At half past ten, he starts heading back to the train station, first down Domstraße and then Machabäerstraße. He turns onto Kunibertsklostergasse, which is nothing but empty windows and staircases with no buildings surrounding them. He doesn’t have to wait long. Dörsam is also early.

“Heil Hitler! Come with me!”

Josef quickens his gait to match Dörsam’s, which is brisk, but not hurried, and already he has the impression that he’s a pesky fly that Dörsam is trying to brush off.

“All this here isn’t going to stay like this. The last word has yet to be spoken.”

Josef nods politely.

Dörsam keeps talking: “Germans long for what was here years ago, believe me. They don’t want democracy and they certainly don’t want any occupation powers. In South America they’re preparing something, a coup.” And then he looks at Josef, who has been nodding politely this whole time, and recoils in shock. “I thought you were someone else. You’re not Josef Wolpensinger. Now I remember. You’re the one with the radio. I don’t have a good memory for names, or for faces. You look like him, the other Josef.”

Josef wonders whether Dörsam might have just told him too much, and also if Dörsam has a screw loose. Overthrow Adenauer? Good luck with that.

“I look like a lot of people,” says Josef. They’ve reached the Rhine now. The silvery gray water is choppy from the wind. He doesn’t recognize any of it, although he knows he was here, his parents, Carl, and him, in a former life.

“But now I remember you. Now I remember!”

Josef walks a foot or two behind Dörsam. As hard as he tries, he can’t keep up with him; whenever he catches up to him, Dörsam just starts walking faster. Dörsam walks with his torso pitched stiffly forward, as if he were trying to walk off a stomachache.

“You didn’t exactly do much for us. Did you?”

Josef hesitates. As of late the fact that he didn’t do much has been a point in his favor. But he had done too much. And on the other hand, yes, too little.

“You’re the one who built a radio. You kept repeating that over and over again in court.”

“I was told that if I was deported help would be waiting for me.” He hurries after Dörsam now, in Carl’s baggy suit.

“For the big fish. You’re a small fry.”

Josef says nothing. He would like to light a cigarette, his last one from America, but the wind on the bank of the Rhine is so strong it would be a waste. Dörsam stops and looks at a bridge. “This is new. All the bridges were bombed by the Americans.”