deaf-mute child has a hard time acquiring a language of its own. It's aware, to begin with, of every last gesture it makes to convey something, but before long its mastery of sign language is so complete that it communicates quite freely and spontaneously as long as it knows that its friends or brothers and sisters can understand it.’
*
How different it is, conversing with a child. I generally do my best to avoid conversations. Not because it bothers me if people address me of their own accord, but because I'm obliged to answer, to question or confirm what they say as if their sole intention were to make me conscious of my voice — as if it delighted them to make me demonstrate its unpleasant timbre.
My first encounter with my own voice goes back a long way. It was, I seem to recall, at a birthday party in my early childhood that I first heard it without speaking at the same time. Under parental supervision, my friends and I had recorded a few words on a wax cylinder and immediately played them back. Everyone present marvelled at this phenomenon: all the children's voices could be heard except mine, which was manifestly missing. And then I noticed that among the sounds issuing from the horn was an unfamiliar, unnatural voice that belonged to none of my friends.
It was a while before I grasped that it could only be mine. But my internal, cranial vibrations were altogether different from that childish voice. To this day, the sounds transmitted to my ears by my bones strike me as deeper and richer than those that reach them from some external source. I was dismayed. On the one hand I felt an urge to confirm my original impression by listening to the recording once more; on the other, I was glad that my friends had already started to play a new game in which I could unobtrusively join. They had forgotten all about the wax cylinder, whereas my own thoughts were still of the quivering stylus that had relentlessly explored those grooves and converted their sinuosities into sound — into the repulsive noise I never wished to hear again.
Since then, whenever I become aware of my unpleasant vocal timbre, I break off abruptly in mid-sentence, too embarrassed to go on talking. I'm nonetheless convinced that it should be possible to remodel the voice and approximate it to the internal, cranial sound by dint of practice, by carefully adjusting the larynx and pharynx, tongue and thoracic cavity prior to speaking. It must surely be possible to master the organ that any stranger can hear, the link between oneself and the outside world, the sound that sheds more light on a person's character than any other single manifestation.
Not that Helga, who now converses with me quite naturally, seems to have noticed this vocal defect. Perhaps she takes it for granted that my voice and its owner go together because she cannot know from experience how little suited they are. Even though the other children are chattering and frolicking behind us, I feel no desire for silence.
'Herr Karnau?'
Helga brings me down to earth with another of her questions. Has she been talking the whole time?
*
'Herr Karnau, are you one of a big family like ours?'
'No, I don't have any brothers or sisters.'
'So you've always been on your own?'
Herr Karnau doesn't know what to say. He's holding Hedda in his arms so the others can play with her pushchair. They're pretending it's a tank and wheeling it through the puddles. I'm holding Coco's lead. Herr Karnau may be right: I mustn't worry about little Heide.
Now we're back in the warm. Coco's fur is cold, it smells of fresh air, and we've brought a cloud of coldness into the kitchen with us. Our cheeks are as red as the baby's picture on those jars of baby food, the laughing baby with the golden curls and chubby cheeks. Herr Karnau hasn't asked us about our homework again. Shall we play collecting for charity? The little ones don't like that game because they have to put make-believe money in our
*
How different it is, conversing with a child. I generally do my best to avoid conversations. Not because it bothers me if people address me of their own accord, but because I'm obliged to answer, to question or confirm what they say as if their sole intention were to make me conscious of my voice — as if it delighted them to make me demonstrate its unpleasant timbre.
My first encounter with my own voice goes back a long way. It was, I seem to recall, at a birthday party in my early childhood that I first heard it without speaking at the same time. Under parental supervision, my friends and I had recorded a few words on a wax cylinder and immediately played them back. Everyone present marvelled at this phenomenon: all the children's voices could be heard except mine, which was manifestly missing. And then I noticed that among the sounds issuing from the horn was an unfamiliar, unnatural voice that belonged to none of my friends.
It was a while before I grasped that it could only be mine. But my internal, cranial vibrations were altogether different from that childish voice. To this day, the sounds transmitted to my ears by my bones strike me as deeper and richer than those that reach them from some external source. I was dismayed. On the one hand I felt an urge to confirm my original impression by listening to the recording once more; on the other, I was glad that my friends had already started to play a new game in which I could unobtrusively join. They had forgotten all about the wax cylinder, whereas my own thoughts were still of the quivering stylus that had relentlessly explored those grooves and converted their sinuosities into sound — into the repulsive noise I never wished to hear again.
Since then, whenever I become aware of my unpleasant vocal timbre, I break off abruptly in mid-sentence, too embarrassed to go on talking. I'm nonetheless convinced that it should be possible to remodel the voice and approximate it to the internal, cranial sound by dint of practice, by carefully adjusting the larynx and pharynx, tongue and thoracic cavity prior to speaking. It must surely be possible to master the organ that any stranger can hear, the link between oneself and the outside world, the sound that sheds more light on a person's character than any other single manifestation.
Not that Helga, who now converses with me quite naturally, seems to have noticed this vocal defect. Perhaps she takes it for granted that my voice and its owner go together because she cannot know from experience how little suited they are. Even though the other children are chattering and frolicking behind us, I feel no desire for silence.
'Herr Karnau?'
Helga brings me down to earth with another of her questions. Has she been talking the whole time?
*
'Herr Karnau, are you one of a big family like ours?'
'No, I don't have any brothers or sisters.'
'So you've always been on your own?'
Herr Karnau doesn't know what to say. He's holding Hedda in his arms so the others can play with her pushchair. They're pretending it's a tank and wheeling it through the puddles. I'm holding Coco's lead. Herr Karnau may be right: I mustn't worry about little Heide.
Now we're back in the warm. Coco's fur is cold, it smells of fresh air, and we've brought a cloud of coldness into the kitchen with us. Our cheeks are as red as the baby's picture on those jars of baby food, the laughing baby with the golden curls and chubby cheeks. Herr Karnau hasn't asked us about our homework again. Shall we play collecting for charity? The little ones don't like that game because they have to put make-believe money in our
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