The Radio Operator

by Ulla Lenze

  “Are you trying to get us thrown in jail?” shouted Max.

  That’s exactly what I’m trying to do, thought Josef. He wanted to finally put an end to it. He stepped on the brake, there was a squeal, then crunching and shattering. His knee hurt, plus something on his arm.

  “Shit, Josef!” Max shouted.

  So Max was still alive. And he was still alive. He took a breath and waited.

  “That was nothing,” Max called up to him. “Drive away, right now. We’re not at fault, he ran into us.”

  “That’s precisely why we have to wait.” He had said it calmly and deliberately.

  Max swore.

  No, he wasn’t going to drive away. He waited. Ettinger’s face popped up in the driver’s window. His eyes twitched searchingly left and right. He seemed to be working hard trying to figure out the meaning of this situation. “Hey, mister, why’d you just slam on the brakes like that?”

  “There was a dog,” said Josef, his voice firm.

  “Here’s my card. We’ll settle things ourselves. No need to get the police involved.”

  Josef got out. Saw with satisfaction that Ettinger shrank back. On the sidewalk people had stopped and were looking at them with curiosity. The front end of the black Austin was crumpled. The delivery truck’s bumper was hanging off. The license plate had come off completely. A man was sitting in the Austin. Josef thought he saw a small shiny radio in his hand.

  “You ran into that delivery truck,” someone called out.

  “Get the police!” cried Josef.

  “You’re doing it all wrong, Joe,” whispered Ettinger.

  They waited in silence. Ettinger kept staring at him. It was a probing look. At one point he said, “Think about this. It’s not too late,” but Josef turned away.

  When a cop showed up fifteen minutes later, Ettinger said, “All right, then,” hurried toward the cop, and planted himself in front of him.

  Josef tugged at the back door of the truck. He wanted to show everyone what they were hauling around town—not just drinks but a radio. The door was locked. Liquid dripped onto the pavement.

  Ettinger stood talking with the cop. He was sure to have shown him his FBI badge. The cop gave the people standing around the sign to move along, the situation broke up into its separate components.

  Josef climbed back into the cab, and when Ettinger drove past him he heard him say in German, “Das war ein Fehler”—That was a mistake.

  Then there was heavy breathing. Josef turned around. Max sat in a glittering pile of broken glass and puddles of lemonade, his hands bloody. “That guy’s got something to hide—how much you wanna bet? I’ve got a nose for these things. He bribed the cop.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “I’ll live. No comparison with Sonnenstaub.” He gave an indecent laugh.

  Josef had already started the engine. Now he turned it off again.

  “What’s wrong?” cried Max. “Drive already!”

  “You’d like to take credit for Sonnenstaub, huh? For people getting maimed or killed?”

  “It’s war, Josef. You don’t know what war is—you were never in one. So shut your mouth and take me to a hospital.”

  He drove off. Thoughts flew through his head. Your life will grow smaller from now on, ever smaller. You won’t amount to anything more here in America. Something inside him let go and relaxed.

  Peace.

  33

  Buenos Aires, November 1949

  HE’S BEEN WEARING THE SAME SUIT FOR FOUR WEEKS. HE has no money to buy himself a new one, and no friends to lend him one. He shares a rathole with two Argentinians who are kind enough to let him sleep on the floor. His suitcase might have come long ago, but without his freight note he can’t get it. He goes to the post office every day. Still no letter from Carl. Meanwhile, he has already written five, with the increasingly urgent request to send the freight note at all costs, or at least to find out the number from the shipping company.

  It’s hot; there’s no wind. His face is covered in a film of sweat. At the laundry he has his suit ironed for the third time this week, which hardly helps—the sweat and the dust eat their way into it. While he waits in underwear and socks behind a crooked curtain, the girl runs the iron over the suit, her face blank.

  Gracias—that’s one thing he can say. Hasta luego is another. He has a Spanish–English dictionary; he opted for it over the Spanish–German one. His stomach is making problems for him too. He often sits in a filthy food stall and spoons up soup with bits of meat in it. The milk usually curdles when he pours it in his coffee.

  Buenos Aires also has massive buildings and geometry, like New York, but the buildings aren’t as tall and there’s more space in between them. On the grand boulevards he hears European languages. Near the post office is a large square with an obelisk, a neatly scrubbed park with a statue of a man on horseback, with pools of water and hysterical fountains. Hotels with white, curved awnings like seashells over every window. Every city has these little spots that act like they know nothing of the other little spots.

  His spot: he has to ride half an hour on the bus to a neighborhood of low buildings, unfinished or already stripped. There’s always something missing on each of them—a windowpane, a doorbell, a wall. Chickens in the unpaved streets. At night the electricity goes out. Villa miseria, his new friends call it. There’s no need to translate.

  It doesn’t matter, he doesn’t plan to stay here long. It’s just a city like any other. He will keep moving, back to America.

  He nears the harbor. The siesta is over, the Porteños are slowly rising from sleep. “Down there,” someone tells him when he asks for the aduana principal, the customs office for parcel post. The ships bear names like Rotterdam, London, Bilbao, Genoa. He walks among shipping containers and sleeping people. The Rio de la Plata is mud-brown as usual.

  He knocks on a half-open iron door and hears a noise from within. The man behind the desk, his slick hair combed back, speaks a little English.

  “I’m sorry. We need the freight note.” He knows voices like this, unyielding, final. At regular intervals an oscillating fan blows air past the sitting man and ruffles his hair.

  “Can’t I just go and take a look myself?”

  “There are hundreds of packages! And I can’t possibly let you in there. Surely you understand that.”

  No, he doesn’t understand.

  His clothing is in this package: two suits from Carl, a few shoes (which Edith traded a clock for), a comb, razors, towels, an alarm clock, a lamp, a travel typewriter, tools, mettwurst.

  He roams the streets. He hears a lot of German, sees German businesses: Großman’s Bakery; W. Tolle Furs; Casa Schill Doll Repair; Dr. Dinkeldein, Dermatology; Adlerhorst Cervecería. Up to now he hasn’t spoken with any Germans here, although he can spot them. How? He just can. And so he walks past them and tries to seem Argentinian.

  He should make himself useful, Dörsam had said.

  In a German bookstore on Avenida Flores he floats among the tables like a ghost, worried the bespectacled young man will throw him out—him, the tramp. He shuffles over to a wall covered in notices. A Bach choir is seeking a tenor, a chess club has announced the dates for its next tournament, a German meetup at Restaurant ABC (he would meet Schmuederrich there, said Dörsam). No job postings. They seem to be above such things here, or they have a different system. His fingers trail over spines. “A Hamburg novel full of sun and longing for the wind and the sea.” And another: Daily Hygiene.

  The door chime rings and two women step inside, break the uncomfortable silence between the bookseller and him, even if it’s only to say “Guten Tag” and to whisper something to each other every now and then.

  He picks up a book by a French author, Nuremberg or the Promised Land, and reads on the back cover: “The Germans weren’t monsters, as Nuremberg would have you believe.”

  A fly lands on his hand. He shakes it off and puts the book back.

  The young man is standi
ng in front of him. “Here, just came in.”

  Josef takes the magazine from him with a nod, as if he knew what it was. DER WEG—Monthly Magazine for Cultural Preservation and Development. He pages through it. “Only those who surrender are lost,” quoting a certain Colonel Rudel, who, he reads, was a highly decorated Stuka pilot and is now head of the Argentinian branch of the Siemens corporation. One article works out how it couldn’t have been six million. “We have to throw off the straitjacket,” he reads. “We know that our newspapers are lying.” He flips to the end. The magazine is published in Argentina and in Germany. “Chess Problem: Which side can mate in two moves? Solution given by Messrs. . . .” He sets the magazine down on the table and leaves the store, uttering something more like a noise than a word.

  Another week passes. His rounds shrink, limited to the places where he can get credit. The girl irons his suit every day. A Madonna on a household altar stares at the ceiling, eyes rolled up toward the ceiling (as if she’d had her fill of Josef). The two Argentinians will be moving soon. They pantomime working in the fields, make the international sign for money. You can come along, repay your debt. He doesn’t want to. Then again, if they move, he won’t even have a floor to sleep on anymore.

  A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

  Once his favorite line from Thoreau, but that was then. That time is over. The older he gets, the less interested he is in other people’s insights.

  The last night he lets the Argentinians take him to a wedding and gets drunk. Corn on the cob and meat on a charcoal grill—a delicious smell wafts through his shantytown neighborhood. He feels like he’s only had to sit out one dance and is ready to jump back in, just a few goddamn years behind bars and now onward and upward—but he doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know anymore what he should do with his life. He’s lost the beat, and here at the shantytown wedding he has to confront this insight, here where all he understands is Salud, rum, whiskey, gin.

  An image pops into his head, and he closes his eyes in shame. Him in the New York Times. Shoulders slumping forward, his hands in handcuffs. The remarkably brazen grin. He never understood this grin.

  Ettinger had told him that same day. After the car accident he hadn’t heard from him again, but then, half a year later, Ettinger called him. “Tonight.”

  He neatly folded Lauren’s sweater, smelled it, unfolded it, then smelled it again.

  At 8:30 that night they knocked on his door. Put him in handcuffs, put him into a car downstairs. He sat in the back seat, pinned in between them. End of June. A hot day. At Grand Central he saw two policemen on a side street shooting water pistols at each other and laughing loudly; he could hear the laughter over the sound of the traffic. It wasn’t just him who was arrested that night but all of them, thirty-three agents.

  The next morning dust floats through the shafts of light as both Argentinians put their hats on and say goodbye. They make it clear somehow that, next time, he should pay.

  Restaurant ABC is pinned between two tall buildings at 545 Lavalle. Tiny, with a red-tiled roof, it looks like it’s made of gingerbread. Over the waist-high curtains in the windows he sees crumpled cloth napkins and little cups of cortado. It’s late afternoon. He nods to the waiter as he walks inside, cranes his neck to make clear that he’s looking for someone, sees as far as the giant painting on the back wall, a mountain landscape with a castle. He doesn’t see anyone he knows seated between the wood-paneled walls. But a young man squeezes his way between tables and heads right for him, as if he knew more about him than Josef did himself. “You’re looking for someone?”

  Josef hesitates. On the other hand, he has nothing to lose, and so he mentions Schmuederrich’s name. Schmuederrich won’t be here until tomorrow night. Is he new here? Josef nods.

  “No place to stay?”

  He can barely bring himself to nod a second time.

  “I know a boarding house—there might be a room available. I’ll call them. One second.” The young man notices Josef’s hesitation and smiles. “Don’t worry. It’s a German couple from the Saarland, the Griebels.”

  The Pension Aleman is just a few blocks away. They walk up a long flight of stairs. Josef feels lines of sweat running down his neck. The door opens—that must be Frau Griebel, and behind her, on the shelf against the wall, the Führer. A bust. So that’s what was meant by “Don’t worry.”

  “Did you have a taxing journey, Herr Klein? Did everything go all right?”

  “Yes, it’s only here that it’s been difficult.”

  “No, now you’re safe. It’s good that you’ve made it. You won’t lack for a thing here!”

  “Pardon me, but how much are you asking for the room? I’m a bit hard up, don’t have a job either.”

  “You’ll find a good job in no time, I’m sure. You can pay at the end of the month.”

  Upstairs a strong smell of oil. The corner room that she gives him was just repainted, she says. It’s clean and bright, with a table and two chairs.

  On the wall hangs a framed metal engraving with a quote: TO YOU, MY HOMELAND, SMOKE ON THE HEATH, I SHALL REMAIN TRUE TILL MY FINAL BREATH.

  In the hall bathroom he dabs shaving cream onto his chin and shaves carefully. Then he lies down in the freshly made bed. He thinks of Edith as the strange noises fill his ears, the rattling of a streetcar, the trilling of a canary, and somewhere a radio. He doesn’t even know the name of the young man who led him here. So this is what he is now: a Nazi on the lam.

  The next day Schmuederrich is standing at the door to his room, two bottles of cold cerveza in his hands, beads of condensation dripping off them. He wears a pale suit and a straw hat, he’s lost a little weight. “There you are, little man!” Schmuederrich laughs, showing the gap in his teeth.

  For the span of a second, nothing happens—no handshake and of course no embrace. Then Schmuederrich simply barrels his way inside, opens the beer bottles, and starts talking. He works at La Plata Aid; they send care packages to Germany: cooking oil, lard, bacon, beef, meat extract, cheese. He handles the advertising and new client acquisition—very much his métier, but still, a step down for him. There’s nothing to be done about it. Yes, a rather large step down. He’s got his eye on something better, but he can’t say anything about it just yet. The German community in Buenos Aires is very well respected and sticks together, no matter what. There is a universal desire to wrest Germany back from the Allies, to liberate Germany. Josef frowns.

  “Now don’t go pissing yourself. This time we won’t run into any trouble with the government. Perón loves the Germans! German expertise is going to help Argentina become the major power in South America. We’re trying to make the tail wag the dog. Nothing’s lost yet. It’s simply a matter of pulling the Germans up out of their depression and getting them excited again!”

  Schmuederrich sips his beer contentedly, prattles on, and every now and then calls out for “Irma, doll!” He means the goodly Frau Griebel. With great gusto she brings beer and sandwiches, opens the windows, and hauls a large fan into the room, which churns up the humid mixture of heat, paint, beer smell, and cigarette smoke. Josef feels dazed. Through a fog he hears words like “rocket scientists,” “air squadron generals,” “physicists,” “doctors,” “military advisers,” “representatives of German industry,” “former diplomats”—in short: big fish, but they couldn’t stay in Germany. Despite their proud past they would be persecuted there.

  Only when Schmuederrich says something about a job does Josef start paying attention—sure, at the Casa Schirmer print shop. They’re in urgent need of extra help for Christmas card production, what with Christmas being just around the corner. Josef sits up and has Schmuederrich give him precise directions for how to get there, Schmuederrich adding that he could start tomorrow. Schmuederrich raises his bottle: “To freedom!”

  Josef drinks in large gulps. He hopes Schmuederrich will leave soon. Then he hears him say, “You should make yoursel
f useful to us at some point. We’re overthrowing the German government.”

  Josef looks away. “Not interested.”

  “We helped you out.”

  “Without you and your friends I wouldn’t have needed any help.”

  “You know what I think? That little girlfriend of yours. She was FBI.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Oh no it’s not.”

  “No, Hans. She wasn’t FBI.”

  He leaves the room, walks outside through the piercing light of the afternoon sun. Lauren is in the past. An eternity ago. But the pain is fresh. It’s there with him every second.

  34

  Buenos Aires, Christmas 1949

  HE WATCHES THE MEN CLOSELY. FACES TURNING GROTESQUE when they laugh, neighing like horses. These are the men Schmuederrich looks up to. That he eagerly stares at. They, on the other hand, don’t seem to notice Schmuederrich, even though two of them are his customers at La Plata Aid.

  Schmuederrich swirls the martini in his glass expectantly and points out the fantastic view they have out here on the terrace. They can see all the way to the Rio de la Plata, which glitters golden in the setting sun. True, it is nice at the Schlüters: stately palm trees adorn their garden, a wreath of deck chairs wraps around the circular pool, a Christmas tree drowns in tinsel.

  Herr Schlüter, the successful German industrialist, appears before his guests in folk costume, complete with staghorn buttons. He nods at them—he is also a La Plata customer—but joins the more important gentlemen. Frau Schlüter, a slender vision in green silk, her posture ramrod straight, smiles graciously as she walks past them and vanishes back into the villa; the doorbell is ringing every minute now. The terrace fills up. A pair of young ladies wearing hats draped in netting park themselves next to them and start chatting away without even a glance in their direction. They’re complaining about the beautiful but impractical New Look from Dior, which they themselves have shown up wearing: high heels, long flowing skirts, cinched waists. A Yuletide boys’ choir is playing on the record player.