Shortly after the war, Dad brought home a strange-looking radio receiver. He bought it at a commission shop, of which there were plenty in Odesa at that time. Ours is a port city, and sailors returning from overseas were in droves. They brought back items from distant lands that were real curiosities in our meager postwar stores. I’ve always been indifferent to clothing. But back then, in my inquisitive adolescence, as I wandered around the city, I’d pop into the commission shops on Preobrazhenskaya and Deribasovskaya streets, and Krasny Lane just for the sake of it, to browse. It’s like going to the natural history museum to look at dinosaurs and saber-toothed tigers. I examined French low-cut velvet dresses with ostrich feathers on the chest, English colonial canes with ornate engravings, cork helmets worn by explorers of the African deserts, and bizarrely shaped faceted crystal vials filled with greenish, alchemical-looking liquid. (The thought that it was simply women’s perfume never occurred to me. There’s always a heady, subtle, seductive scent in the consignment shop: the saleswomen can’t resist the temptation to dab a little on the tip of their little finger and run it behind their earlobes.)
There were also items brought back from the war. Saxon porcelain trinkets… Zeiss binoculars… German lighters…
Dad sets the little radio with its yellowish cloth-covered front panel on the nightstand in the corner and tells me not to go near it. While he’s away, of course, I go over and examine this exhibit in detail, trying to figure out why Dad needed another radio when we, like everyone else, already have a radio—that is the very same pre-war dish made of stiff black cardboard. From that dish, either music blares, or the latest news, a soccer broadcast, or a concert featuring listeners’ requests comes through…
In the middle of the receiver is a flat steel ring, across which the word “Grundig” is soldered in Gothic letters. Both the font and the word itself make me wary. They seem Nazi-like… In those early postwar years, anything associated with Germany—even a word in German—would send short, sharp jabs of unease through my gut. It invariably frightens me and makes me wary. I don’t expect anything good from this object. The receiver is elegantly crafted, and since my first possessions were war trophies—that is, German-made—for a long time I automatically identified everything elegant and neat as hostile, alien, foreign—that is, in the great confrontation of that time, as fascist…
I remember that when I saw Estonian grandmaster Paul Keres—playing as part of the USSR national chess team—in the newsreel *News of the Day*, with his refined Nordic features, neatly combed hair, and a well-tailored suit, I immediately cringed inwardly at the thought that flashed through my mind: “Fascist!” And for a long time, I wondered to myself how a recent enemy had managed to worm his way into our national team?…
Dad, however, isn’t fazed by the receiver’s name. He’s excited about the purchase, and late at night, when I’ve already gone to bed, he pulls a stool up to the nightstand with the receiver and, glancing in my direction—there are three of us in one room; where else can I go! —he waves his hand in my direction, as he often does, mixing Russian and Yiddish:
“Come on, mah nacht. Go to sleep!…
Driven by curiosity as persistent as the itch from a mosquito bite, I grumble:
“I’m already in bed.”
“No, no! Turn toward the wall. Cover yourself with the blanket and go to sleep! It’s late! You have school tomorrow!”
“It’s stuffy under the blanket,” I whine.
“Go to sleep, go to sleep…”
I grumble in frustration and force myself to turn toward the wall. Curiosity is eating me up. And when I hear a click behind me, followed by a soft whistling and that whole array of cooing sounds—like pigeons on the ledge of our roof—coming from the receiver, the skin on my back tightens with an unbearable desire to find out what’s happening behind me.
My father turns off the light, and, taking advantage of the darkness, I turn toward the sounds. I see the bright green “cat’s eye” of the tuning indicator. It reminds me of a cat’s eye because I’ve seen our cat’s eyes—when he’s trying to fall asleep—flashing on and off, widening and narrowing, as Dad, hunched over the radio, carefully turns the tuning knob.
“Abram!” I hear my mom’s loud whisper. “You’ve completely lost your mind! At least close the shutters. Do you want us all to get arrested?!”
Since Dad seems to be glued to the radio, his ear pressed against the speaker behind the yellow drapery, and not waiting for his reply, she can’t stand it any longer and moves as quickly as she can toward the window. Mom closes the window shutters and tucks a small cushion from the sofa into the gap between them.
“You’ve completely lost your mind,” she whispers, and, with a heavy heart, returns to her spot on the couch.
A barely audible, trilling whistle comes from the radio, along with hooting and frequent buzzing sounds that ebb and flow, as if someone were vigorously and relentlessly turning a car’s ignition handle, but the car simply refuses to start.
Then the buzzing dies down a little, and I hear the announcer’s incomprehensible words: “Kol tzion lagola.” I wouldn’t have paid any attention to this voice at all—after all, there are so many languages in the world that people mumble in! — but suddenly, right after that, the chords of a vaguely familiar tune rang out, and then the voice spoke in such pure Russian, yet at the same time with such a distinct foreign accent, that I immediately became wary:
“This is ‘Voice of Israel.’ Here’s the latest news… According to our correspondent in Moscow, another anti-Semitic campaign has begun in Soviet newspapers…
And only then did it dawn on me, a first grader, why, as soon as Dad turned on his Grundig, Mom would close the shutters of our apartment…