voice alone than of singing with instrumental accompaniment. The quivering glottis and the operation of the tongue can be heard far more clearly when the organ lies naked and exposed to the ear. Purely on the strength of a voice, these records conjure up an entire person in the mind's eye. Like an archaeologist examining a potsherd, one can use a tiny fragment to form a picture of the whole. All one has to do is to listen closely, nothing more.

It's also exciting when, having first heard a voice on the telephone and mentally provided it with a body, we meet the owner in person and are able to compare the fruits of our imagination with reality. The result tends to be a disappointment, however: people in the flesh are far less interesting than their voices lead one to suppose. I must study the subject more closely. I must develop an even keener ear and listen to every nuance if my mental image is ever to match a person's actual appearance.

I play a record of sneezing, throat-clearing and breathing. Meanwhile, Coco insists on being patted. He presses against me, rubs his soft, tremulous flank against my leg. Is it the sounds that prompt him to act this way? He jumps up on my lap, exuberantly licks my hands, refuses to be deterred by my feigned indifference. Finally I give in: I fondle him, tweak the fur between his ears. His moist nose thrusts itself into my palm. He can hear better than any human being with those furry ears of his. In daylight one can look deep inside them and follow their pink convolutions down into darkness. I tickle Coco's throat, and he instantly raises his head as far as possible to give my hand free rein. I palpate the hard canine larynx with my fingers. This is the spot from which sounds emanate; this is where the source of the voice resides, beneath that gristly protective shield.

I run my hand over Coco's skull. Where is his sense of hearing located? Where is the capacity for generating sounds rooted in his canine brain? The shape of the skull and its bumps and indentations enable one to infer the site of certain regions of the brain, so Professor Joseph Gall discovered at the end of the eighteenth century. To Gall, every head was a cerebral map. If deaf-mutes had their heads shaved, for example, he could diagnose the nature of their disability by sight, without having been told anything about them beforehand. Professor Gall's observations filled whole phrenological atlases.

Only by keeping a record could one guard against the intrusion of distorted sounds. The nature of the human voice is such, however, that this record would be no more than some cursory sketches of vocality comprising a few jagged lines scrawled on paper to define the hearers' location. It would merely be the rudiments, perhaps, of a map of which the bottom left corner, at most, displays a few faint lines devoid of an established scale, together with a few equally faint dots that do little to assist one's orientation. Where is one, in any case? In what area, since the map lacks a key?

Coco has curled up on my lap and gone to sleep. The record comes to an end. Without getting up, I open the balcony door and continue to sit there for the time it takes to smoke a cigarette. A very clear, cold night. In air such as this, every external sound penetrates the innermost recesses of the ear: a horse-drawn cart, footsteps slowly receding. No, Coco isn't really asleep, or not profoundly so. His ears always twitch an instant before I myself hear something.

I'm planning a map on which even the most insignificant human sounds must be recorded. For example, a practice common to many smokers: the violent expulsion of air between slack lips. A half-casual, half-voluptuous habit, it makes a disgusting sound that irritates me to death and provokes an involuntary urge to strangle the author of such repellently tuneless whistling. But I'd always be far too much of a coward to commit such an act, however justified. Too much of a coward even to rebuke the offender or to point out, very politely, that he's being a nuisance. I'm not equal to hand-to-hand combat — in fact I wouldn't even dare to clear my throat in an admonitory way. Those Hitler Youth boys this morning, perhaps
they
will be capable, when they grow up, of doing such things without turning a hair. Doubtless they will, if they can already bring themselves, as children, to get out of bed on a cold, dark morning for the sole purpose of sweating at their Scharführer's behest. It's lucky for someone like me that I grew up in the days before the Third Reich: no parades, no sojourns in camp, no physical training followed by the masculine stench and clamour of a steamy changing-room, no supervised wet dreams.

The born coward fears everything on principle, even immersion in a group of equally bashful youngsters compelled to bare everything to the gaze of others, their half-aroused penises included. He dreads standing naked in the vaporous heat of the communal showers, dares not even peer between the others' legs for signs of pubescent fuzz. If only it weren't for the coarsely suggestive tone that seems so manifestly proper to those masculine voices. It can prompt a person to cut himself off from the rest because he simply can't bear to listen to it, and because it's inseparable from another tone of voice: the imperious, unambiguous, frontline organ from which all colour has been leached. It's so easy for someone who has mastered the first tone of voice to switch, quite instinctively, to the other. Are we all in danger, sooner or later, of adopting that barrack-square tone? It may be that none of us can rid himself of the temptation — none of us, of course, save deaf-mutes, who are immune to it because the said tone of voice is incapable of penetrating their consciousness. Professor Gall was a lonely child like me. It won him few friends when he noticed at the age of nine that the more pop-eyed of his schoolmates were exceptionally good at learning things by heart. Still, Gall was always surrounded by his skulls. He did at least have his family of death's-heads.

Like Gall, anyone intending to compile a map of all the vocal nuances must not be put off by his fellow men. Nor, like that master of craniometry, can he afford to be thought a coward. He mustn't shrink from the most extreme human utterances; must be there on the spot when danger looms in order to record up any sounds that result; must not be deterred by the fact that many vocalisations sound far from pleasant, both to the hearer and to those who utter them. The listener must regard his subjects as sources of sound, nothing more; just sound sources and not, for example, pain-racked men in urgent need of assistance. I mustn't allow myself to be distracted from a collectable voice by such things as the brutal way in which the Scharführer abused his underlings, or the squalid conduct of the boor in the tram, or the behaviour of the demented woman who pestered the old man with questions about Santa Claus and allusions to her teddy bear's diet. I mustn't be so preoccupied with deaf-mutes' strange gestures, either, that I fail to notice when one of them gives vent to an inarticulate sound. Even if I fly at the throat of someone who noisily exhales tobacco smoke, the effort involved in throttling him with my bare hands must not divert my attention from the sound of his last, dying gasp.

My vocal map will not be compiled in accordance with familiar rules or confined within predictable boundaries. It will not merely survey familiar terrain from a novel viewpoint, but display an area extraneous to every human cartographic domain. The implementation of such a plan will require infinite patience. To capture a specific type of whimper it may be necessary to make comparative recordings before my atlas covers all the nuances of that plaintive sound.

It may be years before the last gap is filled by a related utterance from the lips of another sound source — indeed, a single human life-span may be far too short to accomplish this. An animal has to follow beaten tracks. We, being optical creatures convinced that all phenomena should be regarded in the same way for ever, as our lifelong habits dictate, must do no such thing. We must persevere until, quite suddenly, the heavens burst open and the world of sound breaks over us with elemental force, reducing all that is familiar to ruins in the same way as that belch startled me although my ears should have accepted it simply for what it was: an occasion for making another entry on my map, which is still almost blank.

II

NOW
THERE
ARE
SIX
OF
US
.
MY
DREAM
ISN
'
T
OVER
YET
,
IT
'
S
pitch dark, the middle of the night, let me go on sleeping, stop shaking me, leave go of me. So we've got a little sister, Heide, she's just been born, but that's no reason for us to get up now, in the middle of the night, we'll go and see her in the morning, as soon as it's light. Leave me alone, it isn't time for school yet, either, and there's no air raid on, there really isn't.

All that shaking has woken me up. She's gone again, taken the others to the bathroom with her. What time is it? Do we have to go down to the shelter? I'm still dreaming. Who turned the light on? The bed's nice and warm, the pillow's all squashy. Someone whispered, 'Quick, get yourselves washed and dressed.' Who was it? The nursemaid. I can hear her in the bathroom, talking quietly to the others. 'You're going to be collected,' she said.

Collected? Why? Who by? Where are we going? To visit Mama in the hospital and see Heide? They'll be asleep at this hour. Has something happened? Mama has been in the hospital a whole month, she wasn't well, she was waiting for the baby all that time, she was always so sad when we saw her. And now it's a girl after all, not another boy the way Papa wanted. "When Mama was allowed to visit us at home one afternoon, she and Papa talked about having another little son.

I peep through the crack in the curtains: still pitch dark outside, not a light anywhere, everything blacked out. It's so quiet, too early for birds or people. Any wind? Don't know, can't see the trees. Yes, there, a branch waving around just outside the window, but it's bare. That's not leaves rustling, it's water running in the bathroom. I can't hear anything else. The nursemaid's calling me: 'Helga, pick out some toys, will you? Only one each, mind, that's all you can take with you.'

I'd like to ask her what's up, but I'm too sleepy to talk. We never need to take any toys with us when we go to stay at our house at Schwanenwerder. And what are those two suitcases doing here, full of warm things? We've got plenty of clothes in all our houses. It's warm in the bathroom, the tiles are so steamed up you can hardly see across the room. The nursemaid's standing at the basin with Holde, but Holde won't open her mouth to have her teeth brushed. What's the point of the suitcases and all those clothes?

'You're going to spend a few days with a friend of your parents', he's waiting for you downstairs. Your mother's still too weak, she's got enough on her hands with Heide for the moment, and your father doesn't have time to look after the five of you, what with working till all hours and spending the night at his office or at Lanke and being away so often. Hurry up, all of you. Stop dawdling.'

The others aren't listening, they're far too sleepy. Helmut's standing there in his vest, waiting to be washed. Hedda's rooting around in the pile of clothes and Hilde's gone to sleep again, sitting on the loo. Nobody says anything. Holde's scratching her leg, she's got goose-pimples all over. The nursemaid is doing her plaits.

It's cold in the nursery. Hilde and I can take the new dolls Papa brought us from Paris. He doesn't have much time to spare, it's true. Paris last week, then straight on to Vienna, and back here only two days ago. I rummage in the drawer for Helmut's soldiers and Holde's farm animals. Hedda never plays with anything but her rag doll in any case, it's still over there in her cot, underneath the warm bedclothes. The suitcases are full now, but if we're going to be away overnight we'll need our cuddly toys as well. Who is this friend of Mama and Papa? Have we ever seen him before? I don't want to go out in the dark this early. I'm cold now, I ought to get dressed but I'd sooner keep my nice warm nightie on a bit longer, not put on those nasty cold things.

Where is Papa, anyway? Isn't he going to say goodbye to us? Is he still asleep, or is he at the hospital with Mama? Maybe he drove out to Lanke yesterday evening, after his birthday party, and spent the night there. The nursemaid calls to me across the dark landing: 'Finished, Helga? Then comb your hair neatly and go down to the drawing-room, the gentleman's waiting for you in there. Say how do you do and tell him the others will be down right away.'

Papa's bound to be downstairs, waiting to say goodbye to us and chatting with his friend. I stop to listen on the stairs, but I can't hear any voices from the drawing-room, only plates clattering in the kitchen. Perhaps they're speaking quietly.

It's very dark in the drawing-room, only one light on, the one on the coffee table. I can see someone's head over the back of the armchair. It's in shadow, but Papa's head is smaller and his neck is thinner, it must be his friend. I pause in the doorway: he doesn't move, he hasn't heard me sneaking down the stairs. I'm just about to turn round and tiptoe off to the kitchen when he stands up and looks at me, so he must have heard me after all. He says how do you do and introduces himself. His name is Herr Karnau. I thought he'd be much older, this friend of our parents. How will such a young man manage to look after the five of us? He's looking very tired, too. He smiles at me in the gloom and says, 'You're Helga, the eldest, right?'

I just nod and shake hands, then I go to the kitchen. I've never seen the man before, and Mama and Papa have never mentioned having such a young friend. The others appear in the kitchen one by one, last of all the nursemaid with Hedda, who's all clean and tidy. There's cocoa and bread and jam, but none of us can eat anything as early as this. We don't finish our cocoa and leave half-eaten slices of bread on our plates. The nursemaid fetches Herr Karnau from the drawing-room. He says hello to us all, but the others just stare at him and say nothing.