Two Brothers: A Novel

by Ben Elton

  After all, he knew what she was. She had once spat the fact in his face.

  ‘Goodness, Herr Karlsruhen,’ Frieda said, ‘this is a surprise. Won’t you have some tea?’

  He stood looking at her for a moment, his eyes flicking from her feet to her head and back down again. She was standing in the middle of the room on the big blue rug. He still hovered close to the door.

  ‘Or coffee perhaps? Or I have some chocolate I made for the children – it’s a chilly night. Please, come in. Sit down?’

  But he just kept staring. Or at least Frieda presumed he was staring, his eyes were hidden in the shadow cast by the broad brim of his hat.

  ‘Turn around,’ he said finally.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Ten years is a long time, thirteen in fact,’ Karlsruhen went on. ‘You were twenty or twenty-one as I recall when you modelled in my studio. Now of course you are in your thirties. Most women lose their bloom and their shape during those years. I knew you wouldn’t, though. Yours is a beauty that will take many more years to fade. Won’t you turn around?’

  Frieda swallowed once or twice but then did as she was asked, rotating a single turn on the carpet where she stood and ending with a desperate, selfconscious little flourish.

  She had decided she must humour him. At least until she knew more. Any hope, no matter how tenuous, was worth grasping at. This man wore the party badge. If he wanted her to turn around and to pay her ridiculous compliments as he had done when she was young, then of course he could.

  Karlsruhen breathed deeply, sucking in air in a kind of reverse sigh. Frieda felt almost as if he was trying to smell her.

  ‘You are still beautiful, my dear,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, forcing a smile. ‘That’s very sweet.’

  ‘You haven’t changed so much you know,’ Karlsruhen said. ‘Your figure is still beautiful, at least, I think it is. One cannot tell for sure of course until …’

  He left the unfinished sentence hanging in the air. Frieda knew that she was going red and hot and flustered and fought against it. It was obvious that for whatever reason he still desired her. Perhaps somehow she could play that to her advantage.

  He was a party member after all.

  ‘I have come,’ Karlsruhen said majestically, ‘to ask you to take up modelling for me again.’

  ‘Modelling? But why? Can’t you find younger girls than me?’

  ‘I have never forgotten you, Frieda, my dear. Despite the – difficulty – of our parting I have never forgotten how you – inspired – me and often since then I have longed to be inspired again … I see you have one of our pieces still,’ he said, turning to the little statuette that stood on top of the piano. ‘Your father acquired it. For a fraction of its worth, as I recall. But then he is a Jew and so one shouldn’t be surprised at that. It is the way of your people.’

  Despite still being prepared to try to ingratiate herself, Frieda found herself protesting the slur.

  ‘He paid what you and your wife were asking,’ she said. ‘You were offering the same prices to anyone in the market.’

  Karlsruhen studied the end of his cane for a moment. He clearly did not wish to discuss the statuette. He flicked some invisible speck from the moulded silver knob while clearly considering what best to say next.

  ‘Let us not fall out, my dear,’ he said finally.

  ‘Have you come here after dark to offer me employment, Herr Karlsruhen?’ Frieda asked. ‘Wouldn’t a note have been a better beginning to our reacquaintance?’

  ‘I will speak plainly. I have never forgotten our last, ahem … encounter. Not at the market … I mean at my studio.’

  ‘No, Herr Karlsruhen, nor have I,’ Frieda replied, ‘but let’s not dwell on the past, you had been drinking and—’

  ‘By rights I should be angry with you, and in many ways I am.’

  Frieda had been trying to appear forgiving but now her mouth gaped wide in astonishment. ‘You, angry with me!’

  ‘You deceived me,’ Karlsruhen whined piously. ‘I thought you were a German girl.’

  ‘I was a German girl! Herr Karlsruhen. I am a German girl. It’s only this last year or so that anyone has presumed to say I’m not and they have no right.’

  ‘You are not German, Frau Stengel, and you know it. You are a Jew. Shortly there will be new laws at Nuremberg and you will lose your citizenship as all Jews will …’

  ‘Herr Karlsruhen, have you come here to tell me what I can read every day in the Völkischer Beobachter?’

  ‘I have come here to tell you that I still desire you, Frau Stengel! I wish to finish the business I began in 1920. It has stayed with me all these years like no other need. You denied me then but I hope you will not deny me now. There, I have said it. I know that it is wrong but—’

  ‘Of course it’s wrong—’

  ‘You are a Jew, so such things are rightly forbidden. Your blood is not my blood, your race inferior. And yet you bewitch me. You always did and I have never forgotten the feel of your body when I laid my hands upon it.’

  Frieda knew that she would have to decide.

  It was a dreadful, impossible prospect, one which would have been unimaginable, even an hour before. But Wolfgang was in the hands of the SA. She knew that she would do anything to save him. Anything.

  ‘Well … that’s very … flattering, Herr Karlsruhen,’ Frieda said, trying to keep her voice steady, ‘and perhaps I was a little brusque with you all those years ago. But now, well, the thing is, my husband—’

  ‘Ah yes, your husband,’ Karlsruhen said with triumphant malice. ‘Once there was a time when you told me your husband would kill me for what I would like to do to you. But he can’t help you now, can he, Frau Stengel? He can’t even help himself. For where is he? Do you know, Frau Stengel? I don’t think so.’

  And the dreadful truth dawned on her. Incredible that it took so long for the devilish penny to drop. It was so obvious. Him turning up that very night. Scarcely an hour after …

  ‘What do you know about my husband? Tell me!’

  ‘I know that he is a decadent and a purveyor of corrupt Jew filth and he has been rightly taken into custody and—’

  ‘It was you! You reported him!’ Frieda hissed. ‘You evil bastard, you had them get him out of the way so you could force yourself on me!’

  ‘Your husband has been arrested, Frau Stengel, that is all we know. Meanwhile, there is the matter of you and your children to consider. I have influence. I am highly regarded in official circles. You may in fact have read that I have recently been elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts … I am perhaps not quite an Arno Breker but nonetheless I have been told even the Führer has—’

  ‘Can you help my husband? If I do what you want, can you help him?’

  She had decided. She would let his plan work out the way he wanted if only he would bring back Wolfgang.

  But of course he couldn’t.

  ‘Your husband is gone, Frau Stengel. Into the abyss,’ Karlsruhen said. ‘His fate is now beyond you or me to influence. It is now for you to consider your own position and that of your children. If you will agree to meet me in secret from time to time I can help you. I can protect you and gain you privileges. Believe me, your kind will be in need of such things quite soon now. I can make sure that your sons are allowed to complete their studies. I can see that the local SA are warned off.’

  ‘Herr Karlsruhen, can you help my husband? He has only just been taken! Surely it is not too late!’

  ‘That Jew is gone!’ Karlsruhen said angrily. ‘Forget him. Think only of yourself. Do as I say and I will help you. Deny me and I swear I will do the opposite. How old are your boys now? Fourteen? Old enough to go to Dachau I can assure you … You must succumb to me. You have no choice. You must finally allow me to do to you what you deserve, you little Jewish slut! You whore! Do you think you can deny me? You are Untermensch. You must crawl or die. I’ll break your Jew pride. I’ll show you how a bea
st should be tamed. You will let me use you as I wish or your boys will follow your husband to Dachau!’

  He had taken hold of her now, all pretence at civilized manners gone. And she was utterly at his mercy. Legally without protection, socially without position or influence. Completely defenceless.

  He would take her boys. They’d be sent to a camp.

  She had no choice.

  Frieda kissed him. Hard on the mouth.

  Reaching down she took a hold of him for a moment through his thick woollen trousers. He squirmed against the pressure of her hand.

  ‘At last,’ he gasped. ‘I will take what I want.’

  ‘But not here,’ she begged, breaking away. ‘The children—’

  She did not finish her sentence.

  And that unfinished sentence was the last Karlsruhen ever heard. The words ‘the children’ the final two words ever to enter his consciousness.

  Which was fitting, for it was the children who killed him.

  Otto struck the blow.

  He, Paulus and Silke had been listening from the boys’ bedroom and when they heard the sinister conversation degenerate into scuffling sounds they had opened the door and entered the living room.

  Karlsruhen had been too preoccupied to notice movement behind him and Frieda could see nothing but the sculptor’s huge face and body pressing down on her.

  Otto acted, as ever, on instinct. He scooped up the nearest weapon, which happened to be the little bronze statuette of his mother that stood upon Wolfgang’s piano, and, leaping forward, smashed its heavy marble plinth into the back of Karlsruhen’s head. Splitting open the man’s skull.

  Karlsruhen simply crumpled up. Pole-axed, slumping down on to the thick blue rug.

  Frieda found herself facing the three young people over his prostrate form.

  For a moment they all remained motionless.

  Otto, breathing hard, holding the statue by the head, Paulus and Silke just behind him. Karlsruhen slumped on his side. Blood seeping from the back of his head. Frieda, eyes wide with shock, for once at her wits’ end.

  ‘What …? What do we do?’

  It was all simply too overwhelming.

  For her, but not for Paulus, who stepped forward, kneeling down beside the unconscious man and feeling his pulse.

  ‘Is the bastard dead?’ Silke asked from behind him.

  ‘No,’ said Paulus. ‘He’s still breathing.’

  Without saying a world Otto raised the statuette in his hand, clearly about to bring it smashing down for a second time.

  Frieda gasped in horror. Paulus raised his hand.

  ‘Stop it, Otto!’ he hissed. ‘We don’t want any more blood than there is already. Thank God he fell on the carpet and thank God it’s such a thick one. If he’d gone down on the floorboards we’d be in trouble. Can’t get blood out of wood.’

  The news that Karlsruhen was alive cleared Frieda’s muddled thoughts, her natural instincts forcing her to focus.

  ‘If he’s alive then I should help him.’

  ‘What?’ Otto said.

  ‘Yeah. What?’ Silke echoed.

  ‘He’s injured, I’m a doctor.’

  ‘Mum,’ Paulus said quietly, ‘he’s injured because Otto hit him. You can’t help this man.’

  Frieda paused. It was obvious he was right.

  But it was hard for her nonetheless. For the first time in her life she must fail to help someone in need. Deny her Hippocratic oath. To most people, Paulus, Otto and Silke included, there would be no question. They would gladly let the swine die, even without the enormous threat that he posed to them if he survived. Simply because he deserved to.

  But Frieda was not most people. She was that rare thing, a truly altruistic individual, and in that moment a part of her was lost. It was not the worst thing for which she would never forgive Adolf Hitler, but it was terrible to her nonetheless.

  On the rug Karlsruhen began to stir. Paulus reached into the injured man’s top pocket and pulled out his handkerchief. A huge square of purple silk. The perfect affectation to complement the wide-brimmed hat and silver-topped cane that went to make up the man’s absurdly selfconscious ‘artistic’ image.

  ‘What the …’ Otto exclaimed, perhaps under the impression that Paulus was intending to use the cloth to try to bind Karlsruhen’s wound. The protest died on his lips, however, as Paulus began stuffing the handkerchief into the semi-conscious man’s mouth.

  Perhaps some dream-like notion of the danger he was in jolted Karlsruhen out of his stupor and he began to writhe. Otto dropped down beside his brother and held the flailing arms while Paulus stuffed the last of the cloth deep into the gaping gullet, using the fountain pen he always carried in his breast pocket so as to avoid losing his fingers.

  Then Paulus held Karlsruhen’s nose.

  The dying man was big and heavy and desperation lent brute strength to his final convulsions. But the boys were strong too, particularly Otto, strong in arm and strong in hate, and they held him down till he was dead.

  ‘Paulus, Otto,’ Frieda murmured.

  But she knew that what they did they had to do.

  The Nazis had made killers of her boys.

  Paulus stood up. His voice shook a little as he spoke but nonetheless he was calm. Even commanding.

  ‘We have to get rid of him,’ he said. ‘It’s night time and we can do this …’ He paused. Thinking. Willing himself to make a plan.

  ‘How, Pauly?’ Otto asked quietly. ‘Tell us how.’

  Once more there was silence.

  Paulus stood over the corpse, his fists clenched, his eyes closed. His features contorted with the effort of concentration.

  Frieda looked down at the dreadful sight on the floor. The blood seeping from the fractured skull, spreading, creeping, soaking into the thick blue of the carpet.

  ‘Oh, Pauly, Pauly,’ she whispered, ‘how can we ever—’

  ‘Right,’ Paulus said abruptly, interrupting his mother, perhaps unaware even that she had spoken. ‘Otto, you run to old Sommer and borrow his cart. Tell him Mum’s selling some stuff. Park the cart by the bikes in the courtyard and come straight back up. All right?’

  Frieda wiped a tear from her eye.

  ‘It’s no good, Paulus,’ she said. ‘Even if you got him out. When they find he’s missing they’ll retrace his movements.’

  ‘They’ll try, Mum,’ Paulus replied, ‘but I don’t think the trail will lead them here. Remember how he turned up? After dark. Collar up, hat down – he didn’t want to be seen, did he? Good Nazis don’t consort with Jews, they certainly don’t pay them house calls. Do you think he could afford for people to know he was trying to force a Jewess to be his mistress? And him a party member? No chance. Nobody knows he’s here and if we don’t panic and we make a proper plan, nobody ever will.’

  Paulus turned to Silke.

  ‘You don’t need to be a part of this, Silks,’ he said, ‘you should get out now.’

  Silke didn’t speak, she couldn’t, she was swallowing hard to keep from gagging, but she looked at Paulus and shook her head.

  ‘All right,’ Paulus said. ‘If you want to help you can. We’ve got to roll him up.’

  Still without a word Silke knelt down on the floor.

  Paulus turned to his brother. ‘What are you hanging round for, Otto? Go and get the cart!’

  Otto had also seemed in something of a state of shock but Paulus’s words snapped him out of it.

  ‘Right,’ he said, making for the door, ‘the cart.’

  Paulus got down beside Silke and began to go through Karlsruhen’s pockets.

  ‘Pauly!’ Frieda gasped. ‘You aren’t robbing that man.’

  Paulus looked up at his mother. His face grimmer and more determined than she had ever seen it.

  ‘He’s not a man, Mum. He’s a corpse,’ Paulus said. ‘Me and Otto killed him. And the only chance we have of getting away with it is to stay absolutely calm and make the best plan we can. Money’s useful stuff
when you’re in trouble and we have very little. The sensible thing to do is to take his. We have to do the sensible thing, Mum. No mistakes, not one. It’s the only way we’ll survive this.’

  Silke had already found the dead man’s wallet, which contained more money than Frieda earned in three months.

  ‘We killed him in self-defence,’ Frieda said, ‘but if we rob him and you’re caught—’

  ‘If we’re caught, Mum, it won’t make any difference whether we’ve robbed him or not,’ Paulus said, heaving the heavy carpet over the body and beginning to roll it up. ‘But we won’t get caught. The only people who knew he was here tonight are us and him. He’s dead and we’re not telling. You can be bloody sure that when he made his complaint about Dad he did it anonymously. They always do.’

  This last comment made Paulus pause. In all the horror of the situation he had forgotten about Wolfgang’s arrest. For a moment the fight and spirit seemed to drain out of him, but then drawing a deep breath he steeled himself once more.

  ‘Got to concentrate on the plan,’ he said, speaking, it seemed, to himself. ‘If we can just get him out of the flat and dump him, I reckon we’re safe.’

  By the time Paulus and Silke had the body rolled up and tied with parcel string, Otto had returned. Then he and Paulus wrestled the rolled-up carpet with the body in it into the lift and got it downstairs, with Silke scouting ahead to ensure the coast was clear. The three of them then carried the heavy roll outside and wrestled it on to the cart. They were very lucky that nobody else in the block came or went during the time it took to do this but they were also ready to brazen it out with a sob story about having to sell everything to buy food. Of course with a man of Karlsruhen’s bulk inside the rolled-up carpet it did look strange but once they had brought other rugs and cushions from the flat and loaded them on to the cart all around the concealed corpse, it gave a pretty good impression of an impoverished Jewish family forced to sell off all their meagre possessions.

  ‘It’s only nine o’clock, Pauly,’ Otto whispered as they arranged the cart. ‘The streets will still be pretty crowded. Don’t you think we should wait till later? Till the middle of the night?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Paulus replied, ‘it’s better this way. Crowds are good. I wish it was lunchtime.’