Two Brothers

Final Match Berlin, 1933

PAULUS AND OTTO were cornered.

They never should have come, of course.

How could they have imagined it would be the same as before? That they could just turn up in their footie kit at the old field, the way they had done for years and years, and play?

Paulus had been worrying about it all week. He’d even pinned a map of the local area to their bedroom wall the better to consider escape routes.

‘If we get chased,’ he said, ‘we don’t want to end up in a blind alley. There’s two near the recreation ground plus a walled building site. We need to know the best way out from every corner of the field and how to make for the U-Bahn station, OK?’

‘If we get chased,’ Otto said grimly, ‘we fight. There’s only four fucking Nazis on the team.’

‘Otts, they’re all Nazis now.’

‘Look, it’s our team. We’ve been OK at school, haven’t we?’

‘So far.’

It was true, they had. There had been a few murmurs and angry mutterings, not least from a couple of the teachers, but so far nothing worse. Maybe things would be all right at soccer too.

Even Frieda and Wolfgang had agreed that they should go. The boys had been on the team since they were eight. Five years playing with the same lads had to mean something.

But now as Paulus and Otto found themselves cornered in the changing shed they knew it didn’t.

Quite without warning their former team-mates had turned into a snarling, vengeful mob and the Stengel boys were in big trouble.

‘Jude! Jude!’

The big lad, Emil, began to formalize the chant, ominously beating the wooden walls of the little changing hut with a rounders bat. ‘Jew! Jew!’

The brothers stood side by side. Paulus had hold of a chair and Otto was preparing to use a dustbin lid and a broken corner flag as a sword and shield. The Stengel twins were formidable when they stood side by side and their assailants knew that, which was why for a moment at least they held back.

‘Filthy fucking Jews,’ Emil shouted, breaking the rhythm he had been banging out and taking a step towards the boys. ‘Now you’re going to pay for everything you’ve done to Germany.’

Paulus and Otto looked at the angry faces ranged against them. Emil had of course always hated them, he was the sort of boy who hated everybody, particularly the ones who stood up to him. But many others in the team had been their friends. Only a fortnight before, Otto had been sitting atop their shoulders having scored a direct goal from a corner kick in an important youth league match. But Hitler had been Chancellor for over a week now and the speed with which Paulus and Otto’s world had changed had been breathtaking.

Emil Braas had grabbed his first chance to avenge himself on the Stengel boys. For being better footballers than him.

For being popular and easy-going while he was sullen and had a reputation for spite.

For being attractive to girls while he was laughed at and teased by even quite ugly ones for being dull and lumbering.

This was Emil’s chance, as it was that month for every embittered, failed and inadequate fool in Germany. To be the big man at last.

Otto knew the score. He knew boys like Emil and as far as he was concerned there was only one course of action available to him.

Hit first and hit hardest.

That was his rule.

But Paulus hated that rule. He had a different one. Never confront if you could negotiate. That was the clever way. Yes, hit hard if you had to, but first, try not to hit at all.

Otto had already raised his weapon hand, the muscles on his bare arms and chest taut and prone. He was not quite yet even thirteen but already he had the physical definition of an athletic young man, of a fighter.

Paulus was in good shape too, Wolfgang had made sure of that. But he did not raise his weapon. Instead he laughed.

As a tactic, it had the benefit of surprise, if nothing else.

The crowd of adversaries looked taken aback, but they didn’t lower their fists.

‘What are you laughing at, Jew boy?’ Emil sneered.

‘Well, your face for one,’ Paulus replied, ‘but I ain’t talking to you.’

Paulus then turned to one of the boys standing a little back from the main mob.

‘Come on, Tommy,’ Paulus said. ‘We’ve been mates since kindergarten.’

Beside him Otto growled. What was the point of appealing to their better nature? Clearly things had gone way beyond that.

But that wasn’t Paulus’s idea at all.

He had a bolder plan. As Goebbels had said, if you’re going to lie, make it a big one.

‘We’re not Jews,’ Paulus said

It was the last defence anybody had expected, flying as it did in the face of accepted knowledge, and it certainly took the attacking mob aback.

‘Come on, Tommy,’ Paulus said, using the pause to press his advantage. ‘When did you see me with silly sideburns and a big black hat on?’

Tommy had indeed known the twins since preschool and they had certainly always been friends. But Tommy also knew that the Stengel twins were Jews. Subhumans, according to the Chancellor of Germany. Vermin. A filthy cancerous parasitic disease festering on the nation’s flesh. Sucking its blood.

‘You are Jews, you bastards,’ Tommy said. ‘You hide it. That’s what you swine do. You skulk and hide.’

‘We’re not bloody Jews, Tom,’ Paulus laughed. ‘Wankers like Emil may say we are but he doesn’t know his arse from his elbow, does he? He certainly doesn’t know which way to kick a football.’

A few of the boys laughed at that. Tommy smiled too.

Moments before when Emil had been marshalling them for the attack, blaming the Stengel boys for every possible injury that Germany had ever suffered, they had all been with him.

They had quickly overcome the unease they felt about attacking old friends (and good players) in the face of Emil’s blood-curdling rhetoric. The Stengels were Jews and as such there was nothing for it but to give them a bloody good hiding and cast them out for ever. Nobody who valued their own safety was going to stick up for a Jew in Berlin in February 1933.

But then nobody had expected them to deny it either and Paulus’s surprising position had stopped the assault in its tracks. If they were Jews then they deserved everything they were going to get, but if they weren’t Jews, then brilliant, they were back on the team, best mates again.

Even Otto was taken aback, although he tried not to show it. He’d learnt to trust his brother where planning and scheming was concerned, but this was a bold lie. Everyone knew the Stengels were a Jewish family, secular certainly, no worship, no special holidays, no funny hats or diet, Otto would have happily lived off bacon sandwiches and fried pork rinds for the rest of his life, but they were Jews nonetheless, everybody knew it, why try to deny it?

But Paulus had an ace up his sleeve.

Or, as he was later to tell his horrified mum, in his pants.

He had been thinking about it all week.

A foreskin wouldn’t stand up against a proper search of family history, of course. But it might do in an alleyway, in a cellar. When the wolves were in your face.

If you waved it about a bit and shouted. Loud and clear and furious and certain. They seemed to respond to that sort of thing.

And now the time had come to test the idea.

With his ex-friends and old enemies closing in, nine against two, it was time to try the big bluff.

‘Take a look at little Paulus, Emil,’ Paulus shouted, pulling up the leg of his football shorts with the hand that did not hold a broken chair. ‘What do you think of this big boy?’

Paulus reached up into his groin and pulled out his penis, shaking it at his surprised assailants.

‘Ever see a Jew boy with foreskin?’ Paulus crowed, putting down his chair leg and pulling down his pants. ‘So how about you suck on this, arsehole! Come on, Otto, show the twat what a real German dick looks like.’

Otto didn’t like it. Exposing himself in public seemed like black humiliation to him. On the other hand, they were so heavily outnumbered.

Slowly Otto laid down his corner flag and dustbin lid and pulled down his trousers.

The rest of the team loved it. They howled with laughter as Paulus waved his dick at Emil, who just stood there looking witless, unable to think of a rejoinder.

‘Tell your old man next time he insults decent Germans he’ll have to deal with the Stengel boys!’ Paulus shouted.

Otto just snarled and pulled up his pants.

Outside the hut a whistle blew. The opposing team would be waiting. The ref getting impatient.

‘So are we going to play football or what?’ Paulus shouted. ‘Let’s beat these bastards, eh?’

The incident was over. Emil turned away, confused. One or two of the other lads slapped Otto on the shoulder. He told them to piss off.

Paulus and Otto played the game. Giving it everything they had as always. Occasionally exchanging glances, mutually acknowledging their lucky escape. Both aware of the doubtful confused looks they were getting from Emil and the other openly Nazi members of the team.

It was of course their last game.

Football was over for them. Years of fun, sport and comradeship, stopped dead.

They both knew they could never risk going back.

They left the field the moment the final whistle blew. Their team had won and Otto had scored twice but the Stengels didn’t hang around to celebrate. There were no songs or scuffles or wild cheers. Otto was not hoisted high on shoulders as previously he would have been. They’d won but they had nothing to celebrate. Their entire world had collapsed.

‘I think we should have fought,’ said Otto as they stood waiting for their train.

‘Don’t be bloody stupid, we’d have been killed.’

‘Yeah. But we had to show them our dicks.’

‘So what? Who cares?’ Paulus asked, genuinely surprised.

‘I care. I suppose you and me are just different, that’s all,’ Otto said.

After that there was silence until the boys got home.

To face another humiliation.

From now on such things would be a daily occurrence.

Edeltraud was there, with Silke. And Edeltraud’s boyfriend, Jürgen, now her fiancé. The respectful young man who had come cap in hand to the children’s first concert recital five years earlier. The boys had seen him many times since then, although less so in the last year or two.

And never in the brown uniform of the SA.

‘Say goodbye to Edeltraud, boys,’ Frieda said. ‘She won’t be coming around any more.’

‘Of course she won’t!’ Jürgen snapped. ‘It is not fitting that a German woman should be a servant to Jews. You must know that.’

The boys looked at Edeltraud. Her face was hard, her chin set.

And at Silke, whose eyes were red with tears. Her chest heaving, weeping silently.

‘Tell me, Jürgen,’ Frieda asked quietly, ‘was it fitting, ten years ago, for a Jew to take in a seventeen-year-old street kid with an infant in her arms?’

‘You exploited her! You made her work for you!’

Frieda looked at Edeltraud.

‘Edeltraud, you can’t believe that’s true.’

Edeltraud avoided Frieda’s eye. ‘You’re Jews’ was all she would say.

‘Whatever we are, it’s what we’ve always been. All these years, together in this apartment. So much laughter, so many tears. You and Silke and us. What’s changed?’

‘What’s changed, Frau Stengel,’ Jürgen barked, ‘is that Germany has awoken. We have all awoken. We know now who you are and what you’ve done. And now it is our turn. Now give Edeltraud her money.’

‘Money?’ Frieda asked. ‘What money? She has been paid as always. More than most girls would have got.’

‘Her notice. We want a month’s notice.’

‘But she is resigning, Jürgen,’ Frieda said quietly. ‘Surely you know that she is not entitled to notice.’

‘She is not resigning. You are forcing her to leave.’

‘How? How am I forcing her to leave?’

‘By being Jews,’ Jürgen said. ‘This is a racial dismissal. Give her the money and be grateful I do not demand more!’

Frieda went into the kitchen. To the biscuit barrel, where she kept her household supply of cash.

‘You know, Edeltraud,’ Frieda said quietly, ‘I’ve always known that sometimes you took a little from here when I wasn’t looking. A few extra marks here and there. I never said anything.’

The boys looked at Edeltraud in astonishment. Such a thing would never have occurred to them. Silke stared hard at her mother. Edeltraud went red-faced but said nothing.

Wolfgang had been sitting at his piano, not facing his ex-maid and her storm-trooper boyfriend.

‘Would you like a schnapps, Jürgen?’ Wolfgang asked, turning around for the first time. ‘You’ve been happy to take one in the past.’

The young SA man remained silent standing beside Edeltraud on the blue rug where Silke and the boys had played happily so many times when they were small.

Frieda held out her hand to Edeltraud with some money.

‘Goodbye, Edeltraud,’ Frieda said. ‘For more than ten years, you’ve been family. I shall remember you that way.’

‘You’re Jews,’ Edeltraud repeated. It seemed to be all that she could say. The shield with which she kept her conscience at bay.

She snatched at the money and stuffed it into the pocket of her apron.

‘Edeltraud! Silke! Come!’ Jürgen ordered.

Edeltraud turned to go but Silke hesitated.

‘Paulus, Otto,’ she said, speaking for the first time. ‘I am still a member of the Saturday Club and I always will be.’

‘I said come!’ Jürgen shouted.

And they were gone.