The German Numbers Woman Read Online Free PDF Page A

Woman made him sweat, so he couldn’t listen for long; but she filled his darkness with Brünnhilde eyes, and a gleam of red hair which she tied back at work, though made into braids on Sunday. He couldn’t think she was all that fearful because she made him see, thought no ill of her because in his world she was real and he knew her well, his only fear being that she might become bigger and more immediate than Laura. But that’s another matter, he soothed himself, one between me and my conscience, letting me enjoy whatever secret compensations are available.
    Somewhere she must exist, and could be utterly different to the way he imagined her, but that did not matter, because whatever he made out of the voice was solidifying grist to him. He switched on the tape recorder so that he could play the voice to Laura and ask what she thought of it.
    She was knitting a beige cardigan for the winter, had been on it for weeks, the body and one arm done, halfway through the other. The work settled on her lap. ‘German, isn’t it? Numbers?’
    â€˜Yes, but what does it suggest?’
    â€˜I can’t say. She’s counting, by the sound of it. I’ve no idea what it can be.’
    Ingrid would smile if she could hear this. ‘You don’t wonder what she looks like?’
    â€˜Well, I can’t imagine. Ordinary, I suppose. Plain. Could be middle aged, but you can’t always tell from a voice, can you?’
    He switched the machine off. ‘No, I don’t suppose you can.’ He had done his duty: no secrets between them. No secrets on the airwaves, either, even when items came through in morse. Someone was always listening, so who was the person, or people, writing down the text from the German Numbers Woman? What did her figures mean? Were they weather codes, or spy instructions? ‘There’s no way of finding out,’ he said when she asked.
    â€˜Does it bother you?’
    â€˜No, but I’d like to know. Two receiving stations can get a cross bearing on the transmitter to find out roughly where it is, but I don’t have the equipment to be one of them. If I knew another shortwave listener we could talk about it, and maybe rig something up.’
    She held the knitting to her chest, and fetched a pattern from the other side of the room, thinking how often an advertisement for the local paper had gone through her mind: ‘Wireless operator, ex-RAF, blind, would like to meet similar with sight to send morse code and talk radio matters. Two hours a week. Terms, if necessary, can be arranged.’
    A hint to Howard that she would put it in showed that he needed all his self control not to be angry. And she couldn’t think why, except that he saw it as a blow to his pride, an assault on his privacy which he prized above all else. She regretted not having strength enough to force the issue, put the ad in anyway, make up a story so that the meeting could take place – not having acted courageously and broken the barrier. Howard talked sociably enough to people in the pub whenever there for a pint – his maximum intake on a walk – because she had once met him as arranged, and even before pushing open the door heard his laughter and easy responses among the loud chatter.
    Alone, he was king of his world, no territory of greater expanse than in his mind when assisted by varying and multiplying noises coming into the earphones. Aether sings, is never silent, indecipherable morse lost in vague ringing tones or a low roar as of the sea suddenly punctuated by a rogue whistle coming and going, the momentary growl of a button-message, arrowing from where to where? With such noises he could see, and the universe surrendered to him, at least that part between the earth’s crust and the heaviside layer, where no part of him was tied to the yoke of his blindness.
    Mysterious morse signals, in plain language or in code, ragged beyond comprehension and impossible