The Karnau Tapes Read Online Free PDF Page B

light yet. The pigeons across the street are just waking up. They poke their heads out and do a little preening. Then they fluff themselves up again and thrust their beaks back into their plumage. Their sleeping quarters, the ledge between the tailor's shop on the ground floor and the first-floor windows, are white with glutinous droppings. I put the kettle on for my first coffee of the day. Do the children like malt coffee too?
    I try to imagine how it would have tasted to me as a child, on my child's tongue. What flavour first filled my mouth, even before I cleaned my teeth? What was it, every morning, that ended the drought besetting my gums overnight? I run my tongue round my mouth. It was a drink made with water, not milk, as far as I recall. Camomile tea? No, children don't like camomile tea, it's something you're made to drink when you're ill. Sleepily, I put an imaginary cup to my lips. It's filled with .. . Rose-hip tea, that was it, with plenty of sugar. So hot, the first sip used to burn my tongue.
    I light my first cigarette. Unnoticed on their ledge, the pigeons are watching some passers-by on the pavement below them. They crane their necks to follow the progress of two dawdling schoolchildren. A woman, probably late for work, overtakes them in a hurry. So the children will have some hot, diluted fruit juice. But what about Hedda, the youngest? Perhaps she's used to hot milk? The five of them will be waking up in a stranger's home, so the least I can do is offer them their usual breakfast drink without having to ask them first. They may easily take fright unless I do, because the vague sense of menace inspired by my unfamiliar apartment — and, no doubt, by my unfamiliar person — will haunt them until they leave. I wonder if they like bread as early in the day as this?
    My own favourite breakfast as a child was apple flan with a sugary glaze on top, straight from the baking tin, before daybreak, in a dimly lit kitchen, the teaspoon cold in my hand as I huddled there in my nightshirt. How long I always took to eat a slice of flan. So little of it would be gone by the time my parents were washed and dressed and standing there, ready to leave, that I had to take big bites and wolf them down. Either that, or it was wrapped up and put in the bread bin, and the rest would be waiting for me at supper that evening. And then, instead of a teaspoon, I'd find myself holding my father's hand, or my mother's, as I was towed along the dark street to kindergarten.
    The way those children got up in the dark last night, at this time of year. Not a murmur from any of them. Are they already so inured to discipline? Helga and Hilde are hardly out of the nest and Helmut must be far too young for the Hitler Youth. Or are they irresistibly attracted, as I was at their age, to the early hours of the morning?
    Eight o'clock will soon have come and gone, but I can still detect, in this dim light, a little of the sensation I used to have of being part of a night in whose clear air every footstep, every whispered word, re-echoed before vanishing without trace into the darkness. Every sound held some special significance: a bird chirping once or twice in its sleep; a sudden rustle of leaves as mice or hedgehogs foraged by the roadside, unaware that they would soon be overtaken by daylight and humankind. It was as if noises were created anew each morning; as if voices had first to be born in travail and refashioned at daybreak; as if night were entirely devoid of harsh cries, loud voices hailing each other across the street, and the peremptory tone of which so many people are capable — all acoustic impressions calculated to strike terror into a child; as if shouting had died away and even idle chatter could originate only in the light of the sun, after that brief respite during which my breath evaporated like warm mist in the chill of the night. That's how it was while the street was deserted except for the few muffled figures I saw every