The Karnau Tapes by Marcel Beyer

Author:Marcel Beyer [Beyer, Marcel]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-03-26T16:00:00+00:00

V

TWO BARE FEET ARE ADHERING TO THE COLD TILES. NO movement, no change of position, no shift of weight from one leg to the other, not even a twitch of the toes: nothing. Either because the inevitable excretion of sweat that traces the shape of the man's soles on the tiles is gluing his feet to the floor, or because changing position would compel him to abandon a warm patch on the tiles and infuse a cold one, little by little, with body warmth. His motionless feet obscure a small area of the regular pattern of black and white tiles, which are so highly polished that his heels, and even his bony ankles, are mirrored in them. Their reflection shows up against the chequered pattern and interrupts the series of joins, the network of right-angled intersections, that runs across the room to the spot where I'm standing, though here the floor is dull and reflects nothing, neither my trousers, nor my socks, nor even a faint image of my black leather shoes.

The smooth, tiled floor is draining body warmth from the man's feet. Conversely, its chill is penetrating his soles, creeping up his legs to those parts of his anatomy that are concealed by his vest and underpants, and infiltrating his shoulders and his arms, which, like his feet, are motionless. They hang limp at his sides, and gooseflesh alone betrays that his body is still imbued with life as he stands there half naked in the middle of the room, exposed to the gaze of his fully clothed interrogator.

But the development of gooseflesh is a giveaway in itself. To the observer, even distended pores and erect papillae are overly revealing. The rigidity of the man's face is intended to disguise those uncontrollable changes in his epidermis. His vacant gaze and drooping lips are an attempt to distract me from the shivers running through the exposed parts of his anatomy. They're meant to divert my attention from his bare feet, bent back, hunched shoulders and incipient paunch, from the shape beneath the front of his cotton underpants, but they fail to do so.

They even fail to disguise that faint intimation hidden from the observer's gaze: the cold sweat of fear that is trickling down the back of the body on display and very slowly tracing the line of the man's backbone on the material of his vest.

And we both know this. We both know that the body under inspection can conceal nothing, even though the ears pretend to be deaf and the lips mute, because my subject's eyes are still looking out from deep within him. His gaze is eloquent of the dawning realisation that he has used his voice for years without paying it the slightest heed: all those countless mutilated sounds, all those crude, ill-modulated utterances have suddenly combined to create a diabolical din in his head.

That's how we stand facing each other. That's how the figure in front of me stands, like a conscript undergoing his physical

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