collecting boxes, mine and Hilde's, while the two of us pretend to be standing outside the Hotel Adlon in our fur-lined jackets. We did that with Papa last year, before Christmas, and everyone stared at us. That's why the others are still jealous.
We play families instead, but no one volunteers to be the Mother. No one wants to be the Mother because she has to spend most of the time being ill in bed. Although she's at a health resort with lots of nice fresh air and no work to do, she's made to swallow pills whenever she has a fainting fit. Once, when she's out for a drive, the car goes round a bend and she falls out and breaks some bones and gets concussion. We're all very worried about her, especially the Father, because he was driving too fast. Everyone wants to play the Father in spite of that, because he doesn't feel bad about it for long and he gets to order everyone else around. He has his own secretaries and he's always very busy. Hilde can be the Father today. She picks Helmut and me to be her secretaries. The little ones can be the children.
The Father paces up and down his office, dictating a new speech. It's all about relentless candour, the voice of the people and ice-cold truth, and Helmut takes it down in shorthand. He can't write yet, not properly, so he only makes squiggles on the paper. Hilde speaks much faster than Helmut can write. 'If things are going badly,' she says, 'let's admit it. Let's call a spade a spade.'
The children don't have anything to do at present. The Father decides they're actors in a depressing film about a hospital, so they all have to pretend to be lying in bed and keep quiet. 'That's enough medical films,' he says. 'Too many medical films are a bad thing.' But Helmut, who's supposed to pass the order on to me, gets it wrong. 'That's enough mental films,' he says.
We all laugh at Helmut's mistake and call him Tran, of Tran and Helle, the two film characters invented by the Father himself. But Helmut doesn't think it's funny and changes jobs. He refuses to join in again until the Father is ready to censor some films. The children can now join in too, they're allowed to be present at the screening. There are mountaineering films, newsreels, and children's films, which even the Father finds amusing. Hilde tells us the story of a Mickey Mouse film. Finally the Father says, 'Stop the projector. This film is banned.’
*
I listen at the door. The children have forgotten about me, forgotten for the moment that they're staying with a stranger.
Might it be worth leaving them to play and devoting the half-hour before supper to my project? My collection of sounds is steadily growing: I've already managed to compile about a hundred examples of the strangest utterances. Some are everyday noises, vocal manifestations of which their authors are seldom aware. There's a vast range of sounds to be monitored, especially now, in the autumn: throat-clearings, little coughs and sniffs that are heedlessly emitted by the sound source but mercilessly recorded on disc. My collection includes some genuine treasures, for instance this recording of a brothel behind the lines, which was given me on the sly by an acquaintance. People must be monitored even when making love. Those sounds engraved on wax are unrepeatable because the brothel was closed down soon after they were recorded, for fear of disease. According to my friend, it even employed the services of dogs trained to copulate with the aid of soiled underclothes.
Is my map of vocal nuances subject to any limitations? Is there anything I would not record? Yes, the voices of these children while defenceless, as they are now, because they believe themselves to be alone and unobserved. Everything else is grist to my mill — anything and everything, the whole of the audible world. Every blank space must be filled for completeness' sake. Every space but one: these children's voices will not be entered on my map, where they would be exposed to all and
We play families instead, but no one volunteers to be the Mother. No one wants to be the Mother because she has to spend most of the time being ill in bed. Although she's at a health resort with lots of nice fresh air and no work to do, she's made to swallow pills whenever she has a fainting fit. Once, when she's out for a drive, the car goes round a bend and she falls out and breaks some bones and gets concussion. We're all very worried about her, especially the Father, because he was driving too fast. Everyone wants to play the Father in spite of that, because he doesn't feel bad about it for long and he gets to order everyone else around. He has his own secretaries and he's always very busy. Hilde can be the Father today. She picks Helmut and me to be her secretaries. The little ones can be the children.
The Father paces up and down his office, dictating a new speech. It's all about relentless candour, the voice of the people and ice-cold truth, and Helmut takes it down in shorthand. He can't write yet, not properly, so he only makes squiggles on the paper. Hilde speaks much faster than Helmut can write. 'If things are going badly,' she says, 'let's admit it. Let's call a spade a spade.'
The children don't have anything to do at present. The Father decides they're actors in a depressing film about a hospital, so they all have to pretend to be lying in bed and keep quiet. 'That's enough medical films,' he says. 'Too many medical films are a bad thing.' But Helmut, who's supposed to pass the order on to me, gets it wrong. 'That's enough mental films,' he says.
We all laugh at Helmut's mistake and call him Tran, of Tran and Helle, the two film characters invented by the Father himself. But Helmut doesn't think it's funny and changes jobs. He refuses to join in again until the Father is ready to censor some films. The children can now join in too, they're allowed to be present at the screening. There are mountaineering films, newsreels, and children's films, which even the Father finds amusing. Hilde tells us the story of a Mickey Mouse film. Finally the Father says, 'Stop the projector. This film is banned.’
*
I listen at the door. The children have forgotten about me, forgotten for the moment that they're staying with a stranger.
Might it be worth leaving them to play and devoting the half-hour before supper to my project? My collection of sounds is steadily growing: I've already managed to compile about a hundred examples of the strangest utterances. Some are everyday noises, vocal manifestations of which their authors are seldom aware. There's a vast range of sounds to be monitored, especially now, in the autumn: throat-clearings, little coughs and sniffs that are heedlessly emitted by the sound source but mercilessly recorded on disc. My collection includes some genuine treasures, for instance this recording of a brothel behind the lines, which was given me on the sly by an acquaintance. People must be monitored even when making love. Those sounds engraved on wax are unrepeatable because the brothel was closed down soon after they were recorded, for fear of disease. According to my friend, it even employed the services of dogs trained to copulate with the aid of soiled underclothes.
Is my map of vocal nuances subject to any limitations? Is there anything I would not record? Yes, the voices of these children while defenceless, as they are now, because they believe themselves to be alone and unobserved. Everything else is grist to my mill — anything and everything, the whole of the audible world. Every blank space must be filled for completeness' sake. Every space but one: these children's voices will not be entered on my map, where they would be exposed to all and
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