Two Brothers

‘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.