THE DELIVERY TRUCK IS PARKED OUTSIDE. CARL WEARS THE white shopkeeper’s smock, which makes him look like a doctor. Josef has on Carl’s nut-brown suit; Edith took it in so it would fit him. Now it’s his. A lit cigarette in the corner of his mouth, he props his elbow in the open window. Carl gives him a look but then just puts the truck into gear. The wind smokes the cigarette for him.

He likes playing Carl’s sidekick. Boxes get pushed this way and that, papers get signed, and he holds on tight to whatever Carl puts in his hand. Shaving cream and detergent jostle together in the back of the truck. The bottles clink; a comfortable rhythm sets in. At every stop Carl says, “This is my brother. He’s helping out today,” and before any of the customers can ask a question, Carl quickly asks what they think about the new hair tonic.

When they’re in the truck, Carl has a wealth of jokes to pull from, but only of the sort that can’t be told at the kitchen table: “Two friends get to talking. One of them asks: ‘When you see a pretty woman, what’s the first thing you look at?’ The other one says: ‘My wife.’ ‘Your wife?’ ‘Yeah, to make sure she’s not looking!’”

The sky is totally clear. A radiant blue. It makes the town look even more ruined. Carl seems in high spirits, downright relaxed.

Did Edith talk to Carl? Put in a good word for her brother-in-law? It just takes time. It’s all new for him. And it must be a shock to suddenly come back to Germany. To a completely devastated country. His homeland!

They stop in front of a small grocery store. A boy takes the delivery and signs his father’s name.

Josef thinks of Peter, also a child.

“By the way, I used to make deliveries too. Not soap, the things we printed.”

“Yeah?”

“I went all over New York.”

“And now you’re going all over Neuss.”

He sees himself, shoulders hunched, walking through Harlem with that shy boy on that unbelievably cold day, so cold it felt like the city would shatter under their feet. February 1939. The handcart clattered over icy, hard-packed snow, but it wasn’t carrying soap. It was carrying filth.

The fact that they printed everything except for Communist literature comforted him, let him think it was just a job. The flyers got tossed from tall buildings by the bucketful. They hung up in the trees and got stuck under people’s shoes. The rest were handed out to passersby by speakers on soapboxes who shouted their contents into the streets.