The Karnau Tapes

by Marcel Beyer

  I almost let slip something about the waxworks show in the cellars, I've been so bored and infuriated by the previous speakers. Another sample recording.

  'When discussing what has helped to shape the German race, gentlemen, you surely don't expect any results from all this nonsense about racial materialism, with its eternal concentration on platinum blond hair?'

  My voice is running away with me, I can sense it, and my manuscript is obscured by a disc — the one I've just played and put down in the wrong place. Hastily, I extemporise: 'According to my esteemed predecessor on this platform, the eastern territories will soon become part of the Reich. If all the inhabitants of that vast area are to be brought into line, that process cannot confine itself to imposing certain linguistic regulations and rooting out non-German words, the way we did it in Alsace. I speak from experience, gentlemen, because I was there, and it's nonsense, the whole thing. No fundamental changes can be effected by communal singsongs and elocution exercises chanted in unison. There's simply no point in dinning a new language into people's heads at parades or over the radio until they're addicted to it. Do you really propose to bombard them, for evermore, with monotonous Brownshirt chants and marching songs?'

  A murmur runs round the hall. I detect some hostile glances out of the corner of my eye. They're a sworn fraternity, these men, but there's no going back, I can't stop now. I speak over the top of my recordings, changing the discs in quick succession. 'Listen to this, gentlemen, and this, and this. It's childishly simple: our first task, once we start, must be to teach people to listen carefully, because it's not just language that has to be brought into line, it's the voice itself and every sound of human origin. We must get hold of people, every last one of them, and probe their innermost being — an inner self which, as we all know, manifests itself in the voice, the link between the inner man and the outside world. Yes, we must probe the inner self by submitting their voices to close examination like good physicians capable of diagnosing a patient's condition by listening to his heartbeat and respiration. We must tackle the inner self by tackling the voice and adjusting it — indeed, we must not, in extreme cases, shrink from modifying the organs of speech by means of invasive surgery.'

  There's a sudden, ear-splitting noise: I've inadvertently knocked the needle off the record with a sweeping gesture. Embarrassed silence, not a movement anywhere in the hall. I take a deep breath, but I've lost my thread and am utterly exhausted. 'Gentlemen,' I say at length, 'thank you for your attention.'

  I step back from the lectern, oblivious of my concluding words but aware that I'm trembling in every limb. Muted applause followed by a concerted exodus for supper. I gather my discs together. When most of the delegates have left the hall, a man in SS uniform comes up to me.

  'That was fantastic, Herr Karnau.'

  He introduces himself: his name is Stumpfecker, personal physician to Reichsführer-SS Himmler, a man of about my own age. He speaks in a clear, steely voice littered with punctuation marks: 'No wonder those old fogies are suspicious of your research, Herr Karnau, they're half asleep. Anyone who adopts such a radical approach to his subject is bound to be an unwelcome visitor in such company. I've only one reservation: have you really thought it out, this vocal atlas of yours? Isn't your collection of sounds too unique to be converted into visual terms without the loss of some important nuances? Doesn't the task of mapping them on paper consume too much precious energy that might be better employed in making recordings that defy any form of graphic representation, that override all petty regulations and transcend the imagination of narrow-minded gentlemen like the delegates to this conference — recordings made in conditions of such absolute freedom that your archive could embrace every nuance of the human voice, however faint?’

  *

  We go on talking in the dark when the light is switched off. 'Hilde, do you remember that singer who came to dinner with Mama and Papa, the one with the beautiful necklace?'

  Hilde shakes her head in the moonlight. 'You mean a necklace of coloured stones, like Mama's?'

  'No, shiny white pearls.'

  'Mama's got one of those too.'

  'Yes, but this was a young woman. She was talking with Papa — she said hello to us before we had to go to bed.'

  'No, I don't remember. There are always so many people at Papa and Mama's parties, and nearly all the ladies wear necklaces. And bracelets. Or earrings, at least. It looks nice, wearing jewellery like that. Maybe we should have our ears pierced when we're older.'

  'I bet it hurts.'

  'Yes, but think of the lovely earrings we could wear.'

  'Mama says it's vulgar to wear earrings at our age. Only guttersnipes have their ears pierced, she says.'

  But Hilde isn't listening any more. She's asleep already.

  *

  'Professor Stumpfecker describes you as a clever man. You met him in Dresden recently, do you remember?'

  'Of course.'

  'Well, he'll be joining us before long. Stumpfecker says your lecture embodied some very interesting ideas that might be worth putting into practice. In order to try them out — '

  'Excuse me, but I don't quite understand why you sent for me. This is a hospital, an SS hospital.'

  'Well, assuming that Stumpfecker's report to this department is correct, the point you made was that the eastern territories cannot be Germanised in the traditional way, by teaching their inhabitants the German language and imposing German laws.'

  'That sounds as if — '

  'We must ensure that the East is exclusively inhabited by people with truly German, Germanic blood, isn't that what you said?'

  What's the man driving at? Is this an indirect way of calling me up for military service? Stumpfecker knocks and enters. The SS major turns to him.

  'Something seems to be wrong here, we're not getting anywhere. Perhaps you'd better give Herr Karnau a brief account of what we have in mind.'

  'Where had you got to?'

  'The question of Germanic blood.'

  'Ah yes. It's like this, Karnau: you said that none of our linguistic programmes and Germanisation procedures, none of our attempts to din the language into people's heads by external means could ever get to the root of the matter, correct?'

  'Yes, that's right.'

  'Didn't you also say that the German language is in one's blood from birth, so to speak, and that one can't acquire it merely by learning its grammar, vocabulary and rules of pronunciation? That language flows through the human body like a constituent of the bloodstream and permeates each individual cell? That any linguistic adjustment must logically begin with the blood itself? That one must invade a person's circulation in order to get at the thing that renders him human, namely, his voice?'

  'Not exactly. What I meant was — '

  'Karnau, I have an almost verbatim recollection of your closing words: "Tackle the inner self by tackling the voice, and, in extreme cases, don't shrink from modifying the organs of speech by means of invasive surgery." '

  'Well, in theory ...'

  'Herr Karnau,' the major chimes in, 'you haven't been summoned here for interrogation. On the contrary, we're thinking of appointing you to head a special research team.'

  'Really? What would its terms of reference be?'

  'It would develop the line of inquiry you already outlined.'

  Stumpfecker again: 'We're thinking of a combination of theorists and technicians. You, as an acoustician, would form the link between the two groups. We, of course, would be represented by myself.' He gives me an amiable nod. 'This whole idea has come as a surprise to you, I know. Sleep on it and we'll meet again tomorrow.'

  It all sounds very fishy. Is there any chance of wriggling out of it? I must think up some pretext for regretfully declining their offer, I really must. Just as I'm on my way out the SS major calls after me, quite casually, as if the matter were of no importance:

  'Oh yes, Herr Karnau, the formation of this research team will naturally exempt you from military
service. As of now, you're in a reserved occupation.’

  *

  We're playing Brownshirts and undesirable elements, the game we saw them playing in Berlin one day. 'We'll give the orders,' Hilde says, looking at me, 'and the little ones have to obey them.'

  The others fetch their toothbrushes from the bathroom and hold them out for us to inspect. Then we make them get down on their knees and scrub the nursery floor. Being in charge, we're allowed to shove them around and even kick them a little. They aren't allowed to look at us while they're scrubbing the floor, they have to look down the whole time. They aren't allowed to look at each other, either. They have to keep staring at their own stretch of carpet. The two of us stand over them with our legs apart and our hands on our hips. 'Go on,' we tell them, 'scrub harder, put your back into it.'

  But it's much harder to scrub a carpet than a pavement. Bits come off and get stuck in the bristles, and it isn't long before they're full of fluff. Hilde plants her foot on Helmut's shoulder. 'Get a move on,' she says. 'Faster, cleaner!'

  We yell our heads off. Hilde insists on yelling louder than me, but we both notice we're growing hoarse and get really angry with the others. They don't dare say a word, they scrub away without stopping and shuffle across the floor on their knees, faster and faster the louder we shout at them.

  But all at once someone shouts even louder than us. It's Mama. The nursemaid must have fetched her. 'Have you gone completely mad?' she says. 'What are you up to? Stop it at once or you'll regret it. What on earth were you thinking of? What do you imagine our guests would say if they heard you? You'll ruin our reputation. Outside with you this minute.'

  We slink downstairs and out into the garden. There's a garden party going on, but we don't feel like saying hello to anyone, we go straight down to the lake. We don't speak, Hilde chucks stones into the water. It really wouldn't have looked good if someone had heard us playing that game. No, no one must know what we were doing with the little ones. There are things you can see but you mustn't talk about. Like that opera singer. I mustn't ever say I saw her in Papa's office. I mustn't show it if she also comes to the garden party and I have to shake hands with her. Another thing: no one in the world must know that Papa was nearly killed.

  Papa tries to keep it a secret from us, in fact he seriously thinks he's managed to prevent me from finding out what I'm not supposed to know. It didn't occur to him that I might have heard about it when I asked if it was dangerous, the road home from Nikolassee. But he couldn't conceal how scared he was, the time someone planned to blow up the bridge as he was driving over it — the little bridge where there's a specially strong smell of fish and weed in hot weather. Long after the man had been arrested and put to death, no one was allowed to say the word 'fisherman' when Papa was around because that was what the man had pretended to be, a fisherman.

  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 no
w, 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.