Lost Signals

by Josh Malerman

  Lewis fumbled his half full cup into the plastic holder without spilling any of the steaming brew over its flimsy lid and flung his door wide. The whisper-snick of his seatbelt retracting was the only sound to fill the dangerously silent environment. Nothing moved outside his car. Nothing breathed. The vacant machinery sat in the late afternoon sun, radiating old warmth back into the air, shining in places where dust didn’t caress the painted metals. His shoes crunched through the drying grass waving along the verge. Tiny spearheaded seeds gripped the exposed edges of his socks and detached to accompany him on the sombre journey of denial. Lewis didn’t realise his head perpetually swung side to side, an unstopping motion to match the silent litany of no, no, no, streaming through his mind.

  He stopped at the edge of the reddish-brown wound upon the earth and stared in mute horror. How could they have removed the old lady from her home, and all but erased their prior existence, in such a short span of time ? Who could organise that, orchestrate the approvals and drum up the workers with such speed ? Everything needed to be booked in advance. Paperwork submitted. Higher-ups signing off on demolition works. And where would they have put Pearl with no notice ? Lewis couldn’t help but know her only other living relative was her sister across the country. No one could have shipped her off within hours of Samuel’s death. She couldn’t have left before the funeral of her grandson.

  ‘What the absolute Hell ?’ he asked the barren waves of dirt.

  His mobile phone’s vibration sang out a sharp brrvvvt from his pocket. The street remained quiet enough, still enough, to hear the tiny oscillating motor jiggling out its supposedly “silent” notice. Lewis fished the device out of his jeans and thumbed the answer button without looking at the screen.

  ‘Hello ?’

  ‘Hey man,’ said the kid’s voice, the very same bright greeting which Lewis reminisced over in the car. ‘Remember me ?’

  ‘S-Samuel ?’

  ‘Yeah. So, are you listening ? I have a favour to ask.’

  West Berlin—1977

  The stranger moaned in Elsa’s ear as he came, so close his throaty rasp drowned out the rattle of distant gunfire.

  He rolled off of her and stood by the dingy mattress. A wet pop and the shriveled condom dropped next to her head. The smell reminded Elsa of a bike inner tube, dipped in water to find a leak.

  Next he tossed some coins, which slid down the divot formed by the weight of her body, with a few crumpled balls of currency.

  Hopefully not fucking rubles.

  The man dressed and walked out without waiting for her to count it. Gunshots echoed in the city outskirts, sporadic like the leftover fireworks at the end of a celebration. Elsa, naked and sticky below the waist, locked the deadbolt and chain behind him.

  In the moldy bathroom, she stood in the rust-stained, claw foot tub and filled it to her ankles. The smell was like a stuffed animal forgotten for days in the rain. With a sponge, she scoured away the funk and sweat between her legs until the skin was raw and stinging.

  She told herself other mothers were doing worse to survive, but wasn’t sure if she bought it.

  Back in her room, she listened to the sounds of unrest that carried over Berlin’s late night repose. The distant gunfire popped, refusing to give up battle. Flickering streetlights filtered through the dirty window and gave her bare legs the pallor of a corpse from an Auschwitz newsreel.

  Elsa put her pants on and wiped her eyes.

  She tugged a beaded chain overhead. A single bulb lit the small bedroom with a harsh light the color of piss. Milk crates stuffed with clothes lined one wall. A cracked, full-length mirror hung lopsided on another. A few black and white pictures were tacked to the nicotine-stained walls.

  Elsa picked up the crumpled bills. The paper depicted bald, mustached Communist heroes in red ink. She cursed, balled them up tighter, and tossed them aside.

  “Alex !”

  Her son would usually climb onto the dirty, threadbare mattress with Elsa once her customers retreated back into the bleak neighborhood streets. Alex sought her out at night more, lately, with the clashes and rioting that flared up in past weeks. His sleepy embrace served as her anchor while the tumultuous seas of chaotic West Berlin tossed around them.

  Elsa called again, but knew he wouldn’t hear her.

  She walked back out into the hall and listened to the faint music that drifted from his bedroom.

  The classical tune floated through the flat like a ghost—distant and ethereal, yet pervading every square meter of the scant living space. Instead of string and woodwind instruments, each note of the rhapsody had the tinny articulation of a small, hand-crank music box. It reminded Elsa of the ice cream truck that prowled through her town as a child.

  “Alex !” She entered his bedroom, knowing it didn’t matter how much louder she called.

  Alex’s closet door stood a finger’s width ajar. A roach ran across the sliver of pale light that lay across the cement floor. She pulled the light chain and more of the brown, armored pests scattered. His room stood as empty and temporary as Elsa’s.

  A plastic record player sat unattended in one corner, meant to distract him while Elsa entertained strangers in her bedroom. The pile included some Rolling Stones and Beach Boys she found in a back alley shop, along with some children’s folk tunes.

  But over the past few weeks, Alex had found something else to occupy himself.

  Through the battered closet door, the rhapsody’s repeating bars buzzed along her spine like Limburger had run over a grater. She pulled the door open and peeked in.

  The shortwave radio was kept in a hidden room built into the back of the closet. The faux-wood panel that concealed the shortwave was set aside and Alex sat on a stool in front of the radio. Black knobs and gauges with fluttering red needles filled most of the gray, dented radio’s facade. Wires from the back of the radio trailed up into a hole drilled in the top corner of the secret room. A battered microphone stand was pushed aside, not necessary for Alex’s nightly task.

  Elsa’s son sat bent over a composition notebook. He gripped a pen tight over the paper, ready to write. His head was cocked toward the radio, waiting for the most chilling part of the broadcast. He reminded her of a dog listening to some supersonic sound that humans weren’t privy to.

  After the same three bars of the tune repeated, the music stopped and the voice of a young girl cut in with a message over the ghostly silence :

  Achtung !

  Alex leaned closer and pressed the tip of the pen onto the paper. Intent on the broadcast, he didn’t notice Elsa behind him. He never did.

  The girl’s voice recited a string of numbers, slow, as if she knew someone sat on the other end, jotting down her transmission.

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

  Alex wrote each number in his notebook, starting where he left off from the previous sequence. Page after page of numbers.

  Then, the music would play again in the same pattern—three bars of the rhapsody, followed by twenty digits recited by the girl’s voice. Each string of numerals was slightly different than the last, never the same.

  Music, and numbers. Over, and over.

  Every night, when Elsa’s johns slipped through the front door and out into the night, she would find him here.

  Notebooks filled front to back with the random numbers were stacked against the side of the radio. Loose pages, filled with numbers from top to bottom, lay scattered across the floor of the closet and bedroom like they’d been deposited through the window by a gust of wind.

  “Alex.” Her tone was cautious, quiet, as if he were a quivering stack of fine china. “Come to bed now.”

  “Just one more round of numbers,” he said, each monotone syllable barely above a whisper.

  “No.” She stepped into the hidden room, her arms crossed to brace herself. “You must get sleep. Come.”
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br />   Alex slammed his fist onto the desk. Although a slight boy, the radio jumped and a stack of loose-leaf papers drifted onto the floor. Tiny, handwritten numbers filled each page—hundreds of them, maybe thousands. “No ! It could be a code from Papa !” He turned in the stool and faced her, his eyes narrowed in disgust. “What if I could find him ? You’re being a bitch.”

  She heard the same thing, night after night, but it was still a fresh knife to the gut each time. But, Alex figured the nonsense numbers were some kind of secret communiqué from a man who had been missing so long Alex probably didn’t even remember what he looked like.

  Elsa fought back the urge to yank him from the chair and shake the look of loathing off of his face. Instead, she reached over him and flipped the radio’s toggle switch off. The lilting, metallic notes halted and the closet was left in silence.

  She bit back the need to scream that his father was never coming back, was probably dead. After a deep, cleansing breath, her frustration drained into a whisper. “Come, son. Sleep now.”

  Upon being silenced, the music had released its hold on Alex. His eyes widened out of their apathetic daze. He stood, his thin brown hair falling over his forehead and eyes. “I didn’t mean that, Mama.”

  She stroked his hair. “It’s not you, son. Things have been hard. Why haven’t you been playing with Willi ?”

  Alex shrugged. “He’s been acting strange lately, pretty mean. Also, he’s been going out with his brother a lot, wherever the fighting is happening.”

  Elsa sighed. With the violence in Berlin streets, there was nowhere healthy for him to just be a normal boy. The whole city burned with Molotov cocktails.

  The shortwave, with its knobs like wide, coal-black eyes, seemed to glare at her.

  “I don’t know why I let Sepp keep that radio here,” she said.

  “Yes, you do. It’s because he’s your brother. And for the things he brings us.”

  “I’ll have him take it away. Find somewhere else to hide it.”

  Alex was already walking away when he answered, “We both know you won’t do that.”

  Before she followed him to bed, she moved the fake wall back in place to hide the radio.

  Even after she left his room, she could still feel the radio’s brooding, voltaic presence, waiting for another chance to have Alex to itself.

  ***

  An explosion of shattered glass woke Elsa.

  She started up into a sitting position and brushed her hands over her sweaty face and neck, but there were no shards. The noise must have been right outside, so close it sounded like it was her bedroom window.

  Alex had slept through the noise. He lay next to her on his side, one hand under his cheek.

  The distant pops of gunfire had gotten louder. Two, three blocks away ? Larger automatic weapons, not just pistols—they formed longer bursts instead of the sporadic shots she’d heard earlier. Their drumming chatter was like the relentless thud of an air wrench.

  Another chorus of broken glass echoed from the adjacent alley, pinging the asphalt like a storm of icepicks. Alex moaned in response and turned over, his arm around Elsa’s waist.

  Even with the unrest outside her windows, she almost felt comfort in Alex’s presence and his firm hold. Almost.

  She lifted Alex’s arm off and got up to peek through the window, only exposing her head enough to see down into the street from the second floor. White-hot licks of fire roared across the roof of a car parked in the street. She had to squint and cover her eyes.

  Another flaming cocktail arced out of a flat window and shattered in a trash bin. As the garbage hissed and smoked, the agitators shouted their leftist slogans. “Down with the West ! Remember Viet Nam ! Gaza ! Hiroshima !”

  A few young men in leather jackets ran down the street toward the gunfire. With their crowbars and baseball bats, they resembled a lynch mob of villagers chasing a monster.

  The steady stream of protesters and ruffians became a river, rushing down the Stockumer Strasse. Innocents fought the tide in the opposite direction—but the tide of armed youths was overwhelming.

  The high-low warble of sirens cut through the night in the lull between gunshots.

  Alex tugged on her nightshirt. “What’s happening, Mama ?”

  She hadn’t heard him get up. “We just need to stay put.” Elsa craned her neck to take in more of the view from the street.

  An old man—Mister Albrecht from the first floor—stood on the sidewalk in his bathrobe. Several street thugs knocked him to the ground as they ran past. He lay on the sidewalk, the front of his robe hiked up to reveal his scrawny legs and sagging underwear.

  The mob thickened and the old man disappeared under thundering feet.

  “My God.” Her horrified voice seemed miles away from her heart thudding in her ears.

  Blood seeped into the dirty gutter water where she last saw Mister Albrecht. Through a part in the storming crowd, she could see his head—collapsed into bloody mush where he had been stomped by combat boots.

  Elsa covered her mouth and turned away.

  “What is it ?” Alex tried to push her out of the way, but she pulled him back to the mattress.

  “No, away from the window.”

  “Why are they doing this ? Why hurt these people like this ?”

  Elsa searched for some kind of response, but it was outside her understanding. She may as well have tried to explain how to split an atom.

  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.”