A dull ache flared up behind his forehead. They passed by a pharmacy and he considered buying some aspirin, but he didn’t want to show any weakness in front of the boy. If he had his choice he would have gone home. But they had to go to the headquarters of the German American Bund, where Hans Schmuederrich wanted to discuss the mock-ups for February 20th.

A cold wind blew from the East River. Darkness fell. The cold smelled of snow. Of fire. Of damp basements. They turned from Third Avenue onto 86th Street. The Germania bookstore already had its shutters down. He was supposed to pick up something for Arthur there, speeches from the Reichstag that Arthur had translated and then sold. Josef had started a translation once, but he had had to look up too many words, and some he couldn’t even find. “Volkszorn” for example—the people’s anger—seemed to exist only in German.

He and the boy kept walking down 86th, past the Schwarzer Adler, Café Geiger, the Jägerhaus, and the United Bavarians of Greater New York. From the beer halls came the sound of people enjoying themselves. Little red swastika flags adorned shop windows and the windows of the apartments above.

Two young women in fur coats walked past them, arm in arm, talking loudly in German. Reflexively he placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder and steered him to the other side of the street.

They walked toward signs bearing words like “Möbelladen,” “Konditorei,” and “Bremenhaus.” German words in New York’s rigid street grid. Whimsical confections, like Bienenstich and Frankfurter Kranz, framed by cold geometry. In the beginning he had come to this neighborhood as one might to a grave. Did the Germans not notice? It may have started with the honest desire to cobble together an imitation of the old country, but as the memory grew less distinct with each generation, foreign elements had crept in. By now he probably didn’t notice himself anymore. He felt something like comfort when he went to Schaller & Weber and ate mettwurst. But he knew it didn’t taste like it did in Düsseldorf. Maybe it started with the pastureland, the sun, the wind. Because even the pigs and cows tasted different than they did back home.

They stepped inside a bright, three-story building and went up to the second floor. In German he read PRESSEBÜRO, SCHATZMEISTER, SEKRETARIAT—press office, treasurer, administration. “Herr Schmuederrich is expecting you. Go on in, Herr Klein,” the secretary called through the open door.

Schmuederrich, seated at a polished oval desk, stood up and held out his hand. He was a tall, big man. When he laughed he displayed a large gap between his front teeth that had something childlike about it, as if he still carried his baby teeth around in a little jar in his pocket. He had a reputation as a ladies’ man.