by Ulla Lenze
* * *
Back in Neuss he notices that Edith has started avoiding his gaze. Yesterday it was happening as well. He hasn’t given it too much thought. But now it seems to him as though she were making an extra show of being busy and that there was a mild fury in everything she did. All the tasks she performed around the house, which he so liked to watch, that were so calming—she now carries them out with more severity, more loudly. As if she wanted to drive him off.
When Carl goes into the parlor, where of late he’s been playing chess against himself (“And soon I’ll be able to beat you, my dear man”), he goes up to Edith. She looks up from the dishes. “Please,” he says. “At least when Carl’s around. He’s going to think I’ve done something awful to you!”
She looks hurt. It occurs to him that maybe that’s the reason she’s so angry? That there wasn’t much, and there will be even less?
“You’re going to leave,” she says, and he can sense that it’s not a request, but an accusation. There’s a bitterness to it. You’re leaving. We’re staying. I’m staying. Everything is going to stay just as it is.
21
New York, May 1939
HE KNEW THE COMPONENTS. HE HAD WRITTEN EVERYTHING down. He wanted to start by building the coil and the capacitor. Save the Audion, the antenna, and the amplifier for the next phase of work. He just wanted to buy what would fit in his leather briefcase, to make several trips. This way he could keep things under control—the device mustn’t get too big or too heavy. He also needed to stock up on wires, switches, clips, and a new soldering iron. His plan was to not buy anything prefabricated; instead he would have something tailor-made, handcrafted almost. That way it would be harder to trace the source. The whole thing capable of being stowed in two suitcases max.
He left the dog at home. She whined as he left like she did every time he closed the door on her wet nose. He fished a letter from Carl out of the mailbox—airmail. He opened it outside as he walked.
Dear Josef,
He skipped straight to the last page—that’s where Carl always put the most important news.
Our daughter will soon be a year old. Our son three years old. The two of them are a great joy to us! Don’t you want to marry and bring children into the world yourself someday? It truly is the greatest happiness in life.
How’s work? Are you getting along better with your boss, have you gotten past your differences of opinion? A man should always make sure he’s on good terms with his superiors. I hope you don’t mind the advice.
By the way, my business was declared essential to the war effort. So you don’t have to worry about us if it does come to war. Also I’m considered unfit for military service—one eye isn’t enough for the front. What’s that saying? A blessing in disguise.
Warm greetings from your brother Carl, Edith, and the kids
At the newsstand Josef bought the New York Times. He went over the list again on the train. Memories came flooding back to him: the different steps, the focus, handing wire and cables back and forth, Arthur’s voice. “You have to bend little feet at the ends of the wire. Look, like this.” Maybe Arthur would help him if he got stuck.
He had a hundred seventy dollars on him. He held his briefcase close as the subway rattled downtown. “Only the best materials,” Max had said. “We’ve got the green light from Hamburg!”
He searched for some small feeling of triumph. His ideas were being taken seriously. But he felt only apprehension.
Delancey Street. Foley Square. Fulton Street. He opened up the newspaper. Today he found the name on page three. A private airport was now being built for him, an hour from Berchtesgaden. A Catholic priest had been sentenced to sixteen months in prison for speaking ill of him.
Trinity Church. He had gone a stop too far. He was now in the Syrian Quarter, signs in Arabic all around him. From Liberty Street down to Battery Park, everything here west of Broadway was in Arabic script. He walked past tables with men playing chess and smoking water pipes, handcarts with exotic fruit. It smelled of coffee and cardamom. LITTLE SYRIA. SON OF THE SHEIKH, SYRIAN COOKING. He would bring Lauren here, assuming she was still interested in him. “Why should she be interested in you at all? What can you offer her, you good-for-nothing?” Arthur had been ribbing him. “Yeah, the FBI must have sent her after me,” he’d answered.
He stepped inside a Syrian church, maybe just because he read its name, Saint Joseph’s Maronite Church. A silence enveloped him, as if he’d plunged his head underwater. He said a prayer. He prayed for Carl, prayed that Carl really wouldn’t be sent to the front.
He unfolded the letter and learned that Carl had bought a house. Not incentivized:
The deplorable has become common practice around here—no, the proper, normal way. Edith doesn’t much care for the house, it’s old and it’s got some things wrong with it, but you can’t have everything—a clean conscience and luxury. At least not in these times!
A photo was enclosed. The family in the park. It was an older photo: Carl, posing proudly with one foot forward, showing off the family. Thick wool coats and fur collars, snow in the background.
He crossed himself and stepped back outside. The cool, fruity air of the water pipes drifted through the street. He crossed Liberty Street and soon reached Cortland Street, Radio Row. The radio components glittered in the heat. A whole street crammed with replacement parts; the technology was developing at such a rapid pace that the stores kept having to make room for the newest items. Steel and aluminum casings, speakers, and tubes were piled up on the sidewalks. A crowd of buyers threaded its way among it all, browsing. A few were gathered in little groups—experts talking shop. In the sun it smelled of burnt rubber, lubricating oil, and metal. Music drifted out of the shops, jazz mixing with classical. It lent rhythm to the shimmering metal. He saw old Radiolas and old Stromberg Treasure Chests with beautifully crafted wooden casings. They once went for three hundred dollars; now they were practically giving them away, but without any guarantee that they would work.
He felt the wooden surface of a Philco Midget, an obsolete model from 1931 that was shaped like a cathedral. “You got a car?” He jumped. “We install radios. Make an appointment.” The man was dressed like a mechanic. He handed him a business card. Cars were parked on the curb, the doors wide open. Curious passersby stopped to take a look.
In the shop windows hung seashells from the South Seas and dried fish, souvenirs from the sailors who came here to stock up on radio gear. East Radio Store. Superior Equipment and Repair. He decided on Ammon’s Radio Store.
He walked in and pulled out his list. The salesman looked at it for a long time. “A quarz with a transmitting range of over three thousand miles. What are you planning on using it for, anyway?”
“It’s not for me, it’s for someone I know.” He lapsed back into his German accent, as he always did when he was nervous.
“Do you use a radio yourself?”
“Yes, I’m an amateur operator.”
The list was now sitting on the display table between them. He wanted to just grab it and leave the store.
“But the quarz is supposed to have a range of over three thousand miles?”
“That’s not illegal.”
“Not yet.”
The salesman was eyeing him suspiciously and made no attempt to hide it.
“I don’t have a quarz like that in stock right now.”
“All right. I’ll be going, then.” And he took the piece of paper.
“Hold on now. I can get you the other parts.”
The salesman went down the shelves, grabbing some wire here, clips and rubber components there. Josef had hoped this would give him some time to think. But the salesman drew him into a conversation. He had shellac on the list—what did he need that for? Probably for isolation purposes, right? He’d advise against that. Paraffin or insulating varnish was better.
“All right.”
“Do you have tinfoil at home?”
“No.”
“Oh, but you’ll need it. You have to use it to cover the back of the panel, but don’t forget to leave room for the leads.”
He nodded absently.
He was still alone with the salesman. Should he just go? There was something about the way the man looked at him every time he put an item on the table, and the way he loudly announced what it was.
Then he took a receipt pad, warped from the humidity, and began to write down each item.
“You’re German?”
“I’ve lived here for fifteen years.” Josef picked up a clip, inspecting it, as if he hadn’t decided yet.
“But you’re from Germany?”
“I should think you can hear it.”
The salesman nodded. “Comes out to a hundred fifty dollars. And I’ll need your name and address.”
He hesitated.
“Better yet, just show me your ID. Then you won’t have to spell out that German name for me.”
“It’s not complicated—Joe Klein.”
The salesman looked up.
“How about that. That is easy. And where do you live, Joe?”
Something wasn’t right. But he told him, as if out of spite, his address.
“May I see your ID?” asked the salesman.
“No.”
“Then I can’t sell you these items.”
“That’s my real address, that’s my real name too,” snorted Josef, no longer able to keep his voice down.
“I can’t sell you the equipment. Sorry.”
He reached into his jacket pocket, took out his ID, and slammed it down on the table. The salesman took a quick look at it.
“Thanks a lot. Now, what exactly was the problem?”
“There is no problem. That was the problem.”
“Sometimes I just don’t get you Germans.”
“I’m not German. I’m a citizen.”
“You’ll always be a German.”
He didn’t wait for the salesman to pack the items up. He just threw everything into his briefcase. A copper clamp fell to the ground. He picked it up and hurried out of the shop.
22
New York, May 1939
WHEN HE DIDN’T SEE LAUREN IN THE LOBBY, HE GOT UNEASY. He was a bit late. He bought two tickets, waited five minutes, then joined the line outside the theatre. There was text printed on the back of his ticket: IF HITLER MOVES INTO THE WHITE HOUSE, EVERY PERSON WHO SEES THIS FILM WILL BE ARRESTED. Very funny. But every now and then he heard someone laughing.
The theatre was under guard—two cops standing on either side of the door. He’d worked his way up to the entrance when, behind him, he heard Lauren calling his name. She was holding popcorn and soda. “Can’t watch Nazis without popcorn.”
They sat in the second-to-last row; all the way in the back sat the perverts, even if they couldn’t expect much inspiration from this movie. He sank into the plushy embrace of the theatre seat. They didn’t talk. First previews, then the movie: the Warner Bros. fanfare sounded, then ominous strings. Confessions of a Nazi Spy flickered over the screen.
A silhouetted figure told of an espionage case in New York; the confessions of the agents were “stranger than fiction.”
A meeting hall in New York. Swastikas on the wall and a banner: NUR EINER SCHAFFT’S: DER FÜHRER! HALTE IHM DIE TREUE! Only one man can get it done: the Führer! Keep the faith with him!
Stiff-walking Germans—they had a hard time with the English but it was all the easier for them to lift their arms in salute. “Toomorrow ze verld iss auers. Heil Hitler!” They all seemed thoroughly foolish. The audience laughed. Why the hell did he pick this of all movies to take Lauren to?
Nazis dropping flyers out of a stunt plane flying over New York: THE PRESIDENT IS A COMMUNIST! And: HITLER WANTS PEACE!
In the back room of a Yorkville restaurant—wasn’t that the Old Heidelberg?—a frightened man who wants to stop working for the German spy network is being put through the wringer by burly Gestapo men. “Have you ever heard of an organization known as the Gestapo? We’ll forget it this time.”
Even this seemed ridiculous, but he didn’t feel like laughing. Lauren leaned over and whispered, “He should just go to the FBI.”
“They’d arrest him immediately.”
“Not if he testifies against the others.”
What did she know about it?
“Ze Tcherman desstiny off Amerika,” said someone on-screen. The chuckling in the theatre was getting more and more on his nerves, the cozy comfort of shared feeling. Even Lauren was laughing quietly, and when he turned to her she said, “No, it’s just funny is all. The way you talk is different. You can barely tell that you’re . . .” She didn’t say anything more. Only when Hitler appeared did the giggling in the theatre cease. Not an actor, the real thing. Hitler raving before the Reichstag, Hitler proudly surveying a regiment. The silence in the theatre was more frightening than everything that came before, which of course had merely been ridiculous.
Lauren leaned over again and whispered, “They couldn’t find an actor who was willing to play Hitler. They were all too afraid. There were death threats against the director! That’s why they’re using original footage.”
“I know.”
His voice sounded icy. Lauren’s hands now lay folded together in her lap. A German immigrant by the name of Kurt Schneider tried to procure blank passports for the spy ring. He went about it so ineptly that the FBI was soon on his trail. While Kurt Schneider raced through the streets, running straight into the hands of his pursuers, Josef took a sip of soda and looked over at Lauren, her face lit up in the silver glow, working hard to glean some valuable bit of insight from the movie.
He thought of his own stupid behavior at the radio store a few days ago. But no one had explained anything to him. No one had given him instructions. They just told him to go ahead.
On the screen Germany was busy preparing the way for the global Germanic empire. With wax writing. With disappearing ink. With hollow walking sticks. They had only sent twenty lines of code to Hamburg in the last week. Max complained that there was barely any information coming in of late. Ships’ cooks, housemaids, factory workers—they weren’t delivering. He asked Max if these kinds of people were the only ones working for German intelligence but got no answer.
Kurt Schneider was arrested. A confession was easy to coax out of him; he’d been so pleased to have spent time running around as a Nazi.
Lauren whispered, “Hard to believe they’d recruit such saps.”
“Oh, they do,” he said quietly.
Lauren gave him a searching look. He felt her eyes on him but said nothing.
“The movie is so contradictory, Joe. The Germans are presented as dopes, and yet we’re supposed to believe that they’re about to reduce New York to rubble and ash.”
“And how do you know they’re not going to do just that?”
Lauren looked at him again. Then she said, “You’re right. We don’t know.”
Later, in the lobby, he was silent as Lauren talked. He suspected that after so much ridiculed German he wouldn’t have his accent under control. He stared at the film poster: YOUR GERMAN NEIGHBOR—WHERE ARE HIS ORDERS COMING FROM? WHO’S HE REPORTING TO?
He heard Lauren saying that the movie had won a prize, it had beaten The Wizard of Oz in a contest. “Granted, it’s a propaganda film. Still, though, the issue of how frustrated immigrants are easy to manipulate is well presented, don’t you think?”
She was still mid-sentence when he grabbed her by the elbow and led her outside.
It was dark by now. The air on Broadway smelled of dust and gas fumes. He liked this smell. They threaded their way among the people and neon signs. SCHAEFER BEER, PEPSI COLA—gold and red letters glowing against the night sky.
They walked in silence, side by side, strangely lost and yet, because of this, oddly connected. He took her hand, caressed the palm with his thumb, and felt reminded of another woman; he tried to remember which.
“Don’t expect so much of me,” she said quietly.
“What do you mean?” he asked and let go of her hand.
She was silent.
“What a joke,” he said. And finally: “It’s late. I’ll get you a taxi and take you home.”
“No, that’s not necessary.”
“Yes, it is, Lauren.”
He knew that he had to take her home, and suddenly he felt like God, all-knowing. He grandly hailed a cab, though he didn’t even know where Lauren lived. She looked at him quizzically, a bit hostile, but this too he just let slide right off him. He held the door open for her. She got in on the other side.
“Lauren, I’m taking you home. I’ll need your address.”
She leaned forward and told her street and house number to the back of the driver’s head. It was an address in Brooklyn, a long ride.
They turned off Frankfort Street and onto the Brooklyn Bridge. Lauren looked out the window, her face turned away from him. Lauren’s instincts were working. After all, he was keeping something secret from her, something essential.
It had started raining; a pedestrian opened up a newspaper and held it over his hat.
Suddenly Lauren exhaled loudly and looked at him: “Really, it’s unbelievable how the Germans here act.”
He agreed with her, but said, “They haven’t been back home for many years. Maybe they’re homesick.”
“For Germany?”
“Yes. For the country as they remember it.”
“But they’re supporting today’s Germany.”
“Maybe they’re confusing homesickness with patriotism.”
“But patriotism isn’t any better, Joe!” she said. She was getting worked up now.
He didn’t say anything. The driver was starting to cast glances at them in the rearview mirror.
“Do you think patriotism is something harmless?” She wouldn’t let it go.
He felt a twinge of anger but made an effort to keep his voice calm. “I don’t know, Lauren. I, for example, like America. What’s wrong with that?”
“Joe, in the name of patriotism they want to establish authoritarian regimes like Germany’s all over the world.”