He had to do something. It wouldn’t take much to express his defiance, his resistance, but it was just a fly knocking against a windowpane—vain effort. He felt exhausted after these wanderings, which had no other purpose than to throw off the people following him. They mustn’t get to know his habits, mustn’t find out anything about him, mustn’t think they understood him. For the first time he felt a sense of protectiveness where his life was concerned—no one had the right to cheat their way to gaining knowledge of him. He had lived invisibly, and it should stay that way.

One rainy day a delivery truck drove up in front of the building. A man jumped out of the cab and helped the driver park. The rain fell down his shirt and ran off his flat cap, but the man didn’t seem to mind.

It was Ludwig. And the man now climbing out of the delivery truck was Max.

Max had gotten his old job back making beverage deliveries. As a cover, he told him when he got upstairs. From then on there was always a white delivery truck parked outside the building, with the words THIRST QUENCHER written on the side.

Max drove the truck to Red Hook and chatted up the dockworkers. Who would suspect a cigarette-smoking delivery truck driver hauling lemonade and soda? Sometimes he sold them a few bottles under the table for cheap. Then they got even more talkative.

“You could easily do it yourself and make some extra cash,” said Max. “You’ve got kind of a Heinz Rühmann look—the likable regular guy, the working stiff.”

“Heinz Rühmann?”

“He’s an actor. About your age. Also short. You look a bit like him.”

Seemed as though there were a lot of people he was supposed to look like.

But Josef had other plans. He didn’t want to take on more work under any circumstances. Instead he was thinking about how he could do less and, above all, how he could rid himself of Max and Ludwig. He missed the quiet and the vital sense of being able to disappear. To disappear and, at the same time, summon voices into his apartment, whenever he felt like it.

He felt as if the war between the nations had broken out within reach of his couch, where he usually just dozed, thought about things, and scratched Princess behind the ears.

They always had to limit each transmission to just a few minutes; after fifteen minutes someone could locate their signal. And even still they were in no way secure. Josef thought about it a lot, talking quietly to himself, and the dog pricked up her ears, hearing his conversations with himself.