The Karnau Tapes Read Online Free PDF

spite of his funny name. The car comes to a stop and the chauffeur toots his horn twice. We wait until a woman comes out of the house where Herr Karnau lives. She pulls on a raincoat, then opens an umbrella. She's his housekeeper, Herr Karnau says, and she'll be helping to look after us while we're here. He doesn't have a wife, I suppose. Papa's chauffeur comes inside just long enough to deposit the suitcases in the hall, then he has to drive home. Now we're all alone in a strange apartment.
    Coco really does have black fur, he romps around and wags his tail, sniffing at everything: our shoes, our coats and my hands, which tickles. Herr Karnau shows us our bedroom. We're all going back to bed to finish our sleep.
    I lie beside Hedda on the sofa bed. Herr Karnau can't have thought of getting a cot for her, I suppose. Are the others asleep already? The bedclothes smell different from the ones at home. The pillow crackles when I rest my head on it and the blanket we have to share is too small. Hedda grumbles and clamps one end of it under her arm. The light goes out. Was that Herr Karnau? I hear him whispering to his housekeeper outside, the door's ajar and a strip of light falls across our bed.
    Footsteps are going down the stairs. Someone says goodnight in a low voice — Herr Karnau's voice. He locks the front door and goes into his bedroom. It's pitch dark now the strip of light has disappeared.
     
    *
    Breathing regularly, almost silently, in the darkness, that's how they're sleeping in the room across the passage, and each child has a respiratory rhythm of its own, five different rhythms in concert. They weren't really awake on the way here, their slumbers were scarcely interrupted by our drive through the night, and they all went back to sleep at once. Now the apartment is filled with a faint, nocturnal sound that won't subside before morning, not until the five of them wake up. I've never before heard children breathing in their sleep; the only breathing I know is my own, before I drop off. A patter of paws on the floorboards. The door to the living-room, the children's makeshift dormitory, is ajar. Unable to sleep for curiosity, Coco gently nudges it open with his nose. He'll now be sniffing my guests, I suspect, and carefully sampling their unfamiliar scent.
    How those children stared at me earlier on. The girls had their hair so neatly parted that strips of scalp showed through it like scars, and they all wore plaits. Who's going to braid their hair when they wake up late tomorrow morning, tousled and homesick?
    Coco reappears, but he pauses at the head of the bed and plants his forepaws in front of my face, sniffing the covers as if his master, too, is a stranger now there are strangers in the house. His moist, warm breath fans my nose. At last he jumps up, gingerly picks his way across my body and curls up between my legs. He heaves a noisy sigh. Nothing more for a long time, just the five children next door, clearly audible again. One of them, probably Helmut, gives a sudden, nervous cough. The others, their deep sleep disturbed, change position in turn: bedclothes rustle, someone sighs in the throes of a dream. Then the dog's breathing predominates again.
    I'm the first to wake up. Nothing stirring anywhere. A moment's curious silence prevails every morning, just before the noise of the day erupts. I glance into the darkened living-room. The children are still in the depths of their nocturnal world. Dry, stale air. Peering through the gloom, I see that all the beds are rumpled. The blanket has slipped off the sofa bed on to the floor, one corner of it tightly clutched in Helga's arms. Little Hedda is lying alongside with her nightie rucked up, and a bare leg is dangling from Helmut's camp bed near the window. I quietly close the door, go to the kitchen and draw the curtains: a grey day after yet another night of blackout.
    The war has lasted a year already. It's Wednesday, 30 October. Seven-thirty, and not really