Two Brothers

Rain on the Beach Lake Wannsee, November 1938

A FEW DAYS after the dreadful events of Kristallnacht, the Night of the Broken Glass, as the great November Pogrom had immediately come to be known, the Government announced that all Jewish children were to be expelled immediately from school. Paulus, who had been about to complete his final year, was dismissed that same day along with thousands of other bewildered pupils weeks before graduating. All denied the chance to take any examinations or gain any kind of certificate.

‘Don’t worry about the certificate,’ Frieda assured him. ‘They’ll know about the new law in England and you have enough fine school reports stored up for any college.’

Dagmar came in from Otto and Paulus’s old bedroom, which she had been occupying since Kristallnacht.

‘Pauly,’ she said quietly, ‘since you’ll have a bit more time now and won’t need to be studying every minute, I should very much like you to take me swimming.’

Paulus and Frieda exchanged a worried glance.

During the previous week they had shared numerous whispered concerns about Dagmar’s fragile mental health. She had scarcely spoken since she’d arrived and had not once mentioned her mother’s death. The newspapers had reported that the fire had been electrical and that the widow of Herr Fischer had ‘regretfully’ been consumed in the flames. No mention was made of Dagmar, who had read the article without comment. She stayed mainly in bed or curled up on the couch clinging to the toy monkey Otto had saved for her, a deep fatalistic sadness enveloping her that Frieda and Paulus could find no way of penetrating.

Frieda was familiar with the signs of emotional withdrawal. She knew very well how many deeply damaged people were sitting mutely like Dagmar in cold bare rooms all over Berlin, dealing with their terrible reality by retreating from it.

‘Dagmar, darling,’ Frieda said gently, ‘you and Pauly can’t go swimming, I’m afraid. I’m sure you recall that the authorities have forbidden it.’

‘Ottsy can take us,’ Dagmar replied. ‘It’s never a problem.’

‘Ottsy can take you, dear,’ Frieda said. ‘With Pauly it’s more than double the risk. They’re still targeting young men.’

‘But we could go to Wannsee,’ Dagmar insisted, her voice becoming firmer as she spoke. ‘To the lido. We’ll have the whole place to ourselves. They don’t have staff there off-season.’

‘Wouldn’t it be a bit chilly, Dags?’ Paulus asked with a smile.

‘Exactly. Freezing. So nobody will be there. For once we’ll be in the majority! We don’t need an exit visa or an entrance visa. We just get on the S-Bahn like we used to do. Pauly, I want to swim. I need to swim. But I want you to come too, Pauly. I want both my boys, like it used to be.’

Frieda smiled. Dagmar had said more in five minutes than in the past five days.

‘Do you know, I think Dagmar’s right,’ Frieda said. ‘You both really do need to get out of this apartment. To get some exercise. And if Otto’s with you I really don’t think there’s much risk.’

‘OK!’ Paulus said, grinning himself now, thrilled to see any sign of enthusiasm in Dagmar. ‘Let’s do it.’

‘I’ll write a note then,’ Dagmar said, her eyes widening and her voice growing in confidence with each word. ‘I’m sure Ottsy can get a pass out. They’re all just waiting for graduation now. And he’s such a school pet these days, and of course they still think I’m his Aryan girl. It’ll be the three of us together again. A sort of farewell picnic. Farewell to you. Farewell to Mama. Farewell to everything really.’

For a moment Paulus’s happy grin disappeared from his face. He looked closely at Dagmar, trying to gauge whether her plan was born of reviving spirits or was a symptom of a deepening despair.

‘How about we take Silke?’ he said. ‘Make it a proper Saturday Club outing.’

‘Ha, and share my boys with her?’ Dagmar replied, and for a moment her eyes seemed to twinkle and her old smile appeared on her face. ‘You know very well I’m far too mean to do anything so generous as that!’

Pauly smiled back. She sounded like her old self.

They met at Bahnhof Zoo.

The shattered glass that had littered the streets for days had been cleaned up but the burnt-out buildings and windowless shops remained as testimony to the violence of the attacks. The Jews themselves had been forced to clean up the wreckage that had been made of their lives and it had been a slow task, made harder because, as the newspapers were happy to crow, thirty thousand young Jewish men had been abducted from their homes and sent to concentration camps over the two nights of the pogrom.

What was not reported in the papers, but Frieda had ascertained through her medical contacts, was that ninety-one more had simply been beaten to death.

Now, however, everything seemed calm. The Jews were back behind closed doors and the majority of the population were going about their business as if nothing had happened.

Otto bought some nuts and apples for the journey and the three young people took the S-Bahn out to Wannsee. As they rode, the boys attempted to dispel the sadness that still radiated from their friend.

‘Do you remember the swimming gala,’ Otto said, ‘when we took the blame for you breaking the trophy?’

‘And I got four extra whacks because Otto was too bloody stupid to let me think up an excuse,’ Paulus added. ‘Come to think of it, I still owe you for those.’

‘Any time, Pauly,’ Otto replied, flexing his muscles. ‘You’re most welcome to try.’

The boys tried hard to be cheerful, and as the once-familiar stations passed by it seemed to have some effect. Dagmar almost smiled as they recalled the music lessons and the Saturday Club, and how angry Silke had been when Dagmar first turned up.

‘Poor Silke,’ Dagmar said. ‘I don’t blame her for being jealous. I know I’d have been if it had been her that you boys were chasing in the Märchenbrunnen. Do you remember how you used to trap me between Rapunzel and Little Red Riding Hood and try to steal kisses?’

And so they talked and even laughed a little together, revisiting the happy country of their youth, as the rain lashed on the windows of the train.

But then of course they ran out of happy memories.

Or, at least, while there were still some, any recollections of laughter and friendship that had occurred after 1933 were so entwined with darker experiences, of pain, loss and humiliation, that the three of them felt their smiles vanish from their lips.

‘They took our youth, didn’t they?’ Dagmar said quietly. ‘They stole our youth.’

There was thunder in the air and the rain came down in squalls as the venerable old train shuddered to a halt at Wannsee. As Dagmar had predicted, the three of them were the only passengers to disembark.

‘You’re braver than I am, kids,’ the ticket collector remarked as they made their way through the barrier of that much loved little station, where Berliners had been disembarking with such excitement and departing with such regret for fifty years.

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, sniffing 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.’

Still neither boy replied, although the tension on their faces showed this was one observation that did not need making.

‘You always said that one day I’d have to choose between you, didn’t you?’

She looked from one boy to the other, her eyes big and sad.

Paulus found his voice first, although it was little more than a croak.

‘I thought you had,’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ Otto whispered, ‘so did I.’

‘I had,’ Dagmar replied, looking at Otto, ‘but it wasn’t what you thought. Or what I made you think… I’m sorry.’

The rain was falling more heavily now, splashing on the remains of the food as the inadequate covering sagged under the weight.

‘I’m in love with Paulus,’ Dagmar said quite suddenly.

Both boys looked up astonished. Their mouths dropped open in silent surprise.

‘I think I’ve known that for a year at least. Two. I don’t know. Maybe more. I didn’t want to say. I’ve never wanted to say. I shouldn’t be saying it now.’

Her voice was shaking. Perhaps she was crying, it was hard to tell with the rain.

‘Why did you kiss me,’ Otto asked, and he too looked as if he might cry, ‘that time when I brought you the buttons?’

‘I was fourteen, Otts.’

‘But since then. Lots of times.’

‘I wanted to love you, Otto. I prayed that I could fall in love with you because I knew Pauly would one day have to go. That I mustn’t love him because he would leave. That he would leave me and I’d be left alone and my damned life was going to be dreadful and hellish enough without a broken heart.’

Otto wiped angrily at his eyes.

Dagmar reached out to touch his hand but Otto pulled it away.

‘I like you, Otts. I love you too,’ she pleaded, ‘I really do. You know that. But not how I love Pauly…’

Her voice trailed away. She turned to Paulus as if willing him to say something.

‘But…’ Paulus began, ‘why have you never said?’

‘Why do you think! Because you have a chance and I don’t! And I never ever wanted to say anything to stop you. I knew you loved me and if I’d come to you a year or two years ago and told you I loved you, if I’d been your girl, would you have written all those visa letters? Would you have tried so hard? Would you ever have applied for that ticket that came this morning? Would you? If I’d been your girl?’

Paulus bit his lip.

‘No, of course you wouldn’t. I know you. You’re both the same, you Stengel twins. You and Ottsy, the loyalest, bravest, best boys alive on this earth and I don’t deserve either of you. And now I shan’t have either of you because it’s all set and that’s fine and as it ought to be. You have your place and your ticket and you’ll live, which is all I want. And Ottsy will be sent into the army, and whatever happens to me is my fate, that’s all. And that’s fine too because what will be will be. I kept my secret, Pauly, because I’d die before I’d stand in the way of your trying to get out. But now it’s done and all our paths are set, I couldn’t let you go without you knowing, Pauly. That’s all. That wherever you go in the world, whoever you find in your life, there is… or there was… once a girl in Germany who loved you with all her heart.’

Otto scrambled to his feet.

‘I’m getting out of here,’ he said, trying to sound strong. In control of his emotions. But failing miserably. ‘I’ll see you two around, I guess.’

‘Ottsy!’ Dagmar called. ‘Please, stay with us.’

‘Can’t,’ Ottsy croaked, turning away. ‘Gotta go.’

He ran back up the sand dune, clearly aware that were he to stay a moment longer he would bawl like a baby, and Otto was not the type of boy to want to be seen crying. Not by his brother, and not by the girl who had broken his heart.

After he had scurried away, a long silence ensued.

Paulus looked up and then looked down and then at the sky and the lake. Then he seemed about to say something, but could think of nothing to say.

Instead he kissed her. Just as she had kissed him. Long, passionately, putting his hand behind her head and pressing her face to his.

They kissed for a long time before either of them spoke again. Once more it was Dagmar who seemed to be clearer in her thoughts.

‘I’m sorry I told you, Pauly,’ she said. ‘I had always planned not to. But then I changed my mind. I thought maybe it would help you… sort of sustain you. You’ve got a long road ahead.’

‘Dagmar,’ Paulus replied, finally breaking his silence. ‘You loving me is the best thing that’s ever happened in my life.’

Then they heard steps. For a moment they thought it was Otto returning.

But it wasn’t Otto. Instead a different young man appeared. One who looked about sixteen.

In the uniform of the Hitler Youth.

‘Hey, lads!’ the boy shouted out, beckoning to beyond the dunes. ‘Come here.’

Paulus swallowed hard. He should have been more careful, more aware. Everybody knew that out in the countryside the Hitler Youth and the League of German Maidens were everywhere, camping, marching, singing.

Spying.

Having Otto with them had allowed him to relax. But now Otto was gone.

With a rattle of boots and leather suddenly there were ten more of them, black shorts, brown shirts, swastika armbands. The two troop leaders had daggers at their belts.

‘Heil Hitler, lads,’ said Paulus with a cheerful grin, getting to his feet and delivering the German salute. ‘Cold weather for a dip, eh?’

‘Heil Hitler,’ the lead boy replied. ‘Please may I see your identification papers.’

Paulus had guessed it was coming. One of the principal duties of the Hitler Youth was to act as an observation auxiliary to the police. They were charged with the task of spying on the whole community, including their own families. Jews everywhere had learnt to beware these brown-shirted gangs of self-important young zealots, for if they found you where you shouldn’t be, there was no possibility of getting away.

‘Sorry, pals, can’t do it,’ Paulus said. ‘Left them up with our stuff. Miles away. Didn’t want them getting wet or lost in the sand.’

He knew it was a pathetic effort, but what effort would not have been? They were trapped. Ten eager little Nazis wanted to see their papers, desperate to catch an army deserter or a malingerer from state labour, or best of all a Jew where a Jew was banned. They would no doubt get an armful of extra badges for such a coup.

‘You will take us to where you have left your papers, please,’ the troop leader said. Paulus began to protest but the boy cut him short. ‘Or you will come with us! And I warn you, if you waste our time it will be the worse for you.’

‘Hey, lads,’ Paulus said, trying hard to maintain his pretence at comradely familiarity, ‘this skirt, she’s not mine, she’s another guy’s. If we go back together he’ll—’

‘If you cannot produce identification papers, you will come with us this instant,’ the leader barked.

‘Yeah! And her, she can come with us too,’ another lad, who held a dagger, said, smirking. ‘If she’ll go with this guy, she’ll go with anyone.’

Paulus glanced at Dagmar. Her face white with fear.

The gang of youths now surrounded them. Dagmar got to her feet, taking up a wet towel to fold around herself, looking utterly vulnerable in her baggy bathing suit.

‘Look, guys,’ Paulus began, struggling to keep his voice steady.

‘Silence!’ the first lad shouted. ‘I will give you one more chance and one alone to produce your papers.’

Paulus could only stand and stare, his brain working furiously. He could feel Dagmar shaking beside him.

The other troop leader spoke up. He was clearly the one to worry about. His face was nasty and sly. The first boy was trying to be correct but the other one just wanted to have some fun. If they were to be beaten where they stood, or worse, it would be him who would instigate it.

‘Are you Jews?’ the sixteen-year-old said cruelly, still smirking.

‘Yes, I think perhaps you are.’

He took a step forward, then another, until he was standing quite close to Dagmar. He breathed in deeply.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think I smell Jews.’

He was looking hard at Dagmar.

All the boys were looking at Dagmar.

‘We must take them to the police,’ the first leader said. ‘That is our duty as per our instructions.’

‘You think I’m a Jew, you little bastard!’ Paulus blurted. ‘How about you take a look at my dick, huh?’

Would the old trick work again? It was a horrible prospect but preferable to capture.

‘Don’t be disgusting!’ the first leader barked. ‘You insult the badge I wear. The only thing I wish to see of yours is your papers.’

‘Her, on the other hand,’ the second leader leered, ‘we could see more of.’

‘No!’ the first said angrily, ‘none of that, Alex! We must take them to the police.’

Paulus weighed up the difference between the two senior figures in the gang, his mind searching desperately for a way to use it to his advantage.

‘Yes,’ Paulus said, ‘let’s go to the police at once and when I’ve made a call or two you’ll see what a mistake you’re making.’

‘I said silence!’ the first of the two shouted.

‘You have no right to shout at me, kid!’ Paulus shouted back. ‘I am a grown man! Soon I’ll be a soldier. I have my call-up papers already. Now, if you really insist on ruining my day, then let’s get on with it. Come on. We’ll go to the police now. But let me tell you, son, when we next meet there won’t be ten of you, there’ll be just you and me, and I’ll make you wish you’d never met me.’

It had an effect. The first youth’s face fell a little. Perhaps he was even considering dropping the whole thing.

But the other boy was clever. Clever and sly.

‘What outfit are you joining? Come on! Come on! Which regiment are these papers you have for?’

Paulus tried not to look at a loss but he knew he’d blown it. He was one of the best educated young men in Berlin but he knew absolutely nothing about the Wehrmacht.

‘I don’t have to—’

‘What outfit!’ the boy shouted. ‘Tell me now!’

‘Rifles…’ Paul blurted. ‘The infantry.’

‘There are more than a hundred infantry divisions in the Wehrmacht! Each containing a number of regiments! What is on your papers? Come on! Come on! No soldier who has had the honour to be summoned by the Führer would forget such a thing.’

Paulus was on the ropes and he knew it.

‘I won’t be shouted at by a boy!’ he said. ‘If you insist on keeping up with this bullshit then I demand that you take us to a police station.’

It was a horrifying indication of the level of danger they were now in that being taken to the police seemed to Paulus to be their best option. He did not like the way they were staring at Dagmar. If these boys decided to convince themselves that she and he were Jews, there was no telling what they would do, all alone on a deserted beach, hidden by sand dunes.

‘So,’ the meaner of the two leaders said triumphantly, ‘are you Jews? I think you are Jews.’

‘We should take them in,’ the first lad insisted.

‘What’s the rush?’ the meaner one replied, and it was clear to Paulus that the majority of the junior boys agreed with him.

‘So, bitch,’ the more popular leader said, putting his face close to Dagmar’s, ‘are you a Jew?’

The game was up and Paulus knew it. His best shot was a long one but it was all that was left. The lead boy was much closer than the others, who were all still hanging back somewhat selfconsciously. They were, after all, only boys, and Dagmar was a woman.

Paulus swung a fist into the vicious boy’s face, knocking him to the ground with a single huge blow. Then, in a movement so swift that it was really a follow-through from the blow, he jumped down and tore the dagger from the boy’s belt, pressing the blade to his throat.

‘OK!’ Paulus shouted. ‘Fuck off or he gets it. I’ll stick him, I swear! When you’re gone I’ll let him go, but not till then. Fuck off!’

The youngsters were not used to this kind of thing at all and were already stepping backwards in the face of Paulus’s shocking fury. But then the other lead boy spoke. His character, which Paulus had at first thought might be useful, now proved to be their undoing.

‘Stand ground!’ the first boy shouted. ‘Stand ground, I say! This swine has laid his hand on a Hitler Jugend dagger! Our weapon is our life! And like our life it belongs to the Führer! This man has stolen the Führer’s dagger! Our honour is in his hand!’

The boy Paulus had by the collar was whimpering as he felt the knife on his throat, but there could be no doubt that resolve amongst his comrades was stiffening.

‘Don’t worry, Hitler Youth Man,’ the first of the leaders assured his comrade, ‘if this Jew swine dares to harm you, he knows what he’ll get.’

It was a standoff that could go one of two ways, both the worse for Paulus and Dagmar.

Paulus dropped the knife.

Then another voice intruded on the scene.

‘What the FUCK do you think you’re doing, you little bunch of pricks!’

Paulus and Dagmar almost cried with relief. It was Otto.

He was standing on top of the sand dune. Two years older than either of the troop leaders. Muscular. Commanding.

Dressed in the same uniform.

‘You want to mess around with a Spandau district unit, do you, you little arseholes?’ Otto went on.

Paulus had told his brother to be sure to wear a uniform for the trip, and Otto had chosen his brown Hitler Jugend one because the school one was black and highly formal, and would have looked pretty grim after a day at the seaside.

It had been a fortunate choice. Not least because it carried on it the badges showing that Otto was of a considerably senior rank to that held by the two lead youths confronting Dagmar and his brother.

Paulus let the lad he was holding go. The boy snatched up his dagger from the ground, red-faced with fury but at a loss what to do.

The first of the troop leaders was in no such doubt. He leapt to attention.

‘This man will not show us his papers, sir—’

‘Well, of course he fucking won’t, he’s screwing the Oberrottenführer’s bird! Would you want to be identified?’

At this some of the junior boys in the troop began to snigger.

‘I just wanted to know if—’ the leader protested.

‘All you need to know, sonny,’ Otto went on, ‘is that you are a poxy little Stammführer while I am an Oberkameradschaftsführer.’ Otto patted the badge of rank stitched to the arm of his shirt, above the swastika armband. ‘And what’s more, an Oberkameradschaftsführer from the Spandau district, who, as I think you know, are the meanest toughest bastards in the whole HJ. Even our BDM girls could kick your arses. What could our BDM girls do?’

The boys knew the authentic voice of brutal authority when they heard it and replied at once.

‘They could kick our arses, Herr Oberkameradschaftsführer sir!’

‘That’s right,’ Otto snarled. ‘Now piss off all of you because there’s a queue to get under that oilcloth with this bit of skirt and none of you are in it. So say Heil Hitler and fuck off!’

Otto clicked his heels and gave the German salute.

‘Heil Hitler!’ came ten instantaneous replies.

After which the two young leaders and their little troop of boys hurried away as quickly as they could.

Once more the three of them were alone.

‘Shit.’ Paulus whistled. ‘Glad you came back, Otts.’

Dagmar sank to the ground.

‘I thought…’ she said. ‘I thought they were going to…’

‘But they didn’t, Dags,’ Paulus said quickly. ‘They didn’t, that’s what matters.’

‘I’m sorry I ran off,’ Otto said. ‘It was stupid and if I hadn’t done you wouldn’t have gone through any of that.’

‘You couldn’t have known, Otts,’ Dagmar said.

‘Of course I bloody could! There’s danger absolutely everywhere. We all know that and I should have stayed with you. And that’s what I came back to say, Dags. That I won’t leave again, all right? Whatever you feel about Paulus doesn’t make any difference. I still love you and I’ll still look out for you, just like we planned. I promise.’

‘No, Ottsy,’ Paulus said. ‘I think the plan should change.’