The Karnau Tapes (22 page)

A shelf laden with tapes, some partially unwound, bore witness to sundry attempts to transfer all the recordings to the latest type of recording medium — attempts that had never progressed far because the influx of material to be evaluated and filed was far too voluminous. Although strict attention had always been paid to cleanliness (the entire archive could so easily have been destroyed by vermin), the innumerable cardboard boxes had built up a layer of fine dust over the years. This had to be brushed off with the back of the hand before the lids could be lifted and the documents inside, discs in paper sleeves, removed. Standing in one corner of the ill-lit room was a gramophone on which these discs, many of whose white labels bore no inscription, could be played. Technological developments notwithstanding, this obsolete equipment had not been discarded because of the continuing need to play historic recordings for purposes of comparison. Winding up the gramophone was a strenuous business. While doing so, a committee member knocked some nineteen-thirties sapphire needles off the table. Karnau's statement went on:

'The invention of the sound film had been eagerly awaited. Sound cameras were installed here while movie-goers were still debating whether silent films would survive, though the lenses were always kept covered because only the soundtrack was used. That accounts for the presence here of many kilometres of unexposed film. The sound-on-film system also enabled cutting to be carried out for the first time, an impracticable procedure in the case of sounds engraved on wax.

'Germany was far ahead of other countries in the field of sound-recording. The portable tape-recorders we developed for use at the front continued to be one of the enemy's favourite acquisitions until the war ended, and here at the archive only the very finest equipment and materials were employed. On one occasion our entire collection of wax discs almost melted because the heating system malfunctioned. Discs do have one advantage over tapes, however, in that contact with a magnet cannot obliterate their contents. That was another reason why security was so important. Imagine if saboteurs had installed an electromagnet here and wiped the entire archive!

'One of our tasks was to optimise vocal conditions by technological means, for instance the public address systems used at mass rallies. Sophisticated forms of speech therapy enabled glottal stops to be suppressed, thereby avoiding over-modulation in large halls. Salivation was controlled during loud, rapid speech and glandular activity brought into balance with the aid of medication, the object being to render every last spoken word intelligible. One or two experiments were conducted into breathing under stress and its potentially disruptive effects. Amplification by loudspeakers renders such questions extremely important.'

Arrayed in one corner were some tapes of which it was hard to tell whether the sound engineer had been carried away by sheer love of playing around with advanced recording equipment or whether he had made them for authentic medical purposes: for example — if the accompanying list could be trusted — noises occasioned by secretions of the pancreas or, greatly amplified, by eyelids opening and closing.

Another series of experiments which defied complete elucidation, but which, to judge by the medical technology employed, could not have been carried out so very long ago, included the introduction of probes into the pharynx and the bloodstream for the purpose of recording various unidentifiable bodily noises. As for the human guinea-pigs from whom these data were obtained, sometimes in an extremely painful manner, the committee of inquiry could not discover whence they were recruited.

Rumour had it that cleft palate patients were among those enlisted for comparative recordings. It was even said that the researchers had analysed the potential intensity of human cries — that they had not shrunk from surgically modifying their subjects' articulatory apparatus in order to study their capacity for speech under extreme conditions — but none of this could be proved by the evidence as it stood.

'The Museum of Hygiene concerned itself with man in his visible form,' Karnau explained, 'whereas we dealt with his audible manifestations. We were united by our attention to detail, and pathologists of one discipline were often of service to those of the other, for instance when ascribing our clients' articulatory changes to changes of a physiological nature.'

Karnau proved to be extremely talkative; more than that, he possessed a knowledge of technical matters that was wholly at odds with his status as a security guard. Apart from presenting a detailed account of the archive's division of labour, he sometimes strayed into reminiscences:

'When the morning's work was over and our clients had — in a manner of speaking — lent us their voices, staff members would often meet in the conference-room during the interval between two shifts. The entire team — Professor Sievers, Dr Hellbrandt, Professor Stumpfecker, and others — would sit there swapping ideas, and representatives of the various disciplines would exchange suggestions. Either that, or they simply sat back and relaxed in silence while the archivists went on with their work outside.

'Because they sensed that they were all on the same track and shared the same objectives, they developed close ties. They often cracked little jokes — as, for instance, when Dr Hellbrandt said something about plastic surgery being invasive of the human body, and Professor Stumpfecker, quick as a flash, retorted. "So is sex." They also tried out various breathing techniques on each other, purely for amusement's sake, or indulged in theoretical discussions, for instance about whether it would ever become possible to accelerate the learning of foreign languages by effecting surgical changes in the individual student.'

On examining Karnau's statements more closely, the committee members began to entertain certain doubts about them. His detailed knowledge of the archive's procedures and research projects aroused a suspicion that he had not merely been in charge of security, as he steadfastly maintained, but must have held a far more responsible position — indeed, it was not difficult to picture him hob-nobbing with Hellbrandt, Sievers and the rest in one of the conference-room's luxurious leather armchairs.

It also transpired that the underground complex was more extensive than Karnau, outwardly so eager to be helpful, had at first disclosed: a second recording studio came to light. Far less comfortably appointed than the first, this took the form of a tiled, neon-lit chamber whose bleak decor bespoke an operating theatre. A full set of surgical instruments reposed on a stainless steel trolley, and the microphone assembly overhung an operating table from which blood-encrusted straps were dangling.

Forensic analysis of the blood on the straps revealed that the most recent operation had taken place only a few weeks before. This seemed to disprove Karnau's assertion that work at the archive had ceased before the end of World War Two. On the contrary, the obvious inference was that plans had been made to continue the medical research of which the committee had gained certain intimations. Having learned by some unknown means that the orphanage was about to be inspected, the person or persons engaged in these obscure experiments had hurriedly moved out with the intention of pursuing them elsewhere. Unfortunately, no information on this subject could be gleaned from Karnau. He left the city next morning, destination unknown.

*

I lie silent, feel no pain, just the gentle pressure of fingertips palpating my skull, hear the skin part as the scalpel slices effortlessly through my scalp, but I feel nothing, am conscious only of the light whose beam is burning its way into my skin. Why is that spotlight focused on my head? I try to pull my head away but cannot move, the scalpel continues to cut, makes a careful incision across my forehead, but I still experience no pain. I try to speak, but I can't feel my tongue or gums, my lips are numb from the anaesthetic, my mouth seems full of some unyielding, saliva-sodden mass. It's a gag: I've been gagged.

My chin is on fire, my cheeks and eyelids are twitching, my eyebrows have been singed, my eyelashes too, the rest of my face is muffled up. I try to signal, I move my arms, legs, stomach, but the straps merely tighten and fail to release me, the operating table creaks but no one notices, I strive to make a noise in my throat but hear nothing — yes, I do, a voice from behind me: 'Immobilise him, please, he's struggling. Find some additional straps, heavier on the anaesthetic, I can't work under these conditions.' I know that crisp, clear voice, I remember it now: Stumpfecker's. 'Tie off this vein for me and keep swabbing. Who was responsible for shaving him? Whoever it was, he made another rotten job of it.' My eyelids are spattered with something warm and wet: my own blood or Stumpfecker's saliva?

I hear a second voice: 'Nasty mess, that. Great view, though.' It must be Hellbrandt, watching the progress of the incision.

A curt response from Stumpfecker: 'Peel back the periosteum and clamp it. There it is, you see? That's the white of the cranium showing through. Get ready, Sievers. Hold the skin aside and brush on some more of that styptic solution.'

Now it's Professor Sievers's turn: 'Taking our cue from Dr Gall's informative craniological measurements, gentlemen, we shall run this gramophone needle along the cranial suture. First, though, we must swab the furrow again, or the needle may become obstructed by blood.'

A moment's solemn silence, a fist bears down on my gag. Sievers explains: 'We should soon be able to hear the impulses via the electrodes, amplifier and loudspeaker.' Then, in the midst of renewed silence, I hear a faint crackle. It grows steadily louder, and a current of cool air fans my face as a hand moves across my bare skull, to and fro, faster and faster, up and down the furrow. The crackle increases in volume, becoming a high-pitched hum.

'Keep going,' says Hellbrandt. 'Is the tape-recorder on? Paraspeech, perhaps,' he adds, to no one in particular.

Sievers, very excitedly: 'It works, gentlemen. Our experiment seems to be a success.'

Stumpfecker: 'Keep it up, Sievers, I'm sure we'd all like to listen awhile longer. Afterwards we must evaluate the recording and work out some comparative figures. Then we'll be able to submit our findings to Katzenstein's archive for experimental and clinical phonetics.'

Cranial hum: a sound of human origin never previously heard by the human ear — the authentic head-note — yet it sounds entirely inhuman. It fades to a dull rattle and almost dies away, relapsing into the initial, metallic crackle that causes my skull to vibrate as if splinters were starting to detach themselves from it, a frightful noise that brings me out in gooseflesh. Can this be the specific sound of my own cranial suture, the most primordial of all sounds?

No, it's made by the claws of a pigeon scrabbling around on the window-sill, whetting them on the metal fittings outside my window because it can't decide which direction to take when gliding down into the street. But it's the middle of the night, so why isn't the creature roosting quietly? I force my eyes open: darkness. No Stumpfecker, no Hellbrandt or Sievers. I can even move my head.

Sweat has glued the hair to my scalp and soaked my pillow. It's years since I had such an exhausting nightmare. Stumpfecker has been dead for decades, I saw his body with my own eyes while escaping from Berlin. Shortly after we split up — the same night, in fact — I came upon his huge, inert carcass lying sprawled in the middle of the road-bridge at Lehrter Station. As for Hellbrandt, he went abroad soon afterwards. A British contact helped him to escape in return for a consideration, as he termed it. Being a collector of memorabilia, he pronounced himself satisfied with a small self-caricature scrawled on cardboard by Stumpfecker's last patient.

I'm dog-tired but I can't go back to sleep. I wander into the kitchen. It's still dead of night, not a lighted window to be seen, only the tip of my cigarette glowing red in the darkness. Light divides day from night and governs the world's time. Periods of time are irrevocably defined by the position of the sun and the progress of the stars, whereas human time, our very own form of demarcation, is prescribed by the voice: the alternation of speech and silence, the sequence of the words, or even inarticulate sounds, that almost subliminally determine the rhythm of our footsteps while walking or the range of all our actions, even though, being scarcely noticed, they only appear to accompany our movements. The larynx imperceptibly twitches when we engage in a silent soliloquy, and internal monologues insist on venting themselves in speech as soon as we're unobserved. Thus the voice separates spells of solitude from the rest of time.

Why did people lose the taste for recording their own voices for so long? The dividing line came with the end of the war, which also put a temporary damper on acoustics. Yet the invention of the phonograph was soon followed by the appearance of so-called self-recorders who captured their home-made music on wax cylinders: Uncle Fritz would sing a ballad while the whole neighbourhood clustered around the harmonium. Nobody needed to do any more singing after that, because a wax cylinder recital was given every Sunday. This craze, which persisted even after Emil Berliner's invention of the disc that revolved at 150 r.p.m., continued into the nineteen-thirties, the heyday when all were eager for a turn in front of the microphone and a chance to listen to their poorly reproduced voices thereafter.

It persisted even during the war, when well-devised bulletins from the front were recorded on disc at home. The whole family would sit quietly in the living-room while the cutting stylus quivered and the paterfamilias anxiously manipulated the controls with one eye on an open copy of
The Amateur Recordist's Handbook,
careful to carry out every last instruction in the manual so as not to botch the job — so as to capture the brisk effusions of the Eastern Front commentator and engrave his every tone of voice on wax: pugnacious when describing a tank attack, scathing when obliged to mention a Soviet village, dismissive on the subject of the Russian winter.

But suddenly it was over. Privately owned tape-recorders were few and far between, and it was not until the audio-cassette appeared at the end of the nineteen-sixties that people once more began, as a matter of course, to make recordings for their personal use. Dependent at first on the poor-quality integral microphone built into every cassette recorder, they taped and played each other foolish anecdotes, long-winded accounts of their experiences on vacation, or simply dirty jokes.