Two Brothers

Fate Sealed Berlin, 1935

FRIEDA AND WOLFGANG were summoned to the local Gestapo Office about a fortnight after Otto returned from his trip to Saxony.

They returned ashen-faced.

‘They say that you are never to see us again, Ottsy,’ Frieda said, trying with Herculean effort to pull herself together enough to speak.

‘No!’ Otto shouted. ‘That can’t be true. Why? What’s the point of stopping us even seeing each other?’

‘They said we’ve been a corrupting influence for too long,’ Frieda explained through her tears.

Wolfgang took his bottle of cheap spirits and sank down on the piano stool, his head slumped forward.

‘They say it will be a serious criminal offence if we try to maintain any kind of relationship with you at all,’ he said, speaking into his chest.

‘But what if it’s me?’ Otto almost pleaded. ‘What if I’m the one who comes to you? They can’t blame you for—’

‘If you visit us,’ Wolfgang interrupted, ‘they’ll treat it as if we’ve kidnapped you, and Mum, me and Paulus will be sent to a concentration camp.’

The four of them stared at each other.

‘Tomorrow?’ Otto said almost mechanically. ‘They’re coming tomorrow?’

‘We’ll see you, Otts,’ Wolfgang went on, emboldened by the gulp of liquor he’d taken. ‘Somehow we’ll find a way. They can’t just pretend our family doesn’t exist.’

‘Of course they can’t and nor will we,’ Frieda said, sniffling into a handkerchief and trying to collect herself. ‘Somehow we will stay together.’

‘But if you see me they’ll punish you,’ Otto said in despair. ‘If I come around here they’ll take you away.’ He looked at Paulus. ‘We’ve been together since our first day on earth, Pauly. Now they won’t let us be brothers at all.’

Paulus was pulling himself together also, wiping the wet from his eyes with angry sweeps of his sleeve.

‘Maybe they’d let us see each other if we promised to fight,’ he said, trying to smile. ‘We wouldn’t find that too difficult, would we?’

Otto still did not cry but now he began to rage.

‘I’ll make them wish they never heard of me,’ he said banging his fist down on the dining table. ‘Any family that takes me in is going to regret it. I will make their lives hell. I’ll make them hate me for the Jew I still am! I’ll kill them if I have to.’

‘Otto, please!’ Frieda cried. ‘Don’t say that. You can’t fight these people. They’ll punish you.’

‘Punish me! What more can they do to me? I’m telling you, Mum, I don’t care!’

‘But I do care, Otto. And I’m your mother. Whatever those mad men say, I’m still your mother and you are only fifteen and you will do what your mother tells you!’

Otto was brought up short. Frieda’s tone was so incongruous and yet so very familiar. She’d used it so many countless thousands of times before. Almost by force of habit Otto cast his eyes to the floor, as if she’d been ticking him off for stealing biscuits from the treat tin or brandishing a dirty postcard that she’d found hidden in his bag. He almost found himself smiling.

‘And don’t grin like that when I’m talking to you!’ Frieda snapped, dabbing at her eyes. ‘You will wipe that smile off your face and listen to your mother! It is quite bad enough that you have to go away for a while, without me having to worry that you’re going to get yourself into terrible trouble when I’m not there to look after you.’ Frieda had regained her composure now. The issue of controlling Otto’s behaviour being more urgent to her than her despair at his having to go. ‘I have to know that you’ll be good, Otts. That you’ll do what they say, otherwise they’ll punish you terribly. You’re already marked, don’t you see? You’ve been brought up by Jews, they’ll be watching you. You have to toe the line. For my sake! Do you hear? Join the HJ, sing their songs, give their salutes. Swear death to the Jews, Ottsy! It’s the only way I’ll know you’re safe.’

Otto stared at his mother, his expression a terrible cross between fierce determination and abject despair.

‘All right, Mum,’ he said quietly, ‘I’ll be good.’

‘Promise me, Otto.’

‘I promise,’ Otto said.

Frieda smiled and held him to her.

Behind Otto’s back his fingers were crossed.

Looking over his mother’s shoulder, Otto caught Paulus’s eye. He knew he could fool Frieda any time he wanted but he could never fool his brother.

‘Well then,’ Frieda whispered, ‘at least I’ll know you’ll be safe. Now let’s have no more quarrelling. Tomorrow you’ll leave and we won’t see you for a long time.’

‘When?’ Otto asked. ‘When do you think I’ll see you again?’

‘When this madness somehow subsides,’ Frieda replied. ‘That time will come.’

Sitting at his silent piano, staring blankly at the sheets of music propped up on the stand, Wolfgang sighed. He couldn’t help himself, perhaps he didn’t even know he’d done it. But that sigh spoke volumes. Wolfgang for one no longer believed that the madness would ever subside.

‘It will,’ Frieda said in answer to his unspoken thought, ‘and I’ll tell you why it will, Wolf. Because otherwise the only possible conclusion to all of this is complete destruction for Germany. They keep saying they’re rebuilding the nation but it’s so damned obvious they’re destroying it that even fools will soon see.’

Wolfgang shrugged.

‘No, don’t shrug at me like that, Wolf! I will not despair! We must not despair. This criminal state will end! You can’t survive for ever sustained only by violence. No society ever did or ever will. If these people continue to ignore every basic moral code, every fundamental prerequisite for civilization, they’ll murder themselves in the end and I think they’re far too cunning to allow that to happen. They like their fat life and their uniforms and their big black cars too much to risk losing them. So in the end they’ll compromise. Somehow they’ll compromise if only to avoid their own destruction.’

Wolfgang shrugged again. He simply couldn’t help himself, it seemed to be the only gesture he had left in him. ‘I hope you’re right, Freddy,’ was all he would say.

That night Paulus and Otto went to bed in the room they had shared since they were tiny babies and would now almost certainly never share again.

‘You had your fingers crossed, didn’t you,’ Paulus whispered, ‘when you promised Mum you’d keep out of trouble?’

‘Well, I didn’t want her to worry, did I?’ Otto hissed back defiantly. ‘And if you don’t want her to worry either you’ll keep your mouth shut about it, eh?’

‘So you’re not going to keep out of trouble, then? You’re going to fight the whole German state?’

‘What do you think, mate?’

‘I think you’re crazy.’

‘Hey, Pauly, you aren’t the one who tomorrow morning has to go and live with some Nazi fucking strangers! You’re still a Jew and even if you can’t go to the pictures at least you can live with your family. I’m going to a foster home and then what’s the betting some Nazi school, and you bloody well know they’re going to expect me to join the Hitler Youth. Well, I can’t face any of it, all right? None. I want to die, I want to bloody die right now. I’d be happy if they try to kill me because when they do I’m going to take one with me.’

‘Ottsy—’

‘I’m telling you, Paulus. The only way I can get through this is to hate them. Hate them and fight them and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.’

‘And if you get killed? What about Mum?’

‘Well, maybe she’ll never even know, Pauly,’ Otto snarled. ‘You think about that. She’s wrong when she says the Nazis will be finished one day. She may be right about most things but she’s wrong about that. They’ll never be finished. They’re going to last a thousand years, just like the bastard says. And they won’t stop until they’ve killed us, Pauly.’

‘Killed who?’

‘The Jews.’

‘But you’re not—’

‘I’m still a fucking Jew, you bastard, and I’ll smash your face in if you say I’m not. They’re going to kill every Jew they can in the end. It says it on the wall at school, Death to Jews. But you won’t let that happen to our family. I know that, Pauly. You’re too bloody clever and so’s Mum. You’ll find a way to get out. And I probably won’t even know! I’ll be left here, on my own, living with the enemy. I’m being exiled, Pauly, and I’d rather die.’

Paul went and sat beside his brother on Otto’s bed.

‘Ottsy, mate. We’d never leave you behind, you know that.’

‘They won’t let me out, Pauly, don’t you see? They need me for their bloody army. That’s all the HJ is about, military training. Hitler wants me for a soldier. But let me tell you, mate. By the time I’ve finished, they’ll either have to let me go or kill me, and right now, I don’t care which.’

‘Ottsy, you’ve got to stop talking like that. We’ll find a way out. I promise.’

‘Maybe. But I doubt it,’ Otto said.

Then he went and brushed his teeth. As he passed through the living room he saw his father, still slumped at the piano in the dark. The bottle, empty now, lying on the floor beside his stool.

‘Dad,’ Otto whispered, ‘go to bed.’

‘Later, son,’ Wolfgang replied, without looking up.

‘Dad, you’ve got to pull yourself together a bit,’ Otto went on. ‘Mum’s going to need you now.’

‘Yeah. That’s right,’ Wolfgang said but without conviction. ‘I’m not being a lot of help, am I really?’

There was nothing more to say so Otto continued on to the bathroom. When he returned Wolfgang was still sitting, slumped in the darkness at his silent piano.

Later, after the lights in their room were out, Otto whispered once more to his brother.

‘Pauly.’

‘Yeah, mate?’

‘I want you to do something for me.’

‘Yeah. I know. You want me to tell Dagmar, don’t you?’

Otto smiled to himself in the darkness. ‘We might not be the same blood, bro, but you can still read my mind. The thing is, I don’t think I can go to her myself even if I get the chance.’

‘No, I don’t think so either,’ Paulus whispered. ‘After what the Gestapo have said I think we have to presume they’ll be watching you at least for a while and will go after any Jews you try to contact.’

‘Yeah. I think that’s true.’

‘I’m sorry, mate,’ Paulus said, trying to smile. ‘Just when she’d let you have a bit as well. You lucky bastard. I still can’t believe she let you feel her up! If I’d known she was going to go that far I’d have beaten up an SA man myself.’

‘Yeah. Well, you get her all to yourself now, don’t you? So who’s the lucky bastard then?’

‘You know I wouldn’t have wanted it that way, Otts.’

‘You sure?’

‘Well… almost sure.’

They both laughed.

‘Better go to sleep, I suppose,’ Paulus said. ‘If you’re going to fight every Nazi in Germany you’re going to need your strength.’

‘Yeah… So this is it, eh? My last night at home.’

‘Looks that way. Night, bro.’

But there was one last thing Otto wanted to ask.

‘Pauly?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Have you wondered at all what he would have been like?’

‘Who?’

‘Him. Your twin. The real one. The one who was with you inside Mum, the one who died. If he had lived and I’d never turned up. What he would have been like?’

‘Of course I haven’t, Otts,’ Paulus whispered. ‘I don’t need to, do I? I know what he would have been like. He’d have been exactly like you. Because he is you.’