The Karnau Tapes

by Marcel Beyer

  'You mean we've failed to take that possibility into account because ultrasound is, by its very nature, completely inaudible?'

  'Not by its very nature. We can't hear it, admittedly, but certain species of animals can. One need only think of the conformation of a bat's head, which many people find so weird: the wrinkled snout and the outsize ears capable of rotating in any direction. Both are aids to better reception.'

  'One moment. Are you saying that bats' ears grant them access to a world from which we, as human beings, are excluded?'

  'That's certainly true of most bats, though probably not, to the best of our present knowledge, of flying foxes. The world of sounds is very much greater than we can imagine.'

  'You don't seriously mean that we're at the mercy of that unknown world and at a disadvantage to other species, as if we were all deaf, whereas those animals are capable of perceiving the whole realm of sounds?'

  'There are degrees, of course. Dogs and cats are receptive to a considerably wider spectrum of sounds than human beings, but a bat's sense of hearing is superior by far.'

  'And human beings, though incapable of hearing such sounds, continually produce them without being aware of it?'

  'It's more than possible. The human voice resonates with sympathetic frequencies that hold no importance for us because our ears are unable to detect them.'

  'Do you know what you're saying? Do you realise how greatly it affects our conception of the audible world?'

  'You're an expert on acoustics. You must be familiar with the concept of ultrasound.'

  'Of course I am, in theory, but it's not a phenomenon that has ever been associated in my mind with sounds proper. When people say a dog hears better than a man, I've always taken it to mean that a dog's hearing is more acute in the sense that it can recognise its master's voice and footsteps in the distance, not that it detects nuances in the human voice which a human being can never hear.'

  All at once, my vocal map is falling to pieces in my hands. The lines I've drawn lead nowhere, have always led nowhere, and the whole sheet is suddenly blank and empty. Gone are all my entries, from the silent parade of the deaf-mutes (arms restlessly gesticulating in the misty air, feet tramping across sodden grass), to the Scharführer's barrack-square bellow (autumnal acoustic conditions, drizzle, first light), to the wounded, dying soldiers (early summer heat and night-time), to the distraught figures in their underpants (cold tiles, gaping mouths brightly illuminated). Gone are the cries, the agitated gasps and strident whistles, gone the shouted words of command, the hopeless cripple's laboured breathing and the coward's whimpers, gone the revolting moans and grunts of couples in bed, gone the fading, exhausted voices on the radio from Stalingrad. All are vanishing from my inward ear, all are being sucked back into a silent void because of those never-to-be-heard sounds in the world known only to animals.

  VI

  ALL QUIET. IT'S REALLY QUIET AT THE MOMENT. I PEEP through a crack in the curtains: nothing but darkness. It's as if all the soldiers in the world were having a rest, too tired to go on fighting. It's so quiet, even a night creature mightn't be able to hear anything. And the sky's dark for once, there's no red glow over the city, not a glimmer, no shadows in the night. They've turned off all the searchlights. No bombs falling, from the look of it. The sky is dark, the way Herr Karnau always wanted. No lines on the sky to lighten the darkness, none of those flares that look like strands of flaming seaweed, none of those jagged Christmas trees that make the night as bright as day.

  It's nearly dark here too, in Mama's bedroom. Only her dressing-table light is on. Heide's talking to her quietly and watching her putting on her make-up. Mama's bedroom is the only place in the house we can escape to, nowadays. I don't know how she stays so calm — she's always so incredibly calm when she's doing her face. She was just the same in peace-time and she's never changed all through the war. When Papa gave a party in the old days, she sometimes let us stay with her while she did her face, before we had to go to bed. She would quickly remove her day-time make-up and paint her face for the evening. It only took her a minute or two. Papa would be waiting for her downstairs with the guests, but she always seemed to have masses of time. Mama's bedroom is her kingdom, and Papa never dares walk in on her uninvited. Us children are the only ones allowed to come in while she's getting ready.

  She still insists on being left in peace while she's making up, even though everything else has changed so much lately. 'Mama,' asks Heide, tugging at her sleeve, 'why are there so many people in the house these days? How long will they be staying? They're strangers, after all.'

  'They're refugees, Heide. We're putting them up because they've nowhere else to go. It won't be for much longer.'

  'They look different from us — they're dirty, a lot of them. Don't they ever wash?'

  Mama has always made a point of telling us how important it is to wash properly and comb our hair. It's the same with make-up. Make-up is a kind of protection against other people, she says, and the older you get the more you feel you need it. That's why, for quite a while now, I've been allowed to have a bath on my own. I'm even allowed to lock the door so the others can't disturb me. They used to come running in when I was sitting in the bathtub — they couldn't understand that I wanted to be left in peace, no matter how often I told them. The little ones would bring their wooden boat, which is really only meant for the lake, and insist on sailing it in the bath, even though it was plastered with duckweed. And when I forbade them to get in with me they'd horse around in front of the mirror. We always had a shouting match before they finally left.

  'The refugees wash quite as thoroughly as you do,' Mama says, putting on some rouge. 'If they look the worse for wear, Heide, it's because they had to leave their homes before the enemy got there. They've lost everything they possessed, that's why they can't change their clothes twice a day the way we do. Right now they're simply glad to be safe here with us, a long way from the fighting. And now, leave Mama in peace for a bit.'

  She outlines her left eyelid, concentrating hard so the little pencil doesn't slip off the edge and go in her eye. I don't suppose she realises why Heide is asking so many questions about the refugees. She wasn't there when one of them gave Heide such a shock without meaning to — an elderly man who'd taken a fancy to her and showed her a conjuring trick. He held up a coloured handkerchief and made it vanish into his hands. Heide thought she'd seen through the trick. She laughed and pointed to his sleeve, but it wasn't hidden there. Then the man produced the handkerchief from his mouth and ran it through his fingers again. Heide was looking so hard at the handkerchief she didn't notice he only had two on each hand — fingers, I mean. He looked a bit grubby, too, and his lungs made a funny rattling sound when he breathed. When Heide finally saw the stumps of his missing fingers she shrieked and ran out of the room.

  Mama has finished powdering her nose. She smiles at us in the mirror, but you can tell her face still hurts. You can tell it from her mouth and the way it droops sideways when she speaks. It's that nerve on the right-hand side, even though the operation was months ago. Sometimes she spends the whole day in bed with cold compresses on her face and can't move. I doubt if it'll ever get better.

  These days Heide trails around everywhere with that rag doll Hedda used to have when she was little. Mama makes another attempt to get rid of the thing. 'It's all tattered and dirty,' she tells Heide. 'You've got some nice new dolls of your own.' But Heide refuses to be parted from it. She stomps out of the bedroom sucking the doll's ear.

  'Mama?'

  'Yes, Helga?'

  'The war, will it really be over soon?'

  'Yes, this year, definitely.'

  'Will we being staying here at Schwanenwerder till then, or will we have to move again?'

  Mama shrugs her shoulders. 'That's not for us to decide. If it's safer somewhere else, we'll naturally go there.'

  It was awful, the journey here from Lanke. We set off in the middle of the night. The cars could hardly s
queeze past the columns of refugees. They made room for us and pushed their cart to one side, the poor, ragged people, but we had to drive very slowly. Even in the darkness we could see all the things they were taking with them: suitcases, carpets, lamps — even great big cupboards. Once I saw a horse lying beside the road. I think it was dead.

  Mama ends by squirting some perfume behind her ears and under her chin. She squirts a little on my wrist as well. Then she takes one more look at her hair and stands up. 'Come on, Helga, let's go down and join the others.'

  Everyone's in the drawing-room because Papa is speaking on the radio today, something he hasn't done for a long time. It's awfully cold in February without any heating, so they're all sitting there in their overcoats. Mama gives me a rug to wrap around me. Someone turns on the radio and everyone stops talking. Then comes the announcer, and then Papa starts to speak. The situation is critical, he says, but there are hopeful signs. Our enemies rejoice too soon, as they've so often done in the past, if they think they've broken our spirit of resistance. The brutal enemy soldiers who lay slaughtered babies at their mothers' feet have taught us an object lesson. Speaking for himself, Papa says, he has an unshakeable belief that victory will be ours, otherwise the world would have lost its right to exist — in fact life on earth would be worse than hell, and he wouldn't think it worth living, neither from his own point of view nor from that of his children. He would happily cast that life aside.

  'Mama, did he really mean that? Would Papa really kill himself? And his children? That's us, after all.'

  But Mama doesn't answer, she just stares at the loudspeaker. The others don't say anything or look at me either. They keep their heads down and concentrate with their eyes shut or stare past me at the radio. Neither for himself nor for his children . .. 'Maybe it isn't Papa at all? Maybe it's just an enemy broadcaster who's imitating Papa's voice and putting words into his mouth?' But Mama doesn't hear me. All she hears is that voice.

  *

  I can't hear a thing, not a thing, the sounds are indistinguishable, everything is drowned by this roar, this ear-numbing roar that has taken possession of the air and my trembling body. Is this the end, is this the roar in which all sounds become reduced to a final, fiendish cacophony? Is this the descent into death? No, the plane levels off once more and the stutter of its engines gives way to the whistle of the slipstream as we spiral down towards our destination, a sea of flames. No one knows exactly how far the Russians have advanced, so there's a constant threat of gunfire from the ruins below. We're coming in to land on a runway flanked by shattered buildings. Not the Kurfurstendamm, surely? But it must be, it's the only runway left. Every tree in the avenue has been felled and the tram lines are obscured by a layer of bulldozed, steamrollered rubble. As the makeshift landing strip draws steadily nearer, one detail after another flashes past at lightning speed: a burned-out tramcar, a wrecked vehicle sprawled across the pavement, mounds of debris, splintered wooden doors, bathtubs doing duty for anti-tank barriers, a legless cripple humping himself along on his hands, a string of refugees, the remains of a family, a perambulator piled high with household effects. I can even make out sunken cheeks, bloodshot eyes, a child's runny nose. The images vanish in a cloud of dust as we touch down with a jolt. Are my arms trembling or merely taking on the movements of our plane as it judders to a halt?

  Armed men come sprinting out of a ruined store and start unloading the aircraft almost before it comes to a halt. They stand guard, rifles at the ready, while the freight compartment is emptied of its crates of foodstuffs. The whole city is rationed. Everyone is dependent on rape-seed cakes, turnips and molasses. The inhabitants are being encouraged to gather roots and acorns, mushrooms and clover. Any living creature that can still be found among the gutted ruins is fair game — the authorities have even issued instructions on how to catch frogs. All available warm-blooded animals are to be devoured without delay. Conditions at the zoo are disastrous, I hear: two days ago, on Friday, 20 April, it was compelled to close for the first time in its history. Lack of power has immobilised the pumps and reduced the aquatic animals' pools to turbid soup, with the result that cracks have begun to appear in the dolphins' skin.

  How are the flying foxes faring, I wonder. What sort of state are they in, the descendants of the creatures Moreau brought back from Madagascar and presented to the zoo? They're the last of their kind, now that the Dresden brood has been wiped out together with Moreau himself, who was buried with his charges beneath the ruins of the Chiroptera house on the morning of 14 February, when a bomb pierced the roof.

  We had taken leave of each other only a few days before. I shall never forget that scene: the flying foxes' darkened enclosure, Moreau's gaunt frame, tremulous with privation, and the patient way he proffered slices of blood sausage to his debilitated bats, which ignored them, in a last attempt to keep them alive — canned blood sausage procured from who knows what secret store; canned blood sausage proffered in mute desperation, for want of anything else, because it was obvious, even when Moreau ran the cans to earth, that animals accustomed to fresh fruit would never touch blood sausage. There would be no more fighting over food, no more furious squeaks when one of them, with wildly beating wings, chased another off a peach or an apple and sank its teeth in the juicy flesh. But Moreau did not give up. He broke into the main post office at night in search of food parcels that could no longer be delivered, but the flying foxes spurned their contents too, possibly deterred by the scent of incipient, invisible mildew.

  I made a resolution as soon as I learned of his death: the next time I visited Berlin my first step would be to check on the flying foxes, regardless of prevailing conditions and the risks involved. And now I've been summoned back into this sea of ruins. Clouds of smoke are drifting across the city in an easterly direction. The air trembles whenever a shell lands near by, and shots can be heard not far away. Trees lie uprooted on the paving stones, the main gate is pockmarked with shell splinters, a bent sign on the ground reads DO NOT FEED THE SQUIRREL MONKEYS, and charred tree stumps border the path on which an injured dove is striving, with outspread wings, to drag itself in the direction of some neglected flower-beds.

  Dead ducks are floating in the pond. Seated motionless on a park bench, each propped up against the other, are two wounded, combat-weary soldiers, one with a cocked submachine-gun across his knees. They're both staring blankly at the sky, but the latter suddenly stirs. He keels over sideways, the gun slides off his lap, and his heavy, limp-armed frame slumps to the ground. The other man, deprived of support, follows suit.

  Cigarette lighter flickering, I make my way down into the cellar reserved for nocturnal creatures. This is evidently where members of the zoo staff sheltered during air raids. A flying fox flutters towards me through the gloom, skims my head and makes for the exit, where, bewildered by the bright spring sunlight, it circles in an untidy, haphazard way and quickly disappears from view. Someone has opened the cage, it seems, and as the lighter's feeble flame approaches the spot I'm overcome by a terrible presentiment. Another step, a faint splintering sound. Crouching down, I make out a tiny thorax and spinal column, both picked clean. I examine the floor round about, singe scraps of fur and surface hair with my lighter flame. A severed, membranous wing, residues of black and inedible matter. Not far away lies a peeled head with the eyes still open. Then darkness. The lighter has run out of fuel.

  *

  'Any news for Radio Werewolf, anyone?'

  Papa smiles as he says that, but you can tell it's a strain. Radio Werewolf is his big thing nowadays. He goes out into the passage and asks someone else the same question. Papa spends the whole day collecting items of news for his radio station. 'The Werewolf needs feeding,' he says, and he expects all the grown-ups to submit bright ideas. Heroic deeds, that's what he collects. If Mama thinks of something, or his secretary, or even his receptionist, he makes a note of it at once. He never used to ask his receptionist for suggestions, not in the old days.

 
The Werewolves — yes, all our hopes are pinned on the Werewolves now. 'They must gobble everything up,' Papa says, meaning the power lines, the maps and street signs. They've all got to be destroyed so the invaders can't find their way around our country.

  'There's plenty for the Werewolves to sink their teeth in,' Papa says. 'They can create as much havoc as they like. The Werewolves won't rest till they've bitten off the enemy's ears.'

  What does he mean? Werewolves are half animal, half human. They're something out of a horror story.

  'No,' Papa says, 'Werewolves are partisans, guerrilla fighters. Radio Werewolf broadcasts to them from somewhere in enemy-occupied territory.'

  'Don't pretend to the children,' Mama tells him. 'The radio station isn't far from Berlin. They're figments of your imagination, these news items.'

  Papa looks disappointed. 'I'd prefer to call them products of poetic licence,' he says. 'They're simply the news as it ought to be. Don't you realise that our reports are bound to come true? Don't you realise that we broadcast them so that, somewhere out there, the Werewolves will make them come true? All our news items will become a reality if only we put them over in the right tone of voice. The Werewolves will act with firmness and fanaticism as long as they're worded in the pithy, punchy style I've devised to meet the requirements of this exceptional situation.'

  Mama shrugs her shoulders. 'Besides,' says Papa, 'I want every German youngster to dread being the last to join the Werewolves.'

  Helmut is staring at the floor. Did Papa look at him sternly as he said that? 'Children,' says Mama, 'you'd better go to your room now.'

  Poor Papa, he's so proud of his Radio Werewolf. Sometimes you'd think it was all he had left. We shut the bedroom door. Mama and Papa are bound to start arguing and we don't want to hear them at it. The younger ones try desperately to think of some way of helping Papa. What Papa needs, what he needs really badly to make him feel better, they say, are stories about Werewolves performing heroic deeds. They dig out an old exercise book with plenty of room in it — we don't need our exercise books, not now we've stopped having lessons — and sit down in a corner and start making up Werewolf reports, and when every last page in the book is full they're going to give it to Papa as a present. Hilde lets herself be talked into taking down the stories even though she doesn't feel like it. So there they all sit, whispering together: 'Werewolves are tearing the enemy limb from limb .. . Werewolves are tirelessly stalking the enemy and attacking them from the rear ...'