Chapters (43)
Carl only asks him every couple of days. It’s not supposed to become something he takes for granted, their making the rounds of deliveries together.
“Of course, happy to!”
Carl nods and stands up. “Come on, let’s play a game of chess.”
Right at the outset Carl makes a mistake. In his eagerness to attack Josef’s rook he leaves his queen unprotected. It’s only the fourth move, and already Josef has taken Carl’s queen, giving up only a knight in exchange. Under the table Carl steps on Josef’s foot by mistake; he doesn’t notice, takes it for a table leg. Josef doesn’t pull his foot back.
“Do you want to take the move back? It takes the fun out of it otherwise.”
“That would be dishonest.”
Carl doesn’t say anything more. He stares at the board, concentrating hard. His need to keep a brave face seems to demand his full attention. Josef takes advantage of the opportunity to tell him about his radio hobby.
“Yeah, we had that here too. When the war started it was banned.”
“You can overcome any distance, Carl. You hear someone saying something who at that very moment is sitting in Paris.”
“And what do you say?”
“You confirm that you can hear the other person. Maybe say a few words about the weather or exchange details about each other’s radio equipment.”
“That’s all?”
“Sure. Sometimes amateur operators help rescue people by accident when they intercept signals of people in distress. One thing you have to know is that sometimes you can only transmit a great distance away. It has to do with the ground waves. The waves are distributed across various elevations. The waves that travel close to the ground get swallowed up by different obstacles in their path. They call that the dead zone. But in the open air there’s barely any loss of energy. The waves rise over all obstacles, buildings, forests, bridges, and then they’re reflected back down to earth. But it’s usually somewhere very far away. That’s why, for example, the report of an avalanche in Austria can be picked up in England. From there a message can be sent back to a town near where the avalanche occurred and help can be called in.”
“I can’t think.” Carl gestures at the board.
Carl has lost his major pieces. They play on in silence. Five minutes later Josef has checkmate.
“I’m a bit out of practice.”
“We played every now and then on Ellis Island.”
“There you go,” says Carl.
They played every kind of game—poker, skat—for money, even though it was against the rules. “I might as well do something illegal now,” one of the Japanese men had said once, “otherwise I’d be in here for no reason.”