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.