Two Brothers

by Ben Elton

  The exhibition was on the second floor of the building and it could only be reached via a small back staircase, up which it was really only possible to shuffle in single file. Wolfgang intimated from this that the organizers had not expected a big turnout. It was obvious that the exhibition had been mounted simply that it might be reported. So that the principle that there was such a thing as Jew-inspired ‘degenerate art’ would be established. That smug burghers might be able to sneer at an example or two offered up for ridicule each day in the newspapers.

  The exhibits on display had been mounted in a deliberately alienating manner, crowded together, sometimes skewed, tucked into corners and placed in unsuitable settings for their scale. The place was also hot and the crowd thick, but Wolfgang determined to appreciate every item. To mentally isolate himself within the throng, focusing with all his might on each piece, allowing people to push past as he obstinately took his time.

  Everywhere the organizers had posted little slogans in an effort to remind the patrons to make sure they continued to hate.

  Madness becomes method!

  The German Peasant through the eyes of the Jew!

  Cretins and whores, the ideal of the Degenerate.

  Nature through sick minds!

  Wolfgang revelled in it all. Wallowed in it. Staying until the very last moment, leaving only as the doors were being locked behind him.

  This was his holiday. A trip around the world and across the universe of the imagination in a single day.

  Before he took his leave.

  Because Wolfgang had a plan. A plan which he explained to Frieda in the last note he ever left her. On the kitchen table they had shared together all their adult lives.

  He wrote it on the train back to Berlin. My dearest, darlingest, beloved Freddy, it began.

  Please don’t be angry with me. You must know that what I am doing is right.

  You must also know that I have spent my last full day on earth in the company of some of the greatest spirits that ever lived. I would have preferred to have spent it with you, of course. But I couldn’t. You would have guessed – you always do – and would have tried to stop me.

  Fred. You know I have to leave you.

  You DO know that.

  There is no possibility in all the world of any country agreeing to take me as a refugee. I am broken and there’s an end to it. If you insist on trying to take me, as I know you will, you will never leave this hell, and if you stay I do believe the end will be soon and it will be terrible.

  You must get out and so must Paulus. Ottsy, too, I hope with all my heart. But you cannot if I am with you.

  And so I must leave Germany by another route.

  I pass without regret.

  Believe that!

  Believe it with all your heart or my soul will not rest.

  How could I regret? I shared my life with you. No other man living or dead could ever have filled his time on earth more beautifully than that. To have lived life with you.

  And with our boys.

  But now that time is ended. Seventeen years of love.

  And had those years been five or fifty, a minute, an hour or the half a century they should have been, it would have been just the same.

  The same amount of time really. Do you see?

  For in that time, no matter what length its earthly span, was contained all the love in the world.

  Ha ha! There, you see! I can say something without trying to be funny!

  And now it’s goodbye.

  Freddy.

  Once again.

  You know I’m right. You know I have to do this.

  Here’s hoping those heavenly choirs (in which I’m choosing at this last moment to believe) know some jazz!

  Your own

  Wolf

  The night train arrived back in Berlin shortly before dawn. Wolfgang took a taxi back to Friedrichshain. It was an extravagance but a necessary one as he wanted to be sure to arrive home before Frieda awoke.

  Asking the taxi to wait in the street outside their building, he crept slowly up the stairs to their apartment. He could not use the lift for fear of rousing Frieda. He tried hard not to wheeze as his infected lungs laboured with the climb, and almost held his breath as he approached his own front door. Creeping silently into the flat, Wolfgang left his note on the kitchen table and weighed it down with his house keys. Then, pausing only to pick up his trumpet, he made his way back out. He didn’t linger. He didn’t turn to look. He knew that had he done so the temptation to remain, to creep back into bed and kiss his beloved, would be too much.

  And he had a taxi waiting.

  Outside as the morning sun began slowly to find the first colours of the morning, Wolfgang asked the driver to take him to the old Moltke bridge.

  Once in the middle of the bridge, Wolfgang got out and watched the taxi drive away.

  Then, taking his trumpet, he stood beside the sandstone parapet above the central arch and played. He played Mack the Knife, that mournful, hypnotic hook that Weill laid down to support Brecht’s sinister lyric about the shark’s teeth and the hidden blade. Back when Berlin was beautiful and crazy.

  It took him a number of stops and starts to complete the short tune even once. Wolfgang’s lungs were almost gone and even these few notes presented a challenge.

  Then, rolling himself up on to the parapet, his trumpet still in his hand, Wolfgang Stengel threw himself off the Moltke bridge and into the river Spree below.

  Later, when Wolfgang’s body was dragged from the river and his death was duly recorded, it was said that he had committed suicide. But Frieda knew that he hadn’t. Nor had any of the hundreds of other Jews who took their own lives that year when the whole world still recognized Hitler as a great and inspiring leader of the German nation.

  ‘My husband was murdered,’ Frieda said. ‘They were all murdered.’

  Frieda’s Other Children

  Berlin, 1938

  IN THE SPRING of 1938, the German Government was flushed with victory after its popular absorption of Austria into the Reich.

  This event had unleashed an orgy of anti-Semitic violence in the south, which was so far unparalleled in its spite and cruelty. Emboldened by what appeared to be a popular appetite for pitiless brutality, the Nazis began what they called the Aryanization of Reich assets.

  ‘I think they’re going to take our homes,’ Frieda said to her mother and father on one of her Sunday visits.

  ‘Nonsense,’ Herr Tauber grunted over the empty pipe on which he still sucked despite the fact that it rarely contained tobacco. ‘I won’t believe it.’

  ‘Dad. We have to register our assets. Property, possessions, the lot.’

  ‘Well, it’s like a census, isn’t it?’ the rapidly ageing man insisted, ‘except instead of people they are taking an inventory of property.’

  ‘Yes. Ours, Dad. No one else’s. The Nazis want to know exactly what we own. I cannot think of any other reason for them doing that than that they intend at some point to steal it. Why else would they call a list of Jewish possessions “Reich assets”? They’re certainly nothing if not shameless.’

  The old couple tutted and protested into their little bit of coffee and bread and butter.

  ‘But think about it, Frieda dear,’ Frau Tauber said, ‘if they took our homes, where would we live? There are thousands of us, they can’t very well leave us on the streets. No. I won’t believe it. It doesn’t make sense.’

  Frieda did not argue any further. In fact she regretted raising the point at all. Why should her parents face reality? It would do them no good if they did, for there was nothing they could do about their situation. They could not escape even if they had wanted to. No country would give them a visa. Better really that they should continue to live in denial, choosing to believe that somehow, in the end, the madness would stop. That it simply was not possible for the German State to be reinvented permanently as an entirely criminal organization.

  Most Jews got through th
eir days on just such brittle optimism. Refusing to accept that things were as bad as they were or that they would most certainly get worse. Frieda’s parents, for instance, refused ever to talk about Wolfgang’s suicide. For them, every person who gave up hope was another chink in the paper-thin armour of those whose chosen defence was blind faith.

  ‘I’m sure that it’s sensible for you to leave, dear,’ Frau Tauber went on, ‘but not for us. Everything we know and value is here in Germany and it’s where we will stay.’

  What Frieda said next surprised her parents greatly.

  ‘I shan’t be leaving either, Mother,’ she said. ‘I’ve decided. I will never emigrate.’

  Her parents exchanged a worried glance. Frieda knew what they were thinking. It was clear that their faith in the eventual resumption of the rule of law held only in their own case. When it came to their daughter and grandchildren, they took a more realistic view of what the Jews might soon expect.

  ‘Frieda, that is a foolish thing to say,’ her father said sternly. ‘Of course you must pursue your life abroad. There is nothing for you or for the children here. We are old. It is different for us. You must go. In fact, I forbid you to stay.’

  Frieda, almost smiled at this effort on her father’s part to assert an authority over her that he had not held for at least twenty years.

  ‘Dad—’ she began.

  Her mother interrupted, cracks breaking into the measured delivery she was trying to produce.

  ‘You cannot stay for our sake, darling! You are a doctor, you’re well placed to run, and what’s more to make a life elsewhere. Wolfgang’s gone. We are old. There’s only you and your children …’

  ‘Exactly, Mum,’ Frieda said quietly. ‘My children. I have to stay for them.’

  ‘But they’ll go with you, of course! Ottsy, too, in the end,’ her father said. ‘If it’s a matter of money, let us help, we’ll sell everything we have. You say the government will steal it soon anyway—’

  ‘Dad, I’m not talking about my sons,’ Frieda said gently. ‘They are both eighteen, they’re men now. I’m talking about my children. The ones I care for. The ones I continue to deliver into the world, for whatever our Leader may hope for, nature takes its course and new Jews come. Tiny babies, who don’t know they’ve been born in hell. Those babies, those children, need a doctor. I’m their doctor. I will stay with them and care for them for as long as I’m able.’

  Her parents were astonished. It had never occurred to them that Frieda would take this view. She had spoken so often of emigration. She had written so many letters.

  ‘When Wolfgang was alive it was different. I had to care for him and so I knew that if I could get him out I would have done so. But he’s gone. He made a sacrifice for me and—’

  ‘Exactly!’ her mother exclaimed. ‘He did that terrible thing for you. His note was clear, he was holding you back, making it so much more difficult for you to leave. But now that—’

  ‘Now that he’s gone I intend to honour him and our love for each other by staying.’

  ‘It’s not what he would have wanted, Frieda!’ her father said, his voice rising.

  ‘It doesn’t bloody matter what he would have wanted, does it, Dad! He’s dead! He doesn’t get a vote!’ Frieda’s voice was rising too. ‘He’s released me. Given me back the time I would have spent caring for him, protecting him. I’m going to put that sacrifice to good use. The best use. Lots of people are never getting out, Dad. You two for a start, but a couple of hundred thousand others I’d have said at least. The very young, the very old, the ones with no money, no influence. They are all going to need a doctor. I’m a doctor. That’s my job.’

  ‘But what about the boys?’ her mother asked, almost timidly now, taken aback by Frieda’s passion.

  ‘Paulus will leave once he’s finished school,’ Frieda said, her firm resolve in some danger of faltering. ‘We have a place for him at Goldsmith’s College in London to study Humanities, and the British Central Fund have a place for him in a hostel. And don’t think it doesn’t break my heart to let him go, but every child leaves the nest, and at least I’ll still have Otto. Even if I can’t see him I’ll know he’s near.’

  Her father nodded. ‘Of course, he’s an Aryan. If you’re to stay then there’s no reason for him to leave.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have left anyway, Dad. He’s in love.’

  Her parents both smiled.

  ‘The Fischer girl,’ Frau Tauber said.

  ‘Of course,’ Frieda replied.

  ‘Well,’ Herr Tauber commented, ‘you can’t exactly blame him. She is a damned peach.’

  ‘Yes. Poor Paulus,’ Frau Tauber said.

  The Taubers exchanged regretful smiles. Although they came from a generation that did not pry or discuss personal matters even within the family, they had been perfectly aware over the years of the feelings that both their grandsons harboured towards Dagmar Fischer.

  ‘Yes,’ Frieda agreed with a regretful smile. ‘Pauly lost in love and he was heartbroken, of course. He still is. Young love can be terribly cruel. But of course the truth is it’s worked out very nicely. Imagine if Dagmar had chosen Pauly, I know that boy and he’d be insisting on staying with her. He may be the clear logical one in most things but when it comes to Dagmar he’s as crazy as Ottsy. Funny, you know, when they were kids, before all this began, Wolfgang and I used to watch them playing in their Saturday Club and we’d joke that one day Dagmar would love Pauly and Silke would love Otto. That’s how it always seemed to us it would be. But love of course never turns out the way you’d expect.’

  Herr Tauber frowned somewhat and tapped his pipe thoughtfully.

  ‘And so Ottsy wants to stay on,’ he said. ‘That will mean being conscripted. He knows that, I presume.’

  ‘Of course, he’ll do his National Service after he leaves the Napola.’

  ‘And after that? Those boys are all supposed to become Gauleiters and party leaders, aren’t they?’ Herr Tauber asked.

  ‘As far as I can gather, his idea is to give the appearance of being as good a Nazi as possible so that he can do what he can for Dagmar.’

  Frau Tauber frowned. ‘Well, that’s all very well at the moment while it’s just a question of getting her into swimming pools and the like, but what happens next? They’re growing up.’

  The three of them exchanged glances.

  ‘He can’t marry her,’ Herr Tauber said. ‘It’s illegal.’

  ‘I know and I don’t know exactly what they’ll do,’ Frieda said. ‘All I know is that he’s sworn to protect her. To be her knight in shining armour. I think eventually he thinks he’ll smuggle her out, once he’s in uniform, or later as a party official. It’s not a bad plan – he’s bold and he might pull it off. All I can say is that for the moment Otto isn’t the worry. He’s not a Jew, he’s not in danger. Paulus is and it’s him I’m going to get out.’

  ‘And you really are determined that you will stay?’ Frau Tauber asked.

  ‘Yes, Mum. My boys are men. My husband is gone. I’ve told you. I have other children now.’

  ‘Well,’ her father said, pretending to blow his nose. ‘You always did make us proud, my dear. Always.’

  English Conversations

  Berlin, 1938

  ALONG WITH ALL her other frantic activities, Frieda decided to start an English language conversation group.

  Even before the coming of Hitler, she had made a point of speaking English informally with the twins. Now she decided to spread her knowledge further. All Jews now being prospective migrants, it seemed like a sensible idea.

  Frieda also knew she was looking for ways to help get herself through the lonely evenings. Paulus was still living at home but he was absorbed mainly in study and kept to his room a lot of the time. Frieda missed Wolfgang and Otto terribly and so tried to fill every waking minute in an effort to distract herself from the empty spaces they had left behind.

  The group was an instant success. Quite apart from the p
ractical consideration of gaining a language with a view to emigration, the problem of boredom was endemic across the whole Jewish community. Largely shut up and hidden away, people were simply going crazy with nothing to do.

  Assembling the group was therefore easy, finding something for it to talk about proved harder. Or at least something that didn’t concern the woes of their community. Frieda soon found herself developing rules and strategies to avoid falling endlessly into the same deeply depressing conversational ruts.

  ‘We’re playing that game again!’ she’d say two or three times at every meeting. ‘The game of who’s suffered the most and who deserves it least.’

  It was almost inevitable that most conversations degenerated into an exchange of misery. People fell over each other to describe the dreadful experiences they had suffered and which they were quite certain trumped anything that their fellow group members might have gone through that day.

  Sometimes the exchanges became heated. Previously calm and temperate neighbours raised their voices at each other. Arguing passionately about whether being refused service in a shop by an old acquaintance was more outrageous than being spat at in the street by a small child.

  ‘My daughter was ejected from the railway station lavatory.’

  ‘They took my umbrella. Just took it from my hand.’

  ‘An umbrella? So what! They took my bicycle.’

  ‘Ha! They took my car!’

  ‘I am a war veteran.’

  ‘I’ve paid my taxes all my life.’