The Karnau Tapes Read Free

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.
    The morning mist has dispersed, but my room is still filled with lingering shadows. Birdsong and cold, soupy air drift through the small window and the balcony door, which are wide open. My desk is littered with papers, writing materials and books — dusty appurtenances all, since I seldom touch them. A space has been cleared in the midst of the clutter. This is where the gramophone resides, permanently within reach, so that I can put on a record without having to get up. It occupies the only dust-free area on the desk-top, for dust is