The Karnau Tapes

by Marcel Beyer

  My first encounter with my own voice goes back a long way. It was, I seem to recall, at a birthday party in my early childhood that I first heard it without speaking at the same time. Under parental supervision, my friends and I had recorded a few words on a wax cylinder and immediately played them back. Everyone present marvelled at this phenomenon: all the children's voices could be heard except mine, which was manifestly missing. And then I noticed that among the sounds issuing from the horn was an unfamiliar, unnatural voice that belonged to none of my friends.

  It was a while before I grasped that it could only be mine. But my internal, cranial vibrations were altogether different from that childish voice. To this day, the sounds transmitted to my ears by my bones strike me as deeper and richer than those that reach them from some external source. I was dismayed. On the one hand I felt an urge to confirm my original impression by listening to the recording once more; on the other, I was glad that my friends had already started to play a new game in which I could unobtrusively join. They had forgotten all about the wax cylinder, whereas my own thoughts were still of the quivering stylus that had relentlessly explored those grooves and converted their sinuosities into sound — into the repulsive noise I never wished to hear again.

  Since then, whenever I become aware of my unpleasant vocal timbre, I break off abruptly in mid-sentence, too embarrassed to go on talking. I'm nonetheless convinced that it should be possible to remodel the voice and approximate it to the internal, cranial sound by dint of practice, by carefully adjusting the larynx and pharynx, tongue and thoracic cavity prior to speaking. It must surely be possible to master the organ that any stranger can hear, the link between oneself and the outside world, the sound that sheds more light on a person's character than any other single manifestation.

  Not that Helga, who now converses with me quite naturally, seems to have noticed this vocal defect. Perhaps she takes it for granted that my voice and its owner go together because she cannot know from experience how little suited they are. Even though the other children are chattering and frolicking behind us, I feel no desire for silence.

  'Herr Karnau?'

  Helga brings me down to earth with another of her questions. Has she been talking the whole time?

  *

  'Herr Karnau, are you one of a big family like ours?'

  'No, I don't have any brothers or sisters.'

  'So you've always been on your own?'

  Herr Karnau doesn't know what to say. He's holding Hedda in his arms so the others can play with her pushchair. They're pretending it's a tank and wheeling it through the puddles. I'm holding Coco's lead. Herr Karnau may be right: I mustn't worry about little Heide.

  Now we're back in the warm. Coco's fur is cold, it smells of fresh air, and we've brought a cloud of coldness into the kitchen with us. Our cheeks are as red as the baby's picture on those jars of baby food, the laughing baby with the golden curls and chubby cheeks. Herr Karnau hasn't asked us about our homework again. Shall we play collecting for charity? The little ones don't like that game because they have to put make-believe money in our collecting boxes, mine and Hilde's, while the two of us pretend to be standing outside the Hotel Adlon in our fur-lined jackets. We did that with Papa last year, before Christmas, and everyone stared at us. That's why the others are still jealous.

  We play families instead, but no one volunteers to be the Mother. No one wants to be the Mother because she has to spend most of the time being ill in bed. Although she's at a health resort with lots of nice fresh air and no work to do, she's made to swallow pills whenever she has a fainting fit. Once, when she's out for a drive, the car goes round a bend and she falls out and breaks some bones and gets concussion. We're all very worried about her, especially the Father, because he was driving too fast. Everyone wants to play the Father in spite of that, because he doesn't feel bad about it for long and he gets to order everyone else around. He has his own secretaries and he's always very busy. Hilde can be the Father today. She picks Helmut and me to be her secretaries. The little ones can be the children.

  The Father paces up and down his office, dictating a new speech. It's all about relentless candour, the voice of the people and ice-cold truth, and Helmut takes it down in shorthand. He can't write yet, not properly, so he only makes squiggles on the paper. Hilde speaks much faster than Helmut can write. 'If things are going badly,' she says, 'let's admit it. Let's call a spade a spade.'

  The children don't have anything to do at present. The Father decides they're actors in a depressing film about a hospital, so they all have to pretend to be lying in bed and keep quiet. 'That's enough medical films,' he says. 'Too many medical films are a bad thing.' But Helmut, who's supposed to pass the order on to me, gets it wrong. 'That's enough mental films,' he says.

  We all laugh at Helmut's mistake and call him Tran, of Tran and Helle, the two film characters invented by the Father himself. But Helmut doesn't think it's funny and changes jobs. He refuses to join in again until the Father is ready to censor some films. The children can now join in too, they're allowed to be present at the screening. There are mountaineering films, newsreels, and children's films, which even the Father finds amusing. Hilde tells us the story of a Mickey Mouse film. Finally the Father says, 'Stop the projector. This film is banned.’

  *

  I listen at the door. The children have forgotten about me, forgotten for the moment that they're staying with a stranger.

  Might it be worth leaving them to play and devoting the half-hour before supper to my project? My collection of sounds is steadily growing: I've already managed to compile about a hundred examples of the strangest utterances. Some are everyday noises, vocal manifestations of which their authors are seldom aware. There's a vast range of sounds to be monitored, especially now, in the autumn: throat-clearings, little coughs and sniffs that are heedlessly emitted by the sound source but mercilessly recorded on disc. My collection includes some genuine treasures, for instance this recording of a brothel behind the lines, which was given me on the sly by an acquaintance. People must be monitored even when making love. Those sounds engraved on wax are unrepeatable because the brothel was closed down soon after they were recorded, for fear of disease. According to my friend, it even employed the services of dogs trained to copulate with the aid of soiled underclothes.

  Is my map of vocal nuances subject to any limitations? Is there anything I would not record? Yes, the voices of these children while defenceless, as they are now, because they believe themselves to be alone and unobserved. Everything else is grist to my mill — anything and everything, the whole of the audible world. Every blank space must be filled for completeness' sake. Every space but one: these children's voices will not be entered on my map, where they would be exposed to all and sundry and, worse still, to the children themselves. I couldn't undertake any such exposure without rendering myself guilty of distorting their childish voices into the constrained mode of speech that would inevitably result, because the five of them would find their own voices just as alien as I myself did at their age.

  *

  Hedda has already fallen asleep beside me, and the others have also settled down for the night. A shame, because I'm not the least bit tired. I'd have liked to talk to them about Herr Karnau — about little Heide, too. I can't sleep, I'm too thirsty. I'll go to the kitchen and get myself something to drink. Very quietly, so as not to wake the others. I won't put the light on, I'll tiptoe out in my bare feet. Not a sound.

  Somebody's talking in Herr Karnau's room, I can hear voices through the closed door. But Herr Karnau's all by himself, surely. Or did he have a visitor and we never noticed? Perhaps he's just listening to the radio. That's not German, though, I can't understand a word. Is he listening to an enemy broadcast? No, it doesn't sound like that, not loud and clear like a news-reader. News-readers don't break off in the middle and leave long gaps — they don't keep sighing in between. It's weird. The kitchen's all dark, I'm afraid to go in there now.

 
; The sounds are getting louder and louder. Herr Karnau must have someone in his room, he simply must — someone in pain. Now the man is screaming. Why is he making those awful noises? I want to go straight back to bed, but I can't move, I can't stop listening. No, those aren't words, it's someone being hurt. Maybe it isn't a person at all, maybe it's an animal I can hear, howling like that. My heart is really thumping. Is Herr Karnau torturing his dog? No, that's not Coco, it must be a human being. Now he's making choking noises, gasping for air, whimpering horribly. Why doesn't Herr Karnau do something, why doesn't he help the poor man?

  *

  It's sometimes far easier to detect the characteristic features of a voice from its most extreme utterances — shouts, hoarse cries, whimpers — than from the spoken word, even though those sounds leave exceptionally deep scars on the vocal cords. Even though, or for that very reason? That is when the voice attains a singular clarity unsuspected by speaker and listener alike: when the organ is coping with rough treatment or contending with difficulties and striving with all its might to overcome them, for instance during a fit of coughing that threatens to stifle it and extinguish every sound. Those are the times when a person's vocal image manifests itself with unbridled freedom.

  Recordings of such vocalisations get to the very heart of the sound source in question. They penetrate far deeper than monitored and recorded heartbeats, which, although they vary in rhythm from person to person, do nothing more, in the last analysis, than confirm that the engine is ticking over steadily. The heartbeat is simply evidence of life, a vegetative function common to many living creatures. But the voice, being partly subject to the will, generates sounds that all reveal the special characteristics of its resonator: the human being.

  *

  The door suddenly opens, and Herr Karnau stands there looking down at me as if nothing had happened. His room is silent now. 'Can't you sleep, Helga?' he says. 'You haven't been crying, have you?'

  I'm frightened. Herr Karnau takes my hand and leads me into his room. It's dark in there except for the light on his desk. Can I see something moving over there in the shadows, a visitor clutching his stomach and writhing in agony? No, it's only Coco. He comes trotting over. Herr Karnau sits me on his bed and wraps me in a blanket. Then he sits down at his desk beside the gramophone. Coco jumps up on the bed, snuffling. He wants to get under the nice warm blanket with me. Is there really nobody here but us?

  *

  Little Helga looked absolutely distraught when I found her standing outside my door. She must think I'm a monster. I can't play any more of my recordings while the children are here, it's far too risky. And I thought they'd all been asleep for ages. What could the poor girl have thought when she heard those screams of agony coming from my room? I hope she'll soon feel better and forget what she heard.

  She's huddled up on the bed with her bare feet protruding from under the blanket. She's still frightened. Of me? Of this gloomy room? Of the voice that has long since died away? She looks around timidly, very much a child once more. As for the adult manner she adopts toward the younger ones in imitation of her mother and the nursemaid, it seems to belong to another person altogether, not to the tongue-tied little girl who's sitting here in front of me.

  I must quickly reinvolve her in our interplay of this afternoon, keep up a flow of words so as to steer her thoughts in another direction. The music, too, is gradually calming her down. So is the sight of the black disc on the turntable, gleaming in the semi-darkness as it rotates with soothing regularity.

  *

  Coco rests his head on my lap. Herr Karnau asks me if I like Coco. 'Yes,' I tell him, 'but what breed is he?'

  'I don't know, I've never given it any thought. I suspect it would be very hard to identify.'

  'You mean he isn't pure-blooded?'

  Herr Karnau laughs. 'I'm afraid not.'

  'So he's a bastard?'

  'Let's call him a mongrel, shall we? It sounds nicer.'

  Herr Karnau plays the record for me again. 'I like sitting in a darkened room at night,' he says, 'listening to records. A lot of people find the black-out depressing on really dark nights, but I think it's lovely when the sky above the city looks dark blue, not pale the way it does in normal times — you can see the stars so much more clearly. Were you scared in the dark just now?'

  'Yes, a bit, but I'm all right now. It was only out there in the passage . ..'

  'I know what you mean. As a child I was also scared of the dark, especially in enclosed spaces, but it didn't really bother me outdoors. I'm just the same today, come to think of it: I can only stand being inside the apartment with the lights off for a certain length of time, but I enjoy walking at night for hours on end — as long as I don't meet any shady characters.'

  The desk lamp is shining on Herr Karnau's hair. He's letting me stay up much later than the others. They must have been asleep for ages, but the two of us are still talking together, all by ourselves. What are shady characters, though? Not just people with shadows, because we've all got those. People who only move around in the shadows? People made of shadows, not flesh and blood? Herr Karnau is speaking very softly, his voice gets quieter and quieter. Are shady characters spirits that roam around at night? Or are they like the Kohlenklau, that creature on the posters Papa designed to stop people wasting fuel in war-time? Not a human being, but not an animal either, slinking around in the dark with claws instead of hands and a sack of stolen coal on its back. I'm not frightened any longer, not of the Kohlenklau's lopsided face peering out from under its cap, and not of the fact that I can't hear Herr Karnau any more and it's gone all dark.

  'Are you still awake, Helga?'

  I don't say anything. Herr Karnau picks me up and carries me, blanket and all, into the room next door. Very gently, he puts me down on the sofa bed beside Hedda, who has warmed the mattress while I've been away. He tucks me in. Now he's gone.

  *

  What's the matter with the dog? Why is Coco lying on my arm at this hour? Is he trying to wake me? Another weight lands on my legs. Coco isn't as heavy as that, nothing like. I open my eyes a fraction: daylight already. I make out a child's smiling face. And another.

  'His eyes are open!'

  A chorus of giggles, a fivefold good morning. The children have crept in and are sitting on my bed. Already wide awake, they shake their little heads like dogs emerging from sleep. Their hair is thoroughly dishevelled after only two nights here. The housekeeper and I have both proved incapable of plaiting it neatly. I let Holde crawl under the covers and she promptly sets to work on my hair with her doll's comb: 'That's so you don't look so shaggy.'

  The children laugh. The rag doll dances in front of my face as Hedda sings me an aubade in a squeaky doll's voice. But after only a few bars she gets muddled, or the doll does, so she sings the first two lines again and again. Helmut is doing gymnastics at the foot of the bed. Coco, who approves of all this activity, jumps up and joins us.

  Helmut collapses: he slowly buckles at the knees and lies there for a while without moving. Then he gets up again, extends one arm, takes aim at Helga with his forefinger, and loudly clicks his tongue. Helga collapses too, but much more slowly, and lies so inert that her body would be motionless but for the bedsprings' undulations. Holde watches expectantly as Hilde follows suit after Helga has aimed a forefinger at her and made the same gunshot noise. Helmut has another idea: 'We won't use our fingers as pistols, we'll pretend our pillows are grenades and have a pillow-fight.'

  Hedda and Holde emerge from under the covers and run after the others, who are fetching their pillows from across the way. Only Helga stays behind with me. 'You have to be careful to do it right,' she says. 'It isn't so easy to fall the right way when you've been shot.'

  Soon they've had enough of dying and want to play something else. Helga whispers something to the others and tells me, 'You've got to guess what we are.'

  The children line up beside my bed. Holde gives an involuntary giggle, but Hilde shushes her and t
ugs at her nightie, looking cross. Holde shuts up at once. The children stand there in silence. Then they wave their arms about and look at me as if to convey something, but they don't say a word. After a while they lose patience. 'Well,' says Helga, 'haven't you guessed yet?'

  'No. Swimmers? Birds?'

  'Wrong.'

  'Windmills, maybe? Characters in a silent film?'

  'No, silly, we're deaf-mutes on parade.'

  They turn about, all five of them, and march silently out into the passage.

  III

  IT'S VERY QUIET IN THE APARTMENT NOW THE CHILDREN HAVE gone. Too quiet, for my taste, as if the floors are close-carpeted and the walls padded with cotton wool. They reflect no echoes of childish laughter, no childish comments or questions. The dog's snuffles, too, sound strangely unreal, like a vague reminder of louder and livelier days. My recordings are no substitute. No matter how I turn up the volume, they produce no sounds capable of soothing me. I wander restlessly from room to room as if visible traces of the children's voices may be lingering on the wallpaper or furniture. But no, nothing.

  Their voices made so distinct an impression on me during the few hours we spent together that my inward ear can recall them all. Each has its own, unmistakable acoustic image. Even the piping voices of the youngest can be clearly differentiated, although they still sound ill-defined and will only develop fully as the years go by. Not that vocal development is dependent solely on physical growth. Physical mobility, too, plays its part. Children's voices develop as they romp around with their brothers and sisters, as they pit their strength against that of their peers, as they scuffle and pant and cry. They develop as the individual limbs become adjusted to each other while their owners walk, jump, and co-ordinate the movements of their hands. They also develop during those self-absorbed games on the floor, when the child, almost without knowing it and wholly undistracted by the extraneous noises in its vicinity, mutters a running commentary on the state of play.