Lost Signals (35 page)

Neo-Nazis. Left-wingers. Factions with red battle flags. Angry remnants of the Baader-Meinhoff Gang. Fascists. Communists. Capitalists.

Just an excuse to beat and loot.

“Do you think Sepp is out there
 
?” Alex sat down on the mattress.

Elsa crossed her arms and bit down on a thumbnail, already down to the raw skin with nothing left to chew. “I’m sure he is.” She backed up and sat next to Alex.

A black and white photo, corners curled with age, hung tacked to the wall next to her bed.

The man in the picture wore a gray Wehrmacht uniform bedecked with medals. A handsome man, close-cropped blonde hair and a square jaw that accommodated his full smile. He cradled a wide-eyed baby Elsa tight to his chest and beamed down at her as if he’d just come across the Holy Grail.

The photo was taken as the soldier prepared to embark the troop trains for the Stalingrad front. All that returned was a condolence letter from his commanding officer.

A boy stood next to the soldier’s leg, an arm wrapped around his knee—the only thing keeping the teetering toddler upright. Their mother flanked young Sepp, her arm hooked through the soldier’s. She died a decade later trying to find bread for her children during the Berlin riots of 1953.

If something happened to Sepp because of his revolutionary compulsions, running the streets with his gang of agitators, she and Alex would be utterly alone in that crumbling city.

“I hope Uncle Sepp is all right.”

“I’m sure he is fine.” Elsa brought the boy in tight to her side.

A beer bottle bounced off the window and ricocheted back out to the street. Elsa and Alex flinched, and then huddled tighter. The leftover spray of amber and foam dripped down the dirty glass.

A fist pounded on the flat door, frantic. “Elsa
 
! It’s Sepp
 
!”

The cool rush of relief flooded Elsa’s body. She ran to the knocking, Alex close behind. She unchained and opened the front door, just enough for him to rush in.

“Hi, Elsa
 
!” Sepp leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. He wore a worn leather jacket and a cardboard box was tucked under his arm.

He ruffled Alex’s hair, like every other time he visited. “How are you, young man
 
? Huh
 
? How’s my young revolutionary
 
?”

Alex forced a smile and his cheeks blushed.

Elsa peeked into the hallway. Empty, running footfalls and slamming doors echoed throughout the building. She shut the door and chained it.

Sepp set the box down on a rickety card table in the kitchen. “Sorry, I’m in a hurry.” His usually fair-skinned cheeks were flushed and he spoke in quick spurts, excited. “Tonight, we’ll finally disrupt the imperialistic agenda of the United States.”

The scripted lines of rhetoric drained Elsa. It was like listening to the same record over and over. Was it possible that only seconds earlier she wanted nothing more than for him to be there, safe and secure in her flat
 
?

“I’m sorry it’s been a while since I’ve been by.” He stepped forward and held his arms out to her, but Elsa turned to the table and sat next to the cardboard box.

“What are you into now
 
?” She lit a cigarette and lifted out the first item, a can of evaporated milk.

“It’s tonight, Elsa. Finally
 
!”

Elsa pulled out a carton of eggs and a loaf of bread wrapped in butcher paper and tied with a red string. “No Marlboros
 
?”

“No, none today. Only some cheap Czech smokes.”

Elsa set the carton of knock-off cigarettes aside and sighed. When the little things in her life were left unfulfilled, it left a gaping hole inside her. There had to be
something
to look forward to. “What were you saying
 
? It’s late.”

Sepp sat next to her and scooted in close. “Tonight we will help deal a crippling blow to the oppressive West German Fascist regime and the American hold over it.”

Elsa rolled her eyes. Sepp’s propaganda speeches were a fitting conclusion to another day of no American cigarettes.

“Baader and Meinhoff might be in jail, but tonight we,” he slammed his fist on the table, “the Red Army Faction, will strike a historic blow.” Sepp stuck his chest out. It reminded Elsa of an old newsreel of Hitler screaming from behind the podium.

He stood and paced, eyes distant, and continued his ramble. “Never before has there been such an assembly of free thought and action, right here, in our own city.” He ran his hand through his limp, sweaty hair. “The Red Army Faction, the 17 November Organization, PLO fighters, even Spanish guerillas, have come to help make West Berlin ground zero in a world-wide phenomenon of liberty.”

Elsa crushed her cigarette butt into a saucer blackened with circles of ash. “You know I have no idea what you’re talking about. Just keep bringing food until I can get a better job.”

“I’m talking about the fighters that will be freeing you from this . . .” he made a wide, sweeping gesture around the flat, “. . . poverty. This slavery.”

“They will, huh
 
? With all that shooting
 
? And the poor man I just saw . . . trampled
 
? That was necessary
 
?”

Sepp stopped next to her. “The tree of liberty must be watered with—”

Elsa shot up from the chair. “That’s an American slave owner you’re quoting
 
!” She took a deep breath and let her irritation abate. “Sepp, do what you came here for and go play freedom fighter elsewhere.”

They both looked at Alex. He sat on the torn, threadbare couch, watching.

Sepp gave the boy a sad smile, and turned back to Elsa. “I won’t waste any more of your time. We are attacking the police station. Precinct 31. I need to send a message on the radio to coordinate my group.”

Elsa grabbed his arms and shook him. “
The police station
 
?
Are you
mad
 
?
You’ll be killed.”

“Just as our imprisoned brothers of the Red Army Faction will be if we don’t help. Those are three of our brothers that they have in their cells. The rest of the city is in chaos. The police are spread thin. We’ll be fine. We have a plan.” He tapped his temple and narrowed his eyes, the same look she’d always known meant he’d made up his mind. That nothing could beat him.

Sepp walked over the Alex and dropped to his knee. “Can you go open up the closet and turn on the radio for me
 
?”

“It’s dangerous out there,” said Alex. “Can’t you just stay here, this once
 
?”

His uncle patted him on the knee. “Go on, be a good boy.”

Alex stood and sighed, with a glance to his mother.

Elsa shrugged, and the boy walked away. An immediate pang of regret coursed through her. She didn’t have to shrug. She could put her foot down, make Sepp choose between his blood family and his street family.

But the thought of what his answer might be made her feel like a balloon with a slow leak. After riding along for months—years—on Sepp’s express ride to self-destruction, she was ready to get off.

She dropped down into the plastic chair and lit another cigarette. “What will I tell Alex
 
? He’s had enough people disappear from his life.”

Sepp knelt next to her and covered her hand with his. “You tell him I fought to rid our country of the Nazi pigs still in positions of power. Doesn’t it infuriate you to see Hitler’s cronies in such lofty heights
 
? Chiefs of police. Minister of Finance. Minister of the Interior.” He raised his hands in exasperation. “It would take me all night to list them.” He stood and turned to Alex’s room. “But I’ll get out of your hair as soon as I can.”

He stood and walked to Alex’s bedroom.

Elsa pushed the ashes around in the cracked saucer with the butt of her last smoke.

Radio static purred from the back room, followed by Sepp’s voice as he spoke his codes in a slow monotone.

She’d let Sepp finish his nonsense and leave. To further question and debate his beliefs, to offer his cause any more attention, would only result in more inflamed oratory. She couldn’t help but think back to the teenage Sepp she remembered, the wise, protective, older brother and de facto father. Where did he go
 
?

The same place the other boys went, like Alex’s friend Willi—into the fires of revolution. Pawns pushed across the chessboard to die.

She’d rather die than watch Alex take to the streets, too.

Oiled
clicks
and
snicks
—metal on metal— came from Alex’s room.

Elsa’s heart dropped. She jumped up and burst into the bedroom, hoping to be mistaken.

Sepp lifted a battered sub-machine gun out of a hole in the closet floor under the radio. A small arsenal lay on Alex’s mattress
 
: an automatic pistol, a pile of bullets, and a few pineapple-type grenades. The bullets were pitted and corroded, the guns grimy and dusty.

“Sepp
 
?” Elsa stood behind her brother, peering down at him as he closed up the hole. “I said I’d hold your radio. But I said no guns.”

Alex cast worried glances at them, but then sat down at the radio and fiddled with the dials.

Sepp replaced the block of concrete in the hole and pushed past Elsa. “I’ve got to be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Don’t fucking ignore me
 
!” Elsa grabbed his arm and turned him around.

Outside, the pistol shots—no longer distant—popped in the street right outside the flat’s window. Converging sirens blared over the angry rally’s shouts and cheers. Farther down the street, someone shouted commands in a bullhorn.

She pushed Sepp in the back. “Damn you.”

“Fine, I’m leaving.” Sepp slammed a magazine into the submachine gun. “I’m leaving.”

Elsa sat down on the bed, her back to him, and buried her face in her hands. Sepp filled his pockets with clips and grenades. He shoved the pistol into his waistband and looped the machine gun sling around his shoulder and under his jacket.

In the closet, Alex turned the radio back. He adjusted the dials to cycle through the squawks and buzzes of dead air.

And then the strange rhapsody played.

Each metallic note rubbed like sandpaper over the lobes of her brain.

“Alex, not now.” Elsa looked up at him. “Please, turn it off.”

He sat over a notebook, hunched down with his pen, waiting for the music to end.

In the hallway outside the flat’s front door, screams broke out. Authoritative shouts commanded people to get out of the way. A stampede of footsteps shook the floor.

Achtung
 
!

“Alex, go in my room and get back in bed.”

He set the tip of the pen to the paper.

Eins, Zwei, Nuen, Sieben, Sieben, Zwei, Acht, Sechs, Sieben, Sieben, Zwei, Eins, Zwei, Nuen, Nuen, Neun, Zwei, Acht, Sechs, Acht

Instead of writing the numbers, he sat up, rigid, eyes wide. He dropped the pen. It rolled over the pages and onto the floor.

“Alex
 
?”

The footsteps and shouts grew louder in the hall.

“What’s wrong
 
?”

Alex stood and the stool plunked backward. His skin drained into the pale-yellow of cheesecloth.

“Police, open up
 
!” A heavy fist pounded on the flat’s front door.

“Fuck.” Sepp racked the bolt to the rear on the submachine gun. “What the fuck
 
?”

Alex walked to the bedroom window. His gait was automated, a robot dressed as her son.

The doorway crashed open with a solid kick that snapped the chain and tore the deadbolts from the frame. The door flopped onto the couch, completely separated from the jamb. “Hands up
 
! Police
 
!”

“Fuck you, pig motherfuckers
 
!” Sepp yelled.

“No
 
!” Elsa reached toward him, but it was too late.

He leaned into the hall and sprayed several rounds into the living room.

The firing pounded Elsa’s eardrums, so loud she was sure her skull was splitting up the sides. She crouched with her hands over her ears. Too late, a distant ringing filled her head in stereo.

“Alex
 
! Get down
 
!” Her voice was distant and muffled, like she was screaming inside a box.

The boy didn’t look back at her. He fiddled with the corroded window latch.

Elsa lunged toward him.

Drywall exploded along the bedroom wall over her head. She dropped to the floor and was showered with white powder. The room looked like a bag of flour had exploded. A ragged line of holes peppered the wall where she stood seconds earlier, each the size of American silver dollars.

Sepp fired the machine pistol around the corner and into the living room. A brass plume of spent casings bouncedoff the wall and
tinked
to the floor like a handful of coins.

Alex lifted the window and ducked through the opening and onto the fire escape beyond. Elsa, frantic, almost forgot about the gunfire.

Sepp let the weapon drop to his waist, suspended by the sling, and pulled a grenade from his jacket pocket.

“What are you doing, Sepp
 
? Stop
 
!”

He looked back at her, grenade clutched tight and a finger through the ring. “Just go
 
! Get Alex and get out of here
 
!” He flinched from another burst of gunfire that strafed the bedroom wall.

Elsa crawled toward the open window on hands and knees and peeked out.

Through the fire escape grating she could see Alex descending the ladder.

“Alex
 
!”

Alex dropped the last few feet to the sidewalk without looking up at her. He pushed through the crowded street with a purpose, blending in with the writhing mass of protesters.

Fires, beatings, screams—the street and sidewalks were packed. The police stood outnumbered, unable to push forward through the angry throng.