by Ulla Lenze
“Don’t talk like that, Joe.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re not taking it seriously.”
He wanted to tell her now, tell her about Max, as a further way of proving to her how seriously he was taking things. But as soon as he started speaking he knew it was a mistake.
Her face darkened. “You have to report it. Do you hear me? They’re not going to let up.”
“Let’s just wait a bit, Lauren.”
“But you promised.”
“Nothing’s happened yet, not a thing,” he said angrily and thought of the movie. He pictured FBI men and heard the fanfare blowing.
Lauren just looked at him.
He looked over at the wall. He felt sick.
She laid her hand on the table, palm up, an invitation to place his in hers. He didn’t take it. He caught the eye of the waiter, ordered a soda, and said, “To America.”
“To world peace,” she said.
A week later he was walking down a small side street near the Manhattan Bridge. Max and Ludwig were sitting in the white delivery truck with THIRST QUENCHER written on it in blue lettering. They handed him the half-finished radio.
Ludwig called out from the passenger seat, “We took Paris!”
The door slammed shut. He heard the car rumble off and looked carefully at the bag in his hand. He knew he had to get rid of the device. He started walking toward the river, but after a few steps he turned around. Better to wait till dawn.
Back home he put on “After Hours.” The slow, lazy blues and Avery Parrish plonking away on the piano like he’s bored and how the horn section only came in right at the end—Great, he thought, and played it again. He could feel the walls and all the objects in the room, and he could feel himself in it. This here was his life.
A thin copper wire was sticking out of the bag at his feet. He looked at it, and then he looked away. He hesitated, then he gave it a tug, and when he held the wire in his hands he started to make little feet at the end, while Avery Parrish hacked away at his piano. When he was finished, he pushed the bag under the table a bit. He tried to remember the circuit he’d built last year. Finally he pulled it out and had to smile. It was primitive: a simple press key with a contact, in between a spring-loaded washer, but just a slight movement pushed the coil to the desired contact—it worked. He tried it out a few times, back and forth, back and forth. Then he stopped. Yes, early tomorrow morning, before dawn, he would throw it all into the river.
He looked at the leads. They were much too long. They would cause whistling noises by allowing for too much oscillation. Carl. If he sent the radio to Carl, they could talk. He hadn’t heard his brother’s voice in sixteen years. But Carl had no idea how to use a radio. And the device would be confiscated anyway, or it wouldn’t arrive in the first place. He had read in the New York Times recently that in Germany you could get a death sentence for listening to an enemy radio station. He could hardly believe it. What had happened to his homeland?
He clipped a wire that was too long in half. Then he searched his toolbox for a soldering iron, soldering tin, flat-nose pliers, tweezers, a fine-tipped screwdriver, alligator clips—he’ll just practice a bit of soldering. He had always liked soldering in midair. It took a steady hand, but he didn’t have that today; his hands were shaking. He went into the kitchen, poured himself a large glass of Old Musket, enjoyed the melting feeling in his stomach, a calm extending all the way into his limbs. He nodded along to Duke Ellington, muttering, “Soldering tin, soldering tin, soldering tin, I’m at it again.” He felt the resin that he’d bought at a musical instrument shop, brown-black cubes with a glass-like sheen, thought now of forests, forests full of men, men running and running away, falling, dying. With the wire cutters he removed the rubber from the ends of the cables, twisted the now-exposed wires together, got them ready for soldering. Princess ran around him. Her claws clicked on the wood floor. Every now and then she barked.
At the front they used mobile radios that they carried in backpacks—he had read about it. He would like to get a look at such a compact piece of equipment. What he was building here was too bulky, you couldn’t carry it for long. Or maybe you could. He had never been in battle, and didn’t know anything about the limits of what soldiers were capable of doing or whether he would be able to keep up in the heat of things, whole nights spent marching in the rain, in wet clothing, with swollen feet and fever. After Germany’s defeat in the Great War they had done away with compulsory military service. And then he had emigrated to America. He closed his eyes. Saw a deciduous forest. Saw faces, jaws clenched under steel helmets. He didn’t know anything about war. He was sitting on a couch in an apartment in Harlem. It was all connected, and for the first time he could feel this.
He heated the ends of the wires with the soldering iron. Then he took the tweezers, let a few tiny crumbs of resin melt onto the contacts, and quickly added soldering tin. It melted immediately, coated the leads, and connected them. He had never done it so well. It didn’t matter. He would throw the radio in the river tomorrow morning. He imagined Max’s and Ludwig’s faces when he told them.
He tested the durability by tugging on the ends, then he trimmed the tubing and pulled it over the spot. This was his favorite moment: held above a tiny flame, the melting rubber collapsed in on itself and closed around the wires. Would he fight against the Germans if they invaded America? Yes. Would he also fight against the Germans on German soil?
He put on Fats Waller. Lauren had given him the record.
Yes, your feet’s too big.
They had laughed like mad and danced together.
Don’t want ya ’cause ya feet’s too big.
He danced a few steps, now holding an imaginary Lauren in his arms, found his way back to the kitchen with a fresh glass of Old Musket, sang, “I’ll throw it out the window, no, in the river, tomorrow morning.” He knew he would need an explanation for Max. He would think of something. From below someone knocked on the ceiling with a broom handle; it was already two o’clock. He turned the music down, then he got busy soldering more wires together. On he went, casually soldering and screwing like the brilliantly lackadaisical piano playing of Avery Parrish until the first light of dawn came in through the window.
He was dreaming of a foxhole when he awoke. Now he lay on the floor between the couch and the coffee table, a haze of smoke in the air, but only from the soldering and all the cigarettes.
At noon Lindbergh came on the radio at the print shop. Suddenly the men were making less noise. They even turned the machines off so they could better hear the world-famous aviator warning the US not to enter the war. Lindbergh was a member of a committee that called itself America First.
Josef kept working, even though today he felt like he couldn’t do anything right, not even brushing his teeth in the morning. It was nothing but half measures; he did it all in a haze. He kept looking for ways to take a break—a smoke break and a piss break and a coffee break. America should not try to police the world, Lindbergh said. The men applauded. Someone called out, “Sieg Heil!” Laughter. He looked over at Arthur, who also stood applauding. Arthur finally looked back and shrugged his shoulders.
“Don’t get so worked up, Joe. It’ll all take care of itself soon enough. Hitler doesn’t stand a chance in the long run, and the Germans know it. At some point the military will probably oust him. Then we won’t even need to intervene.”
Arthur smiled—which got him even more worked up. “Maybe it’d be better if I went looking for another job.”
“Go ahead. But who’s going to hire a German now?”
In August Trotsky was murdered in Mexico, by the Stalinists. Lauren showed him the article. “I guess your idea that Trotsky was in Mexico planning a Communist takeover of America wasn’t so off base, huh?”
“But what can you believe these days, anyway? Can you trust the Hitler-Stalin Pact, for example?”
She looked at him. Sometimes she managed to look at him in
such a way that he immediately felt dumb.
“Lauren?” he asked.
“Ugh.” She sighed.
“Ugh?”
“Sorry,” she said. “You’re right.”
She had never apologized before. Never admitted he was right. Tonight, her night off, she rummaged nervously in her purse, then she put more lipstick on and said, “We can go.”
Something wasn’t right. Something was going on with her. She seemed pensive and hesitant, kept looking at the door, then at him.
“What?”
“You should go to the FBI, Joe.”
“We’ve had this conversation already.”
“You have to.”
“I have to?”
She looked past him. He touched her shoulder.
“They’re expecting you.”
“Why are they expecting me?”
“Because I was there already myself.”
“Did they bring you in?”
“No. I went voluntarily. Because I knew that you wouldn’t.”
He took a step back, as if he had been struck.
“I did it for you. To put an end to it! The FBI can help you. They told me they could!”
“To put an end to it?”
She nodded. There was something in her eyes. Fear. Not for him.
“We had a deal, Joe. You promised!”
“Don’t you trust me?” he asked quietly.
She went into the bedroom. He knew what she was doing, knew it immediately. He heard the bed squeak, and then she came back with the case with the radio inside.
“And this here? What am I supposed to make of this? Is this your idea of trust?”
“Lauren. That’s a misunderstanding.”
“A misunderstanding?” Now she was shouting.
“I was going to throw the radio away. I took it so it wouldn’t do any damage.”
He could hear how implausible that sounded. True, he kept putting Max off, telling him he needed more time. He had hoped for some other solution to present itself, something other than having to destroy his own handiwork.
She grabbed the radio with both hands, lifted it up in the air, and let it drop. Nothing happened. Good soldering work. She kicked it. It flipped up on its side and tipped back over. He pulled Lauren away. “Stop it. I’ll go to the FBI tomorrow morning.”
They didn’t go out that night. He could tell that Lauren would have preferred to just go back to her room in Brooklyn. She dutifully kept him company, drank whiskey with him, they listened to Duke Ellington, but it all just seemed lost and alien to him. He would almost have felt better in a bare prison cell.
He was furious at Lauren.
“Did you tell them we were together?”
She sat reading on the couch, her legs drawn up beneath her, and nodded. What could one person ever know about another? Nothing. But still, she was ashamed. He could see it in her very narrow shoulders, her feet that pointed back toward her—every part of her seemed to shrink from his gaze.
That night he lay next to her, unable to sleep. All the effort he made to lie still, to suppress every impulse to move so as not to wake Lauren, brought time to a standstill. Time—it struck him full in the face, crashed into him like a wave, became something combative and adversarial, and everything became crushing and intense, as if this were the longest night of his life.
Once, as if from a great distance at first, and then suddenly, rapidly, he felt the touch, growing more and more clear, of her hand on his hip—he must have fallen asleep after all but then was thrown immediately back into wakefulness.
That morning he awoke with a headache. Lauren was already up. She was getting dressed with her back to him. Skinny shoulders, narrow hips, everything he’d found enchanting before, now he saw it with sober eyes. He was hurt, but he didn’t trust the feeling—he couldn’t even trust his own pain.
They reeled past each other, between the bathroom and the kitchen and the little tasks of the morning, putting coffee on, brushing teeth, getting the paper. He had to remind himself how to do everything. He did it all as if for the first or last time. Shirt, pants, tie, shoes, coat, hat. Grab his ID. Lauren sat at the kitchen table, rustled the newspaper, immersed in the articles. He felt a sharp pain in his ribs when he breathed.
Lauren looked up. “I’ll take care of Princess.”
He was trembling.
“So you think they’re going to arrest me?”
“I don’t know what to think. Maybe I made a mistake.”
They hugged—no kiss. Not like usual. Soon afterward he stepped out onto 126th Street and wondered if he would ever come back—if he would ever be able to come back.
31
New York, August 1940
HE WAS STANDING STILL; EVERYTHING AROUND HIM WAS moving. He saw filing cabinets, typewriters, scuffed hardwood floors. The agent pressed the phone to his ear and nodded in response to what the voice on the other end was saying. Josef had said who he was, why he’d come, and now he stood still and waited. It hurt to breathe. Each shallow breath seemed to glue his ribs together.
He tried to calm himself down, telling himself he was still a free man, they hadn’t immediately arrested him after Lauren’s tip-off. Clearly they weren’t thinking of him as a criminal. She had mentioned “contacts,” nothing more, thank God. He heard hurried steps coming down the hallway, and his heart started racing again.
“Joe Klein?”
A man with a white mustache had appeared in the doorway. He gestured with his hand, and Josef followed him into a room down the hall. It wasn’t a cell, wasn’t an interrogation room, just a friendly looking office with a couch by the window.
The agent turned around to face him, and now he saw a man around fifty years old, facial features sagging from the eyebrows down, like a face made of melted wax. The smile that lifted the features lent him a gentle and wise air. “Agent Ettinger.” He shook Josef’s hand, gestured toward the couch, and offered him a cigarette.
“Thank you. That’s very kind of you,” said Josef.
“Wir sind nicht die Gestapo,” Ettinger said. We’re not the Gestapo. He smiled. Josef gave a tentative smile back.
Ettinger switched back to English. “All right, so tell me. When did they first contact you?” His legs were crossed. A notebook rested on his knee. He pulled out a fountain pen.
Josef hesitated. Was this a trap? Did he need a lawyer? He continued not to say anything, until finally Ettinger said, “Listen, Joe, we’ve known about you for about a year. Ever since you went shopping at the electronics store on Cortland Street.”
Ettinger took a drag on his cigarette and watched him. His heart started pounding, and he tried not to let it show. “I’m not one of them. I was forced into it.”
“You asked for a quarz with enough transmitting range to reach Europe. Did no one tell you how to go about it a bit less obviously?”
“I need a lawyer, don’t I?”
“No, just go ahead and tell me what happened,” Ettinger repeated.
He felt dizzy, and his mouth was dry. He spoke haltingly; every word could be a mistake. He talked about the meeting at the Old Heidelberg. He named names: Schmuederrich, Dr. Ritter, Dörsam, Duquesne, Max, Ludwig. He wasn’t sure if Ettinger’s nodding with the mention of each name meant that they were already known to them. Ettinger didn’t write anything down. He just looked at him. Then he put out his cigarette and said, “Max was trained in Germany. He was tasked with recruiting junior agents in New York. You’re probably one of them.”
“You know more than I do,” said Josef.
“That we’re not sure of. You can speak openly with me. Tell me what you know. What are they up to?”
Josef took a drag on his cigarette. Now he felt angry. “I was fired last year. I’ve got nothing to do with them now.”
“And what about the radio that you just built?”
Lauren had told them about the radio?
“I took the radio so it wouldn’t do any harm. I was going to des
troy it. But then I couldn’t”—he hesitated and said quietly—bring myself to.”
Ettinger laughed. “Oh, is that so? You’re working against the Nazis? So why does your girlfriend go and report you to us?”
“It was a misunderstanding.”
Ettinger hesitated a moment, then he shook a new cigarette out of his pack. “Is the radio functional?”
“No. It’s missing a quarz. They’re hard to come by these days, as you know.”
“Take the quarz from your own radio. Get the device working so that it can transmit and receive, and then hand it over to the Germans.”
“Why should I do that?”
Ettinger stood up and gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Wait here.”
The noise from the street came in from the open window. He stared at the tips of his shoes. He wasn’t going to take advantage of the opportunity to look around the room undisturbed, maybe even look at Ettinger’s notes. The ash on his cigarette grew ever longer. He couldn’t move, couldn’t bend over to reach the ashtray.
Ettinger came back with a young woman who brought a tray into the room. She poured him a cup of coffee and asked how he took it. He said milk, he said sugar, as if he were sitting in a café; meanwhile his life was at stake here. When they were alone again, Ettinger took a deep breath.
“Why don’t you tell me what information you sent last year.”
Although he felt nauseated, he took a sip of coffee, which immediately made the nausea even worse.
“I don’t know. They were just columns of numbers.”
“You never asked?”
“They told me it was all information that was available in American trade magazines and newspapers.”
Ettinger made a note for the first time. Then he looked up and stared at him for a long time. “Did you really believe that?”
Josef thought about it. He no longer knew what he believed last year. He had tried to get through it somehow, that he remembered. “I don’t know anymore what I believed last year.”
“I can help jog your memory. You attended Nazi rallies. You’re a member of the Christian Front. And you printed inflammatory materials.”