Two Brothers: A Novel

by Ben Elton

  ‘Helene’s a Nazi?’ Wolfgang replied.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Helmut, ‘and not from convenience either. She’s not like me, I’m just a fair weather National Socialist, but she’s the real thing. She’s besotted with the whole business. Loves it. The flags, the uniforms. The power. She honestly believes that Germany’s woken up. From what and to what she never really explains. It’s just woken up that’s all, new dawn, young nation, pure blood. The lot. She’s hysterically in love with Adolf, of course, but then so many otherwise perfectly sensible women are. They dream of him marching into their boudoirs and ordering them sternly to bed where they will lie back rigidly to attention with right arm outstretched while he tells them that it’s his unalterable will that he ravishes them. Honestly, I bow to no one in my appreciation of male beauty but that one I really cannot see.’

  Wolfgang thought back to the Helene he had known. Young and bright and intelligent. In love with fashion and fun. And now she was in love with Hitler.

  ‘She was a fashion buyer for Isaac Fischer,’ Wolfgang said.

  ‘Well, the Jews enslaved us all before the awakening, don’t you know,’ Helmut said with a smile.

  Wolfgang almost smiled too. Helmut didn’t care what he joked about; he never had.

  ‘She was such a free spirit,’ Wolfgang went on. ‘And a good heart, too, I know she was. We laughed together all the time. She loved The Sheik of Araby and Avalon. Doesn’t she mind? I mean about all the hatred and violence.’

  ‘She doesn’t think about it, dear. And if she did, she’d think it was all lies, just Jewish moaning and a few sweet, over-excited SA boys getting carried away. People like Helene are having too much fun to want any of this to stop. Everyone is having too much fun. Every day another parade assuring us that we’re better than everyone else in the whole world, so invigorating. You can see why people love it, surely? I mean if Adolf had decided to pick on, say, left-handed people and let Jews join his gang, you’d be strutting about with everybody else, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I hope not. Not me. But I’m sure plenty would. Of course it wouldn’t happen though. It’s always the Jews who get it. It’s why we’re here.’

  ‘Apropos of which, Wolfgang,’ Helmut said, producing a pen and a little leather notebook on which a swastika was embossed, ‘I’m going to write down my telephone number for you. If you need help, and of course you will, you may call me. Be discreet, of course, when you explain yourself, but I promise that I will do what I can for you, for friendship, you know, for old times’ sake.’ Helmut tore the piece of paper from his book and got to his feet. ‘And now I’m afraid I must go. I fear I have a long long night on the train ahead. I’d only popped into your little bar to see if I could pick up a bit of company for the journey. Love a bit of fresh trade, you know, can never resist the lure of the new, but now I fear I shall just have to read a book.’

  ‘Where are you off to?’ Wolfgang said. ‘Somewhere nice?’

  ‘Munich! Heart of the movement, my friend! Home of big bellies and small minds. Thank God I’m just passing through. Off to Bad Wiessee, a charming little spa resort. Have you been?’

  ‘No. I’ve never had a holiday, as it happens. We had our kids too young, never had the time, never had the money.’

  ‘And of course when we were young Berlin was a holiday. Why would one have gone anywhere else?’

  ‘That’s true.’

  A wistful shared moment hung between them. Then Helmut drained his wineglass and his Cognac and called for the bill.

  ‘Anyway, you certainly aren’t missing much on this trip. Bad Wiessee itself is beautiful but the company won’t be. Hey ho! Duty beckons, all work and no play makes Chief of Staff SA Röhm a dull boy and I must go and line up his playmates.’

  As they parted Helmut took Wolfgang’s hand.

  ‘Don’t forget,’ he said, ‘I can help you. I’m SA and we can do what we like. Pretty soon there won’t be an army, or a police, or even a government in Germany, just us, the SA. We are the party, and we are the nation. Even Adolf is scared of Röhm, you know. Well, who wouldn’t be? Three million troops? The SA is the biggest army in Europe and it answers to Queen Ernst, not King Adolf.’

  ‘I’m grateful, Helmut. Thank you.’

  They emerged from the restaurant and parted, Helmut in a black Mercedes that had been waiting for him, Wolfgang to make his way home on foot.

  As he did so his thoughts were far away and long ago. Back in the Berlin of 1923, at a bar, talking theatre and art with an intoxicating girl.

  He didn’t love Katharina any more. He had never loved her in the truest sense. He loved Frieda and Frieda alone, Katharina had been a crush, an infatuation. But a beautiful and sincere one nonetheless, based as much on a meeting of minds as it had been on her sexual allure, and his heart ached to think of her in such abject misery. If he had ever loved another woman it would certainly have been beautiful, thrilling Katharina.

  All those nights talking art and theatre. All that style. That captivating beauty.

  And now.

  Wolfgang had seen the faces of those ravaged by that cruel disease.

  Forcing such images from his mind he focused once more on the beautiful nineteen-year-old with the severest shining black bobbed hair he had ever seen. The smoky stare. The purple lips. Chattering about Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht. Stealing Lucky after Lucky from the packet on the bar between them.

  Lost as he was in 1923, Wolfgang wasn’t concentrating on the present.

  Had he been, he might perhaps have noticed the large black van parked opposite their apartment building. He might have seen the little gang of kids standing nearby, as if waiting for something to happen, throwing glances his way and giggling. He might have sensed the nervous excitement with which the concierge grunted her guten Abend, her manner even ruder and more abrupt than usual, her door closing quickly as he passed.

  But preoccupied and half drunk, the first inkling Wolfgang had that something was wrong was when the creaking, clanking old lift began to settle as it arrived at his floor. That was when he noticed through the metal diamonds of the cage that the front door to their apartment was wide open.

  That was certainly unusual.

  Then a moment later as he was pulling back the concertinaed door and stepping out, Wolfgang heard Paulus’s voice shouting out. Shouting out a warning. ‘Run, Dad, run!’

  But it was too late.

  He turned but they were already all around him, reaching hold and dragging him into his own apartment, where Frieda was standing in silent terror, her arms around her sons.

  There were half a dozen men present, one in plain clothes, the others dressed in a uniform that Wolfgang had only seen in news reels. A terrifying, all black affair, on the caps of which was a skull and crossbones.

  One of the black-clad figures was holding the print that for ten years had hung above Wolfgang’s piano. The one by Georg Grosz depicting an army medical team from 1918 passing a skeleton fit for active service.

  The man holding the print had put his leather-gloved fist through it, glass and all. The jagged shards lay broken at his feet.

  ‘You admire this decadent?’ the man said with a superior sneer.

  Decadent? Even in that moment of dawning horror Wolfgang’s mind recoiled at the strange outrage of a thug who, having invaded a private home, ripped a picture from the wall and smashed it with his fist, then had the effrontery to call the artist decadent.

  ‘Yes,’ was all Wolfgang could think of in reply. Knowing very well that from this point of complete disaster onwards what he said was irrelevant anyway. They had come for him, that was all. He did not know why, but no one ever did. He had lost enough friends over the previous year to know that once these people had you in their sights there was no hope …

  Another officer spoke up. He had hold of Wolfgang’s beloved trumpet.

  ‘You play nigger music?’ the man asked.

  The same casual sneer. These people genuinely seemed
to feel that they were the civilized ones.

  ‘Well … I did play jazz … but now I …’

  The plainclothed officer spoke up. Obviously a Gestapo man, dressed as ever in the inevitable gabardine coat and Homburg which every German, even the most fervent Nazi, had come to dread.

  ‘We have received intelligence that you are a dangerous subversive. A dangerous Jewish subversive. You will come with us.’

  ‘Dangerous? I play music.’

  ‘Nigger music.’

  ‘How is that dangerous?’

  ‘It is morally corrupting. Germany protects itself from decadent and inferior culture. You will come now.’

  Frieda cried out in desperate protest.

  ‘But, sir, officer, I’ve explained!’ she pleaded. ‘It must be a mistake, he’s just a poor musician. A harmless nobody. I am a doctor, I’m known in the neighbourhood, many Aryans of my acquaintance can vouch that my husband is of no consequence. The local Lutheran minister, he will speak for us, I know it … Please, let me call him!’

  ‘Stengel,’ the plainclothed figure commanded, pointing at Wolfgang, ‘come quietly or we will subdue you. I presume you would not wish your children to see that.’

  Wolfgang glanced across at his family.

  Frieda scrabbling in her address book for the pastor’s number.

  Otto looking ferocious, ready to kill … His hand playing with something in his pocket.

  Paulus glancing about, his eyes darting from one black-clad figure to another, trying to think of something, anything.

  Wolfgang knew that the longer he drew this out, the more chance there was of his boys doing something very stupid. Particularly Otto.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I will come. Boys, be calm. For Mum’s sake. Be calm.’

  ‘No! Take me!’ Otto shouted. ‘I’m the subversive. Whoever called you must have meant me! Look, I’ve got a—’

  Otto’s hand was emerging from his pocket but Paulus, seeing what Otto intended to do, stepped forward, holding Otto’s arm and positioning himself in front of his brother. ‘Wait,’ he said, trying to smile, ‘I’ve got it! I know what this is about. There’s been a mix up. Your informant must have meant those other Stengels! The Communist ones. They live on – oh, where is it? – that’s right, Boxhagener Strasse! We’re always getting mixed up with them. If you just …’

  It was a good effort but the home-invaders weren’t listening. The Gestapo man barked a command and two of the black-clad figures took hold of Wolfgang. Frieda screamed in terror, leaping forward and holding on to him, struggling in the grasp of his tormentors.

  During the moment of confusion when the room seemed to have twice as many bodies in it as a moment before, Wolfgang was able to grab at his wallet and press it into his wife’s hand.

  ‘Here, take what I have, there’s a little money – for the boys,’ he said, before leaning forward into her desperate embrace and whispering, ‘The number. Call it, ask for Helmut, tell him.’

  Then the SS men dragged Wolfgang away.

  As the last one, the Gestapo man, was leaving, his figure framed in the doorway, Otto pulled his knife from his pocket. There was a click and the blade sprung open. A vicious gleaming spike. Otto raised the weapon, blind hatred in his eyes, poised to spring. Paulus saw the danger just in time and shoulder-charged his brother, sending him sprawling on the floor as the door to their apartment closed.

  ‘You lunatic!’ Paulus snarled. ‘You stupid bloody lunatic. Do you want to get Mum killed as well?’

  Otto turned on his brother, furious for a moment, then blank, and then, quite suddenly, he began to cry. Perhaps it was the words ‘as well’ which set him off. Had their father been dragged away to be killed? Both boys knew it was possible. Probable.

  Paulus cried also. Perhaps Frieda would have done so too but she was too busy searching in Wolfgang’s wallet.

  Outside they heard the groan and clank of the lift as it began its descent.

  Unfriendly Nazi

  Berlin, 1934

  FOR AN HOUR or so after Wolfgang’s arrest, Frieda tried continuously to call the phone number that she had found in Wolfgang’s wallet, but received no answer.

  Paulus and Otto sat on the couch, scarcely able to speak. So sudden and absolute had been the disaster that had befallen them. They knew precisely what sort of danger Wolfgang was now in. This had not been an arrest in the way such a thing was recognized in other countries. With the reading of rights and the arrival of lawyers. The possibility of a defence, even of innocence. Too many husbands and fathers had been arbitrarily abducted over the previous eighteen months for the Stengel boys to be under any illusions that their father would be given a chance to defend himself. It was perfectly possible that Wolfgang was already dead.

  ‘Just like Dagmar’s dad. At the station,’ Otto said finally. ‘One minute you see him, a second later he’s gone.’

  Paulus glared at Otto. ‘It’s not going to be like Dagmar’s dad,’ he said, and then repeated it, quietly, almost to himself. ‘It’s just not.’

  Frieda put down the phone.

  ‘I’ll wait fifteen minutes and then call again. Have either of you boys ever heard your father mention anyone called Helmut?’

  But the boys had not.

  Frieda tried to pass the time by making herself some tea and hot chocolate for the boys.

  Then they heard the noise of the lift approaching their floor once more and dared for one moment to hope.

  But it was Silke.

  She had come around intent on rehearsing her own grievances. Her relationship with her mother’s Nazi boyfriend had gone from bad to worse. Right from the start Silke had refused to accept his authority in the house and for that reason he had taken to slapping and spanking her. She was fourteen years old and was of course deeply outraged at this and so became all the more defiant, which in turn outraged the SA man. And also astonished him. He had clearly imagined that by living with Silke’s mother he had acquired for himself two servants for the price of one. He expected his clothes laundered, his food cooked and his cigarettes and beer brought to him while he sat hogging the gas heater. Edeltraud herself was completely cowed and terrified of losing him. As the fiancée of an SA man she was a ‘somebody’ in her block for the first time in her life. The SA were all powerful, they did what they liked, and if anybody objected there were three million more of them around the corner spoiling for an uneven fight. Edeltraud simply adored going about knowing that all the old bitches who used to sneer at her and call her a whore must now be pleasant to her, and so she always sided with Jürgen against her daughter. Silke had therefore taken to keeping out of the way as much as she could, and often took refuge at the Stengels’ apartment, where she was always welcome.

  She had come there now, nursing a swelling ear and a sore backside courtesy of the newly awoken German man, but she soon realized her troubles were as nothing compared to those that had befallen her old friends. And befallen her also, for Wolfgang and Frieda were as much family as she’d ever known.

  ‘Is there anything your Brownshirt stepdad could do, do you think?’ Otto asked but without any hope at all.

  ‘Are you kidding? He has no idea I still come here,’ Silke replied, ‘and if he did he’d probably actually kill me. Besides, those guys were SS, that’s different. Jürgen’s only a stupid little prick of a corporal in a street gang really. He’s a big man in our block or when he’s hitting me but out in the real world he’s just a scared little rat. The only Nazis that listen to him are the other apes on our street corner.’

  Frieda brought some hot chocolate for Silke and together they tried to think. Frieda noticed that there was still broken glass on the floor from the destruction of Wolfgang’s Georg Grosz print and began to clear it up. Paulus went and got some parcel tape and carefully repaired the torn picture. Despite the SS man having put his fist through it, no pieces had actually come away and so it was possible to make it look almost new, from the front at least.


  Paulus hung the now glassless print back up where it had been. A small act of defiance.

  Then once more they heard the lift creaking and clanking outside in the well of the building, followed by a heavy footfall outside, and again for a tiny moment they dared to hope.

  But the figure who a moment later was standing there in the shadows was not their father. The boys did not know who it was at all, but Frieda did. Even if she had not seen him for eleven years. Not since that day at the market during the Great Inflation when he had been selling his works for a pittance.

  ‘Good evening, Frau Stengel,’ the man said, remaining in the dark. ‘I hope I do not intrude.’

  ‘Well, no,’ Frieda stammered, ‘no, of course not … Herr Karlsruhen … what a very unexpected surprise. Boys, go to your room please and shut the door, take Silke.’

  The surge of hope that Frieda had felt on hearing footsteps had been replaced by complete astonishment at the utterly unexpected appearance of this figure from her distant past. Now, however, as the youngsters retreated with many a wary glance at the shadowy figure in the doorway, hope rose within her once more. This man had once been infatuated with her but he had wronged her. Could it be that his conscience was troubling him? Had he come finally to make amends?

  Could it be that somehow his sudden reappearance could be of assistance to Wolfgang?

  From what detail she could make out, Karlsruhen certainly looked like a man of influence. A very different figure to the lean and angry stallholder who had been peddling his work for peanuts during the inflation. Clearly he was once more a person of substance. More so even than when Frieda had first known him. More portly and more expensively dressed in his big cashmere coat and holding his silver-topped cane.

  Frieda did notice that the collar of his coat was turned up high and his wide-brimmed hat had been pulled low. As if he had not wished to be recognized when he entered the building.