Two Brothers

Funny Money Berlin, 1923

THE CRUCIAL THING was to move fast. When a kilo of carrots could leap in price fifty-thousand-fold in the space of a day, a young couple with children to feed were wise not to leave their shopping until the afternoon.

Wolfgang was fortunate in that being a musician he finished work only an hour or two before the commercial day began. He would grab his pay from the manager, in bundles of freshly printed notes, some still damp having been produced only hours earlier on one of the twelve printing presses that the Reichsbank kept running twenty-four hours a day. Then he’d rush out of the back door of whatever club he had been playing at, lash his trumpet and his violin to the rack of his bicycle and pedal off in a fever of anxiety lest the inflation render his wages worthless before he had the chance to spend them.

In February he had two or three hundred thousand marks stuffed into his pockets in five-and ten-thousand-mark notes. By the summer he had begun carrying his instruments on his back and his wages strapped to his bicycle rack in a bulging suitcase.

Knowing that the drinks he had had with Kurt and Katharina had made him late, Wolfgang laboured mightily at the pedals of his bicycle. His teeth rattled as he forced the ungeared old bone-shaker across the cobbles and uneven flagstones of Berlin’s nineteenth-century back streets, his mouth clamped firmly shut for fear that he would bite his tongue as he bounced along.

He chained his bike up by the communal bins in the internal well of their apartment block, rushed in through the front entrance and summoned the lift. For some reason, wherever Wolfgang was in the building, be it at the top or the bottom, the lift was always at the opposite end of the shaft. Usually he stood cursing quietly at this purest example of sod’s law, but on this occasion he had cause to be thankful, for as he waited on the ground floor, listening to the lift’s laborious, clanking descent, his mind returned to his recent encounter and in particular of course to Katharina and her goodbye kiss.

He remembered her hand drawing his face towards hers. The lazy eyes behind the cigarette smoke. Her mouth momentarily alive.

And then he remembered her lipstick. Thick, glossy and purple.

If there was one thing that Wolfgang knew it was that a woman could detect another woman’s cosmetics at fifty paces and from behind closed doors. He grabbed at his handkerchief and wiped vigorously at his mouth.

Looking down at the little linen cloth he saw that he’d had a lucky escape, there were hints of dark purple on the cloth. Of course he had no reason to feel guilty, he hadn’t invited the kiss. But Wolfgang knew that when it came to other women’s lipstick, innocence was no defence.

Frieda was waiting for him in their apartment, her hat and coat already on, her bag ready at her feet and Otto in her arms.

‘You’re late,’ she said in a loud whisper, nodding towards the children’s bedroom door to remind him that one child was still asleep.

‘Sorry. Got talking. A fella said he wanted to offer me a job. Could be interesting.’

‘Take Otto, he’s been up an hour,’ Frieda said, shoving the toddler into Wolfgang’s arms and grabbing her bag. ‘Had a nightmare I think. Got to rush. I’m meeting Ma and Pa before surgery starts. It’s Dad’s day.’

As a police officer Frieda’s father was on a monthly salary, an arrangement that only a few months before was a mark of success and stability. A middle-class achievement which meant that if a person was sacked they had a whole month’s notice with which to cushion the blow. But in Germany in 1923, a monthly pay cheque was a curse. The recipient was forced to buy everything they needed for the month to come in the first hour of getting their money, because by the following day when the new dollar exchange rates were announced it wouldn’t buy a pod of peas.

‘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.’