Two Brothers

Two Women Berlin, 1945

DAGMAR AWOKE HAVING slept for a long time. She stretched and yawned and wished she could have a wash but water had become too precious for that.

She got up and, collecting the rainwater tin from its ledge, began to prepare some herb tea. Astonishingly there was still gas for the stove. Bits and pieces of Berlin’s civic infrastructure continued to function right to the end. One could just never be sure which bit. Dagmar had filled the pot with boiling water when she heard the front door.

She froze in terror. Sure that now it was all over. That it was the police come for her once again, and that they would either kill her or she’d be forced to become like Stella Kübler, a poison woman, living by betrayal and murder.

But it wasn’t the police.

It was Silke.

For a moment Dagmar felt herself still in terrible danger. Silke must know of her betrayal. Were the three other Communists behind her with knives and clubs bent on vengeance? The Communists were nothing if not ruthless.

But then Silke ran forward and embraced her.

‘They came for us,’ Silke said. ‘Thank God you were out! To think I tried to stop you.’

‘What happened, Silke? I walked for hours and had to take cover from a raid. When I came home you were gone.’

‘Somehow they found us. I’ve always known they would in the end. They’ve arrested so many of us over the years.’

‘But you’re here. You’re free again.’

There was rubble in Silke’s hair and her face and clothes were caked in dust. Dagmar guessed what must have happened but she let Silke tell it.

‘The British saved me,’ Silke said half smiling, the dust cracking at the corners of her mouth. ‘The RAF.’

Dagmar could not help thinking how much Silke would have preferred it if it had been the Russians.

‘The police station got hit in the night before they even had a chance to get to work on me,’ Silke said. ‘They’d put me in a separate cell to the men and that was what saved me. They died and I didn’t. I don’t know what happened to the Gestapo guys. Maybe they got hit too, maybe they took shelter, I don’t know. All I know is that I was knocked unconscious and when I came to it was just me and a lot of bodies. There were no emergency services — perhaps they came later, but I doubt it. Anyway, I didn’t wait around to find out. I just got up, walked out of the wreckage and came home. I came for my stuff. I’m going to need it soon.’

‘They obviously ransacked the apartment when they took you,’ Dagmar observed. ‘Is there anything left?’

Silke crossed the little kitchen, turned off the gas tap and pulled the stove from the wall. Behind it was a bare brick wall from which she removed a loose brick, pulling out various papers and a little booklet from the cavity behind.

‘My Orchestra stuff,’ she said. ‘I need to find another place to hide it now.’

‘Stay a little while, Silks. I’ve made some herb tea.’

‘The police might come.’

Dagmar looked at her watch. It was already mid morning.

‘I don’t think they’re coming, Silke. Perhaps they’re dead. Perhaps they’ve just finally given up.’

Silke sat down and drank her tea. Then they shared some food together and talked a little.

Still the police did not come.

Silke decided to sleep. She said she felt dizzy, and went to her room.

Dagmar sat in the kitchen and wondered.

Had Silke been taken to the same police station as her? It seemed likely. If she had, then the notes the police had made about Dagmar’s arrest and confession, about her betrayal of the Red Orchestra cell, would probably have been destroyed in the air raid.

Probably. But not certainly.

Dagmar did not know what police station it had been. They had taken her to and from it in a sealed van. Somewhere in Berlin it was perfectly possible there remained a detailed police account of how, as the war drew to a close, the Jewess Dagmar Fischer had been caught and had subsequently betrayed a Communist cell.

And the Russians were coming.

Dagmar sat and wondered. What should she do?

The afternoon wore on.

Dagmar’s shadow on the kitchen floor crept slowly towards the wall.

Finally Silke emerged. Looking a little bewildered.

Perhaps it was the strange noise that had woken her. A new sound in a city that had heard so many new sounds in recent years. A low crunching, jerking rumbling.

Looking out of the window into the street below, the two young women saw a new sight to fit the new noise. A Russian tank.

Silke actually shouted for joy.

‘They’re here!’ she cried, grabbing Dagmar in a wild embrace and spinning her round. ‘It’s over. We’re free!’