Two Brothers (64 page)

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.’

The Morning After

The German–Dutch Border, 1939

OTTO WAS AWOKEN by the jerking and shunting as the locomotive hauled its carriages into the customs siding for border inspection.

Otto had not expected to fall asleep. He recalled lying awake for hours. Staring at the second hand on his watch in the intermittent flashes of yellow light as the train roared through some town or other.

And now he was awake again.

Silke was up, rinsing her face in the little basin.

It was a lovely compartment. The stuff of happy daydreams. Cosy, comfy. Every little convenience tucked neatly away. Tooth cups in cavities secured by leather straps, concealed lamps and mirrors, an ashtray, water-glass holders, a fold-down table by each bunk, a little netted alcove for shoes. Everything in brass and wood and leather. Such a very nice place to wake up.

Unless of course that little compartment was carrying you away from everything you had ever known or ever loved.

Silke had her back to him as she bent over the sink. She had put on her skirt but not her blouse. The white straps of her bra stretched across a bronzed back and up over slim, muscular, slightly freckled shoulders, which her golden hair brushed as she flannelled her face.

How strange. How utterly surprising.

That he and Silke …

‘You’re not to be embarrassed or to hate me,’ she said through the water and the cloth. Bright. Matter-of-fact. Jolly even. Yet every syllable strung tight with the shrill, brittle tension of having woken up remembering.

Otto hadn’t realized that she knew he was awake. Her back was turned to him and he’d made no sound. But women seemed often to know things you didn’t expect them to know, he’d noticed that.

Silke finished washing and reached out a hand, feeling for one of the starched linen face towels that were looped through the polished brass rings beside the basin.

‘It happened, that’s all,’ she went on, towelling her face dry then taking up her sponge bag. ‘I said you shouldn’t have bought us all that brandy.’

She still hadn’t turned around. Otto was in the top bunk so her mass of blonde curls were just a half metre or so from his face. A single bar of sunlight shining through a crack in the window blinds painted a blazing golden stripe across her shoulders.

She took a little tube of toothpaste from her sponge bag and squeezed some on to her brush.

‘How many of those damned Hennessys do you think we had?’ he heard her ask brightly.

Otto could not honestly recall. Four or five probably, plus the bottle of wine with dinner. They had certainly been the last to leave the dining car.

‘Quite a few,’ he said. ‘And
guten Morgen
, by the way.’

How did you greet your oldest friend when quite unexpectedly you had made love to her the previous night?

‘Don’t worry, I know it didn’t mean anything,’ Silke said quickly, talking through the toothbrush foam in her mouth. She turned around to face him as she brushed. He could see her breasts jiggling very slightly in the cups of her bra as her arm moved back and forth and up and down. There was a wisp of rusty-coloured hair visible in the pit of her raised arm.

She turned back and spat the toothpaste foam into the basin and rinsed out her mouth.

‘I know you don’t love me. You love Dagmar,’ Silke went on, using her ablutions to cover her embarrassment. ‘Obviously I know that. God knows you’ve said it often enough and you talked about no one else last night at dinner, which was a bit boring, actually. And
slightly
rude. Of course, you didn’t
get
her. That does have to be said. You lost that one but I know you still love her, so don’t worry. Last night was about the brandy.’

As she leant forward over the basin he could see her ribs corrugated against her honey-coloured skin, the vertebrae standing out along her slim back. She was a very pretty girl.

‘It was just for comfort. That’s all, wasn’t it?’ she said, putting on her blouse.

‘Yes,’ Otto replied quietly, ‘for comfort. Nice though.’

‘Yes!’ Silke replied, slightly too loudly. ‘Very. Funny it should be the first time though,’ she added, now a vivid crimson. ‘I mean, for both of us.’

‘Yeah. Weird. Kept it in the club, eh?’

‘I always presumed you and Dagmar must have been at it like rabbits this last year or two.’

‘No.’

‘Sensible of her, really. Keeping that one in reserve.’ As she said it her face fell and she added quickly, ‘No, that was awful. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that, I didn’t mean it. I don’t know what I meant.’

Outside far along the corridors at the other end of the train, doors began to slam.

‘
Raus! Raus! Ausweis!
’

As Paulus had predicted, the Gestapo were not being overly polite to the third-class passengers as they checked the credentials of those wishing to cross the border and depart the glorious Fatherland.

‘You’d better get dressed,’ Silke said, tucking in her blouse. ‘They’ll be in to see us in a minute.’

Otto was pulling on his pants beneath the sheets. ‘Moment of truth, eh? Not that there’s any risk. I get to be me for one last time.’

‘There’s always a risk with these people.’

All along the train could be heard protests and shouted commands.

Silke watched from the window as the Gestapo led away the ones who didn’t have the required paperwork or whose faces they didn’t like.

‘Let us go!’ a middle-aged woman was protesting. ‘You don’t want us. You hate us. For God’s sake, why don’t you let us go?’

There was much anguish at the border that day, as indeed there had been every day for years. Some of the older guards missed the days when theirs had been a happy job. Wishing people well as they went off on their holidays. Contented was the world when borders had been things that travellers crossed for fun.

There was a knocking at the door. More like blows, in fact, than knocks, as if the beautiful wooden panelling was being punched.

‘Are these bloody people incapable of doing
anything
without turning it into some sort of violent assault?’ Silke hissed
sotto voce
, running a brush through her hair. ‘Tea time at Gestapo headquarters must be a
nightmare
. Breaking the crockery, spilling the milk. If they put on a ballet they’d do it in bloody jackboots.’

Otto laughed.

‘Hey, I went to Napola! I’ve had three years of it. You stand to attention when you take a crap.’

‘Actually I rather think that would be anatomically impossible.’

‘Nothing is impossible to the German soldier!’

Another rattling bang on the door.

‘
Einen moment, bitte
,’ Silke called out.

Having slipped on her shoes, she opened the door of their compartment. There were three of them outside. A plainclothes officer and two Wehrmacht soldiers in steel helmets. Steel helmets in order to ask people on trains if they had visas. Even after six years of living under the Nazis, three at an elite school, Otto had still not got used to their deep psychological need to militarize
everything
.