Two Brothers

by Ben Elton

  Lovely young people. Fine, upstanding young people. Smartly turned out in their matching outfits. The girls with little caps that Frau Fischer had designed herself.

  But no customers. A ghost shop. Silent during business hours for the first time in its history.

  The beautiful, sparkling, tastefully sumptuous store was like a film set just before the extras were ordered to their places. As if some unseen director was about to shout ‘action’ and flood the aisles and counters with hundreds of eager shoppers.

  Herr Fischer attempted to smile and even found his voice, or at least a croaking semblance of it.

  ‘Thank you all for coming,’ he said. ‘I hope that you will stay at your positions in expectation of later trade.’

  Then, still holding his wife’s hand, he began to make his way across the floor.

  Some of the girls gave way to tears as the injured couple passed. The young men too looked shaken and close to breaking. The Fischers seemed to notice this and attempted to hold their heads up a little, giving a small nod or the hint of a smile to various of the longer-serving employees.

  On they walked through the tension and the silence. Their footsteps ringing on the polished marble floor. The sole sound in that great and splendid room.

  Past porcelain and china. Perfumery.

  Cosmetics. Small leather goods. Luggage. Stationery. Sticks, canes and umbrellas.

  Through the glass central arcade where stood the food hall and restaurant. The very Konditorei from which Dagmar had chosen her chocolate cake to take to the Stengels, seven years before, and again just weeks ago on their birthday.

  Past the famous escalators. Those mighty moving stairways which all Berlin had marvelled at and admired when the old Herr Fischer had installed them. Which Crown Prince Willy himself had opened and which every day since had thronged with shoppers, but which were empty now.

  Empty but running.

  Making their rumbling, vacant progress, up and down, up and down from 8.30 till 6.00, with only ghosts to ride them.

  Finally Herr and Frau Fischer arrived at the elevators in the far wall of the building.

  Herr Fischer turned to his wife, addressing her for the first time since they had been assaulted. ‘We must go to the office and begin telephoning, my dear. We must find Dagmar.’

  ‘Begging your pardon, Herr Fischer,’ the under-manager interjected softly, ‘but Fräulein Fischer was seen by the staff members who were assembled at the south doors. She’d been running from the disgraceful scene at the main entrance when she once more found herself in the grip of those villains. However, it seems that two boys got her away. Only young lads but somehow they were able to extricate the Fräulein from the Sturmabteilung and get her on to an east-bound street car, sir.’

  ‘Ah,’ Herr Fischer nodded and it seemed as if the ghost of a smile might be playing on his scabbed and bloodied lips, ‘then, my dear, I think we may know where she is gone.’

  That night, alone in their bedroom, Paulus and Otto made a pact.

  They swore to themselves and to each other that no matter what happened, no matter what Hitler tried to do to them, they would protect Dagmar.

  It would be their mission in life.

  They would be her brave knights in shining armour, she their damsel in distress.

  Their own lives meant nothing, their only value was that they be placed in the service of the girl they loved. Somehow or other the Stengel boys would protect their princess and see that she survived this fire-breathing dragon which threatened to devour them all.

  Hitler wouldn’t get her.

  They would be her shield.

  Law Student

  London, 1956

  STONE TURNED OFF the gas beneath the kettle and made a pot of tea.

  He lit the grill for toast and went into the living room to gather up his law books.

  The following summer he would be taking his Bar exams via correspondence course. It would be his third attempt to pass but recently he had been ignoring his studies. The letter which purported to have come from Dagmar had chased such things from his mind. Taking his tea and toast, Stone spread the books across the kitchen table and tried to focus.

  The words swam before his eyes: torts, jurisprudence, criminal, civil, family, property, commercial.

  Amazing how much law it took to run a civilized country.

  Hitler had always despised the law. And lawyers too.

  Stone swore he would be a lawyer yet.

  A Party Is Announced

  Berlin, August 1933

  MIDWAY THROUGH THE first of the thousand summers that Adolf Hitler had planned for his Reich, the Stengel family were breathing a sigh of relief. Tentative and highly qualified, but relief nonetheless.

  ‘Basically we’re still alive,’ Wolfgang said, spreading sardines in the boys’ sandwiches for their lunch. ‘I wouldn’t have put money on that two months ago.’

  ‘I would, Dad,’ Otto said. He had finished his breakfast oats and was lifting dumbbells in the corner of the room as was now his regular habit, both morning and evening. ‘I’d like to see them try and kill me.’

  ‘They would have flipping killed you, Otts,’ Paulus said, ‘if I hadn’t told Dad what you were up to.’

  ‘Like a bloody snitch.’

  ‘Saving your life, mate,’ Paulus said, through a mouthful of porridge.

  Otto did not reply, concentrating instead on curling the weights up his body, his biceps bulging under the strain.

  Frieda sank down on the couch.

  ‘It still makes me weak to think about it.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I’m sorry, Mum,’ Otto snapped, ‘but I just reckon it’s time somebody let these pigs know they can’t push us Jews around. We’re strong. We’re proud. We’ll settle them in the end.’

  ‘Us Jews?’ Paulus laughed. ‘Suddenly you’re such a Jew! You never gave a damn about being a Jew before.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I do now and if it hadn’t been for you being a snitch, I’d be Jew with a gun!’

  ‘Otto be quiet!’ Wolfgang hissed. ‘And please let’s not go over it again, eh? The thing’s at the bottom of the Spree now. Which by the look of it was where the guy you bought it from got it in the first place. But just be damned certain, Otts, that a Jew found with a gun, even a rusty old relic which probably hadn’t been fired since the Franco-Prussian war, would without doubt be hung on the spot, child or not. Do you hear me? They’d execute you on the spot.’

  Otto just rolled his eyes and continued lifting his weights.

  ‘Listen to your father, Otto!’ Frieda demanded, fear making her voice harsh. ‘You know what these people are capable of.’

  Only the week before a well-known local family of Social Democrats had been lynched in their own back garden for brandishing a hunting rifle when their house was attacked by drunken SA. A father and two sons, all hanged from the same tree in five minutes for defending their home.

  ‘I just wanted to do something.’

  ‘Getting killed isn’t doing something,’ Paulus said. ‘It’s doing nothing.’

  ‘Hitler says we’re cowards,’ Otto insisted. ‘One day I’ll show him just how brave a Jew can be. What are you going to do, smart arse?’

  ‘I don’t know what I’ll do, but, believe me, Otts, when I do do whatever it is I’m going to do, I’ll be ready to do it.’

  ‘Pardon?’ Otto asked, somewhat confused.

  ‘I’ll be prepared.’

  ‘Prepared? How? By studying? What’s the point of that any more? They won’t let you have a job no matter how many exams you pass.’

  ‘Who knows? We might have law again one day. And if we do we’ll need lawyers.’

  ‘That’s right, Pauly,’ Frieda agreed. ‘You should listen to your brother, Ottsy.’

  ‘Mummy’s boy!’ Otto sneered.

  ‘What’s more,’ Pauly went on, ignoring the insult, ‘if we have to leave Germany and I’m qualified, then perhaps I’ll be able to support us. What will you sa
y on your immigration form, Otts? “Please give me a visa, I’ve got big muscles”? They’ve got plenty of people who can lift weights in America, you know.’

  ‘And plenty of trumpeters,’ Wolfgang said ruefully.

  ‘Who knows?’ Frieda said, putting on a brave face. ‘It might not come to any of that. As Papa says, we’re all still alive, aren’t we? Now go and have a flannel, Otto. You can’t go to school all hot and sweaty like that.’

  There was no doubt that from the Stengels’ point of view August 1933 was a distinct improvement on the previous spring and the legally sanctioned orgy of brutality that had culminated in the first Jewish boycott.

  ‘They don’t want to scare their new chums in industry and the banks,’ Wolfgang said.

  Jewish businesses were no longer picketed, arbitrary public beatings and robberies were no longer tolerated on the streets and the number of people abducted from their homes and spirited away to ad hoc concentration camps had also declined dramatically.

  With care, and treading softly, Jews felt safe to go about the city once again.

  This is not to say that life was any fun. It may have become a little less dangerous but it was no less demeaning or irksome. The various bans and exclusions on Jews and gypsies remained in place. Access to the professions was closed to them. There would be no more Jewish judges or lawyers. Jews were banned also from the army, the police and most commerce. University places were restricted to a tiny quota and books written by Jews were not merely banned but publicly burned.

  But life was not impossible.

  Frieda had, to her immense surprise, even been able to resume her work at the Friedrichshain Clinic, now called the Horst Wessel Medical Centre, the whole district having been renamed after the SA’s favourite ‘martyr’, who had been a local boy. It was true that Frieda was only allowed to treat Jews, but there were plenty of them to keep her busy as Jews were no longer allowed to be treated by Aryans. Even wealthy Jews who previously would not have been seen dead in a public surgery came to her now. Sadly this did not enrich Frieda or the centre since private medical insurers were excused from reimbursing Jewish doctors, and so effectively every premium any Jew had ever paid was stolen by the state overnight.

  However, to Frieda’s astonishment she herself was still paid her salary. She was discovering that the vast pre-Nazi German bureaucracy would continue to function until told otherwise, and told not just once but in writing and in triplicate. It was going to take the State a long time to get round to officially de-Jewing everything and in the meantime she remained on the public pay roll, which enabled life in the Stengel household, for the time being at least, to return to something vaguely resembling the pattern it had followed before.

  Paulus and Otto still attended the same school they had during the days of the Weimar Republic, although they now had to be constantly ready to defend themselves against attack from bully gangs, and lessons had acquired a more sinister tone. The law required that each school day now begin with the National Anthem followed by the Horst Wessel song and that every classroom display a picture of the Leader. Teachers were expected to greet their classes with the ‘German greeting’, which had to be returned en masse on pain of beating. The children of Jewish families, though still tolerated, were ‘excused’ History classes during which their ‘blood race’ was systematically blamed for every wrong that had ever beset the Fatherland.

  But despite the deeply unpleasant nature of all of these pressures, none of them were, for either Paulus or Otto, the principal frustration of that summer. What really bothered them was that they had not seen Dagmar for months.

  The object of their mutual obsession had almost completely disappeared since her terrible experience at the hands of the SA. The boys had heard that she scarcely attended school now and she had certainly not turned up for her Saturday music lessons at the Stengel apartment. Apart from the occasional note in response to the boys’ regular letters, poems and gifts, the twins heard nothing from Dagmar at all.

  ‘I’m afraid that poor girl will never entirely get over what happened to her on that dreadful morning,’ Frieda said.

  ‘But she wasn’t badly hurt, Mum,’ Otto protested. ‘We saved her before they could do anything.’

  ‘It’s not the physical violence, dear. It’s the shock of it. It’s what a man called Freud calls trauma, which is something that affects the psyche. Something so powerful as to actually change it. Perhaps damage it permanently.’

  ‘Psyche, Mum,’ Paulus asked, ‘what’s that?’

  ‘Well, I suppose you might say it’s the soul.’

  ‘Soul!’ Otto gasped with deep concern. ‘You think Dags has got a damaged soul?’

  ‘Yes, in a way. Certainly a very badly bruised one and it’s going to take a long long time and a lot of love and care for it to be better again.’

  The two boys exchanged glances. Instinctively aware of what the other was thinking. If Dagmar needed love and care then it must be they who supplied it. If her soul was bruised and damaged then the brave and noble Stengel twins would make it better.

  Then quite suddenly, on the last Saturday in August, the very girl herself arrived at Paulus and Otto’s door in a state of breathless excitement.

  ‘We’re going to America!’ she told the twins with a little shriek.

  ‘New York! Mama has a cousin there! We leave from Bremerhaven on the SS Bremen in a fortnight. Imagine it, boys! I shall have my own cabin on the voyage next to Mama and Papa’s! My own cabin! Just think of it, with a steward!’

  Dagmar gave another squeal and clapped her hands together. It was as if all the accumulated misery of the previous seven months had been transformed into a single moment of pure joy.

  ‘My goodness, Dagmar,’ Frieda said from the hallway. ‘Come in and tell us all about it. Have you got the visas then? Is everything in order?’

  ‘Yes! Daddy’s been working on it since …’ Dagmar did not say since when. Even in her relieved and happy state she could not bring herself to speak of what had happened to her. ‘Well, he’s been working on it for months anyway and it’s all come through. Exit and entrance. Getting into America doesn’t seem to have been half as hard as people are saying it is.’

  ‘Well, Dagmar,’ Wolfgang said with a smile, ‘I think it might have something to do with money. It’s not as if you’re going to be a burden on the American State, is it?’

  ‘Gosh I hope not!’ Dagmar laughed. ‘I don’t think I’d do very well in a hobo city like on the news reels.’

  Frieda and Wolfgang could not help but exchange rueful glances. They too had been looking into the possibility of emigration but it was not so easy if you weren’t Isaac Fischer of Fischer’s of the Kurfürstendamm. The Great Depression was showing no signs of easing and foreign countries were far from anxious to encourage immigration when millions of their own people were already out of work. As a doctor Frieda certainly had a skill to offer but she came encumbered with two school-age sons, a husband with no ‘practical’ skills and two ageing parents who would certainly not be able to find work. Therefore, while the Nazis were allowing Jews to leave (having first taken a substantial portion of their assets), it was only possible to do so if you could find somewhere to go.

  ‘How exciting, Dagmar,’ Frieda said, putting on a brave face for the excited girl’s benefit. ‘America! I’ve always so wanted to visit.’

  ‘Well, now you can!’ Dagmar gushed. ‘You can all come and visit us. Father is arranging for us to have an apartment in Manhattan but I’m sure we will have somewhere out of town as well so there’ll be plenty of room. Anyway, never mind that for now. The first thing is that I’m having a party! Well, my parents are but it’s my party too and of course you absolutely have to come. It’s to be a ball! We’ve taken the grand room at Kempinski’s and I’m allowed to invite whomever I like, so of course I’m inviting absolutely everybody. Well, I have so many people to say goodbye to and this way I can do it all at once. Although of course it’s really
just auf Wiedersehen, not goodbye, because I’m sure everything will be all right in the end.’

  Dagmar was actually slightly hysterical with excitement and relief and gabbled on and on about the arrangements, assuring the boys that there would be more delicious food at the party than either of them had ever dreamt of.

  ‘And of course since it’s mainly a grown-up party there’ll be gallons of champagne too and I’m going to sneak some! You wouldn’t mind, would you, Herr Stengel? Frau Stengel? If I give the boys a taste?’

  ‘Not as long as you leave some for me,’ Wolfgang replied. ‘Now since you’re here, do you think we should try a bit of music? The band’s been a bit thin lately what with you not coming and losing our singer to the League of German Maidens.’

  ‘Is Silke in the BDM?’ Dagmar gasped. ‘The bitch!’

  ‘That’s not a nice word to use about anyone, Dagmar,’ Frieda said. ‘I don’t think your mother would like it.’

  ‘And come on, Dags,’ Paulus insisted. ‘You know Silke’s stepdad forces her. She sneaks off all the time.’

  ‘Yes, well, that’s as may be,’ Dagmar observed tartly. ‘But she’s still marching around with a swastika on her arm, isn’t she? I’ll bet all that Aryan blonde hair looks lovely under the black beret.’

  Otto and Paulus let it go. They knew that Silke was no Nazi but were far too caught up in the joy of seeing Dagmar again to waste any more time defending the fourth but absent member of the club.

  And Dagmar was far too full of her party and the glamorous new life that beckoned in the USA to waste any more time talking about Silke either, or to do any music for that matter, so Wolfgang gave it up, poured himself a schnapps and announced that school was out.

  ‘There’s a few marks,’ he said giving some money to Paulus. ‘Go and get me a pack of Lucky Strikes and don’t smoke more than half on the way home.’

  Delighted at this unexpected pass out, the three thirteen-year-olds tumbled out of the apartment into the lift and then out into the local streets. Just as they had done so often during happier times.