Two Brothers: A Novel

by Ben Elton

  ‘I still think it’s stupid that you have to go with them,’ Wolfgang grumbled.

  ‘They’re no good at all on their own, you know that,’ Frieda replied from the doorway. ‘They still think it’s 1913 and spend so long squeezing each orange and sniffing the cheese that by the time they’ve decided to buy something they can’t afford it any more. I’m going straight to the clinic from the market so you’ve got the boys until Edeltraud comes at ten. I’ll try and get back before you go out tonight. See you!’

  ‘Don’t I get a kiss at least?’ Wolfgang asked.

  Frieda turned around, her face softening in an instant. She dropped her shopping bag and ran back to him.

  ‘Of course you do, my darling.’ She put her hands to his face and pulled him towards hers.

  Then she stepped back.

  ‘Whose perfume is that?’ she asked.

  ‘What?’ was the best Wolfgang could do in reply.

  ‘You smell of perfume, whose is it?’

  ‘Well, I … my aftershave, I suppose. My cologne.’

  ‘I know your cologne, Wolf. I’m talking about perfume. Women’s perfume. I can smell it. Even over the sweat and the booze and the gaspers, so it’s been rather close to you I’d say. Did you kiss someone at the end of the evening, Wolfgang? Just asking.’

  Wolfgang could scarcely believe it. In seconds she’d recreated the entire crime scene.

  ‘Frieda, for goodness’ sake,’ he stammered.

  ‘Is that why you were late, Wolf?’ Frieda’s voice was now a steely combination of disingenuous innocence and flint.

  ‘No! I’ve told you, I was talking to this fella about a job. His girl gave me a peck …’

  Frieda put a hand back up to his face and wiped a thumb across his mouth. ‘There’s grease on your lips, Wolf. They’re still waxy. On the lips is not a peck. You peck cheeks. You kiss lips.’

  Wolfgang was stunned. He’d always known his wife had a smart, analytical mind, she was a doctor after all, but this bordered on witchcraft.

  He pulled himself together. Time to get on to the front foot.

  ‘I didn’t kiss anybody, Frieda,’ he said firmly. ‘Somebody kissed me, which is a very different thing.’

  The best defence was the truth.

  ‘Who?’ Frieda asked, still narrow-eyed.

  ‘I have no idea.’

  Or at least as much of it as you could afford to tell.

  ‘Some stupid flapper,’ Wolfgang went on. ‘She was with the man I was telling you about, the one who wants to offer me a job. She just flung her arms round me and kissed me. Said she was a jazz fan.’

  ‘Hmmm.’

  ‘I can’t help it if I’m irresistible.’

  ‘Was she pretty?’

  ‘God, Frieda, I don’t know! I doubt it or I’d have noticed. I was trying to get away and she kissed me. Like I said, I didn’t kiss her, she kissed me, and if you want to know, I’m a bit unhappy at what I think you may be implying.’

  Frieda’s narrow look softened a little.

  ‘We-ell,’ she said, ‘you can see why I wondered.’

  ‘Only if I first presume that you don’t trust me.’

  That got her.

  ‘I work in nightclubs,’ Wolfgang continued, pressing his advantage. ‘They’re full of silly young girls. What do you want me to do? Have six bodyguards like Rudolph Valentino? I refuse to let my sexual magnetism make me a prisoner.’

  She was laughing now. He could always do that to her.

  ‘You’re right. I’m an idiot. Sorry, Wolf.’

  ‘Well really. As if I look at other girls.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. I’m tired … But if you see that little flapper again just you tell her to keep off, all right?’

  ‘If I do, I will. But I doubt I’ll ever lay eyes on her again, babe. And by the way, I thought you were supposed to be in a hurry.’

  ‘God, I am!’

  Once more she reached up and took his face in her hands and pulled him towards her.

  ‘And by the way, whoever she was didn’t kiss you. This is a kiss.’

  Frieda pushed her mouth against his and for a few moments kissed him with hungry passion while Otto gurgled happily in between them.

  ‘Let me put the kid down,’ Wolfgang gasped, his free hand grabbing at her.

  ‘No! Can’t. Sorry, Wolf,’ Frieda said, breaking away. ‘Got to run. Dad’ll be livid if he can’t afford any herring.’

  And for the final time she picked up her bag and ran for the door.

  ‘We need to make more time for each other,’ Wolfgang said, following her into the corridor.

  ‘I know, darling,’ she replied. ‘But I work days, you work nights, and we have two toddlers. We’ll make time for each other, I promise, but it might have to be when the boys are grown up.’

  The lift arrived, in its shuddering and laborious manner. Frieda pulled open the concertinaed metal doors and stepped inside.

  ‘Maybe around 1940,’ she said, ‘when they’re at university. Book a restaurant.’

  Wolfgang was not smiling. ‘I’m serious,’ he said.

  ‘I know, I know, just kidding,’ Frieda said through the diamond gaps in her cage. ‘We will make time, we really will. We’ll make the effort.’

  Then there was a clunk and a shudder and she disappeared down the shaft. Ankles, waist, chest. A final smile and she was gone.

  Wolf was left with Otto in his arms, who having happily watched his mother disappear now found it hard to come to terms with the fact that she had actually gone and began to wail. Wearily Wolfgang turned back towards the apartment.

  He thought about Frieda. How much he loved her. How much he wanted her. How very very frustrated he felt.

  Involuntarily Katharina intruded on his thoughts.

  She was probably still out there enjoying the night. Still drinking, still dancing. Still living the jazz, baby.

  Wolfgang went back inside the flat and into the kitchen in search of a rusk.

  Not very jazz, baby.

  Fuck Frieda’s dad.

  ‘Why can’t your Gramps do his own fucking shopping?’ Wolfgang said to Otto.

  ‘Fucking,’ said Otto. ‘Fucking shopping. Fucking. Fucking. Fucking.’

  Renewed Acquaintance

  Berlin, 1923

  OUTSIDE IN THE street Frieda ran for a tram and nearly got herself run over in the process. City traffic was getting out of control.

  Wolfgang said it was just ‘mechanized Dada’. It was his joke. He said that Surrealism had become so ubiquitous that even Berlin drivers were challenging structure and form.

  However, as the mother of two wilful toddlers, Frieda did not find the situation funny at all. She had in fact spent several chilly Saturday mornings standing outside the U-Bahn station collecting signatures for a petition of complaint to the local council, but had so far heard nothing back. The newspapers said that there were plans to install Berlin’s first traffic lights in Potsdamer Platz along the lines of what had been developed in New York. But Frieda reckoned that no such refinement was likely to reach the less glamorous streets of Friedrichshain in the near or even distant future.

  Two tram changes later she was in her old childhood district of Moabit where her parents still lived and where she was to meet them on the steps of the Arminius Markthalle on Jonasstrasse.

  Frieda was always happy to visit the Arminius with its great arched red and yellow brick entrance. It had been built in 1891, nine years before she was born, and had always been a part of her life. An enormous, noisy, frantic, bustling Aladdin’s cave of a building in which it always seemed to Frieda that every magical and wonderful thing on earth could be found.

  She had wandered its great steel arched aisles through all the weekends of her growing up. First, pushed in a pram, and then holding on to her mother’s hand. After that, giggling and gossiping with school friends, and finally shyly with boys. It had been at the Arminius that Frieda had first met Wolfgang. He had been busking for pf
ennigs during the starvation winter of 1918 and she had given him a bite of a piece of dried beef jerky her mother had managed to find for her lunch.

  And now she was back, as if she’d come full circle, except that this time it was her parents who were holding her hand.

  It was towards the end of the shopping trip that Frieda quite unexpectedly bumped into Karlsruhen. It was the first time she had laid eyes on her ex-employer since her final day as his model when he had assaulted her in his studio, and Frieda was startled to see the depths to which he had sunk. For Karlsruhen was not at the market to shop but to sell. He and his wife had set up a little stall in amongst the junk dealers at the back of the great hall from which they were trying to unload his previously valuable works.

  It was a chastening sight. Both Karlsruhen and his wife looked thin and haggard. The skin of the sculptor’s previously fat jowls hung in creases from his face. Neither of them had overcoats and they were clearly feeling the cold. Despite it being summer the hall was draughty.

  Karlsruhen and Frieda caught each other’s eye but did not acknowledge it. Frieda certainly had no wish to renew their acquaintance and he clearly felt the same way.

  Unfortunately Herr Tauber had also spotted the stall and was pushing his loaded shopping cart straight for it.

  ‘Look at this, Mother,’ he called to his wife. ‘This stuff’s very good, proper art, not like this modern nonsense. Come along, Frieda! Bring the purse, I think I might buy something.’

  Frieda had no choice but to hurry after her father, who was already introducing himself to a somewhat alarmed-looking Karlsruhen.

  ‘Tauber. Police Captain Konstantin Tauber at your service. I think your work is very fine, sir. Very fine indeed.’

  Now Karlsruhen looked genuinely worried, clearly wondering whether Frieda had decided finally to make a complaint about what had happened. It made her angry because she had always felt that she should have reported him, and had only not done so because it would have simply been one word against another and could have done no good. Now, however, she found herself in the position of having to set her attacker’s mind at rest for fear that he would blurt out some lie and an awful scene would ensue.

  ‘Hello, Herr Karlsruhen,’ she said, ‘it’s been a while, hasn’t it? This is my father and mother. Don’t be alarmed,’ she added, as if making a joke, ‘he’s not on duty.’

  Frieda forced herself to smile pleasantly. There was nothing to be gained from confronting him now, a year later, and she had nothing but sympathy for the man’s wife.

  ‘Goodness gracious, Frieda,’ Herr Tauber said. ‘Do you two know each other?’

  Karlsruhen clearly wished they’d all go away but had no option but to introduce himself.

  ‘Your daughter used to model for me,’ he explained.

  Frau Tauber had been inspecting one of the figurines and nearly dropped it.

  ‘Goodness!’ she exclaimed. ‘Modelled? For these?’

  Every single statuette displayed on the table was of a naked girl. Frau Tauber’s expression hovered somewhere between astonishment and horror.

  ‘Yes,’ Frieda said brightly, ‘didn’t I ever tell you?’

  ‘You told us that you were modelling,’ her mother replied, ‘but not …’

  ‘This is me,’ Frieda said, picking up one of the figures. ‘It’s a good likeness, don’t you think?’

  Herr Tauber took it from her and then immediately handed it on to his wife, clearly feeling that even holding the thing was somehow inappropriate.

  ‘You mean, you posed for it?’ he said. ‘Completely naked?’

  ‘Yes, Dad. Don’t you like it? You did before.’

  ‘It is a Rhinemaiden,’ Karlsruhen said grumpily, taking it back from Frau Tauber. ‘Of course they’re naked.’

  ‘Yes, a Jewish Rhinemaiden,’ Frieda said, giving Karlsruhen a hard stare, suddenly fed up with tiptoeing around the man. ‘Think of that? What would Herr Wagner have said?’

  ‘Nonsense, Frieda!’ her father exclaimed. ‘A German’s a German. I have two French bullet wounds in my thigh that say my daughter has as much right to cavort in the damned Rhine as anyone. Isn’t that right, Herr Karlsruhen? She makes a splendid nymph!’

  Karlsruhen admitted that she did and since the Taubers did not seem to be moving on he was forced to introduce his wife. Frieda shook the woman’s hand feeling most uncomfortable, not merely because of the unpleasant secret she shared with the woman’s husband, but also because of the reduced circumstances to which Frau Karlsruhen had fallen. She couldn’t help but suspect that the person who would suffer most from Karlsruhen’s wounded pride was his wife.

  Herr Tauber, having got over the initial shock of encountering a naked depiction of his daughter, had decided that in fact he was rather proud that Frieda had inspired such fine German art. He thoroughly approved of Karlsruhen’s style and subject matter.

  ‘Had you been posing for one of these idiot pornographers our imbecile arts establishment insists on lionizing, then I should have been concerned, but this is the art of a patriot and gentleman. Herr Karlsruhen, I salute you.’

  Herr Tauber shook Karlsruhen vigorously by the hand, utterly oblivious to the horrible irony of his description of the man, and the crackling undercurrents flowing between the artist and his daughter.

  ‘In fact, my dear,’ Herr Tauber said, turning to his wife, ‘I really do think we must have this! After all, it’s not every girl who gets to be a Rhinemaiden. And I’m happy to go without my bottle of schnapps this month to get it too.’

  Karlsruhen scowled at this graphic illustration of the current value of his work.

  ‘It’s bronze and the plinth is marble,’ he said sulkily, but his wife had already taken Tauber’s money.

  ‘For you, my dear,’ Tauber said, making a flourishing gesture and handing it over to Frieda. ‘I’m sure Herr Karlsruhen will admit that it is not quite as beautiful as its model but it’s a fine piece of work nonetheless and I am proud to make you a present of it.’

  Frieda suspected that Karlsruhen would admit no such thing, but the sculptor merely continued to scowl and said nothing.

  A New Job

  Berlin, 1923

  ‘THAT WAS THE Sheik of Araby, ladies and gentlemen,’ Wolfgang said, emptying the saliva valve of his trumpet into the cigarette-filled spittoon at his feet, ‘fresh out of the USA! And my many thanks to our genial host Kurt Furst for bringing such a scorching new tune to my attention. Smokin’! We’ll be back after a break.’

  The boisterous crowd of young men and women, their elegant evening dress in disarray, shouted for more as the sweating combo retired to the little band room at the rear of the stage behind a shimmering beaded curtain.

  Wolfgang had begun working for Kurt the very day after they first met, when, true to his word, Kurt had bought the club in which Wolfgang was working.

  ‘Say hello to your new boss, Mr Trumpet!’ the exuberant teenager had shouted, having waylaid Wolfgang in the alleyway at the back of the venue as Wolfgang was chaining up his bicycle. ‘I told you I’d buy this joint. So welcome to the Joplin Club, the hottest hell-hole in town.’

  Katharina was there too, standing in the shadows of the little stage doorway, trying to keep her coat from touching the filthy, urine-soaked walls, the tiniest smile creeping across her usual mask of bored indifference.

  Wolfgang smiled also.

  But nervously.

  In the early hours of that very morning he’d been wiping this woman’s lipstick from his mouth and lying to Frieda that he could not recall if she was pretty or not. He had in fact recalled very well how pretty she was, and had continued to recall it any number of times that day as he mangled nappies and created amusing faces out of apples and cheese for his children.

  But what could he do? Jazz musicians couldn’t turn down work because there were pretty girls attached. They’d never work at all.

  ‘Congratulations, Kurt,’ he said, ‘looks like I’m your new band fixer then
.’

  ‘You betcha, Daddy!’ Kurt replied. ‘We’ll make this joint jump!’

  And from the moment the three of them walked together down into the darkened cellar, breathing in the stench of the previous night’s booze and tobacco and following the morning’s toilet bleach, they did exactly that. They made the joint jump.

  It was, without doubt, the best job Wolfgang had ever had.

  And not just because Kurt was a ridiculously generous employer who paid at least twice what Wolfgang could have got elsewhere. The main cause for Wolfgang to celebrate was that Kurt was a genuine fan. He loved his jazz in a way that only the young love their music. Like a first love. Their discovery, defining them and their generation. To Kurt jazz was a religion, a way of living. He knew every record just in from the States and the names of half the side men in New Orleans. But he didn’t use this knowledge to impose his vision on his club. He respected Wolfgang absolutely and gave him a completely free hand.

  ‘Just make sure it’s out there, Daddy,’ he said. ‘Blow it hot hot hot!’

  Wolfgang could scarcely believe his luck.

  ‘All the other assholes I’ve worked for don’t give a damn about the music,’ he told Frieda on the morning after his first night at the Joplin. ‘Those cloth-eared pricks only play jazz because it brings in the gangsters and the flappers; they’d play nursery rhymes or bloody Wagner if they thought it would pay. Even the ones who pretend to understand the music would be happy if we played Alexander’s Ragtime Band and The Yankee Doodle Boy back to back all night. But Kurt’s different, he’s got soul. He only bought the club so he can listen to the band. It’s like his own great big grown-up toy.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ Frieda observed dryly between sips of coffee and bites of black bread. She was working away at some statistical papers and did not look up. ‘I dealt with three cases of rickets yesterday.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Wolfgang rather surprised. ‘That can’t have been much fun.’