Read Online The Karnau Tapes by Marcel Beyer - Free Book Online Page B

words and sounds. They may even yearn to be able to speak like adults. Later on, however, their voices will inevitably lose that natural quality. It will vanish if only because they learn how to cough, to emit polite little coughs and clear their throats behind an upraised hand, grown-up fashion, instead of relieving a troublesome tickle as promptly and forcefully as possible. It will vanish if only because their voices will seldom be heard again at full strength, and because the uninhibited shouts, screams and jubilant cries of childhood will be replaced by restrained utterances delivered at room volume. Their voices will soon be subject to limitations. They will be taught to speak clearly at all times, taught not to pick up any old accent they hear, if only in passing, and temporarily substitute it for their usual mode of speech, albeit unconsciously, perhaps, when they themselves pass a remark or engage in conversation. The continual repetition of words and sentences, the persistent crying and whimpering, will disappear for ever, because every voice is monitored by the human ear.
    The children may already have a secret inkling of this. Why else were they so shy when they first arrived, why else were they so reticent at first? Not a word more than necessary, and only when they couldn't avoid answering a question of mine. Slowly, one by one, they gained confidence and ventured to address me of their own accord. But they chattered with real abandon only when playing alone in their room with the door shut so the stranger couldn't hear — or so they hoped. A diffident, inhibited manner of speaking will one day come naturally to them, and they'll be wholly unaware that their voices ever sounded any different.
    Their original lack of constraint will never be satisfactorily replaced by anything they learn in the way of new vocalisations, for instance the polite, affected, swiftly subsiding laughter that greets an unfunny or unseemly joke, or the vocal sweet nothings, the reallys and you-don't-says that dissuade people from tearing each other limb from limb at the slightest conversational tiff. The erstwhile vocal range narrows and the voice is steadily abraded by prescribed patterns of speech until death supervenes, by which time it has become a strangled sound located at the base of the tongue. Clipped utterances are all it can produce, and any outbursts are quickly retracted.
    It will dawn on the children, sooner or later, that they no longer enjoy free use of their voices. Helmut will attain this painful realisation as soon as his voice starts to break. The larynx suddenly refuses to obey and becomes a sore point, an ever open wound in the throat. The vocal cords are strained and distorted, and the tongue, too, weakens because all it can articulate are fragmentary sounds that fluctuate in pitch. And Helmut will be alarmed to find that his voice is slipping from his grasp. Like everything else.
    Growth alone is held responsible for all the unpleasantnesses associated with this phase: the adolescent's headaches, growing pains, and uncoordinated movements. But isn't it far more likely that changes in the voice are to blame for this feeling of disorientation, and that its gross failure has repercussions on the entire body? We know, after all, that phonation or vocalisation brings many more muscles into play than are directly connected with the apparatus of speech itself. May not the voice be far more important than is generally assumed, therefore, since it is echoed by dull aches throughout the body at the very stage when it sounds most discordant? If a breaking voice betokens adolescence, or incipient sexual maturity, must a man have slept with a woman before his voice attains its final form?
    My own voice never broke, as far as I can recall, and my memory cannot be at fault or my voice would now be deeper, like those of other men. I have the impression that its pitch has never really changed, never slipped down the scale.