Two Brothers (60 page)

Otto bridled at once. His fists clenched.

‘Hey, Pauly!’ he said angrily. ‘I don’t have to promise. You know damn well I’d die for Dagmar.’

And now Paulus too was angry.

‘Oh for God’s sake, Ottsy, are you really such a bloody moron?’

‘What do you mean?’ Otto asked, squaring up to his brother as he had done so many times before. ‘Who’s a moron? You asked me if I’d look after Dags and I told you I’d die for her and I would!’

‘But I don’t
want
you to
die
for her.
Anyone
can bloody
die
for someone. It’s easy, just get yourself killed. I want you to
live
for her. Keep yourself
safe
. Keep your stupid head down. Make sure
everything
you do, you do with Dagmar in mind. Don’t go trying to murder Himmler, and if there’s a war, which obviously there’s going to be, don’t get yourself killed. Because if you did then Dagmar would be all alone. Alone! Do you understand, you idiot? The
last
thing she needs you to do is
die
for her.’

Otto was almost contrite.

‘Oh. Well, put like that,’ he said, ‘I see what you’re saying. You’re right. Absolutely right, of course. You always are.’

‘When I’m gone, Ottsy,’ Paulus said solemnly, ‘you have to pretend you’re me. OK? Every move you make, every decision you take, you have to ask yourself, “What would Pauly have done?” Be calm. Be calculating. Be
careful
. Stay alive and keep Dagmar alive.’

‘Right, absolutely. I get it … And once I’m in uniform,’ he said, brightening, ‘I can try and get her across the border and—’

‘Otto, you’re doing it again!’ Paulus said, his face red with frustration. ‘You have to
think things through
.’

‘Well what’s wrong with—’

‘Quite apart from the fact that a lot more people have been shot trying to rush the border than have made it, there’s no point. Dags doesn’t have an
entry visa
any more. She had one five years ago for the States but not now. The Yanks are pulling up the drawbridge. Everywhere is. Even if you got her across she’d be sent back.’

‘Oh,’ was all Otto could say in reply.

‘You have to protect her in Germany. And when the time comes,
hide
her in Germany, Otto. Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ Otto said solemnly. ‘I understand.’

Dagmar was looking at them both. A faraway expression in her eyes.

‘You should go, Otts,’ she said finally. ‘It’s nearly dawn. You have to get back to Spandau. They might accept you staying out all night but not all of the following day.’

‘Yeah,’ Otto said, ‘that’s right, I’ll have to hitch a lift … I’d better go.’

Dagmar put down her mug and hugged him.

‘Thank you, Ottsy,’ she said quietly. ‘You saved my life tonight.’

‘That’s what I’m here for.’

‘It’s what we’re both here for,’ Paulus added. ‘We’ll get you through, Dag. I promise. It looks like you’ll be staying here for a while, too, until we can make a plan. You can have my room and I’ll go on the couch.’

After Otto had gone, Dagmar and Paulus sat together in the darkened room for quite a long time without speaking.

Eventually Dagmar broke the silence.

‘Pauly,’ she said. ‘Hold me.’

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.