Two Brothers

by Ben Elton

  Otto stared at his mother, his expression a terrible cross between fierce determination and abject despair.

  ‘All right, Mum,’ he said quietly, ‘I’ll be good.’

  ‘Promise me, Otto.’

  ‘I promise,’ Otto said.

  Frieda smiled and held him to her.

  Behind Otto’s back his fingers were crossed.

  Looking over his mother’s shoulder, Otto caught Paulus’s eye. He knew he could fool Frieda any time he wanted but he could never fool his brother.

  ‘Well then,’ Frieda whispered, ‘at least I’ll know you’ll be safe. Now let’s have no more quarrelling. Tomorrow you’ll leave and we won’t see you for a long time.’

  ‘When?’ Otto asked. ‘When do you think I’ll see you again?’

  ‘When this madness somehow subsides,’ Frieda replied. ‘That time will come.’

  Sitting at his silent piano, staring blankly at the sheets of music propped up on the stand, Wolfgang sighed. He couldn’t help himself, perhaps he didn’t even know he’d done it. But that sigh spoke volumes. Wolfgang for one no longer believed that the madness would ever subside.

  ‘It will,’ Frieda said in answer to his unspoken thought, ‘and I’ll tell you why it will, Wolf. Because otherwise the only possible conclusion to all of this is complete destruction for Germany. They keep saying they’re rebuilding the nation but it’s so damned obvious they’re destroying it that even fools will soon see.’

  Wolfgang shrugged.

  ‘No, don’t shrug at me like that, Wolf! I will not despair! We must not despair. This criminal state will end! You can’t survive for ever sustained only by violence. No society ever did or ever will. If these people continue to ignore every basic moral code, every fundamental prerequisite for civilization, they’ll murder themselves in the end and I think they’re far too cunning to allow that to happen. They like their fat life and their uniforms and their big black cars too much to risk losing them. So in the end they’ll compromise. Somehow they’ll compromise if only to avoid their own destruction.’

  Wolfgang shrugged again. He simply couldn’t help himself, it seemed to be the only gesture he had left in him. ‘I hope you’re right, Freddy,’ was all he would say.

  That night Paulus and Otto went to bed in the room they had shared since they were tiny babies and would now almost certainly never share again.

  ‘You had your fingers crossed, didn’t you,’ Paulus whispered, ‘when you promised Mum you’d keep out of trouble?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t want her to worry, did I?’ Otto hissed back defiantly. ‘And if you don’t want her to worry either you’ll keep your mouth shut about it, eh?’

  ‘So you’re not going to keep out of trouble, then? You’re going to fight the whole German state?’

  ‘What do you think, mate?’

  ‘I think you’re crazy.’

  ‘Hey, Pauly, you aren’t the one who tomorrow morning has to go and live with some Nazi fucking strangers! You’re still a Jew and even if you can’t go to the pictures at least you can live with your family. I’m going to a foster home and then what’s the betting some Nazi school, and you bloody well know they’re going to expect me to join the Hitler Youth. Well, I can’t face any of it, all right? None. I want to die, I want to bloody die right now. I’d be happy if they try to kill me because when they do I’m going to take one with me.’

  ‘Ottsy—’

  ‘I’m telling you, Paulus. The only way I can get through this is to hate them. Hate them and fight them and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.’

  ‘And if you get killed? What about Mum?’

  ‘Well, maybe she’ll never even know, Pauly,’ Otto snarled. ‘You think about that. She’s wrong when she says the Nazis will be finished one day. She may be right about most things but she’s wrong about that. They’ll never be finished. They’re going to last a thousand years, just like the bastard says. And they won’t stop until they’ve killed us, Pauly.’

  ‘Killed who?’

  ‘The Jews.’

  ‘But you’re not—’

  ‘I’m still a fucking Jew, you bastard, and I’ll smash your face in if you say I’m not. They’re going to kill every Jew they can in the end. It says it on the wall at school, Death to Jews. But you won’t let that happen to our family. I know that, Pauly. You’re too bloody clever and so’s Mum. You’ll find a way to get out. And I probably won’t even know! I’ll be left here, on my own, living with the enemy. I’m being exiled, Pauly, and I’d rather die.’

  Paul went and sat beside his brother on Otto’s bed.

  ‘Ottsy, mate. We’d never leave you behind, you know that.’

  ‘They won’t let me out, Pauly, don’t you see? They need me for their bloody army. That’s all the HJ is about, military training. Hitler wants me for a soldier. But let me tell you, mate. By the time I’ve finished, they’ll either have to let me go or kill me, and right now, I don’t care which.’

  ‘Ottsy, you’ve got to stop talking like that. We’ll find a way out. I promise.’

  ‘Maybe. But I doubt it,’ Otto said.

  Then he went and brushed his teeth. As he passed through the living room he saw his father, still slumped at the piano in the dark. The bottle, empty now, lying on the floor beside his stool.

  ‘Dad,’ Otto whispered, ‘go to bed.’

  ‘Later, son,’ Wolfgang replied, without looking up.

  ‘Dad, you’ve got to pull yourself together a bit,’ Otto went on. ‘Mum’s going to need you now.’

  ‘Yeah. That’s right,’ Wolfgang said but without conviction. ‘I’m not being a lot of help, am I really?’

  There was nothing more to say so Otto continued on to the bathroom. When he returned Wolfgang was still sitting, slumped in the darkness at his silent piano.

  Later, after the lights in their room were out, Otto whispered once more to his brother.

  ‘Pauly.’

  ‘Yeah, mate?’

  ‘I want you to do something for me.’

  ‘Yeah. I know. You want me to tell Dagmar, don’t you?’

  Otto smiled to himself in the darkness. ‘We might not be the same blood, bro, but you can still read my mind. The thing is, I don’t think I can go to her myself even if I get the chance.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so either,’ Paulus whispered. ‘After what the Gestapo have said I think we have to presume they’ll be watching you at least for a while and will go after any Jews you try to contact.’

  ‘Yeah. I think that’s true.’

  ‘I’m sorry, mate,’ Paulus said, trying to smile. ‘Just when she’d let you have a bit as well. You lucky bastard. I still can’t believe she let you feel her up! If I’d known she was going to go that far I’d have beaten up an SA man myself.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, you get her all to yourself now, don’t you? So who’s the lucky bastard then?’

  ‘You know I wouldn’t have wanted it that way, Otts.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Well … almost sure.’

  They both laughed.

  ‘Better go to sleep, I suppose,’ Paulus said. ‘If you’re going to fight every Nazi in Germany you’re going to need your strength.’

  ‘Yeah … So this is it, eh? My last night at home.’

  ‘Looks that way. Night, bro.’

  But there was one last thing Otto wanted to ask.

  ‘Pauly?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Have you wondered at all what he would have been like?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Him. Your twin. The real one. The one who was with you inside Mum, the one who died. If he had lived and I’d never turned up. What he would have been like?’

  ‘Of course I haven’t, Otts,’ Paulus whispered. ‘I don’t need to, do I? I know what he would have been like. He’d have been exactly like you. Because he is you.’

  A Spontaneous Drink

  London, 1956

  ‘THAT WAS THE last night me and my brothe
r ever spent together,’ Stone said. ‘The Gestapo arrived the following morning.’

  Despite their previous arrangement not to meet up until after his return from Berlin, Stone had decided to call Billie and to ask if she could see him.

  He knew that to do this was against the unspoken rules of their relationship. But sitting alone in his flat, after spending an entire day with the deeply irritating and unsettling MI6 double act, Stone had realized that he did not want to wait until he got back from Berlin to see Billie.

  Not least because he was not at all sure that he ever would come back from Berlin. A trap was waiting for him there. Of that he had become quite certain.

  He hadn’t expected Billie to agree to come out. He had presumed she’d be busy. Busy with her young, carefree, potential-packed life. Busy associating with people who were not crippled by history.

  Busy being properly alive.

  ‘I know we said we wouldn’t meet up in the week but …’ he began over the phone.

  ‘Baby, you said dat, not me,’ Billie corrected him. ‘Personally I don’ like to make no rules. I like to be spontaneous.’

  ‘Spontaneous?’ Stone said. ‘That sounds like a nice thing to be. I think I can just about remember what it is.’

  ‘Well, let’s be spontaneous now then. Let’s go out for a drink on a school night. How’s dat for wild and reckless?’ Billie laughed. ‘Do’an worry, baby, it do’an mean we be married nor nuttin.’

  They agreed to meet on Piccadilly and chose a little pub halfway down St James Street from the Ritz. As they entered Stone noted the looks they got from the other clientele. He was used to it but it always irritated him. Black people were still pretty rare in pubs up West and a white man with a black woman always drew attention. Particularly a woman such as Billie who was young, beautiful and dressed as ever in as eye-catching a manner as she could contrive. That evening she had on white stiletto shoes, tight denim pedal-pusher jeans and an equally figure-hugging pink cashmere sweater which extended over her bottom and was tied off at the waist with a black patent leather belt. To top it all off she wore a rakish tweed trilby hat perched on top of her magnificent jet black bouffant.

  ‘I know what they’re all t’inking,’ Billie whispered as Stone returned from the bar with their drinks.

  ‘They’re thinking “Lucky bastard”. That’s what they’re thinking,’ Stone replied.

  ‘No, man. They’re t’inking how much she chargin’ ’im an’ could I afford it meself.’

  Stone set the drinks on the table. A pint of bitter and a port and lemonade on either side of their packs of cigarettes, hers French, his American.

  ‘So you jus’ felt like some company then?’ Billie asked.

  ‘Yes. I suppose. Something like that. This Berlin trip. It’s got sort of complicated.’

  ‘Everyt’ing about you is complicated,’ Billie replied with a laugh. ‘It’s kind of interestin’ an’ sort of cute but you don’ wanna overplay it. A girl could get bored only gettin’ to meet ten per cent of a fella.’

  ‘I thought you told me to keep my demons to myself,’ Stone said, smiling.

  ‘That was when I only knew you a week,’ Billie replied. ‘Now it’s been t’ree months. Maybe it’s time you let a couple out. You know, jus’ one or two every now and den.’

  ‘You’d really like me to?’

  ‘I just said so, didn’t I?’

  And so Stone began to talk.

  Talking about things he never talked about. Sharing something of the weight of history and emotion that he kept shut up in the locked suitcase of his mind.

  Perhaps it was the cigarettes that set him off.

  Billie was smoking Gitanes, the same brand Dagmar used to get from her French pen pal. The same brand that he and she had smoked together on the night when he’d brought her the buttons from the SA man’s shirt and she had chosen him over his brother. Even the design of the packet was the same as it had been in the thirties.

  ‘We mugged those guys,’ Stone said, drinking deep on his beer. ‘I can’t say I regret it even now. I can see the bastard like it only happened this evening, right there, through the bottom of my beer glass. And I’d do it again too. When we jumped them they were strutting up the street like they owned it. Like they all strutted. Strutting and marching and stamping around like they’d done something brave and special by ganging up in their millions in order to persecute a few scared little individuals. That was what always annoyed me the most, the way they acted as if their “revolution” as they called it had been somehow heroic. Like they’d had some long, legendary struggle. Jesus, the Nazi Party was only as old as me. We were born on the same day. And heroic? The best they could come up with for a martyr was a pimp called Horst Wessel who got knifed over a girl three years before Hitler even came to power. They had all these festivals and celebrations, every week it seemed like, commemorating their “years of struggle” and their “martyrs”. They’d parade around with their “Blood Banners” going on about what a fight they’d had saving Germany. Jesus, when you actually added it up they’d lost about ten yobs in pub fights, that was it. But every Nazi walked round like he’d been a Spartan on the bridge when all they’d actually done was push Jewish grannies off the pavement.’

  ‘So you rolled dese guys,’ Billie asked.

  ‘That’s right, we rolled them. Cornered them in an alleyway, me and four other kids, and kicked the shit out of them. You’d have done the same if your dad had been half crippled in a concentration camp like mine was.’

  ‘Ha! Do’an give me dat! You wasn’t doin’ it fo’ your dad, you was doin’ it cos o’ dis girl.’

  Stone smiled.

  ‘Well. Let’s say I did it for various reasons,’ he said.

  ‘But you didn’t kill dem?’

  ‘No. Not that time. I’d killed a man before though.’

  ‘What?’ Billie said, quite horrified. ‘Before you were fifteen?’

  ‘Me and my brother did it. In our apartment. I knocked the guy out and then Paulus suffocated him. I used that little statuette that’s in my flat. The one of my mother.’

  Billie grimaced at the horror of it, but there was something else in Stone’s story that also made her think.

  ‘Paulus?’ Billie asked looking quizzically at Stone. ‘So that’s your brudder den?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But your name’s Paul?’

  ‘Yes,’ Stone agreed warily.

  ‘So you’re called Paul an’ your brudder was called Paulus?’

  ‘So it would seem.’

  ‘What the matter wit’ your momma? She only know one name?’

  Stone gave a noncommittal shrug and took another swig of his beer.

  ‘Don’t you want to know why we killed the guy?’

  ‘I guess you must a’ had a pretty good reason.’

  ‘We killed him because he was about to rape our mum.’

  ‘I s’pose they don’t come much better than dat.’

  Stone told the story. Surprising himself by taking pleasure in divulging information that had not even been sought. He, who for twenty years had made a habit of giving nothing away until forced to. He told Billie about killing Karlsruhen and about the buttons he’d cut off the SA man for Dagmar. About how triumphant she had been and how she’d kissed him and let him touch her.

  ‘Sounds like a dangerous girl to be in love with if you ask me,’ Billie observed.

  ‘She was excited,’ Stone replied defensively. ‘We’d drawn blood. Stood up and fought back. Don’t judge her – they made her lick pavements and they murdered her father.’

  ‘I ain’t judging her, Paul,’ Billie replied. ‘I don’t judge anyone.’

  Then he told her the rest of the story of that night.

  About how he’d arrived home to discover the truth about his adoption.

  ‘I just felt so completely alone. Deserted. They were my family, my whole life, and suddenly I was no longer a part of the single greatest element
of their lives, the terrible danger they were in. I was alone. It was so strange. I’d decided so completely that I was a Jew, you see.’

  ‘And suddenly you weren’t?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You told me you were.’

  ‘Yes. That’s what I’ve told people ever since I came to this country. But I’m not. Sorry about that.’

  ‘Don’ matter to me.’ Billie shrugged. ‘Jew or non-Jew is two exactly similar t’ings as far as I’m concerned.’

  Stone drained his beer, took Billie’s glass and was about to go to the bar for another round. Billie put her hand on his arm to stop him.

  ‘What’s your real name, Paul? Just so I know.’

  Stone smiled.

  ‘Otto,’ he replied. ‘My real name is Otto.’

  Into Exile

  Berlin, 1935

  OTTO WAS TAKEN from his family by a female council official and a policeman. They informed him that as a ‘racially valuable’ individual he was to be housed with a decent Nazi family. They told him he must come immediately.

  ‘Bring no money nor any significant possessions,’ the council woman explained. ‘You are coming home to the Reich and the Reich will support you. You need nothing from these Jews.’

  ‘My family,’ Otto said.

  ‘You have been deceived,’ the woman replied. ‘The Jew will only look after his own. All else is trickery.’

  Otto went meekly. He kissed Frieda briefly, ignoring the distaste on the face of the government woman and then shook Wolfgang and Paulus by the hand.

  ‘Please, ma’am,’ Frieda asked, ‘are we not even to know where Otto will live?’

  ‘That information is of no concern to you,’ the woman replied sharply. ‘Your parenthood of this boy is illegal under the law and you no longer have any rights or interest in him whatsoever. You are to have absolutely nothing to do with him from this moment forth. Come, Otto.’