The Radio Operator

by Ulla Lenze

  “Not if you become a journalist. Then the newspapers will hang on a bit longer!”

  She gave him a faintly scornful look. “Your attempt to soften the blow is far too transparent.”

  He felt his face turning red.

  By way of conciliation she said, “And what’s this here?”

  “Here the functions of the radio are described.”

  “I see. And just what are the functions of the radio, Mr. Klein?”

  “‘The dissemination of economic news; the broadcasting of sermons and prayers; the broadcasting of music, such as opera (without coughing and sneezing); issuing weather reports, storm warnings; the broadcasting of music for factory floors, mines, hospitals; the broadcasting of political speeches; promotion of understanding between nations.’”

  “Music without coughing and sneezing—yeah, back in 1924 that probably was a sensation.”

  She smiled, and he decided to smile back this time.

  “May I?”

  She turned on the transceiver and turned the tuning knob. Broken skin around her fingernails. Like his mother, who had worked for years in a tavern kitchen. Every night she took a brush and tried to get out everything that had gotten caught under her fingernails. Did Lauren have to scrub her hands like that at the hospital?

  “If there’s a war, we won’t be allowed to transmit outside the country anymore,” she said.

  “There’s not going to be a war.” The words slipped out of him. “That’s just anti-German propaganda.” Max said it all the time, then Josef argued, or thought he did at least, and now he was saying it himself.

  Lauren tilted her head, as if to get a better look at him, this idiot sitting across from her. “And the arms buildup?”

  He hesitated. “I couldn’t say. I haven’t been there for many years.”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “None,” he said grudgingly. “Whiskey? Scotch?” he asked.

  “Water.”

  He went to pour himself a whiskey—Macy’s Old Musket, aged ten years, on sale for $2.49—took a sip as he walked back and immediately felt the heaviness setting in, all the way down to his fingertips. He regretted pouring himself a drink while this young woman, his W2, sipped water and began almost to crawl inside the radio, as if she were going to disappear; while she, headphones on, went off somewhere else—a trance. He knew it himself. The static and squealing alone were enough to send a wave of euphoria flooding through him.

  “Switzerland.” Now she was filling him in. “The man is talking about a dog that went missing in Grenoble. Gray and white.” She played the cheerful explorer on the tuning knob. Everything, just not a man and a woman in an apartment together, at night, in May.

  “How old are you, W2?”

  She took off the headphones and turned around to face him. “Twenty-four. Why?”

  “Aren’t I too old for you?”

  “Too old for what?”

  He went quiet, embarrassed.

  She had an amused look on her face. “Aren’t you a bit direct, Joe Klein, or is that just how one acts at your age?”

  “Of course. One doesn’t want to lose any time. One has less of it, after all.”

  She laughed and turned back to the radio, but she had gone red.

  “I’ll make us some spaghetti,” he announced and went off into the kitchen, looking among old onions with green shoots for one he could use. He had an eggplant and a few tomatoes. He’d be able to whip something together.

  She stood in the doorframe and held up the page he’d torn from the New York Times.

  “Will you take me with you?”

  He froze. Sauce dripped from the spoon to his shoe.

  “You circled the movie,” she said.

  He still didn’t say anything.

  “Sorry, Joe, the paper was just sitting there on the couch.”

  “I’d rather go see Paradise in Harlem,” he joked. “Or”—he took the paper from her hand and read—“Only Angels Have Wings with Cary Grant.”

  “Why?”

  He took a step closer. And now was standing very close. Her breath in his face. “This is why,” he said. “A Nazi movie isn’t as good for this kind of thing.”

  “What?” she asked quietly.

  He was standing so close to her now that she might well have guessed. She didn’t step back.

  He could still feel her lips on his when he was back standing at the stove. He congratulated himself on his clever offensive. He had wanted to kiss Lauren anyway, on this their second time seeing each other, and it had happened at the right moment. Lauren had laughed quietly, a laugh that gave him credit for the smooth move and that was at the same time a bit delighted. He wasn’t the first person to have kissed her—that too was clear now. She seemed not at all unsure of herself.

  He poured the noodles into a colander, mixed them with the sauce, handed her a plate.

  “So long as it’s not the eight a.m. screening on Sunday morning, then let’s go.”

  “How about the one at eight p.m.?”

  “I’ll get the tickets.”

  After they’d finished eating she sat down next to him on the couch, petting Princess, who sat in front of them, her hand drawing long lines down her back. He decided not to make any more advances today—first they had to get through this movie. While Lauren talked about her work at the hospital, he realized how much he liked her. She told him about a ditzy coworker; he lost himself in her voice. Then he realized that Lauren was talking about something else now, about men who were brought in at night with a knife in their stomach, and about screaming wives she had to calm down, about kids with chicken bones stuck in their throats, about drunk drivers who ran into trees, about people who’d been beaten up. She had to take care of the patients until the doctor had time to see them. Lauren lit a cigarette and said, “The German American Bund beat up two people the other day, two protesters.”

  “That’s no good.”

  “This lunatic in Germany is a menace to the whole world. These days you have to pick a side. That’s what these two men did. It was the right thing to do.”

  He nodded thoughtfully and knew she was right.

  “Did you hear about the attacks in Washington Heights, Joe? The victims landed in our emergency room. One shopkeeper recognized his assailant from back in Berlin.”

  She looked at him, challenging him. Now it’s your turn, she seemed to be saying.

  “Does this have anything to do with me?”

  Lauren hesitated. “You’ve got friends in Yorkville, don’t you?”

  “Well, sure. I wouldn’t call them friends. And there’s lots of things in Yorkville: athletic clubs, reading groups, choirs, baking clubs, and of course also a mini version of Hitler’s Germany.”

  He got up and went into the kitchen. His voice still echoed in his ear. He poured himself some more whiskey and came back just as she was saying something about Isadore Greenbaum. He immediately saw the suit pants pulled down around his ankles, and the article in the New York Times two days later. “A hero!”

  He muttered agreement and felt the back of his neck getting hot, as if he were blushing with shame. The feeling spread down his back. He’d been there, after all. He had seen Greenbaum with his own eyes. And he himself had been as far from jumping up and protesting as could be.

  Without thinking he pushed the standing lamp away so that the light wasn’t shining on him. Lauren slid a bit closer; she had misunderstood him. The lamp now shone on the QSL cards on the wall. X1AY, a man with a sombrero who lived somewhere in Mexico. Josef squinted; his tongue followed, forming the words: Avenida Ixtaccihuatl 27.

  “It’s getting pretty late,” said Lauren quietly.

  “You’re right. I’ll walk you to the subway.”

  The wind blew a smattering of raindrops out on the street; maybe that’s why Lauren walked so quickly. At the top of the stairs of the subway station on Lexington she assured him that he could leave her alone now, it wasn’t dangerous.r />
  “But what about all the beatings and assaults all over New York?”

  She looked at him with surprise, searched his eyes.

  “Sorry, Lauren, that was a dumb joke.”

  Suddenly he wasn’t sure if their date on Sunday was going to happen. But he would be there.

  20

  Neuss, July 1949

  DÖRSAM ANSWERS THE PHONE SAYING HIS NAME IS MEERBUSCH. Josef recognizes his voice right away.

  He says his own name, “Josef Klein,” then adds, “Joe,” then, “from the old days at the Old Heidelberg,” and is about to say Ellis Island when finally Dörsam interrupts him.

  “Right, I know who you are.” Josef, his heart beating in his throat, makes an effort to hear goodwill in the voice. But then Dörsam asks cuttingly, “Where did you get my number?”

  “From Schmuederrich.”

  “Oh, him.”

  “Can we meet?”

  There’s a pause. Dörsam seems to be thinking.

  “Tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock in Cologne. Can you manage that?”

  “Of course,” says Josef. He’ll find some way to manage it.

  “Come to the Kunibert monastery, behind the train station. Stand by the entrance and wait.”

  He hears the click of the receiver landing back on the hook.

  * * *

  He keeps an eye on Carl throughout the evening, and when finally his brother opens his newspaper and leans back contentedly in his chair, he informs him that he’d like to go to Cologne tomorrow. He feels like a little kid who has to ask permission. Because he doesn’t want to lie, he also doesn’t have an explanation for why he’d like to go to Cologne, and so when Carl asks, “Oh yeah? What do you want to go there for?” he says he just has to get out of Neuss for a bit, which isn’t untrue. “Maybe I’ll take a few photos with the Linhof.”

  “Go ahead, then. You’ve got money.”

  He does have money. Carl gave him ten marks, “for helping out.”

  The next morning he sets out early, swallows sailing across the royal-blue sky, under which every other impression of the city seems to dissipate. The camera is heavy; it weighs his shoulder down, but it also reassures him, makes him feel as though he really is taking a harmless day trip.

  He buys a ticket at the train station, leaves an hour later. It’s a short journey, and as the cathedral begins to soar up ahead of him, so venerable and dark, cracked, rough looking, damaged in a few places, but unmistakably the cathedral, he feels such sadness that he stares out the window and simply lets the tears flow.

  The train pulls into a giant station that he once saw forty years ago with his father, his mother, and Carl, a Sunday trip. He remembers the suit Carl had to wear, too big for him; his timid, unhappy mother on the Rhine promenade among people much better off than they. His father didn’t make much money. A sign painter who hoped he could switch careers and become an electrician. The government had promised a promotion to those who enlisted in the first days of the war.

  The front hall has also survived the war, an overly ornate, gloomy edifice. Outside, his eyes wander over many barren lots, over a few one-story buildings that had been built quickly on top of old leftover foundations, over piles of rubble that were already overgrown with weeds. He has some time still and walks in the direction of the old city. He sees individual buildings here and there propping each other up like drunks. On a wooden fence the words OUT WITH THE NAZI PLAGUE. On a wall, between two bullet holes: HITLER KAPUT.

  At a makeshift wooden kiosk he buys a coffee. A one-legged man who seems to be working with a blind organ grinder holds out his hat.

  On Ellis Island he had always given Dörsam a wide berth. He didn’t want to be seen with him too often. As the Americans saw it, Dörsam was bad news. Should he call him Herr Meerbusch? He mustn’t make any mistakes.

  At half past ten, he starts heading back to the train station, first down Domstraße and then Machabäerstraße. He turns onto Kunibertsklostergasse, which is nothing but empty windows and staircases with no buildings surrounding them. He doesn’t have to wait long. Dörsam is also early.

  “Heil Hitler! Come with me!”

  Josef quickens his gait to match Dörsam’s, which is brisk, but not hurried, and already he has the impression that he’s a pesky fly that Dörsam is trying to brush off.

  “All this here isn’t going to stay like this. The last word has yet to be spoken.”

  Josef nods politely.

  Dörsam keeps talking: “Germans long for what was here years ago, believe me. They don’t want democracy and they certainly don’t want any occupation powers. In South America they’re preparing something, a coup.” And then he looks at Josef, who has been nodding politely this whole time, and recoils in shock. “I thought you were someone else. You’re not Josef Wolpensinger. Now I remember. You’re the one with the radio. I don’t have a good memory for names, or for faces. You look like him, the other Josef.”

  Josef wonders whether Dörsam might have just told him too much, and also if Dörsam has a screw loose. Overthrow Adenauer? Good luck with that.

  “I look like a lot of people,” says Josef. They’ve reached the Rhine now. The silvery gray water is choppy from the wind. He doesn’t recognize any of it, although he knows he was here, his parents, Carl, and him, in a former life.

  “But now I remember you. Now I remember!”

  Josef walks a foot or two behind Dörsam. As hard as he tries, he can’t keep up with him; whenever he catches up to him, Dörsam just starts walking faster. Dörsam walks with his torso pitched stiffly forward, as if he were trying to walk off a stomachache.

  “You didn’t exactly do much for us. Did you?”

  Josef hesitates. As of late the fact that he didn’t do much has been a point in his favor. But he had done too much. And on the other hand, yes, too little.

  “You’re the one who built a radio. You kept repeating that over and over again in court.”

  “I was told that if I was deported help would be waiting for me.” He hurries after Dörsam now, in Carl’s baggy suit.

  “For the big fish. You’re a small fry.”

  Josef says nothing. He would like to light a cigarette, his last one from America, but the wind on the bank of the Rhine is so strong it would be a waste. Dörsam stops and looks at a bridge. “This is new. All the bridges were bombed by the Americans.”

  It’s not true. The Waffen-SS blew up the bridges as the Americans were marching in; Carl told him. But if he wants something from Dörsam it wouldn’t be wise to contradict him.

  “Schmuederrich is in Buenos Aires. He was a friend of yours?”

  Josef nods. Schmuederrich, sure, sure, a friend.

  “So you want to go to South America too, huh? That’s why you wanted to meet with me?”

  “I don’t have a future here. Maybe I can make myself useful in Buenos Aires?”

  “Just what did you do for us anyway?”

  He hesitates. Then he decides to bet it all on the one card he has.

  “I did a lot for you. Operation Sonnenstaub.”

  Dörsam’s face lights up. “Operation Sonnenstaub!”

  Josef quickly changes the subject. “I don’t have any papers.”

  “Come back to Cologne in four weeks. Do you have money?”

  “No.”

  “That’s not good.” Dörsam keeps walking, unfazed.

  “What does that mean, that’s not good?”

  “You can get a job, can’t you? Or sell that camera you’ve got in your pocket? What kind is it?”

  “A Linhof.”

  “Sell it.”

  “I can’t. It’s my brother’s. Just how much money do I need?”

  “Depends. If you can do without a lot of comfort, a little money is enough. Maybe five hundred dollars. First you cross the border at Aachen. Hitchhike to Eupen and take the regional train to Herbesthal. There’s a train that goes from Herbesthal to Brussels. From there you take a train to Paris. You actually ne
ed a visa for Belgium, but you’re from England, you didn’t know anything about it—that will get you through. In Paris you take a train to Le Havre. Plan on it taking a day. From Le Havre the ship to Dakar, with a stop in Casablanca. Can you remember all this?”

  “I don’t know.” Dörsam waits till he’s written down all the different stages of the journey on the back of his train ticket.

  “You can apply for a visa in Bonn.” Dörsam looks at his watch. “A little late for it today.”

  Eupen, Herbesthal, Brussels, Paris, Le Havre, Casablanca, Dakar, he’s got it all down. “The ticket for the ship?”

  “In Le Havre. You need the money for bribes. It’s not as bad as it sounds. All of Europe is on the move. Use the chaos to your advantage. Maybe you can sign on as a sailor, then they’ll give you free passage. And once you get to Buenos Aires, get in touch with Schmuederrich. Restaurant ABC. I’ll send a telegraph. You can make yourself useful there. I’ll be coming later, when I’ve finished my work here.”

  He sees that Dörsam keeps looking around nervously, his way of signaling that the meeting is over. Josef summons his courage and asks, “What ever became of Dr. Ritter?”

  “Dr. Ritter? He’s an exporter in Hamburg now. Why do you ask?”

  “And General Lahousen?”

  “Why would you bring him up? A traitor!”

  “I’m just interested in what becomes of a person like that.”

  “The Americans gave him a fat pension after he sold everybody out and sent them to their deaths. Lives somewhere in Tirol now. Innsbruck, I think.”

  A few minutes later he’s alone again. Dörsam is walking up toward the cathedral, and Josef would also like to head that way but opts not to and continues walking along the Rhine.

  The water is blue and sparkling, not a cloud in the sky. The black trail of smoke left by a steamship hovers over the river. While the ship’s paddle wheel struggles against the current, he searches in vain for the feeling of peace that the Harlem River always brought him. The conversation is still running through his head. It makes him uneasy. Will he be able to steer clear of the Germans once he gets to Buenos Aires? Maybe, somehow, he can even keep going. He could cross the border in Mexico—America is his true homeland after all.