The Radio Operator

by Ulla Lenze

  “In Harlem.” He always said it as if he were asking a question. Most people’s faces went blank when they heard it, tight lipped, especially women.

  “You probably can’t find space anywhere else, is that it? I mean the city is bursting at the seams, especially with all the refugees from Europe.”

  Josef loosened his tie and said nothing.

  “And the rioting in Harlem doesn’t bother you, Herr Klein?”

  “Well, nowadays there’s rioting all over the place.”

  “He’s right about that,” Schmuederrich jumped in again. “Even at Madison Square Garden we had to hear insults from the anti-fascists. Right, Josef? They called you a ‘bloody bastard.’”

  He was less and less happy with where the conversation was going.

  “I like living there. Good food, pretty women, and the best jazz in the world.”

  A derisive smile in the corner of Dr. Ritter’s mouth. Max seemed satisfied. They were competing against each other, Josef realized.

  Snow was falling outside, when the door opened he could see each individual snowflake lit up brightly in the glow of the streetlamps. Washington next week, then Chicago, meetings everywhere—the firm was expanding at breakneck pace.

  “He’s here,” said Dörsam softly to Dr. Ritter, and there stood a tall man about sixty years old, his shoulders dusted with snow, good-looking, like a movie star. He walked up to the table and shook everyone’s hand, even Josef’s. Josef didn’t catch the name. At the table there was a kind of awe; it was palpable.

  “The radioman,” said Schmuederrich, and Josef felt himself sitting up straighter. He was being sized up; it was a test.

  “Let’s speak in private, Nikolaus.” The man had addressed Dr. Ritter, speaking with an accent that Josef had never heard. The two men went to a spot over by the wall that was screened by a curtain, then they disappeared through the wall like something in a magic trick, and he had the feeling that whatever the test was, he hadn’t passed.

  It was silent at the table. Everyone seemed to know who the man was, just not him.

  “That’s Duquesne,” said Schmuederrich finally, as if that explained everything. Had he missed something?

  They drank their beers very slowly. Dr. Ritter’s glass was still half full. Max kneaded a piece of bread and hummed along to the music.

  Who hasn’t spent a mild summer’s night dreaming of delight

  and drinking wine on the Rhine.

  The soul intoxicated . . . The sick heart healed.

  A little later a woman appeared, the kind of woman he had only ever seen in the movies, wearing a fur stole and a silk dress, stunningly beautiful. She swept past them and likewise entered the back room. This time he noticed the leather-padded door.

  “Tell us a bit more about your radio equipment,” Dr. Ritter said when he came back to the table. Josef placed the photo on the table. He didn’t show it to women anymore; they imagined nights being left sitting alone on the couch while squeals and strange voices floated through the room. He had never been able to get a woman to share in his excitement at how small the world truly was. The men, however, saw the picture and started asking questions. Yes, of course he knew Morse code. And yes, he could also transmit speech. Headphones, microphone—he had everything. He played it cool, enjoying the attention and the fact that he was finally in a position to answer questions to their satisfaction. He spoke at length of making single-layer solenoidal coils and electrical loads with variable resistors. He confirmed that it was possible to transmit as far as Hamburg and to receive signals from there. “This would speed up the firm’s communications enormously, Herr Dr. Ritter,” said Schmuederrich assiduously.

  But he didn’t tell them the most important thing. What it was like to listen at night to the crackle and static as he carefully turned the tuning knob. To send out a signal and wait for someone to respond. Someone in Toronto, Helsinki, or Cairo. He was just a call sign and a voice; they were all just call signs and voices.

  Dr. Ritter steered the conversation to war, to mangled arms and legs and charred faces. Russia, 1917. Max had been there, and had been missing two toes ever since. He’d had to amputate them himself. Schmuederrich had also fought the Bolsheviks, in Munich in 1919, and he must have bagged a couple of ’em too, he said. Dörsam had been on the Western Front, in France. That was where Josef’s father had been killed; he himself had still been a child then. They all assured one another that they had always kept the faith. Old comrades.

  Outside everything was white. He headed back to Harlem. They’d told him the job was his. His radio equipment was needed, also his knowledge of Morse code. Max, who when it came to Morse was still a beginner, would like to learn from him; they could work together.

  He didn’t feel happy about it. He considered whether he should turn the job down.

  He went to Club Hot-Cha, bought a ticket, and sat down at a table. The showgirls hopped, stomped, and strutted; with frozen smiles they kicked their legs high in the air. At the table next to his sat a man whose hand sometimes disappeared under the table. Josef was the only one who could see it, and the man didn’t seem to care. Then the dancers walked off and a single showgirl appeared. She wore only feather boas and a pair of hot pants; first she danced with the boas, then she pulled the hot pants off and let the boas drop.

  He had wound up at a show like this once before. It was after he had just made it through a three-week journey by boat and the old country seemed to be sinking behind him for good. Carl’s voice and the voice of his mother would only be in his head from now on, or in his dreams.

  12

  New York, January 1924

  HE COULD STILL FEEL HER HAND ON HIS HAIR. SHE’D CUT IT for him the day before. They probably wouldn’t ever see each other again—if you went to America, you were gone. That’s how his mother said it: if you went to America, you were gone. She had sounded composed.

  He had set two alarm clocks, but he couldn’t sleep for fear that he wouldn’t hear them and would miss the train and then, just like Carl, wouldn’t be able to go to America.

  He was alone for the first time. He lived in a room with lots of people, but no one knew him. Meals were served three times a day in soft, bendable metal dishes.

  Only salt water came from the faucets. No one bathed. The men pissed over the railing. By the third day he was doing it too, pissing with a soft sigh of relief into this black something of which the world consisted.

  There was no longer such a thing as morning or afternoon. He had bought a winter ticket; it was cheaper. Black smoke hissed down on the third-class deck. He knew that up in first class they had an orchestra that played dance music, a smokers’ lounge, and a mail room.

  Straw leaked out of the mattresses. Leaked down upon him from the snoring man in the bunk above him. His whole body itched. He lay on his stomach and pinned his hands under him, bits of skin caught under his fingernails.

  The men in the other bunks played cards late into the night. He heard of the construction boom in New York. He couldn’t work construction. He was too weak for a job like that. He heard that the cities were overcrowded. In the coming year America would be putting the brakes on immigration. He would have liked to talk to Carl about it, to ask Carl to reassure him, Carl who now sat in Düsseldorf with a bandage over his eye.

  Sometimes he heard prayers. Ever since what had happened to Carl, since he had lost an eye and with it his entry visa, he knew that prayers didn’t help.

  One morning the city rose before them from up out of the sea. Suitcases, rugs, baskets, feather beds were brought up from the depths of the ship. Solemnly he put on his father’s black suit—good prewar quality, thick material, hardly ever worn. By now the ocean liner had sailed so close to the skyscrapers that he could count the windows, which looked down on them like countless eyes. The photos hadn’t prepared him for the sight. The grandeur, the majesty—it was the difference between being blind and seeing.

  They had to wait—first class first.
With their cheap tickets they had already made themselves suspect.

  Around him crying children and mothers trying to console them. Men who puffed their chests out, thrust their chins forward, as if America would be a cinch. Patches of ice knocked together in the black water, a lazy splinter and crunch. He blew into his hands, trying to warm them.

  Finally they let them on land too, and the firm ground under his feet was a blessing. They all wobbled like sailors. At the pier they were herded over to the ferry landing, while the first-class passengers were already on their way to their homes and hotels.

  He stood all the way at the back and watched the fluttering train of hungry seagulls that flew in their wake. He didn’t dare throw bread to them. He could feel the others’ eyes on him, all poor devils like him. They sailed toward a building that stood in the middle of the water, a grand, castle-like edifice. Ellis Island.

  He plunged into a loud tumult. Women in bright peasant dress held their bags close; men in uniform shouted instructions in several languages. The crowd was directionless, helpless. He didn’t know what to do either. A man put his false teeth in. Around them the stench of sweat and vomit. He found a bathroom. Here there was pushing and shoving, eventually he started shoving back. He shaved, spit blood. His gums hurt. He drank a sip of water; here too it tasted salty.

  “No, this way!” They sent him up a staircase. Talk of what this staircase meant had gotten back to Europe. Upstairs, behind a window, stood doctors who looked you over to see if you were fit to be an American. If you breathed heavily, then no. He sprinted upstairs and stood in a giant hall with wooden benches, chandeliers swaying overhead. He seemed to have passed the test. He took a seat, and as he sat he could feel the rocking motion of the ship in his body for a long time.

  He tried to read the faces of the inspectors, looking for what they liked to see. He saw how the young women laughed at jokes, summoned all their charm. He saw a woman get a chalk mark on her shoulder and burst into tears.

  “You’re next!”

  He jumped up immediately. A man who didn’t look like a doctor told him to show him his hands and stick out his tongue. He sent him on to an inspector: name, age, date of birth. Every time he answered, the inspector checked the answer against his papers. Finally Josef was handed an open Bible. He was supposed to read a passage out loud, in English. He read, without understanding, and nodded, again without understanding, whenever the inspector said something. He was lucky. An officer waved him on, more friendly than before: “Your landing card, mister.” They pinned a piece of paper to his lapel. He walked through a kind of fairground: food stalls, a mail kiosk, booths where you could exchange currency, train tickets to California, bulletin boards with ads for English-language courses and offers for migrant workers. He exchanged his money, Reichsmarks to dollars at a rate of 4.2 billion to 1. He received one hundred eighty-one dollars in return.

  He had his luggage sent to the Engelking family, 32 Mott Street, Lower East Side. He tried to remember how they were related. Years ago the Engelkings had sent them a photo: the father in a suit with a round black hat—it was called a bowler hat, Carl said. Later they saw this hat on Charlie Chaplin in the movie house on Königsallee. Engelking looked distinguished; he wrote that he had started a business in New York.

  A feeling of happiness rippled through his body as they cast off in the dim afternoon light and steered once more toward the southern tip of Manhattan.

  He passed through a ravine of gray stone, walking stiffly, concentrating on every step. The city was filled with a constant din. A hammering, pounding, metal on metal. Sirens wailed.

  He kept craning his head back. Scrollwork, gables, columns, even way up high. This was what he imagined Rome to be like, or Athens. Carl, take a look at this. He closed one eye. Was it the left or the right? A building with tall stone columns, mythological figures adorning the façade: NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE. Men in a hurry all around him. He himself seemed invisible; only when he stopped could he hear them chuffing with annoyance.

  He lingered a long time in front of a gold-plated door. Through it he could see a lobby with ornate vaulted ceilings, chandeliers, and richly upholstered furniture. WOOLWORTH BUILDING read the letters above the entrance. A doorman gave him a warning look. Another one from these ships, from poor Europe!

  The black suit smelled of moldy potato sprouts. Whenever he stood still the smell was everywhere, so intense that it horrified him. His mouth was dry, and there was a steady pain weighing down on his forehead. That night he found a boardinghouse for new arrivals. It was a squalid basement. He didn’t want to go see the Engelkings yet. He had to know what it was like to have to fend for himself in this city.

  The light stayed on the whole night. Under the cardboard boxes and wooden boards the bare concrete floor. The blankets were full of holes. His head on his kit bag, his legs curled up; if he were to stretch them out, they would be in another man’s face. His bunk on the ship seemed like a luxury now. His exhaustion was great enough; he would close his eyes and make it through this night, this one night. He would look around for a better place to stay. With that, he fell asleep. With the first light that fell into the basement through the narrow street-level windows, he awoke and sat up, saw men slowly getting up, gathering their things, and trudging off toward the stairs, something ashamed in their movements, each of them wanting to put this experience behind him.

  That day he walked the streets up and down, sometimes stopping when he saw a notice. He sensed Carl next to him, Carl giving his opinions. WAITER WANTED. No, we’ll find something better. He saw churches in between tall apartment buildings. They seemed pinned in, their arms pressed close to their sides. Much different than in Düsseldorf, where the churches stood apart, even on little hills, so that they towered over everything. It all seemed out of proportion, and as a result his small stature seemed to him less tragic here, with the tall, sleek towers sneering down at everything. But he couldn’t really gauge how fast to walk, the appropriate distance to allow between himself and others. He found himself surrounded by sighs and curses and angry excuse-mes, which meant the opposite. In the aisle at the grocery store a woman ahead of him moved aside to let him pass, and when he stepped back he was in the way of the surly customers behind him. On the stairs leading down to the subway he felt like he was just about to fall on someone. Often he knocked into people’s shoulders, hat brims jabbed him in the face, he was jostled, and all the while the hissed curses seemed directed at him, as if he was the one at fault. He began to see himself from high above, a black dot moving through the streets.

  He looked up the Engelking family when he started yearning for a bath and could feel the lice in his hair. The family lived on the Lower East Side. He wandered first through half of Chinatown, a neighborhood where all the signs were in Chinese, except for CHOP SUEY, which he guessed was meant to be immediately identifiable to Americans.

  The family lived in a single greasy room, their clothes hung on nails on the walls. Five kids—all of them had a cough. The business they’d founded was on the kitchen table: a pile of busted umbrellas.

  The worst thing was the noise that filled the space between the apartment buildings: peddlers’ cries, the rumble of cars, and the screams from inside the buildings, which sounded like someone was being beaten. Women sat outside in their house dresses. One pushed a breast back under her neckline; it had fallen out. Bare legs with blue bruises. The misery continued as he moved down the street. Shouting women, limping men, dogs mating, peddlers pushing carts. A cat landed on its back at his feet and let out a pitiful yowl. From a window he heard children laughing. There were many languages spoken on the Engelkings’ street, everything except English.

  He left the family after only one night and this time went to a sailors’ hostel. He was a bit relieved. He had discovered what it was to be alone.

  He dragged himself through the streets, his hands in the pockets of his ancient suit.

  He knew he would eventually have to become
somebody, but he still had time for that. He could start fresh—yes, he was starting fresh. He wandered through the streets feeling invincible. Invincible, as if he hadn’t been born yet.

  He had stopped thinking about Carl.

  After a few days, Arthur found him. Josef was lying on his suitcase; Arthur looked him up and down. “German. I can tell by the cigarettes.”

  Josef sat up. “Hardworking people,” he said, pitching himself, and smiled, because Arthur had something trustworthy and kind in his gaze, and he wore a red-blond Charlie Chaplin mustache. Josef gave him his last Bremaria; Arthur offered him a Chesterfield in exchange.

  “I’ve been seeing you walking down Vandam Street for days. I’ve got my shop there. I’d have a place for you to stay. A couch. What’s your name?”

  “Josef.”

  “Give Joe a try.”

  He ordered himself to trust Arthur. He followed him into the subway, his red-blond hair always in sight, let him lead him around the city, through its countless entrances and exits, its noise. Often he didn’t know where the noise was coming from. At some point they were back aboveground. This was the Bronx, Arthur said.

  The apartment was right next to an elevated train track, on the sixth floor. Arthur locked the door behind them. Darkness, the smell of wet wool. He could barely see a thing. “You can have the couch. The bathroom is down the hall. Two dollars a week. You can earn it from me at the shop. A print shop.”

  Everything in this apartment shook whenever a train thundered past. He had never heard such a noise. He lay on his back, and the noise sent vibrations throughout his body. He felt the full extent of it, from the tips of his toes to the top of his head, and realized that for the first time this body belonged to him, as if this city had given him shape, footing, however much it might rattle him.