Two Brothers

The Last Meeting of the Saturday Club Berlin, February 1939

THE FOUR MEMBERS of the Saturday Club met under the clock at the Lehrter Bahnhof.

Or rather under the great crimson slashes of red that hung beneath the clock.

The cavernous interior of the station was festooned with swastikas. More so even than usual. Hitler’s fiftieth birthday was only weeks away and the station management had shown considerable ingenuity in finding places to hang banners where none already hung.

‘Just when you think there’s nowhere left to put a flag,’ Otto murmured.

‘Flags and parades. Parades and flags,’ Dagmar said, without bothering to lower her voice. ‘Don’t they ever get bored with it?’

‘Dagmar!’ Silke hissed in exasperation. ‘How many times? You don’t have the luxury of being able to moan.’

‘Nobody’s damn well listening, Silke!’

‘They are always listening.’

‘Come on, let’s not fight,’ Paulus begged. ‘Not on our last day together. You buy the tickets, Otts. I’ll try and get us a table at the café. The train doesn’t leave for another hour, we can have some coffee. Come on, Dagmar.’

Paulus led Dagmar away towards the station restaurant while Otto and Silke joined the queue at one of the numerous ticket office windows.

When they arrived at the window, the woman behind the glass gave the German greeting. It was a ridiculous sight. There was so very little room in her tiny cubicle that the woman was forced to make her gesture with a bent arm cramped close to her chest. More like the salutes Hitler gave himself at rallies, walking past a forest of outstretched arms, his own wrist merely flicked back at the shoulder in a selfconscious demonstration of absolute authority. Too busy, too weighed down with the cares of destiny to offer anything more than a limp parody of the straining adulation that surrounded him.

Otto returned the woman’s salute. He had to.

The German greeting, as it was called, was not compulsory, and the ticket woman was being quite a zealot in greeting every single customer in such a manner. But having been saluted, it was certainly dangerous not to return it. Otto had seen people beaten up in bus queues for such an insult.

His own salute was no less comically inadequate than the one the ticket woman offered. With people pressing from behind he was also too close to the glass to do it properly, and so he was forced to stretch his arm out sideways, being careful not to knock the hat off the person in the next queue.

‘Heil Hitler,’ Otto said. ‘Two tickets for Rotterdam please.’

It was just so absurd. Standing there with his arm stretched out sideways, invoking the name of the head of state while purchasing a train ticket. Otto doubted whether even the power-corrupted despots of Ancient Rome had expected imperial genuflections from their citizens in such mundane circumstances.

‘Identification and travel visas,’ the woman demanded.

Otto pushed two sets of papers under the window.

‘First class,’ he said loudly. ‘Sleeper berths.’

It was extravagant but it was what Paulus had suggested when they had been planning the trip. The journey was a long one and slips of the tongue were a constant worry. As Silke had just pointed out to Dagmar, you never knew when the Gestapo or one of their millions of eager informers were listening. It was said that people had been given away by their own children after talking in their sleep.

The woman in the booth looked from Otto to Silke with suspicion. He was just nineteen, she was eighteen. A glance down at their papers showed that they did not share a surname.

‘That’s right,’ Silke said from over Otto’s shoulder, ‘we’re going to use the journey to see if we can’t make a present for Heinrich to put in his Spring of Life orphanages! Wish us luck, won’t you?’

The woman issued the tickets with ill grace and Otto and Silke retreated from the window, both trying not to laugh.

A brief moment of levity in a strange and horribly bleak day.

‘Spring of Life!’ Otto scolded. ‘I thought you said not to draw attention!’

‘I was just pretending to be a good Nazi girl.’

They made their way to the restaurant where Dagmar and Paulus had already bought coffee and sandwiches.

‘Well, here we are,’ Otto said, laying the sleeper tickets on the table. ‘As Mum often says, “Everybody’s looking for Moses”, and here he is in the form of a ticket to Rotterdam.’

‘First class, eh, Silke?’ Dagmar said. ‘All right for some.’

‘It’s what we agreed on,’ Paulus reminded her, ‘and it’s worth it. We don’t want Silke getting searched carrying my papers on her way back. Those Gestapo are all peasant snobs. They’ll paw a girl in third class but bow and scrape to the ones in first. Besides, it’s a present from Mum, we can afford it.’

‘Yes, lucky your clever old mum thought to settle her money and property on Otto when she did,’ Dagmar said. ‘Every Jewish family should have an adoptive Aryan to look after the estate. Shame my parents never thought to adopt one. I might still be a millionaire.’

‘Nobody should be a millionaire,’ Silke said, ‘and one day nobody will.’

‘Bet you wouldn’t say that if your father had been one,’ Dagmar replied.

‘Well,’ said Otto, ‘nice to know you girls are as good mates as ever.’

They were all uncomfortably aware that the moment had almost come.

‘So this is it,’ Dagmar remarked after a moment’s silence. ‘The final meeting of the Saturday Club, eh?’

‘Not final, I hope,’ said Paulus, ‘but certainly the last one for a while.’

‘Might as well be realistic,’ Dagmar said. ‘There’s going to be a war. Do you really think all four of us will survive it?’

The other three did not answer.

‘Your mother isn’t coming then?’ Silke asked eventually. ‘To see her wandering lad off?’

‘We didn’t think it was a good idea,’ Paulus said.

‘The fewer Jews in the situation, the better, in this case,’ Otto added.

‘Well,’ Silke said, trying to sound bright, ‘at least this gets me out of a couple of days of slavery.’

Silke was a few months into her compulsory Year of Domestic Service, which all young unmarried women were required by the state to perform and which she never made any secret about hating.

‘How did you get them to give you the two days off?’ Otto enquired. ‘I thought they were slave-drivers.’

‘They are. But when you work as an unpaid skivvy in someone’s house you get to hear things. And see things. Things I don’t think Frau Neubauer wants me telling Herr Neubauer about.’

‘You’re a resourceful girl, Silke,’ Dagmar said. ‘You always get what you want.’

‘No I don’t,’ Silke replied abruptly. ‘I do not get what I want. You do.’

Silence returned for a little while longer as they ate their sandwiches.

‘Well,’ said Otto, raising his coffee cup. ‘To the Saturday Club. Always loyal to the club and to each other.’

The other three raised their cups, repeating once more the childish oaths they had sworn on so many happy, carefree afternoons wandering the streets and public spaces of Friedrichshain looking for mischief.

‘Except Dagmar,’ Silke said with a giggle.

‘Not including Silke,’ Dagmar replied, smiling also.

Both girls showed each other their crossed fingers and laughed together.

‘Just kidding!’ Silke smiled. ‘To each other!’

‘Yes, to each other,’ Dagmar replied.

Once more they raised their cups, demonstrating this time that their fingers were not crossed.

The station loudspeakers announced the number of the platform for the Dutch sleeper.

Silke drained her coffee. There was still half an hour until departure but there seemed little point in the four of them sitting staring at each other.

‘Come along then, Mister Stengel,’ she said. ‘Let’s be off.’

‘Give our love to England,’ Dagmar said.

The four of them got up.

Otto hugged Paulus.

‘Until whenever, mate,’ he said, forcing a smile.

‘Yeah,’ Paulus nodded, ‘just till then.’

Then Otto turned to Dagmar.

‘Goodbye, Dagmar,’ he said.

Silke backed away discreetly, walking a few steps towards the platform. Paulus also turned away, retreating to a nearby newsstand.

Allowing Otto a moment.

Dagmar put her arms around him and hugged him tight.

‘Goodbye, dear Ottsy,’ she said. Her scent was in his nostrils. Wisps of her hair on his cheeks. ‘And thank you, thank you with all my heart.’

‘Well. I won’t say it’s a pleasure,’ Otto replied, trying to make a joke. Then he whispered, ‘I love you, Dagmar. I know I have no right to say that any more because you love Pauly, but I love you. And I always will. Paulus is there to protect you now and I’m glad because he’s so much cleverer than me. But if ever you need me, I’ll come. You know that, don’t you? Because I love you. And I always will.’

Gently, she disengaged and smiled. ‘Yes, I know, Ottsy,’ she said. ‘And don’t you dare forget it!’

Then he left her, grabbing his bag and hurrying to catch up with Silke.

‘You’ll see her again,’ Silke said as he fell in beside her.

‘Maybe.’

As they made their way through the ticket barrier and then along the side of the train searching out their carriage, Silke put her hand into Otto’s.

He was surprised and had she not closed her fingers tight around his he might have withdrawn it. They had often held hands as little children, and occasionally at Napola when Silke had been Otto’s only friend, but this was the first time they had done it for years.

‘Do you mind?’ Silke asked quietly. ‘Just for friendship. For comfort.’

‘No,’ Otto replied, ‘I don’t mind.’

He meant it. It was actually a comfort for him also. Good old Silke.

‘It’s so kind of you to come with me, Silke. To do this for us.’

‘Hey, we’re all in the same gang,’ she replied.

As they walked along beside the hissing train, Otto felt a tiny increase of pressure from her hand.

Back in the main part of the station, Paulus and Dagmar were also hand in hand, walking purposefully towards the S-Bahn. Both of them knew that the best way to avoid detection, to avoid curt demands, searches and humiliation, banishment from the carriage and perhaps losing your watch and wallet, was to act with absolute confidence. Nazi officials had a sixth sense for fear so it was essential to show none.

To walk as Nazis did.

To strut. To barge. To bully.

‘As Goebbels says,’ Paulus remarked, throwing out his chest and fixing his face to an arrogant sneer, ‘if you’re going to tell a lie, make it a big one. Make it a bold one. If you’re a Jew, act like a German. But don’t worry, Dags. Once Silke gets back from Holland, I’ll be a German and then you’ll be safe.’

‘I don’t know why you can’t be it already. You had an exit visa. Now that Otto’s you and you’re Otto, why didn’t he leave on that?’

‘This way we can be sure he’ll get out,’ Paulus said. ‘A Jew’s exit visa is worth less and less these days. War’s coming and they’re turning more and more of us back at the border. Some for no better reason than spite, but also because relations have deteriorated so badly with the British. As an Aryan he’ll avoid any kind of trouble, and Silke will bring back his ID tomorrow.’

Dagmar put her arm around Paulus.

‘You’re so clever, Pauly,’ she said, ‘you think through every little detail. I certainly made the right choice.’