Two Brothers

by Ben Elton

  ‘Make ’em wear the piss-soaked rags,’ a teenage girl shouted at the boys, while her friends pushed a wailing old lady towards the scene.

  Otto could do nothing.

  He cared but he also didn’t care. Because if all this was happening to every Jew he passed, what was happening to Dagmar?

  The streets became a little quieter once he entered the expensive district of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. There were not as many very rich Jews in Berlin as the Nazis claimed, and Otto ran through whole streets in which there were no disturbances at all.

  Here and there a house was under siege, bottles thrown and windows smashed, but there were no random crowds of dazed thugs roaming about the prestigious streets. The police were seeing that better order was kept in so picturesque a suburb.

  Briefly Otto dared to hope. Perhaps the madness had not quite arrived in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, perhaps he was still in time.

  Hope lasted only a moment. For on turning from one wide tree-lined street into the one on which Dagmar lived, he saw flames ahead and in an agony that made him forget his bursting, aching lungs, he knew that he might already be too late.

  The Fischer house was on fire.

  A mob were gathered outside it, chanting, singing and dancing. Clearly they had already ransacked the place. Otto saw in one glance across the debris-strewn street many things he recognized from his visits over the years. Pictures, a gramophone player, beautiful cushions, shattered china and vases, small items of furniture, all smashed and scattered on the ground.

  As he pushed his way through the crowd he trod on something soft.

  Looking down he saw an old and frayed, knitted woollen monkey. Otto had seen that little stuffed toy many times before.

  Lying on Dagmar’s pillow. Or propped up on her dressing table, leaning against a tin of talcum powder. Or sitting on a box of tissues.

  For all her grown-up sophistication, Dagmar still cuddled that monkey. And now it was in the gutter.

  Which meant that they had been in her bedroom.

  Her toy was on the street. Where was she?

  Stooping as he ran, Otto gathered up the toy and shoved it into his pocket.

  ‘Did you get them?’ he called out at some idiotic prancing boys. ‘The Fischers? Did the cops take them?’

  ‘Cops? What cops?’ the boys shouted happily.

  ‘The Fischer women, where are they?’ Otto said, and now dropping his pretence at a friendly enquiry, he grabbed one of the youths by the neck. ‘The woman and the girl! Where are they?’

  ‘Fuck off! I don’t know,’ the lad exclaimed. ‘Probably still inside. That’s where they were. Who fucking cares? Let ’em burn.’

  Otto looked at the burning house. The ground floor was ablaze but the second floor wasn’t burning yet. It would not, however, be long.

  He tried to approach the house. The front door was already a furnace. There was no way that even driven by love he could enter there. The front windows too were impassable, fierce flames coming from every one. The great bay window that looked out from Frau Fischer’s drawing room was a red-hot hole.

  Then Otto heard the sound of sirens and clanking bells. There was a screeching of tyres and two large fire tenders thundered to a halt.

  Otto dared to hope that all might still be well.

  Firemen tumbled out as orders were shouted and with impressive efficiency the crew began preparing their hoses.

  Otto ran over to the officer who was directing operations.

  ‘Stengel, sir! Otto Stengel,’ he said, snapping to attention and delivering the German salute. ‘I’m a Napola boy.’

  Otto knew that a panicked appeal would get him nowhere. He must be calm, authoritative.

  That’s how Paulus would have been.

  ‘I’m busy, son,’ the fire officer replied curtly.

  ‘I think the Fischers are still in there, sir. I have been in the house. I know the layout. I can help you get to them.’

  But the officer simply shrugged and turned to direct his men who now had their hoses unwound.

  ‘Steady pressure!’ the officer called out. ‘One on either side.’

  There was a roar and a gushing sound. The hoses which had been lying flat across the street squirmed and whipped into rigidity as the water engorged them and two great pressurized arcs shot from their spouts. There were three officers gathered around each nozzle struggling to contain and direct the water as the hoses twitched and slapped on the road, like tethered snakes desperate to break free.

  For a second Otto felt relief, but only for a second. Relief was followed in short order by black horror.

  The firemen were directing their hoses on to the houses on either side of the Fischer residence.

  ‘What are you doing!’ Otto screamed. ‘There are people in the burning house.’

  ‘Calm down, lad,’ the fire officer replied sternly. ‘If you’re here from Napola you’ll know the directive. We have been ordered to let Jewish property burn but to ensure that German property is not damaged. You may understand that the neighbours here are getting pretty concerned for their homes.’

  For a moment longer Otto watched almost transfixed as the firemen, in accordance with a nationwide directive, dampened down the nearby houses while doing nothing to put out the actual fire.

  Then he snapped out of it and ran. Crossing the front garden under the great arcs of water, skirting round the burning building and running up the dividing path that separated Dagmar’s house from one of its neighbours.

  As he ran he was drenched in water, fizzing and steaming as it cascaded off the roof of the next-door building, soaking him, which was a tremendous relief as the heat from the burning Fischer house was terrible.

  At the back of the building the garden was empty. There was plenty of evidence that it had recently been filled with looters and vandals but now with the fire taking hold in earnest whoever had been there had clearly decided to join the main party going on around at the front.

  Otto knew there was a ladder. He had been in this garden many times as a boy and had sometimes seen the Fischers’ groundsman put a long ladder against the house to clear the gutters or carry out some minor repair to the roof.

  He found the ladder just where it had always been, laid out on the ground behind the potting shed, and with a huge effort he was able to drag it out and get it up against the back of the house. Under the place he knew was Dagmar’s bedroom window.

  The fire had still not ignited the upper storey but it had certainly taken hold of the whole of the ground floor and Otto felt as if he must burst into flames himself as he stood on the lawn, wrestling with the ladder in the burning heat, trying to raise its upper section by means of the pull rope until he could get it high enough.

  Somehow he managed the job and once the top end of the ladder was rested on Dagmar’s windowsill, he scurried up, his skin burning at first but cooling as he got above the level of the flames.

  Arriving at the window he peered into Dagmar’s room. It was dark and he could see nothing through the glass. The power lines must already have been consumed by the flames because there were no lights on in the house at all. Otto banged on the window, getting ready to try and smash a pane.

  Then, to Otto’s relief and astonishment, the sash window began to open.

  Sliding upwards in front of him.

  Dagmar was standing behind it.

  Her face a filthy, tear-stained mask of terror.

  ‘Ottsy,’ was all she could say.

  ‘Your mother!’ Otto demanded. ‘Frau Fischer …’

  ‘Downstairs,’ came the croaked reply.

  Otto climbed into the room and pulled down the window behind him.

  ‘The draught,’ he said in answer to the mute plea in Dagmar’s eye. ‘It’d fan the flames.’

  As he said it he was hurrying across the room. He opened the door and stepped out on to the upper landing. It was already a furnace. The staircase was alight, the ground floor beneath a mass of flame.
The heat and smoke were overwhelming.

  Otto took one step forward, almost by instinct. But it was useless, he could not get another centimetre closer to the flames than he was already. No one could have done. Besides, if Frau Fischer had remained downstairs she was assuredly already dead.

  Otto retreated into Dagmar’s room and slammed the door behind him. Rushing to the window he opened it once more and looked out. He could see that below him the flames from the bottom floor of the house were already reaching out and licking at the lower part of his ladder.

  If they were to get down that way they had only seconds left before their escape route was burned up beneath them.

  ‘I’ll go first in case you slip,’ he said.

  He climbed out and descended the ladder by a rung or two then, looking back in, he noticed that Dagmar was in her stockinged feet. ‘Grab some shoes, Dags,’ he shouted. ‘You must have shoes. We’ve got to get away from here and there’s glass everywhere.’

  The fact that Dagmar could scarcely speak did not mean that she was defeated entirely. Still mute, but active, she grabbed her strongest shoes from beneath the bed, and sitting on its pink coverlet for one final time managed to put them on without fumbling. Then she followed Otto out of the window.

  ‘The last bit’s going to be bloody hot,’ Otto shouted. ‘Let’s get it over with.’

  Together they descended, both in turn losing their grip on the red-hot lower section of the ladder and falling together in a heap on the back lawn, before picking themselves up and scurrying away from the flames.

  Dagmar turned and looked back at the burning house.

  ‘Mummy,’ she whispered.

  Shouts could be heard from around at the front. Shouts and laughter and singing. Clearly the crowd was enjoying the bonfire, watching a beautiful home burn.

  Then a chant began.

  Death to Jews. Death to Jews.

  Dagmar began shouting.

  ‘You got your wish!’ she shouted back, suddenly hysterical and violent. ‘My mum’s in there! My mum’s dead. My dad’s dead too. You got them both. The Jews died! Isn’t that enough!’

  Otto grabbed her hand. He didn’t think there was much chance of her being heard by the mob at the front of the house, but it would only take a few of them to decide to have a look in the back garden for him and Dagmar to be discovered.

  Or she might run round to the front. With the wild way she was screaming and twitching there was no telling what she would do.

  Otto could scarcely imagine what her mental state was after what she had been through. Only minutes before she had been resigning herself to being burnt alive.

  He tried gently to pull her away but she wouldn’t move. She simply stood, staring at her burning house.

  ‘They kicked down the front door,’ she said, quieter now but shaking terribly, her face and body flickering orange in the light of the fire. ‘They went all through the house. They slapped and hit us. They tore pictures off the wall and pissed on the rugs. They took what money and jewellery they could find and smashed everything else …’

  ‘Dagmar,’ Otto whispered, gently tugging at her sleeve, ‘we have to get out of here.’

  ‘Mama was hysterical,’ Dagmar went on. ‘Beating her fists against her own head, that made them laugh. I locked myself in the lavatory and they left me alone in there. Thank God for the laws on racial purity, eh?’

  Dagmar actually smiled at that thought, but it was a shocking, mad smile.

  ‘Dagmar,’ Otto urged again, ‘we have to—’

  ‘Then they went away and we thought it was over and we sat together amongst the chaos they’d made—’

  ‘Dagmar—’

  ‘Mummy was trying to gather up all the photos and albums that had been thrown around. By the time I realized they’d set the house on fire it was too late to get out. The hallway was burning and the only place to go was upstairs. I ran but she must have been trying to bring her photo albums. I only realized when I turned back at the top of the stairs that she wasn’t following me. I could see her trying to pick up photographs and albums and bits of memories and then dropping it all as she reached out to try to gather more. I screamed at her to get out but it was too late, by the time she realized how close the danger was it was too late. All the papers and pictures around her were already burning. Then the ones she had gathered in her arms … her past life was her funeral pyre.’

  ‘Dagmar,’ Otto said, firmly now, ‘we have to get moving. They’re out for blood. You need somewhere to hide.’

  But Dagmar wouldn’t move. She was simply frozen with horror. Having found the strength to get out of the burning house she now had none left to flee. The sight of the flames had transfixed her.

  Then Otto remembered her toy. The stuffed monkey he had picked up in the street and which he knew had been with her all her life. Taking it from his pocket he pressed it into her hand.

  ‘How …?’ she murmured, looking down at it.

  ‘It was outside, on the road. I picked it up.’

  Dagmar put the little woollen object to her face and breathed deeply, taking in its smell.

  Somehow it seemed to help her. Otto’s desperate effort at providing a distraction had worked.

  ‘Where will you take me?’ she asked in a steady voice.

  Relieved, Otto led her by the hand to the back of the garden where there was a gate into an alleyway behind.

  ‘I know how to get away from here,’ he said.

  Paulus and Otto had never told Dagmar but years before, when they had first fallen in love, they had sometimes made their way right across town together in order to creep into that same back alley and stare up at Dagmar’s window. Hoping to catch a glimpse of her shadow on the blind.

  ‘We’ll go to my mum’s place,’ he said. ‘There are no other Jews in our block so at least they won’t have burnt it. There’s a big order gone out about not damaging German property.’

  ‘An order?’ Dagmar said, almost to herself.

  ‘Come on,’ Otto instructed, ‘we need to get a move on.’

  The distance from the Fischer house to the Stengel apartment was a good eight kilometres clean across the centre of the city. A city they had known all their lives but one that had been transformed utterly into the most dangerous of jungles in which gangs of wild and merciless predators pack hunted Jews.

  ‘We’ll have to avoid the Ku’damm,’ Otto said, as they hurried along. ‘My school mates are all over it. I’m supposed to be a part of all this.’

  ‘You mean … it’s been planned?’ Dagmar said in astonishment.

  ‘Oh it’s been planned. They read out an SS order, signed by Heydrich himself. The police have been told not to intervene.’

  They were hurrying along through the crowded streets. Streets that appeared to be in the grip of some bizarre sort of carnival in which joyful revellers perambulated from one bloody entertainment to another.

  ‘They’re going to kill us all,’ Dagmar said in a voice that sounded as if she was already dead. ‘They’re going to kill us all tonight.’

  Otto kept firmly hold of Dagmar’s hand and pulled her forward.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We should be able to grab a tram at Zoo.’

  With the town in the grip of a riot and the fire brigade at full stretch trying to contain the many and various blazes being set, it took them almost three hours to get to Friedrichshain. When they got there, however, the district was much quieter than the centre of the city had been. There were still screams and bangs and the smell of fire was everywhere, but the street on which the Stengels lived was free from hooligans.

  Otto and Dagmar ran into the well of the apartment building and got into the lift which for once was at the right end of the shaft. They stood for a moment in silence as it began its noisy, ponderous way to the sixth floor.

  ‘Dagmar,’ Otto said falteringly, ‘I’m so sorry – about Frau Fischer. About your mum.’

  The words seemed so supremely inadequate that
he wished he’d said nothing.

  ‘I envy her,’ Dagmar said, her voice hollow and empty like a freshly dug grave. ‘Not the way she died, of course. But being dead.’

  ‘No, Dags! Please,’ Otto protested.

  ‘It was what she wanted anyway. She talked about it so often that these last few months it’s as if she’s been dead.’

  The lift crawled its way up the building. Otto struggled to think of something to say.

  ‘You know I haven’t been in this lift since I was fifteen,’ he remarked.

  ‘Should you risk it now?’ Dagmar asked. ‘You know you’re banned from ever coming back here.’

  ‘Fuck them. They don’t know where I am.’

  ‘Won’t they miss you?’

  ‘It was a free-for-all, I’ll say I got separated. That I was chasing Jews,’ he said, almost with a smile, ‘which of course I was. I bet I’m not the only one of the older boys to have grabbed the opportunity to go off and please himself.’

  Finally they arrived at the old familiar corridor.

  There was no light on in the apartment and Otto of course no longer had a key.

  ‘Oh shit,’ he said, ‘please don’t tell me they’re out.’

  He knocked on the door and then whispered: ‘Paulus … Paulus, are you there?’

  After a moment they heard Paulus’s voice from within.

  ‘Who are you?’ the voice demanded. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘It’s me, Pauly! It’s Ottsy,’ Ottsy hissed. ‘I’ve got Dagmar.’

  The door swung open and within a moment all three were in each other’s arms, hugging as if their lives depended on it.

  ‘Fuck, Ottsy,’ Paulus said eventually, ‘look at you! You’re huge.’

  ‘Where’s Mum?’ Otto replied.

  ‘She’s everywhere,’ Paulus said, ‘the phone hasn’t stopped ringing. There’s so many people hurt. It’s like they’ve actually declared war on us.’

  ‘They have,’ Dagmar whispered, cupping her hands around a mug of beef tea that Paulus had been preparing for himself and which he had now given to her.