Two Brothers

The Fischers Throw a Party Berlin, 1933

FRIEDA, WOLFGANG AND the twins got out of their cab at the entrance to the famous old Kempinski hotel. That splendid portal which had in the past regularly welcomed royalty and heads of state and which had for so long bustled with the richest and most elegant people in Berlin.

Being Jewish-owned the hotel had of course been much defaced with paint in recent months, but much to Wolfgang and Frieda’s relief there was no gauntlet of SA pickets to run on the night of the party. The Fischers had not announced the event in the social papers as they would have done in previous years, and the only evidence that the police were aware of the celebration at all was the two black-leather-coated figures in Homburg hats who stood at the entrance just behind the doorman with notebooks and pencils in hand.

Unfortunately, however, it was not just the SA who were absent from the party that night.

There was no sign of other guests either. From hearing Dagmar talk about the extent of the invitation list, the Stengels had been expecting a jam of cars and a merry throng at the hotel doors, but for the moment at least they had the red carpet which stretched across the pavement to the street to themselves.

‘Perhaps people will come along later,’ Frieda said brightly. ‘After all, we’re bang on time, which everybody knows is not the fashionable time to arrive. I’m sure it’ll fill up. Come on, at least there won’t be a queue for drinks.’

The four of them entered the lobby of the hotel and were politely directed to the grand ballroom which was situated at the rear of the building along a number of thickly carpeted corridors.

‘I know what it is!’ Frieda said. ‘Of course! The ballroom has a separate entrance, I remember now. I came to some doctors’ do here years ago and we all entered from the street behind.’

But whether or not they had got the right entrance, when finally they arrived at the gilded doors to the ballroom there was still no throng of people bustling to get in. Just the Fishers themselves, waiting to greet their guests.

They made a handsome threesome. Magnificent in a way.

The very cream of rich Berlin society.

Herr Fischer upright in formal evening dress, a service medal at his chest and a sash representing the Berlin Chamber of Commerce across his shoulder. Frau Fischer in a full-length gown, cut low at the bosom to accommodate a fabulous diamond necklace that was surely worth a fortune.

And then there was Dagmar.

The boys’ jaws almost dropped to the level of the carpet with selfconscious admiration when they saw her. She was suddenly a young woman, while they two still felt like little boys. Little boys, shuffling their feet, tongue-tied and pole-axed with ill-concealed longing. She had on a silken gown with a full-length skirt and a tight, strapless bodice which left them in no doubt that the figure Silke had once pronounced a fake was certainly nothing of the sort any more. The boys were struck dumb with admiration.

So mesmerized were they that at first they did not notice the tension on their friend’s lovely face and the sadness in her eyes.

They were, after all, thirteen-year-old boys and at that moment, speechless with longing, they weren’t looking at her face.

‘Welcome, Herr Stengel, Frau Stengel,’ Herr Fischer said. ‘You met my wife of course on that dreadful day when we collected Dagmar from your apartment, after these two fine lads had been her saviour, for which we will always be grateful… You are very welcome. Please. Do go on through.’

Herr Fischer then turned to his daughter.

‘Dagmar, you must greet your guests.’

Dagmar had seemed in something of a daze.

‘Yes, of course, Papa. Hello, Paulus. Hello, Otto.’

‘Wow, Dagmar!’ Paulus stammered.

‘Yeah. Wow,’ Otto echoed.

‘You look…’ Paulus began. He was trying hard to keep his focus on Dagmar’s face but was having a lot of trouble preventing his eyes from flicking downwards.

‘You’ve got…’ Otto was not even trying.

‘They look…’

‘They’re just…’

Dagmar went red. ‘Stop staring!’ she hissed.

‘I wasn’t!’ Paulus protested, going red himself.

‘Nor me!’ Otto lied too.

‘You were!’ Dagmar whispered ferociously. ‘Anyone would think you’d never seen me before.’

‘Not so much of you, we haven’t,’ Otto said.

At which Paulus kicked him.

‘Well, it’s very rude to gawp like that but I don’t care because this evening is absolutely horrible anyway! Now go through and get some ice cream which is all you probably care about anyway and I have to stand here with my parents and I just want to die!’

Then Dagmar turned away from them, sniffing loudly and dabbing at her eyes.

Somewhat at a loss, Paulus and Otto did as they were told and followed their parents through into the ballroom where even they, who had never attended an event remotely like it before, realized at once that things were not going the way they were supposed to.

The ballroom was empty save for them, their parents and twenty waiters.

‘Keep smiling, boys,’ Frieda muttered through a fixed grin. ‘I’m afraid we’re the first.’

Wolfgang’s smile at least was genuine. It was such a ridiculous situation. The four of them standing alone in the huge ballroom beneath the light of ten enormous crystal chandeliers outnumbered five to one by the waiters.

‘Well, I must say, that’s a lovely carpet, isn’t it?’ Frieda said bravely attempting to fill the emptiness with small talk. ‘I imagine it took absolutely for ever to weave. And the champagne is delicious, isn’t it! How is the fruit cup, boys? What a treat this is.’

Slowly as the minutes ticked by a few more guests drifted in until eventually there were perhaps forty or so people in a room that could comfortably have held two hundred.

People skirted around the obvious embarrassment.

‘There has been a flu of some kind going around,’ they assured each other. ‘Perhaps that has put some people off.’

Finally the hosts themselves entered the ballroom, having clearly concluded that they could expect no further arrivals to join the party, no matter how long they stood at the doorway. Canapés were brought out by yet more members of staff and soon after that a buffet appeared. Some ten metres of white linen-clad table, laden with food for two hundred.

Paulus and Otto did their best.

Time and again they returned to the sumptuous spread, enjoying more fresh meat in one evening than they’d eaten in the previous three months. Followed by bowl after bowl of the various desserts, fiercely determined to try them all.

Dagmar sat with them, picking sadly at a single chicken leg and staring at all the empty tables around her.

‘None of my friends came,’ she said. ‘Not one. I’ll never forgive them. Any of them.’

‘We came, Dags,’ Paulus said, through a mouthful of strawberries whipped in cream and sugar.

‘Yeah, we’re here,’ Otto added, looking at her over a fork loaded with rare roast beef. Otto had decided to return to the savoury tables in order to start the whole meal again.

‘You don’t count, Otto. I knew you and Paulus would be here. But no one else, not one, not even the Jewish ones. Why wouldn’t the Jewish ones come?’

‘I expect they were worried that the SA would give them a kicking at the door,’ Paulus said. ‘I don’t mind admitting I was.’

‘Me too,’ Otto said darkly. ‘Which is why I came prepared.’

‘What do you mean?’ Dagmar asked.

Otto attempted an enigmatic smile. Somewhat spoilt by the layer of cream that surrounded his mouth.

‘Leave it, Otto,’ Paulus said.

‘No,’ Dagmar insisted, ‘what do you mean, Otts?’

Otto glanced about himself and then, putting his hand into his breast pocket, pulled out a flick-knife. A neatly executed twist of his fingers snapped out the blade which he then used to impale a new potato from his plate and put it in his mouth.

Dagmar’s sad eyes gleamed momentarily with excitement.

‘Wow, Otts! You look like a gangster in a movie!’ she gasped.

‘Put that away!’ Paulus snarled. ‘How many times, Otto! It’s one thing taking precautions, it’s another bragging about them. If you got found with that they’d show no mercy, you know that.’

‘Yeah,’ Otto replied grimly, ‘and neither would I.’

Then Otto stuck his knife into a blood-red slice of roast beef on his plate and offered it to Dagmar, who took it from the vicious-looking point, with an excited giggle.

Paulus wasn’t giggling. ‘Don’t be such a bloody prick! Put it away. Fuck, Otto, you can’t go flashing a knife around. The cops are bound to have spies in a big Jewish business like this. I’ve seen some of the waiters sneering behind their bow ties. If one of them sees that and reports you, you’re dead. There’s Gestapo outside, you know.’

Reluctantly Otto closed the blade and put it back in his pocket.

‘Yeah, well, maybe you’re right,’ he said. ‘But whoever does catch me had better watch out because I’ll tell you this, Pauly, this is one bad Jew boy who won’t be going quietly.’

‘Good for you, Otto,’ Dagmar said angrily. ‘You stick it in one of those pigs. I hope you kill a hundred!’

‘A hundred’s not enough,’ Otto snarled. ‘One Jew is worth at least a thousand of them and that’s how many I’m going to kill. Just you wait.’

‘Yeah, and what about Mum if it’s you that gets killed?’ Paulus snarled back. ‘As if she doesn’t have enough to worry about.’

For a moment the three of them ate in silence.

‘At least now I know who my real friends are,’ Dagmar said. ‘I shan’t need to bother writing to anyone else from America but you.’

‘Well, that’s certainly something to celebrate,’ Paulus grinned. ‘Come on, let’s get some more of that strawberry cream stuff.’

‘Why don’t you get me a plate too, Pauly,’ Dagmar said. ‘I’d like to try some now.’

‘At your service, ma’am,’ Paulus said leaping to his feet, delighted at having been the one selected to do her bidding.

When he had gone Dagmar turned to Otto.

‘Show me again,’ she whispered.

‘What?’

‘Show me your knife.’

‘Yeah, right. OK,’ Otto said, taken aback but also delighted. ‘It is pretty hard, isn’t it?’

He took it out and discreetly flipped it open once more.

Dagmar leant forward and put her finger against its wicked point.

‘Do you really think you could do it?’ she said, her voice a little unsteady. ‘Really stick it into a Nazi?’

‘Of course I could,’ Otto replied, ‘if I had to. I reckon it’d feel great. I’d enjoy it.’

A spasm of excitement passed across Dagmar’s beautiful face.

‘I know you could, Otts,’ she breathed. ‘And I love it.’

Otto’s fingers tightened around the hilt of the knife.

‘But you mustn’t, of course,’ she added quickly. ‘Paulus is right, it’s too risky… I’m just glad you could, that’s all.’

Then with a glance across the room to see that Paulus was fully occupied at the dessert table, Dagmar took up a napkin and, under the guise of pretending to wipe something from Otto’s cheek, leant forward and kissed him.

Not a little girl’s kiss. But something older and more knowing, something closer to how Jean Harlow had kissed Clark Gable in Red Dust.

‘That’s to remember me by,’ she said. ‘Now, quick, put that knife away before someone sees.’

Otto was so surprised and flustered that he almost cut his fingers off as he closed the blade and slipped it back into his pocket.

Paulus returned with the plates of dessert.

‘What’s up?’ Paulus said to Otto. ‘You’ve gone bright red.’

‘Bit of food,’ Otto said quickly, ‘went down the wrong way.’

In the centre of the sparsely occupied ballroom, the Fischers, who had been making the rounds of their few guests, had arrived at Wolfgang and Frieda.

‘I must say,’ Herr Fischer remarked, ‘I had expected better of Berlin. To think that people are so craven, it is astonishing.’

Fischer was swaying slightly, having clearly had a number of glasses of wine.

‘You mustn’t blame them, Herr Fischer,’ Frieda said. ‘People know that their names will be taken, you saw the Gestapo outside.’

‘But that is exactly why those with a position in society should show themselves. And lead by example. Otherwise they’re cowards!’ Herr Fischer said. ‘This government rules not by law but by fear!’

The drink was making him indiscreet, his voice was slightly raised.

‘Hush, dear,’ Frau Fischer said, looking at the hovering waiters with concern, ‘we must remember where we are.’

‘And again, that is the point,’ Herr Fischer went on defiantly, although lowering his voice slightly. ‘Everyone is terrified to speak the truth. Well, I am done with this country now and may say what I like. In fact –’ Herr Fischer leant forward conspiratorially — ‘I gave a valedictory interview to the Berlin correspondent of the New York Times this afternoon. The man was witness to what happened outside my store on April the first. He himself was manhandled.’

‘I wish you’d left it, dear,’ Frau Fischer said. ‘Talking about it can’t do any good now.’

‘I will not leave the land of my fathers with my tail between my legs, my dear. We are not running, we have been driven out and I’m damned if I’ll make a secret of it.’

Once more Frau Fischer looked nervously about her.

‘I think they’re serving coffee, dear,’ she said.

‘Yes, and we really should be going,’ Frieda added. ‘The boys have school in the morning and I must be at the clinic.’

‘Then before you go,’ Herr Fischer went on, taking Wolfgang by the hand and speaking carefully like a man who knows he’s had too much to drink and wishes to disguise it, ‘there is something else I must say. My wife and I owe those splendid boys of yours a great deal.’

‘Please, forget it,’ Wolfgang interrupted, ‘you gave them each a hundred marks at the time, they couldn’t believe their luck.’

‘It’s quite possible that they saved Dagmar’s life that day,’ Herr Fischer went on, ‘or at least saved her from the most terrible sort of attack. I can never repay them for that.’

‘Dagmar’s their friend,’ Frieda interjected. ‘You really mustn’t—’

‘All I’m saying is I won’t forget,’ Herr Fischer said. ‘Dagmar, Frau Fischer and I will be Americans soon and I have friends who have friends in Congress. I beg you to write to me… if things become… well, if they… if you ever feel you are in need.’

Wolfgang looked Herr Fischer in the eye.

‘Thanks very much,’ he said. ‘I hope you mean it, Herr Fischer, because I think there’s a very good chance we’ll be taking you up on that offer.’

‘I mean it most sincerely,’ Herr Fischer replied, squeezing and shaking Wolfgang’s hand. ‘You and Frau Doktor Stengel are fine, fine people and those are two very precious boys you have there. My wife and I will never forget them.’