The Karnau Tapes (15 page)

The little ones are coming towards us through the bushes. At least they aren't angry with us, which is lucky, and maybe none of the guests heard us yelling. Most of them aren't interested in children anyway. Mama's ignoring us. We won't get any cake today, that's for sure, but I can see Herr Karnau up there on the terrace. He's peering around with his eyes screwed up. He looks sad, perhaps because no one's talking to him. Now he's looking in our direction.

*

I scan the human terrain. The smooth, fine-pored area stands out against its rough, uneven setting, and expanses of shadow alternate with others bathed in glaring sunlight. A long curve, the softly delineated roundure of the shoulder, wrinkles radiating from the armpit, tiny shadows fanning out between the arm and the base of the breast, isolated moles and fine hairs distributed across the entire
decolletage,
an unpigmented streak on the upper left margin that shows off the flawless skin elsewhere to even better effect. A dark grey stripe over the shoulder, where the musculature of the neck can be discerned when the chin is raised. The central section, from which visual movements emanate, is framed by a string of pearls, and it is there, on the throat, that my gaze fastens: the Adam's apple is bobbing. Every sound alters the outlines of the throat in the chiaroscuro beneath the chin. The pearls repose in her cleavage, they rise and fall with the ribcage at every breath. Tendons ripple beneath the soprano's smooth skin as soon as she speaks, which she does in a clear, incisive voice that can be heard all over the garden. The tip of her nose twitches whenever her mouth moves. Now, while speaking, the young woman scratches her neck within millimetres of the Adam's apple, that infinitely fragile, vulnerable projection of cartilage, and the glottal chink flutters as compressed air passes through the narrow vent. She continues to speak, this singer in her light summer dress, seemingly unconscious of the larynx she subjects to such rigorous training at other times. At the moment, since it produces that silvery voice on its own, it is merely a tool requiring no attention.

Dressed all in white, in a white linen suit, shoes of fine white kid and even gloves of the same colour, the children's father approaches with the singer in his sights: thin mouth in a gaunt face, stern features, firm, exceptionally pronounced cheek muscles tempered like steel by countless public speeches, prominent carotid artery throbbing fiercely, prominent Adam's apple. He forbade me in advance, before the children could even learn of my request, to record their voices. Not from any fear that those voices might be distorted by their awareness that I was recording them, nor because he thought it might be indiscreet for them to speak into a microphone extempore instead of adhering to a prepared text in the usual way. He didn't refuse for any reason that commended itself to me because I myself had already thought it, but purely on grounds of copyright: 'The right to exploit my children's voices is not your prerogative, Karnau. It's vested solely in the family, and that means me.'

Hasn't it ever occurred to him, the great public speaker, how dependent he is on underlings as outwardly insignificant as myself? Doesn't he realise that sound engineers have made a major contribution to his brilliant career — that without microphones, without immense loudspeakers, he would never have been blessed with such success? Didn't he often complain of poor acoustics in the Movement's early days, for instance during a speech at the Sportpalast, when the dud loudspeakers started to whistle and he had to go on speaking for nearly an hour with no amplification at all, until he was dropping with fatigue and his voice gave out entirely? Or when no one could understand him because the loudspeaker had been located behind the platform so that every word could be heard twice over, once uttered by himself and once as an amplified echo? That sort of thing went on until we disseminated his voice with the aid of as many as a hundred loudspeakers designed to hold his audiences in thrall from all directions. Does he think it's pure chance that his personal success has coincided with major improvements in the public address systems he uses at mass rallies?

Snatches of conversation: 'Rubber,' says someone, and 'We're cut off from the plantations in South America.' Perhaps they're talking about self-sufficiency in rubber, or perhaps about the modelling clay the children are playing with in the garden. You can mould it into anything — people, animals, buildings — as long as your fingers are deft enough.

The children carefully knead the soft material with their fingertips. They fashion it into heads, arms and legs, then obliterate them by squeezing it hard between their palms. They indent the lumps and dig out eyes, nostrils and mouths, only to efface those features with their thumbs a moment later. It's just the same with a recording when the stylus bites into the wax: the more relentless a furrow it ploughs, the more accurate the result and the more clearly a recorded voice can be heard when played back.

The guests at the garden party are offered big bowls of fruit from which the stones have been carefully removed. The children's father, with the soprano on his arm, strolls down to the lake, where his offspring are romping among the trees. Blinking in the sunlight, they run up and down the bank until they can't run any more and flop down exhausted on the grass. Their light summer clothing stands out white against the greenery. They're playing at being dogs now, so engrossed in their snuffling and digging and scampering after stones that Helga's father has to yank her to her feet by the collar before she smooths down her skirt and bids the singer a polite good afternoon. The others, too, are dragged away from their game and made to shake hands in turn. But that's not enough for the singer. With the father looking on, she enfolds little Hedda in her arms and hugs her. Hedda averts her face and looks away, patently ill at ease, but her father doesn't intervene, he simply stands there smiling. Such are children's early exercises in habituation, and such is the way in which their innocent bodies go rigid when exposed to the touch of an adult. These exercises are repeated until the entire body rigidifies and the child degenerates, little by little, into adulthood: the transformation of a free-flying, aerial creature into one that is forever earth-bound.

V

TWO
BARE
FEET
ARE
ADHERING
TO
THE
COLD
TILES
.
NO
movement, no change of position, no shift of weight from one leg to the other, not even a twitch of the toes: nothing. Either because the inevitable excretion of sweat that traces the shape of the man's soles on the tiles is gluing his feet to the floor, or because changing position would compel him to abandon a warm patch on the tiles and infuse a cold one, little by little, with body warmth. His motionless feet obscure a small area of the regular pattern of black and white tiles, which are so highly polished that his heels, and even his bony ankles, are mirrored in them. Their reflection shows up against the chequered pattern and interrupts the series of joins, the network of right-angled intersections, that runs across the room to the spot where I'm standing, though here the floor is dull and reflects nothing, neither my trousers, nor my socks, nor even a faint image of my black leather shoes.

The smooth, tiled floor is draining body warmth from the man's feet. Conversely, its chill is penetrating his soles, creeping up his legs to those parts of his anatomy that are concealed by his vest and underpants, and infiltrating his shoulders and his arms, which, like his feet, are motionless. They hang limp at his sides, and gooseflesh alone betrays that his body is still imbued with life as he stands there half naked in the middle of the room, exposed to the gaze of his fully clothed interrogator.

But the development of gooseflesh is a giveaway in itself. To the observer, even distended pores and erect papillae are overly revealing. The rigidity of the man's face is intended to disguise those uncontrollable changes in his epidermis. His vacant gaze and drooping lips are an attempt to distract me from the shivers running through the exposed parts of his anatomy. They're meant to divert my attention from his bare feet, bent back, hunched shoulders and incipient paunch, from the shape beneath the front of his cotton underpants, but they fail to do so.

They even fail to disguise that faint intimation hidden from the observer's gaze: the cold sweat of fear that is trickling down the back of the body on display and very slowly tracing the line of the man's backbone on the material of his vest.

And we both know this. We both know that the body under inspection can conceal nothing, even though the ears pretend to be deaf and the lips mute, because my subject's eyes are still looking out from deep within him. His gaze is eloquent of the dawning realisation that he has used his voice for years without paying it the slightest heed: all those countless mutilated sounds, all those crude, ill-modulated utterances have suddenly combined to create a diabolical din in his head.

That's how we stand facing each other. That's how the figure in front of me stands, like a conscript undergoing his physical — like a youngster who, for the first time in his life, sees his naked adult body exposed to thorough scrutiny by strangers. We stand there in silence for a short while only. Then it's time for me to put a stop to the man's impersonation of a deaf-mute. And, once he fills the cold room with sounds, being compelled to answer my questions, he's even more naked than before — really naked now, even though certain portions of him are concealed by the cotton that moulds itself to his scrotum and limp penis. Has he already reached the stage at which tears need restraining? Can I already detect, in the corners of his eyes, slight traces of moisture with morning sunlight reflected in them? Although he hasn't been informed that he's the subject of vocal research, he clearly senses, as we talk, that I'm inexorably recording every nuance of his voice, however faint. Is that a dark spot I see on the front of his underpants? Has my subject lost control of himself and passed a drop of urine?

But he realises that it doesn't matter whether he passes a drop that visibly moistens the material, or whether he manages to suppress this minimal efflux of urine throughout our session, because every fibre of him senses that even his muscular tension is being registered.

There it is: a twitch of the upper lip. Quite unconnected with word formation, this tic is quickly acquiring a life of its own and will persist with every sound the man utters, expressive of impending collapse and disintegration. My subject won't retain his composure for much longer, I can tell from his voice. It not only shakes but communicates its tremors to his entire body. The bare feet will soon have to move, the man in the vest will soon be seeking some means of support. He can't concentrate any more, gropes desperately for answers to the simplest questions, his own voice ringing so loudly in his ears that every attempt to formulate a word misfires. Not a single clearly audible consonant emerges from his writhing lips. His throat balks, contorted by uncontrollable muscular spasms, and all that can be heard is that hideous organ, just a croak bereft of all meaning, a strangled laryngeal gurgle that drowns one misshapen sound with its immediate successor. Meanwhile, quite unhurriedly, I continue to repeat my questions in a loud, clear voice as if patiently giving my subject a second chance. I do so although we're both well aware that he's long past saving — that every renewed attempt to speak is just another step on the road to speechlessness, that every movement of the mouth, every readjustment of the vocal cords, every flutter of the tongue, is bringing him closer to ultimate and ineluctable silence.

Now to conduct an intuitive assessment of my subject's swaying figure. Should I grant him a fleeting hope of recovery, or should I push him over the edge right away? His eyes transmit no entreaty, nor does his stance convey anything of the kind, but his voice implores me to exempt it from further interrogation. A momentary pause as I prepare to ask another question: calmly, I draw breath, assume a look of inquiry, begin to shape a word — and, almost imperceptibly, a plaintive sound issues from deep within that half-naked body. Not that my subject realises it, I've attained my objective: no need to say another word.

That last, faint sound was precisely what I had to coax from him for recording purposes. Now that silence has fallen and nothing more happens, he collapses. Is his uvula damaged? Are his gums sore? Have his vocal cords been seriously affected after only one session? I hand him over to Hellbrandt, who will check on his present condition. It's only afterwards that I become aware of an acrid smell in the room: the man spent half an eternity standing, barefoot and breathless, in a puddle of his own juices. I send for someone to mop it up.

*

Papa's going to give a speech. What a lot of people, and how close together they're standing. They can't move forwards or backwards, they can't move their arms and their tummies are rubbing together. This is the first time we've been allowed to come and listen, me and Hilde. There's a smell in the air from all these people. I hope they'll let us through to our seats, all the others have been taken long ago. If we have to stand we won't be able to see a thing — we'll be crushed to death by all these grown-ups. Mama pushes a man out of the way and points to our seats, one each for her and me and Hilde, Papa reserved them for us. People wave when we sit down, and we wave back. Now they're starting to cheer. Mama nudges me. 'Look,' she says, 'here comes Papa.'

'Where?'

'Not behind us, silly, straight ahead.'

Papa takes his place at the speaker's desk and looks out over the audience. He's looking in our direction. Has he seen us? Does he know exactly where we're sitting? His eyes are tired, but you can't see the shadows under them because the lights are so bright. He hardly eats a thing these days, just semolina with milk, and he smokes all the time, but now his eyes begin to shine. He's concentrating on what he's going to say. Everyone realises this, because they all go very quiet. Now he starts speaking.