My Own Dear Brother

by Holly Müller

  ‘It’s like a squinty eye,’ said Ursula.

  ‘Squinty eye,’ echoed Schosi.

  Anton scrambled down the bank and went on to the ice. He edged towards the hole, the ice creaking and whistling beneath his weight, a sure sign that it was getting thinner.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said Ursula, horrified, thinking about the cold black death of Tobias Messer.

  Anton stopped at intervals, watching for hairline cracks beneath his boots, and Schosi called to him every few seconds to take care. When Anton was close to the hole, he halted. He waited a moment, looking into the water. Then he took off his leather bag and put his hand inside it. Ursula tried to see what he was doing – his back was to her and all around him the snow glittered sharply in the morning light, so that she blinked and couldn’t focus. Anton pulled something out of his bag and held it towards the hole. After a second or so, Ursula saw the object convulse in his grip. It was a young cat. Anton must have carried it from the shed where the now teenage litter slept heaped on top of each other in an old crate. He must have reached his hand amongst the warm furry bodies, forced the cat inside his thick leather bag. Had it not cried as they went over the field? Had the wind blown its mewing away? Anton shifted his hold on the slender body so that it dangled from the loose skin of its neck. The cat’s thin face was stretched tight, its pale pink gums and teeth bared, its tongue curled like a rose petal, its ginger fur smooth with the newness of youth. It squirmed for a moment and then contracted into an inert ball, surrendering to Anton’s hold. Without much hesitation he tossed the cat into the hole. It fell with a small splash and disappeared from view. Ursula stood immovable, not breathing. She felt suspended, stuck in a fraction of a second as the cat sailed through the air.

  Schosi lurched forward. ‘You dropped it!’ he yelled, his voice high with panic. ‘You dropped it! Get it! Get it!’ He stumbled and slid towards the edge of the ice, eyes wide. Ursula grasped his sleeve. Meanwhile, Anton crouched beside the hole, looking in.

  ‘No!’ she said to Schosi. ‘It’s gone. Leave it!’

  ‘Can’t leave it!’ Schosi bellowed, tugging at her hand to free his sleeve. She gripped harder but he wrested himself away and hurtled on to the ice, sliding about and yelling, ‘Get it! It’s drowning! Quick! Get it!’ The ice gave an alarming crack and Ursula saw it bend and sag beneath the weight of two people. There was another loud crack and Anton, realising the danger, leapt towards Schosi, collided with him and pushed him backwards towards the edge of the pool. Schosi fell and Anton, heaving with all his effort, dragged Schosi by his coat from the ice and on to solid ground. A stark black gap opened where they had stood, cutting the ice sheet almost in two.

  ‘Stupid damn imbecile!’ Anton glared down at Schosi where he lay then kicked him. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? Are you completely thick? Completely stupid?’ Schosi covered his face with his hands, his breath wheezing torturously. He was crying.

  Ursula shook her head at Anton because she couldn’t speak. She

  ran up the bank towards the field.

  ‘Uschi!’ Anton yelled.

  She kept running – she could hear Schosi wailing, ‘The cat! The cat!’

  ‘Stop right now!’

  She stopped despite herself. Anton had borrowed Papa’s voice, hollering a command that must be obeyed, or God help your backside. She started to cry and scrubbed her tears away so her brother wouldn’t see them. He climbed towards her, arms out to steady himself, and she thought that if she threw something at him and he fell backwards into the pool it’d serve him right. ‘Why?’ she said when he reached her.

  He shrugged. Behind him, Schosi was crouching beside the pool’s edge.

  ‘You know I love them,’ she said.

  ‘But they’re always killed anyway,’ said Anton. ‘What’s the difference if their heads are smashed, or if they’re thrown in the stream?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Ursula. She tried to formulate her thoughts. Schosi came slowly up the bank and into the field, watching Anton with wide, woeful eyes. ‘Mama does it when I’m not around so I don’t have to see. And . . .’ She thought of Anton’s face as he’d turned from the hole, his eyes narrower than usual, a small hard smile on his lips. ‘Because you’re not supposed to enjoy it.’

  Anton watched her, mystified. After a while he put an arm over her shoulder in a comradely headlock. ‘Don’t tell anyone, will you?’

  All three set off up the hill and Ursula didn’t reply because she didn’t want to, but she knew already that she wouldn’t tell.

  They arrived back in the yard after dark, even later than the previous night. Schosi had gone off home some hours before, still whimpering, and Anton had called after him to be quiet, he was lucky it hadn’t been him in the hole. A dim light was on in the kitchen – the shutters hadn’t yet been properly closed. Dorli was drying a plate and placing it on the dresser; Mama worked at the sink. They’d already had supper.

  Anton and Ursula squatted beneath the window.

  ‘What shall we say?’ said Ursula. ‘Shall we say we saw a wild boar? And we hid until it was gone?’

  Anton shook his head, his face in deep shadow. The moon was up, a silver disc sunk in a sheet of small clouds that covered the whole sky like a lumpy feather quilt, high above everything. The wind blew mist from the trout stream and with it the smell of the cow – the sweet stench of slurry that pooled like green soup and froze. Ursula shivered. She imagined Mama gripping a wooden spoon so that her knuckles showed. ‘Or, shall we say that I fell over? I can pretend to limp. I’m good at pretending to limp.’

  ‘Uschi,’ said Anton. ‘You always think of lying.’

  Ursula bridled at the criticism. Anton often lied to Mama, saying he’d been in lessons when in fact he’d been kicking a ball about with Rudi.

  ‘I’m not going to lie. I don’t feel I should have to,’ said Anton. ‘Not when she acts like a whore and lies to us all. She should be the one sneaking and feeling like a dog.’ He stood and looked boldly in through the gap in the shutters.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Ursula looked at her brother’s boots, caked with snow. ‘Why are you saying that?’

  ‘You don’t want to hear it, Uschi. But I saw.’

  ‘Saw what?’

  ‘She’d lie if you asked her.’ Anton looked at his sister. ‘She knows she’s doing wrong by us, and Papa too.’

  ‘Did she kiss him?’ Ursula imagined her mother kissing Siegfried and felt sick.

  ‘Worse than that.’

  ‘What do you mean, worse than that?’

  6

  In the morning, Siegfried’s car was still there and Anton said they were probably fucking. Ursula didn’t know exactly what this meant, not having heard the word before, but from the harsh and indecent sound, and the way it felt filthy in the mouth, she could make a good guess. Anton was furious – she asked no questions of him. They went early to school to avoid seeing the adults and as they left the house he kicked the boot scraper, which spun on the ice and clanged against the rain butt with a sound almost as impressive as the village church bell. Ursula ran after her brother – they’d done none of their chores and there’d be hell to pay.

  —

  They played tag along the track and then Anton began one of his HY songs:

  We shall march on our way,

  Even if all crashes in sorrow,

  For Germany hears us today!

  The whole world tomorrow!

  They marched like soldiers side by side and Ursula gnawed her bread, nibbled off the mould and spat it out. They reached the village. The road was dotted with early-shift factory workers who tramped with heads down. Amongst them were prisoners in chains accompanied by guards.

  ‘There’s Frau Hillier,’ said Anton. He pointed to Schosi’s mama wrapped in a bulky coat, a bag over her shoulder. She walked slowly alongside the other workers as though she was very tired. Above them the sky was full of black clouds; soon it would snow. As they overtook Frau
Hillier they hid their faces. The camp fence was adjacent to them on the right. A figure stood amongst the rows of wooden huts, an armed guard. Ursula looked quickly away. They descended the hill to the church, the white walls distinct in the dark dawn. Specks of snow fell. They ran across the graveyard and sat in the porch beside the holy water on a skinny stone ledge. A thin snowfall began and hissed on the grass and on the church roof. Flakes blew in near their feet and melted.

  ‘There’ll be a lot of gossip, if they find out, won’t there?’ said Ursula.

  ‘What do you think? What happened to Frau Linser when she was caught with a Polish worker?’

  ‘She was given stale bread and rotten meat and made unwelcome everywhere.’

  Anton nodded.

  ‘Siegfried’s not a Pole though – and he’s respectable-looking.’

  ‘He’s a crook.’

  ‘Oh, come on. He’s not really.’

  ‘He damn well is!’

  The parcels secreted into Mama’s hand; Siegfried’s significant smile; Mama’s nervousness. Her whispered rebukes to Siegfried in the hall. Ursula knew, but didn’t care and didn’t want it spoiled, the small wealth he brought, this taste of a world beyond her own. If anything, the subterfuge appealed to her, the forbidden things concealed behind rows of preserve jars in the cellar – coffee and cigarettes, tinned sardines and chocolate. Ursula had been to rummage amongst them, pilfered morsels. She’d found the small wrap of plain brown paper containing chocolate, opened it carefully, trying not to tear or wrinkle it. Fragments of chocolate lay like dusty stones and she’d chosen a large piece, rewrapped the remainder and returned the package to its hiding place. Then she’d put the chocolate into her mouth and sucked and sucked. The sweet, heavy, exploding flavour coated her tongue and momentarily drugged her. She kept her mouth closed to stop the saliva drooling. It was unbelievably delicious. She’d stood for a long time trying to resist recklessly gobbling the rest, the preserve jars reflecting the liquid flame of her candle.

  When the snow eased and they wandered into the graveyard, a woman was tending one of the graves, clearing leaves and weeds from amongst the shrubs. Her skirt trailed behind her in the wet. It was Frau Gerg. Ursula’s steps faltered and she resisted the urge to turn and walk the other way. She hid behind her brother and hoped to go unnoticed. She’d missed the weekly League meeting, yet again. She hated going; she’d no idea if Marta had delivered her string of excuses and, if she had, whether she’d been believed. She dreaded even a glare from Frau Gerg, which was piercing, scouring and harsh, a feeling not unlike having a pumice stone applied violently to the face. Frau Gerg had once slapped Ursula across the cheek for being late, and it was common knowledge that she didn’t bat an eyelid about sending people to the camps. Mama said Frau Gerg was just as terrifying for grown-ups and kept her high place in the village by informing on people – asocials and traitors – including her own neighbour, Herr Blumsberg, who’d run the ironmonger’s and listened to Allied broadcasts on an illegal radio. Apparently, she’d heard him late in the evening when everything was quiet and his window wasn’t properly closed. The British national anthem had floated out into the night and she’d known at once he was a traitor. She and Herr Adler were good chums.

  Anton spoke as soon as they were out of earshot. ‘Perhaps there’s another way,’ he said. He unearthed a fir cone from its nest of snow and kicked it. He looked sideways at Ursula. ‘We could tell someone.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Tell someone he’s a thief. We could have him in prison before you know it.’

  Ursula stared at her brother. ‘No,’ she said. The reality of what he was suggesting registered and she felt quite dizzy. ‘We couldn’t.’

  ‘We could. We could go right now to the police.’

  ‘But why? And anyway, Mama would know. She’d guess it was us.’

  ‘No she wouldn’t!’ Anton scoffed. ‘How on earth would she guess?

  ‘Because we’ve seen him bringing the parcels.’

  ‘Yes, but someone might’ve seen him in Vienna too – the Gestapo might follow him here.’

  ‘It’s wrong. He’s a good person. I don’t want him to go to prison.’

  ‘You’re soft on him.’ Anton gave her a look of distaste. ‘Use your loaf. It’s wrong that he steals, and it’s wrong that he fucks a woman who’s not his wife. He must have a wife in the city, otherwise why wouldn’t he marry Mama?’ He glared at her and she daren’t reply. ‘It’s also wrong that he isn’t fighting in the war,’ he continued. ‘Why’s he not fighting with the rest? Why’s he allowed to live like this? Just doing what he likes when people like our papa have to die.’

  Ursula couldn’t answer him. She didn’t know. She’d never thought about those things before. Why was Siegfried not at war with the other men? He was fit and healthy and not too old. How come he had a car just like the Party officials? What kind of a man had taken Papa’s place?

  ‘But can we wait a little while?’ she said eventually, hoping to find a way to dissuade him. The plan was too cruel, too drastic. ‘Can we please just wait?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I feel afraid.’

  Marta Fingerlos was the person to talk to about fucking because she was from a very religious family. She often quoted her papa about the lusts of men, whores and harlots and Ursula supposed that if it was true about the mistress then he was well placed to know. Herr Fingerlos was devout and sat three rows back in church. He was also very dashing, according to Mama, and had a condition. Something to do with his heart. Everyone knew which was his place amongst the pews and wouldn’t dream of sitting there. He’d spoken to his daughter about the facts of life, without many facts divulged, and emphasised the importance of saving her virtue for her husband. When she married, with God’s blessing and her father’s too, her husband would provide her with children – eight or nine, God willing, with a golden Mother’s Cross awarded by the Führer himself. But anything other than this, any hanky-panky or disgraceful behaviour, and he’d disown her immediately. This did nothing to prevent Marta from trying to catch the eye of the boys; she knew just how to swirl the hem of her dress and give coy, inviting smiles.

  The first few weeks of March came and went before Ursula broached the topic with Marta, during which time the visits from Siegfried continued. Anton hadn’t gone to the police station – Ursula had pleaded with him to abandon the idea. His plan, she pointed out, would also incriminate Mama, who’d accepted the illegal parcels and kept them in her house. She implored Anton to spare her; she didn’t want to be parentless and starving. Eventually he’d relented, if only temporarily.

  She chose her moment with Marta on a day when rain rinsed the grass, drummed incessantly on the windows at school, and sluiced in a silver curtain from the eaves of the buildings. The girls ran homewards after lessons, dodged from doorway to doorway in the vain hope of staying dry. It was a pointless mission and they were now resigned to sogginess, seated on the wall of the village bridge looking down at the river, which flew mad with froth over the rocks. Marta could rest easy – it was too wet for anyone to wander by and see them together. They found pebbles and threw them into the rush.

  ‘What does “fucking” mean?’ said Ursula.

  ‘Oh, rude!’ squealed Marta. ‘It means “fornicating”.’ She looked at Ursula, beady-eyed. ‘Why? Who’s been fornicating?’

  Ursula had prepared an answer for this question. ‘Anton’s friend.’

  ‘Scandalous!’ Marta feigned disgust. ‘Who was it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Ursula. ‘Toni won’t tell.’

  ‘Well, who are his friends?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I don’t really know them. Someone at the HY.’

  ‘And you don’t know who the girl was?’

  ‘No.’

  The two friends were silent for a while. Ursula was almost disappointed to learn that fucking was no worse than fornication; it seemed a waste of a shocking word. But she supposed it
was enough to know that Mama was a fornicator. Rain blew from the thick clouds, light but dense, a lull between the brutal showers. She was growing cold. A shiver convulsed her body.

  ‘If a boy tried to do it to me, I’d scream till I was purple,’ Marta said. ‘Papa said only Jezebels let their knickers down.’

  ‘Well she let them down all right,’ said Ursula, suppressing the worry that Marta would ask Anton about the fictitious girl. ‘I hear she’s a loose type who’d go with anyone.’ Marta tittered with delight. ‘In fact,’ continued Ursula, getting carried away, ‘“Jezebel” seems too nice a word for a girl like her. How about “slut”?’ She threw another stone; it flew in an impressive arc and splashed near the water’s edge, guzzled by the current. ‘Jezebel’. It did sound nice, like the name of a flower or a jewel. There were so many names for a woman like Mama. What was Siegfried then? ‘Philanderer’? ‘Adulterer’? They seemed the nearest thing, but so formal, with nothing like the punch. Perhaps Ursula would tell Marta the truth; she was a friend after all. Perhaps she’d listen and keep the secret and sympathise because her papa was an adulterer.

  But just then, Marta leaned in close and whispered, ‘I saw a man in the forest yesterday with his peter in his hand. He opened his trousers and pulled it out. It was quite big. And hairy too.’

  Ursula forgot her idea, enthralled. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I went home a different way. He was Slav or something.’

  Slavs rode on top of the cattle trucks that roared through the village on their way to Brauhausen market, their faces shiny with perspiration. They worked in the fields and factories, had P for Poland stitched on to their uniforms and weren’t allowed into churches or on trains.

  ‘Did you run?’ Ursula’s pulse rose and her imagination filled with shadows, fast movements in the dark, in the snow, a hot–cold feeling.

  ‘Yes. You have to watch out. They aren’t like us. They’re more like beasts. Shame on him.’ Marta flicked her bedraggled hair and managed to look prim even though the white of her underwear showed clearly through her rain-soaked dress.