Two Brothers: A Novel

by Ben Elton

  Paulus managed a smile in reply, his eyes flicking briefly to take in the first of numerous signs announcing that Jews were banned from the beach and its facilities.

  The wet, windswept steps down from the ticket office boasted none of the festive garb that the three trippers remembered from happier visits. It being late November there were no flowers in the station windowboxes. No balloon-seller or ice-cream stand. The little wooden pretzel wagon was boarded up and padlocked and there was no accordion player in Bavarian costume with his feathered hat filled with coins.

  But the sun peeped through the clouds momentarily, as it was supposed to do at Wannsee, and if they half closed their eyes and imagined that the limp and sodden swastika banners hanging from the lamp-posts were strawberry bunting, they could almost visualize the summer of 1930 when the great Strandbad Wannsee lido had been brand new. When Dagmar and her parents, stately in first class, and the Stengel twins with Wolfgang and Frieda in third, had joined the tens and tens of thousands of other holiday-makers thronging on to this very platform, all eager to see the gift to the people of Berlin from their municipal council. The new restaurant, the changing facilities, the easy access to the longest inland beach in Europe and, most important of all to the civilized citizens of Germany’s capital, the splendid public lavatories.

  The three of them made their way over the little railway bridge that crossed the platform and descended the worn-down old stone steps on the lakeside of the station to the promenade.

  Of course every few metres they had to pass another sign forbidding Jews to visit, but in Otto’s company Dagmar and Paulus felt relatively safe. They were young, fit and attractive, filled with life and vitality. It would have been a very great leap of the imagination for one of the ubiquitous police spies who hung about in the parks and pleasure palaces even in bad weather to mistake such a good-looking trio for any of those grotesque caricatures that featured in the pages of Der Stürmer or in the editorials in the Völkischer Beobachter.

  The fat, top-hatted, hook-nosed gargoyle with its greedy, bulging eyes, grinning over money bags stuffed with Yankee dollars. Or the cadaverous figure with the hammer and sickle on its forehead, dragging a helpless maiden by the hair with one hand and holding a dripping knife in the other, a desecrated church left burning in its wake.

  ‘Streicher and Goebbels might get mistaken for those people,’ Dagmar said bitterly as they passed a poster depicting just such a wicked duo, ‘but not us.’

  ‘How do they do it?’ Paulus said. ‘How do they get away with these unbelievable pictures? I never saw anybody remotely like that in my life. Not even in a pantomime. Do people really believe they exist? I mean, it wouldn’t be so bad but Adolf’s entire gang are such a pathetic, weasel-faced bunch of cunts themselves.’

  The next poster along was for the Hitler Jugend and the Bund Deutscher Mädel, which of course depicted the inevitable ideal of Nazi youth staring upwards with distant inspiration in their eyes. The funny thing was that, blonde hair aside, Paulus and Dagmar could quite easily have modelled for the poster. The two of them looked as fine and upstanding an example of German youth as any two eighteen-year-olds could be, and had Hitler been passing by in his open-top Mercedes, he would without doubt have nodded with approval and shaken them all sternly by the hand. Goebbels probably would have done more than shake Dagmar’s hand. His reputation as a sexual predator was already well established and his particular taste was for sophisticated and glamorous young women with filmstar beauty. Dagmar would have caught his eye immediately.

  Dagmar caught the eye of most men. Heads always turned to admire the tall, long-legged beauty when she walked about town, always elegantly turned out, with the handsome Napola Jungmann on her arm. None of those who grinned and nudged their friends and even wolf-whistled at her shapely behind as it swung past would ever dream that this lovely-looking Berlin girl was the same spoiled, cruel and wicked Jewess heiress of Goebbels’ hysterical editorials, the pariah daughter of the Jew capitalist Isaac Fischer.

  Dagmar had only been thirteen, still a girl, when she was forced to retreat from her life. The young woman who had emerged a few years later courtesy of Otto’s Aryan ancestry was a very different creature.

  But there were no passers-by to wolf-whistle Dagmar at Wannsee on that wet November day as they made their way down from the amenities blocks to the beach.

  ‘Where shall we set ourselves up?’ Dagmar asked.

  The boys grinned at each other.

  As if Princess Dagmar Fischer would have allowed them to choose. She had always decided where to sit, right back to the first days of the Saturday Club.

  ‘Well, we’ve certainly got plenty of room,’ Otto said.

  The Wannsee beach was well over a kilometre long and they were the only people on it.

  ‘But I think we should move along a bit,’ he added, ‘up towards the Glienicker bridge.’

  Despite her current misery Dagmar found herself giving him a playful punch.

  ‘I know where you mean,’ she said, ‘and we are certainly not going there.’

  They all laughed. Otto was referring to the notorious nudist section of the beach, which had become even more popular under the Nazis, in their obsession with health and beauty.

  ‘I’m not going nude in this temperature anyway,’ Paulus said. ‘My dick will disappear.’

  ‘Not much to disappear if you ask me,’ Otto remarked, chucking a handful of sand.

  ‘Shut your face or I’ll hit you over the head with it.’

  A fight ensued between the boys, rolling together and tussling in the wet sand. Dagmar laughed. Something of the pent-up horror of the previous week and the terrible years that had preceded it was blown away for a moment at least in the fresh lakeside breeze.

  ‘Stop it, you two!’ she demanded. But she didn’t mean it. She never minded at all when the twins showed off for her benefit.

  ‘I think we’ll sit here,’ she said, putting her bag down on a secluded little dune where the lake wasn’t too weedy. ‘Look, there’s even a Strandkorb. Somebody must have dragged it here and it’s never been collected.’

  Dagmar sat down in the middle of the padded, two-seater wicker seat.

  ‘Don’t think we’ll need the shade,’ she said, going to push the canopy back.

  ‘Might keep the rain off a bit,’ Otto suggested.

  Dagmar squeezed at the cushion she was sitting on and it dripped water.

  ‘Hmm,’ she said, ‘bit late, I think. Still, it doesn’t matter, my bum can’t get any wetter so I might as well relax.’ She threw out her arms. ‘Won’t you two gentlemen join me on the chaise longue? Or is a girl to sit alone on the beach without an escort? How very ungallant of you.’

  Neither Paulus nor Otto needed asking twice. They both rushed to squeeze themselves in on either side of Dagmar. For a little while all three giggled and flirted together, the boys exchanging insults while assuring Dagmar of their individual devotion to her, she laughing and scolding and giving them kisses on their cheeks.

  ‘I’m going to swim!’ she said suddenly, getting up and disappearing behind the beach basket to change.

  ‘Don’t laugh,’ she called out. ‘I’m wearing your mother’s suit, which dates from the Stone Age, I think. It’s also too small but since it’s made of horrible baggy wool I don’t think that matters. I had a very daring two-piece in pale pink satin from France but of course that got burnt when …’

  Dagmar’s voice trailed off. It was obvious to both boys that her joie de vivre was paper-thin, that beneath the surface the indescribable horror of the previous week was constantly with her. As of course they knew it must be.

  ‘I always feel closer to Daddy when I swim,’ Dagmar said as she emerged in the ill-fitting navy-blue suit. ‘Mummy too, now, although she only sat and watched from the shore. She was always there though. Maybe she’s here now, sitting on that bit of grass. Her and Daddy watching over me.’

  Dagmar turned from them for a moment, sni
ffing deeply. Then she pulled herself together.

  ‘It’ll be pretty cold,’ she said, ‘but the only way to get in is to get in!’ She ran splashing into the lake, leaving Paulus and Otto struggling out of their shoes and trousers so they could follow.

  They couldn’t catch her, of course, she was far too powerful and efficient a swimmer. What was more, that afternoon she swam as if somehow, if she went fast enough, she might wash away a little of her pain. She swam hundreds of metres out into the vast lake, breaststroke, crawl and backstroke. The boys, though good enough swimmers themselves, could not compete over those distances and were forced to wait impatiently in the shallows for her return.

  It was pouring down now and so the boys eventually gave it up altogether, and filled in the time making a shelter for the picnic using an oilcloth groundsheet they had brought with them. They managed to knot it to the back of the Strandkorb for one half of the support and cut a couple of sticks from the scrappy woodland that fringed the lake for the other. In the end they were able to produce a decent enough lean-to under which they sat watching Dagmar powering her way back and forth across the storm-tossed lake.

  The sky was even darker now and there was thunder rolling in from the direction of Potsdam.

  ‘She’ll have to come out soon,’ Otto said. ‘If there’s lightning.’

  ‘I’m not sure if she’d care.’

  Otto nodded. He knew what Paulus meant. It was only a year since their own father had jumped from the Moltke bridge. There wasn’t a Jew in Germany who had not at some point given thought to suicide. Dagmar had more reason than most.

  ‘I think a girl like Dagmar wouldn’t mind so much if she went like that,’ Paulus continued, staring out across the wind-rippled lake to where Dagmar was churning up the water as if competing in one of those races from which she had been denied entry. Freestyle. Elbows up, fingers straight as they cut into the water, pulling her through it. ‘In fact, I think she’d love it. To be taken in a storm, swimming at Wannsee, blasted to oblivion mid-stroke in a glorious instant. I don’t think I’d mind much myself if I could go that way.’

  They stared out at the distant figure. Crooked white arm followed by crooked white arm. Face emerging every third stroke.

  ‘No. You’re wrong,’ Otto said finally. ‘A girl like Dagmar will never want to go at all. She wants to live for ever. Something inside her will always make her want to live.’

  ‘I certainly hope so. And it’s our job to make sure she succeeds. It’s your job, Ottsy. She’s your girl.’

  Finally Dagmar tired of her swim and began making her way back to shore.

  ‘Well, let’s drop it for now anyway,’ Paulus said. ‘After all, this is supposed to be a day out.’

  Dagmar swam the last twenty metres breaststroke, heading straight for the boys, her head rising and falling, mouth opening and closing in a perfectly executed rhythm. She knew the shore well from childhood and found her depth at about five metres out, emerging from the water looking like the magnificent athlete she was, Frieda’s sodden baggy costume clinging to the lines of her body. Paulus and Otto devoured the sight with hungry eyes.

  ‘Now now, boys. I’ll thank you not to ogle a lady in so obvious a manner,’ Dagmar said, taking up a towel, which was of course as wet as she was. ‘You look as if you’re eyeing up your dinner.’

  She stood before them, looking slowly from one to the other, patting at herself with the towel as the rain fell around her.

  ‘Speaking of which,’ she added, ‘where is dinner? Why don’t you lay it out, boys.’ She threw the towel into the Strandkorb and plonked herself down on the ground beside the boys. ‘I bags all the best bits.’

  ‘You know you don’t need to say that,’ Otto replied, starting to lay out the food.

  ‘I would if Silke was here!’ Dagmar laughed.

  Treats were no longer so easy to obtain in Berlin but nonetheless between them they had managed to assemble a decent spread, which they had kept dry in two biscuit tins. There was cheese, pickled gherkins, and even fresh white bread rolls. No butter of course, that had gone to make guns, but Dagmar had brought a little flask of olive oil and some salt. They had two bottles of beer, two packets of cigarettes and finally a whole bar of Suchard milk chocolate. The boys tried to insist that Dagmar should have all the chocolate but she had magnanimously suggested she take only half and they have a quarter each.

  So they sat together in the pouring rain, half protected by their improvised shelter, and ate their meal.

  And the emotions that crackled between them right from the start were as strong in their way as the lightning splitting the air above them.

  Three passionate young souls, all huddled together on the wet sand beneath a dripping oilcloth. Breaking the bread. Sharing the cheese. Three histories, inextricably entwined. At first so very happy. Then so strange and so cruel.

  Two boys desperately in love with one girl. Furtively stealing glances at her long bare wet legs, her feet folded beneath her bottom. The beads of rain on her slim arm as she reached between them for the chocolate. A chill wind blowing amongst them raising goose bumps on Dagmar’s glistening white skin.

  ‘Boys,’ Dagmar said, offering round the cigarettes and lighting one for herself with some difficulty in the groaning wind, ‘there’s something I want to talk about. Something important.’

  ‘Hang on!’ Otto said through a mouthful of bread. ‘Sorry! Got to take a slash. Been holding on but can’t …’

  Paulus grinned. ‘Such a romantic, soulful spirit, eh?’ he said as Otto scuttled off over the dune.

  ‘Go properly away,’ Dagmar shouted. ‘I don’t like hearing boys wee. You both used to leave the door open when we had our music lessons and I hated it.’

  She laughed but the jollity did not ring true. There was a new tension in the air. She turned to Paulus.

  ‘Pauly,’ she said, ‘was that your ticket I saw arrive in the post this morning?’

  Paulus frowned and looked away without answering.

  ‘So it was, then. I thought you looked a bit furtive.’

  ‘Not furtive, Dags,’ Paulus said, ‘just … well, sad. And scared, I suppose … can we please not talk about it?’

  ‘We have to talk about it, Pauly,’ Dagmar said. ‘When do you leave?’

  ‘February. I keep telling myself maybe I could put it off. Try to change the ticket, wait a bit longer. But Mum gets angry about that and you know it’s not like her to get angry about anything.’

  ‘Angry?’

  ‘Well, everybody’s desperate to get out now. Since Kristallnacht. All the people who’ve been telling themselves for years it’ll be all right. Like Pops and Grandma. They know now. But they’re too late. It’s insane the queues on the Wilhelmstrasse and at travel agents’. If I don’t take my chance now …’

  ‘I know, Pauly,’ Dagmar said quietly, and now it was her turn to look away. ‘I know.’

  ‘I don’t want to leave you, Dags!’ Paulus pleaded, his face suddenly a picture of guilt and anguish. ‘I can’t bear it. To even think of leaving you when all I’ve ever wanted is to be near you.’

  Dagmar leant over and squeezed Paulus’s hand, looking into his eyes unblinkingly.

  ‘And I can’t bear the thought of you going, Pauly.’

  ‘You know that if there was anything … anything I could do,’ he began, but he could not continue because at that point Dagmar kissed him. She pushed her face forward across the remains of the picnic and locked her lips on to his.

  Then her arms were around him and his around her.

  It was utterly unexpected and Paulus was taken completely by surprise.

  As was Otto.

  Who emerged at that moment over the sand dune.

  ‘Oi!’ he shouted in surprise. ‘What are you two up to?’

  He scrambled down the dune looking red in the face and angry.

  For more than three years, ever since the night he had mugged the SA man, there had been no doubt in Otto’
s mind as to who held the closer place in Dagmar’s affections, and it was him.

  She liked Paulus, sure. He was like her brother. But she was his girl.

  There had never been any doubt about it. Never on all the many outings Dagmar and he had shared since the day when Paulus had first produced his plan for them to be together. All the kisses and cuddles, the hand-holding, the shared frustration of not taking it further when they both admitted they wanted to.

  And now he found, on returning after an absence of just a couple of minutes, that she was locked in an embrace with his brother.

  ‘Come and sit down, Ottsy,’ Dagmar said. ‘I have to tell you something. And Pauly.’

  Otto did as he was told, a bewildered expression on his face.

  Paulus too looked at a loss.

  ‘Boys,’ Dagmar said, taking a deep breath.

  ‘This all sounds sort of ominous, Dags,’ Paulus said, trying as ever to intellectualize the moment. To put his brain ahead of his fast beating heart.

  ‘Ominous?’ Otto blurted. ‘Nice kind of ominous, if you ask me. Was that a “friends”-type kiss, by the way? Because it didn’t look like a “friends”-type kiss.’

  ‘Hey, Ottsy,’ Paulus replied angrily. ‘We were talking about me leaving. Amazingly, Dags is sad I’m going. Is that all right with you or does she need your permission?’

  ‘Oh, so it was a farewell-type kiss then?’ Otto asked.

  ‘Look! I don’t need to explain—’ Paulus began.

  ‘Boys!’ Dagmar said sharply. ‘Please. You have to listen to me.’

  The Stengel twins fell silent.

  ‘We’ve been best friends since we were seven,’ Dagmar went on, ‘and you know I love you both more than anything in the world. You are my world. Particularly now Mama has gone.’

  The rain started to fall harder as she spoke, running down her cheeks and on to her bare shoulders, where it was gathering in numerous little glistening droplets. Paulus and Otto listened in silence.

  ‘But we’re growing up now. We’re adults, not kids, and friendship’s a different thing, isn’t it? When you’re grown up. Between boys and girls.’