The Karnau Tapes Read online

  Contents

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  'I hear the sweet little voices

  that are dearer to me

  than anything else in the world.

  What a precious possession!

  May God keep it safe

  for me!'

  I

  A VOICE PUNCTURES THE DAWN STILLNESS: 'FOR A START, GET those signs up. Hammer the posts in good and deep, the ground's soft enough. Hard as you can, the signs mustn't sag.'

  The Scharführer's commands ring out across the stadium. He aims a finger at several boys in swastika armbands, who detach themselves from the rest and set to work. All have been freshly shorn down to ear level, to the point where the shiny skin of their clean-shaven necks begins. They look like puppy-dogs with stubble. If they had ears and tails, they'd be docked for good measure. That's the way our youngsters are reared these days.

  'Get cracking on those ramps for the wheelchair attendants — boardwalks, so all the cripples can be wheeled into the front few rows. I don't want any of them getting stuck in the mud if the rain comes down any harder.'

  The rest of the Scharführer's minions stand stiffly at attention, not even shivering in the dank air. Weary, ghostly figures, they're alert to every gesture and word of command that emanates from their Hitler Youth troop-leader in his sodden brown uniform.

  'Six of you, take the line-markers and lay down some parallel lines along the boardwalks for the guide-dogs to follow. Distance between the lines, sixty centimetres precisely: the width of one man's shoulders plus dog.'

  This is a war of sound. The Scharführer's voice slices into the gloom, carries as far as the platform. The acoustics here are odd. Six microphones are required in front of the speaker's desk alone, four of them for the batteries of loudspeakers aimed at the stadium from all angles. The fifth, which serves to pick up special frequencies, will be adjusted throughout the speech to bring out certain vocal effects. The sixth is hooked up to a small loudspeaker beneath the desk and can be controlled by the orator himself.

  Additional microphones are installed at a radius of one metre to create a suitably stereophonic effect. Positioning these is an art in itself. They're concealed inside the floral decorations and behind the flag, so the audience can't spot them from below. But they must also be invisible to the guard of honour and the Party bigwigs seated behind the speaker's back. Where are the stadium's blind spots, acoustically speaking? Where will the sound-waves break on the listening ranks to best effect? Will any stray sounds be deflected and unexpectedly rebound on the speaker himself? No one really knows if our calculations are correct. There are numerous doubtful areas, but they're only vaguely indicated on the ground-plan.

  Of special importance to the general effect is a microphone mounted in the Party emblem suspended overhead. This precludes any loss of volume when the speaker projects his words at the sky. The night is over, but it's still dark out here. Raindrops are falling from the outsize swastika above me. One lands on my upturned face.

  Down in the stadium the marshals are receiving their instructions. 'All the amputees are to be wheeled in first. Double smartly across the field and keep to the lines, utmost care essential while pushing the wheelchairs. No collisions, so watch it!'

  The leading wheelchair attendants come trotting in, barely visible through the pall of mist that enshrouds the stadium. They double across the field, each pushing an empty wheelchair ahead of him. The whole procedure will be rehearsed several times more before noon to ensure that the World War One cripples and other disabled veterans are paraded without a hitch. Chairs have been ranged along the boardwalks to represent the audience during rehearsals. One boy slips on the wet planks and crashes into this barrier, wheelchair and all. He earns himself an immediate tongue-lashing: 'You useless blithering idiot! Do that this afternoon and you're for it. One little goof and you'll be on punishment parade. All right, once more from the beginning. Back into the tunnels, all of you, then out across the field in double-quick time.'

  The way that Scharführer bullies his underlings . .. How can they meekly endure his strident bellowing so early in the day? Do they knuckle under and submit to such humiliation, do they grit their teeth and tolerate the sound of his masterful adolescent voice because it makes them feel they're part of a movement in which they themselves will grow up just as masterful? Is it their firm belief that a similar organ will implant itself in their youthful throats as time goes by?

  My gaze lingers on the luckless bungler as he doubles off, surreptitiously rubbing his knee and elbow. I turn up my overcoat collar. The clammy material adheres to my Adam's apple and brings me out in gooseflesh. My fingers are cold, so cold and stiff they can hardly hold the cigarette I'm smoking. The men with the cable drums appear. They thread their way through the retreating youngsters and make for the platform. Someone must have a word with the man in charge of the design team before the cables are laid up here. That's because the oak-leaf arrangement he's planning must be used to camouflage them. All the cables must be carefully taped aside and led beneath the platform through holes in the floor. The speaker will want to come down and mingle with his audience after addressing them, so nothing must get in his way.

  They're already installing the lights. We sound engineers are running a little late. The Scharführer, too, is becoming edgy because the blind veterans' entrance has presented unforeseen problems and his boys are getting into a lather.

  'Apply wheelchair brakes! Amputees to stay exactly where they are. After them will come the blind plus guide-dogs trained to follow the white lines. Canes to be carried under the arm. They're not to make contact with the ground until all the blind are in position.'

  A few blind men have actually been rounded up to help rehearse this procedure, but they keep blundering into their Alsatians. Many of them become entangled in the leads and nearly fall headlong in the mud. Young dogs stray off the boardwalk or stand there looking bewildered. The Scharführer rallies his youngsters with a note of panic in his voice: 'Those white lines — thicken them up! Go over them again at once, two or three times. The brutes can't see a thing in this light.'

  One of the blind men pauses in the beam of a spotlight, warming himself in its glow. His dog tugs at the lead, but the man refuses to budge. The harsh glare is reflected in his dark glasses and bounces off the tinted lenses, straight into my eyes.

  'All the dogs know their places. Procedure as follows: they're to park the blind and then turn, but not on the spot, not back the way they came. Around the front and then out, rear rank first, front rank last.'

  The blind veterans are to listen to the speaker in a relaxed pose, and their dogs would only spoil the picture. Besides, the press photographs must mitigate any impression of frailty in favour of strength and martial fervour. Everyone is more or less formed up at last. For the past week the blind have devoted one hour a day to practising the correct execution of the Hitler salute. Now, however, as they raise their right hands, a horrific sight meets the eye: some arms are parallel to the ground, others point almost vertically at the sky, and one or two are extended so far to the side that they brush the faces of their owners' next-door neighbours. The Scharführer has recovered his voice, and words of command ring out in quick succession: 'Up! Down! Up! Down!'

  The Hitler Youth boys kneel to adjust the blind men's arms until they're neatly aligned. A technician reports the loudspeakers in position and the cables laid. The microphones can now be hooked up. Someone in the distance gives me a wave: the power is on. Who's going to try out the sound? Not me, definitely not. In any case, the Scharführer renders any sound tes
t abortive: 'Last of all, march in the deaf-mutes! The deaf-mutes won't be able to cheer the Führer, so they'll have to stand at the very back.'

  The Hitler Youth boys exchange uncertain glances. Two of them, I notice, are actually whispering. The deaf-mutes .. . Here they come, emerging from the tunnel. Or maybe they aren't deaf-mutes at all, those men crossing the running track with resolute tread. Has the Scharführer got it wrong? Aren't they simply guests of honour? No, this must indeed be the heralded arrival of the contingent of men unfit for military service. What a spectacle they make in the half-light of dawn, conversing in their esoteric sign language and attired in weird, absurdly starched and well-pressed uniforms beaded with raindrops — fancy-dress uniforms, given that none of their wearers could ever serve in the armed forces.

  What are we to do with them, we sound engineers? They won't be able to follow the text of this afternoon's speech, but the gigantic public address system will set up continuous vibrations in their bodies. Even if they can't grasp the meaning of the sounds, we can set their innards churning. We adjust the public address system accordingly: higher frequencies for the cranial bones, lower for the abdomen. The sounds must be made to penetrate the darkness deep inside them.

  Some SS men are sighted in the stadium, come to check on the progress of preparations. The Hitler Youth boys seem intimidated by their black uniforms. The glances they exchange differ from the ones that preceded the entry of the deaf-mutes. Leather boots, waterproof capes — even the faces in the shadow of the peaked caps are only dimly visible against the pale, misty background. But now, as luck would have it, the Scharführer has his invalids neatly drawn up. All are in position, medals tinkling faintly. There follows a trial run-through. The Scharführer gives vent to a few words at the speaker's desk. He bellows them in emulation of his Führer's characteristic delivery, subjecting the public address system — and his voice — to maximal strain.

  Isn't he aware that every shout, every utterance of such volume, leaves a minuscule scar on the vocal cords? Don't they realise that, the people who so brutally erode their voices and subject them to such reckless treatment? Every such outburst imprints itself on the overtaxed vocal cords, steadily building up scar tissue. Marks of that kind can never be erased; the voice retains them until silenced for ever by death.

  The stadium shakes. My body shrinks and contracts. Or does it? Hasn't it simply been compressed into a rigid mass by sound-waves? Putting your hands over your ears is forbidden, not that it would do any good: the din is enough to drive the marrow from your bones. Air masses are churning around with undreamed-of force. Meantime, the little band of supernumeraries in the arena stands there spell-bound.

  As soon as the sonic pressure ceases the deaf-mutes raise their right arms and open their mouths like everyone else. This creates a homogeneous impression, but whereas a loud 'Sieg Heil!' rings out from the first few ranks, all that can be heard at the rear is a chorus of faint, effortful croaks. Next, standing in for the speaker, an SS officer inspects the front rank. The veterans, whose outstretched arms and sightless eyes are directed at nothing, stare past him into space as he grasps one upraised hand and gives it an appreciative shake. Simultaneously, the band strikes up a march.

  My job is done. On the way out I see a bunch of deaf-mutes loitering some distance from the parade. Wearily shuffling from foot to foot, they smoke and converse in sign language under the paling sky. Like bats, their hands flutter silently in the limbo between day and night.

  One of them puts two fingers to his lips, then jabs his arm in the air. Does the vehemence of that gesture carry some special force? Is it the equivalent, in a deaf-mute, of speaking loudly? If so, what form does a quiet, diffident remark assume? That man with his head bowed — should the tremors that run through his limbs be construed as a message to the others? What if they themselves are trembling so much in the dank morning air that they don't even notice? Trembling alone may mean something, but it's no substitute for sound.

  Deaf-mutes are unrecognisable, whereas amputees can be recognised at a glance. The blind, too, can be identified by their dark glasses, by their canes and hesitant gait, by the lifeless gaze or empty eye sockets revealed when they raise their glasses to scratch their noses or wipe the sweat from their eyelids. But deaf-mutes defy recognition. Even if a deaf-mute fails to react when addressed, you may mistake him for a naturally taciturn person or assume that he simply hasn't heard you.

  All these men incapable of speech, what expelled the voice from their bodies before birth? What do they have inside them, these voiceless ones? What resonates within them if they can detect no sounds, if they cannot hear voices even in their imagination? Is it ever possible to fathom what goes on inside such people, or does a lifelong void prevail there? We know nothing about deaf-mutes, nor can we vocal creatures elicit anything about their world. Yet these men have plenty to say to each other as I, unnoticed, walk past them. One deaf-mute's gesticulations break in on another's, and their flying hands fail to keep up with the sheer urgency of their conversation.

  As for me, I'm a person about whom there's nothing to tell. However hard I listen inwardly, I hear nothing, just the dull reverberation of nothingness, just the febrile rumbling of my guts, perhaps, from deep within the abdominal cavity. It isn't that I'm unreceptive to impressions, or apathetic, or inattentive to the sights and sounds around me. On the contrary, I'm overly alert — alert as my dog and constantly aware of the slightest changes in sound and lighting. Too alert, perhaps, for anything to lodge in my mind because my senses are already perceiving the next phenomenon. I'm like the coloured leader affixed to the beginning of an audiotape: no matter how hard you listen, you can't hear a sound, however insignificant.

  My dog is an example to me, not a mere companion. As soon as Coco hears me coming he gets excited, knows who will be entering the house when the gate is unlocked down below, recognises the way my soles scuff the worn stairs, knows exactly how the banisters creak when I lean on them, thrusts his nose into the crack beneath the apartment door and inhales his master's scent, scrabbles at the handle with his paws, jumps up at me with his ears pricked when the door finally opens; then, and only then, does he hear me speak his name. That's what one has to learn to do in the acoustic hinterland: to listen to the state of the air an instant before the first word is uttered.

  A belch. Someone sitting near me in the tram has belched, and the hairs on my neck bristle even before the nature of the sound sinks in. I scan the reflections in the window for the passenger in question — it has to be a man somewhat older than myself — and there, two seats behind me, I dimly make out a gargoyle of a face intent on an open newspaper as if nothing has happened, though the belch was so loud that all the other passengers must have heard. If it happens again I'll have to look for an empty seat up front. Many people seem determined to tyrannise their fellow creatures in this way. This is a war of sound, yes, but where are the war correspondents? Unprovoked assaults like these should be reported and repulsed.

  I look upon myself as I might regard a deaf-mute: not a sound to be heard, and even my gestures are unintelligible. Pushing thirty, and I'm still a smooth, blank wax disc when others have long since been engraved with countless grooves, when their discs already hiss or crackle because they've been played so often. No discernible past and no events worth mentioning, nothing in my memory that could help to constitute a story. Nothing there save a few isolated images or, rather, specks of colour. No, not even that: just a grey-and-black iridescence, a twilight zone, a brief moment sandwiched between night and day.

  Once, when the whole class had turned out for compulsory physical training in the gloom of a winter's morning, we heard a strange sound coming from the gymnasium roof, and when the teacher turned on the lights we saw something black flitting around in the rafters. 'A bat,' said someone. It had probably strayed in not long before, desperately seeking a safe place in which to hibernate, and now it had been disturbed, first by a horde of noisy youngsters and then
by the lights. While my classmates continued to horse around I stood stock-still, as though my solitary silence could drown the others' din and soothe the agitated creature. I even hoped that the class would be postponed and the bat left in peace until spring. But gym-shoes were already being hurled at it, and one boy, who had brought along a ball, handed it to the best marksman in the class. He flung it with all his might and only just missed. The thud of the impact was drowned by warlike yells. He took aim and threw the ball again and again, and someone kept running to retrieve it for him while the bat fled to and fro. All that brought this scene to an end was a loud call to order from the gym teacher, who wanted to get on with the lesson.

  The bat's trembling body and helplessly fluttering wings lingered in my mind's eye all morning. The black creature's after-image persisted, and I failed to fade it out and replace its hysterical gyrations with the free-wheeling flight of flying foxes in the wild as illustrated in my album of cigarette cards. As soon as I got home I turned to the page I'd opened so often that it was dog-eared and grimy. I can still see it now, that African scene: a bare-branched tree starkly outlined against a red sunset with a cluster of black creatures hanging from it upside down, and, circling in the air overhead, a few flying foxes awakened by the approach of night, soon to fly off to their feeding-tree, guided there by the scent of night-flowering plants. Nocturnal creatures. Night: the unfolding of a world in which there are no warlike cries, no gymnastics. Come, dark night, enshroud me in shadows.

  I'm soaked to the skin and thoroughly hoarse, even though I exchanged barely half a dozen words with my colleagues at the stadium. I'm back on inside duties for the next few days — stupid little chores, for the most part, though the man whose office I share prefers them to working in the field. I can't think why he's a sound engineer at all, when he could be compiling endless lists of statistics for any number of firms. Who cares whether the public address system we installed this morning generates its exact quota of decibels, or whether it displays some minor deviations from the norm? But that's just the kind of donkey-work that appeals to my office-mate: ascertaining whether the values recorded in laboratory experiments precisely correspond to those attained in field trials. He's quite uninterested in the sounds themselves, in fact it seems to me that paperwork is his way of avoiding the world of sound with which he would come into contact, willy-nilly, in the field or the laboratory. I'm not going back to the office today. The parade doesn't take place till after lunch, so the relevant figures won't, in any case, be available till late this evening.