The Karnau Tapes (5 page)

Hedda's awake now, she's blinking at me sleepily. We cuddle up under the bedclothes with her rag doll's arm draped over my face. Hilde's far too excited to stay in bed any longer. 'Let's go and see Coco,' she says loudly.

*

Five children at table with me, still in their night clothes. Helmut munches his bread and jam in silence, Helga sits there with her shoulders hunched, and little Hedda looks as if she may burst into tears at any moment. Only Hilde and Holde, with Coco to distract them, seem relaxed. No, the housekeeper didn't bring any pastries with her, worse luck. They've hardly touched the cocoa she insisted on giving them.

They obviously don't feel at home here. I hope it won't be long before their mother's well enough to have them back. How could I have landed them in such a situation? How could I have been rash enough to say yes when their father asked me to take care of them for a few days while his wife was having another baby? They're the children of a national figure, after all. As such, they're used to an entirely different life-style. And why did he take it into his head to ask me, of all people? We haven't known each other long. It was the overpowering effect of that gigantic public address system that first drew me to his attention, because I'd supervised its installation. After that he insisted on having me in his personal recording studio whenever he was going to record a speech for radio. That's how we got into conversation, while I was working there. Did he pick me because he sensed my approval of his views on education and upbringing? He refuses on principle to surrender his own children to the Hitler Youth. Was that the reason? I don't suppose I'll ever find out. He simply asked me, in a friendly but forceful way, if I'd be prepared to put the children up if no suitable alternative presented itself.

I must take great care not to get their names muddled up. Helga's the eldest, that's easy. Then comes Hilde, the one who kept pestering me about Coco on the way here. Then Helmut, the only boy. Then Holde, who has a slight squint. Hedda's the youngest apart from the new-born baby, Heide. Even their father seems to lose track sometimes: on one occasion, when referring to Hedda, he persisted in calling her Herta, but nobody dared to correct him. It's possible he mixes up the girls' names because so many boys' names keep flitting through his head for bestowal on imaginary sons. Horst, Hartmann, et cetera — he tries them out in his left-bank Rhenish accent to see if they would be appropriate to a male offspring of his, enunciating them with that singsong intonation betrayed by the very first phoneme that issues from his oral and pharyngeal cavity, a habit of speech that no amount of lip-pursing can eliminate when he tries to iron it out. The father's perceptible accent has rubbed off on his children. Perhaps he even experiments with Hermann, my own name, in secret.

*

Stuck here, that's what we are — stuck here with a stranger who doesn't keep things tidy, whose home is an absolute mess. The kitchen's far too small to hold us all and there are only two other rooms in the apartment. Where are we supposed to play? Why didn't Mama and Papa send us to the country? Then our nursemaid could have come too. Herr Karnau's housekeeper plunks a cup of coffee down in front of him so hard it makes the skin on my cold cocoa quiver. We didn't want to come here. Mama and Papa have simply packed us off without thinking. Either they don't care if we're happy here, or they don't know it because they don't really know
us.
Only one toy each, too. Or doesn't Mama know we're here — did Papa decide it on his own? I'm sure she wouldn't have agreed.

Herr Karnau drops a piece of cheese rind for Coco. Treff isn't allowed indoors at home — it's unhygienic, Mama says.

Coco snaps at the cheese rind and catches it in mid-air. 'Really, Herr Karnau!' says the housekeeper.

But Herr Karnau acts as if he hasn't heard. He breaks off another piece for Hilde to give to Coco.

*

The housekeeper glances at me over her shoulder. Do I detect a look of reproach? She reminds me a little of my colleague at the office, the one I don't get on with. We seldom exchange a word, and there are things that he and the rest of the department mustn't know about me or they'd be bound to think me insane. They mustn't get to hear about the private research I engage in, often until the small hours. The fact is, I've already made certain attempts to plumb the mystery of the human voice. Many of my experiments have become a habit, I've repeated them so often, but I still haven't found the answer or fathomed the secret. How could my colleagues be expected to understand why one of their number should so often patronise butchers' shops and abattoirs on mornings when beasts have been freshly slaughtered (I set off long before office hours, so as to get there before the anglers and dog-owners) in the hope of acquiring a particularly fine severed head, preferably undamaged?

It requires a certain amount of will-power not to be content to infer the function of the ear, or the operation of the tongue and larynx, from the diagrammatic illustrations common to so many textbooks. Drawings of that kind afford no real clue to the secret of living sounds, so I had no choice but to pursue my research with the aid of the real thing. Once I had familiarised myself with the basic techniques of dissection by studying a brief manual on the subject, it was time for my first visit to the knacker's yard. I hesitated, possibly embarrassed by the thought of what my colleagues might have said, and my manner was awkward in the extreme. The men in the queue behind me grew impatient as I falteringly enquired if the horse's mouth was sure to contain a tongue. All the other customers had come equipped with pails. I was the only one that had to ask the assistant to wrap my bloody, eyeless head in newspaper.

*

We've got to get dressed, Herr Karnau must have forgotten that, and he doesn't seem to notice that we haven't washed yet. When is he going to finish his breakfast? He hasn't eaten up his roll, and already he's smoking another cigarette. Herr Karnau smokes almost as many cigarettes as Papa does. Mama smokes a lot too, especially when she's not feeling well. What's all that stuff Hilde's telling Herr Karnau? He's asking questions about Mama and Papa. Funny, that: if he's really such a friend of theirs, why does he know so little about them? Holde suddenly interrupts them in a loud voice: 'Let's go and play.'

At last Herr Karnau asks us if we want to leave the table. The housekeeper wipes her wet hands on her apron and follows us out. Then she lugs the suitcases into our room. Helmut is upset when he sees we haven't brought all the toys he wanted. He feels in his pockets. 'Where's my car?' he shouts. 'Where's my Meccano? Helga, where did you put my car?'

He hurls his toy soldiers across the room and snatches one of Holde's wooden cows out of her hand. The housekeeper takes it away from him. He starts bawling and runs back into the kitchen. Cry-baby. If he's running to Herr Karnau for sympathy, he's welcome.

*

The stump of the neck bled profusely when I emerged into the street with the horse's head under my arm. I felt sick, the bloody newspaper smelt so awful. I'm not as squeamish nowadays, and handling animal's skulls has since become a matter of course. The cloying stench of blood, too, can be almost entirely eliminated by spraying the apartment with cologne. I've long been able to dispense with my medical textbooks, the dissection manuals that used at first to lie open beside me, their pages covered with reddish-brown fingerprints from the blood on my hands.

I work on the kitchen table. Coco, who has to be shut out while I'm dissecting, waits impatiently in the passage for me to cut up the remains and put them in his bowl. Bread-knife and scissors, pincers and knitting needles — those are my instruments. And, sometimes, when a skull is particularly hard to break open, an old spade. Oh yes, and a potato peeler. I find that ideal for skinning heads.

Layer-by-layer dissection may at least be bringing me closer to the heart of the mystery, even if I never solve it by that means. The tongue, which we employ as a tool throughout our lives, we think of as a flat slab because all we ever feel of it against our teeth is the forward extremity and all we usually see of it in the mirror is the tip. Confronted by a horse's tongue, however, we can make inferences about our own tongues from that long, round muscle, and it seems inconceivable that such a crude, unshapely mass of tissue can contribute to the formation of finely differentiated sounds.

I'm familiar with the oral cavities of pigs, also horses, oxen and cows of all ages. Only last night I had to get rid of my most recent skull in a hurry and exchange it for the presence of the five children.

*

Why is Herr Karnau stroking Helmut's head? Is he going to tell me off about something?

'Helga, your nursemaid told me she'd packed your school books. Your father insists that you do a little work every day, even though it's the holidays. Hilde, will you come into the kitchen too, please?'

We're disappointed, we don't feel like doing any school work. The younger ones have to stay in the living-room and play quietly, so as not to disturb us. We empty our pencil cases on the kitchen table. Herr Karnau reads out the sums we have to do, then he joins the others.

'What were you talking about at breakfast with Herr Karnau, Hilde? What were those animals he was telling you about? Those foxes?'

'Flying foxes, they're called. They're black foxes, a special kind that can really fly. But only at night, Herr Karnau says. They're very small, the size of mice. Not many people have ever seen one, but Herr Karnau knows a man who has seen them in real life, not just in pictures. A friend of his.'

'Nonsense, there are no such things. What do you mean, foxes? Don't be silly, foxes run, they can't fly. You must mean bats and you've just made them up, these foxes of yours.'

'No, they're flying foxes. It's true, Herr Karnau says so.'

'You must have misunderstood. You weren't listening properly, so now you're lying, and you know we're not allowed to lie, not ever.'

'Don't be so beastly. It's the truth, flying foxes really can fly. They only live in Africa, nowhere else.'

'Rubbish. How would you know?'

'Because Herr Karnau told me. That friend of his has actually seen some, after all.'

'Herr Karnau, Herr Karnau! He doesn't even know our parents, Mama and Papa have never asked him to the house. Have
you
ever seen him at home with them?'

'You're just being stupid, Helga. Of course Herr Karnau knows our parents.'

'How do you know he does?'

'You're angry because he's so nice to me, that's all.'

'You and your silly foxes.'

'If Herr Karnau hears ...'

'Shut up and get on with your sums, you little sneak.’

*

What's going on in the kitchen? Aren't Helga and Hilde working? I leave the little ones on the sofa, playing farms, and peek into the kitchen. 'What is it, finished your sums already? Put your things away, then. The housekeeper will want to make lunch as soon as she's back from shopping. We can do the housework this afternoon.'

The two girls give me a sheepish stare. They shut their exercise books and put away their pencils. They avoid each other's eye, I notice, probably because they've been squabbling. Then they both get up without a word and take their school things into the room next door. Did they do their sums at all, I wonder. Are they frightened I'll check and be angry with them?

The housekeeper goes home after lunch. That relieves us of her presence until tomorrow morning. Hedda and Holde settle down for their afternoon rest. The others are also less lively than they were this morning. They perch on the kitchen window-sill and look down at the street, talking quietly among themselves. At first I assume it's because they don't want to wake the two little ones.

I'm wrong: they're playing a game, a whispering game. Although I don't entirely follow it, I'm reluctant to ask them the rules because they're so engrossed. I notice, however, that each phase of the game ends with the same, invariable form of words: 'Take care, or the evil whisper will get you too!'

They intone this formula in a dramatic voice, the way a malevolent magician might utter it. Apparently, the evil whisper curdles your blood and dries up your heart. It's a special kind of voice adopted for the sole purpose of paralysing the person addressed. That shows how close they are in the imagination, the voice and the soul.

The little ones come toddling into the kitchen with sleep-crumpled faces. We've probably roused them too soon from their afternoon rest. They're thirsty, and now they'd like some rose-hip tea, but not until it's cool. All at once I detect a strange, unpleasant smell. Has Coco made a mess in the passage? 'No,' Helga says briskly. 'Hedda's done it in her pants.'

Don't little girls of two wear nappies? Hedda herself looks quite as taken aback as I do. Helga has already lifted her down from the chair and is pulling off her leggings and knickers. Hedda co-operates by casually raising one leg. Off balance now that she has one foot in the air, she starts to sway and violently flails her arms. Quite instinctively, I grab her hand. Equilibrium restored, she gives me such a beaming smile that I feel called upon to say something nice: 'There, Hedda, it could be a lot worse. Come with me and we'll find you some clean things.'

But Helga intervenes: 'No, not yet, she'll have to be washed first.'

Of course, I wasn't thinking. Hedda won't let go of my hand, so I'm left with no choice but to accompany her into the bathroom. I take a clean flannel and test the water with one finger to make sure it's not too hot, but Helga intervenes once more: 'What are you doing, Herr Karnau? Hedda can't stand on those tiles in her bare feet, she'll catch cold. You must put a towel down.'

She soaps the flannel and is swabbing away at Hedda before I know it. There's nothing more for me to do. I wonder if Helga looks after the younger ones as conscientiously when she's at home. She seems to handle everything with such self-assurance. 'Well, Helga,' I say, half jokingly, 'your own nursemaid couldn't have made a better job of it.'