Two Brothers

‘Of course I’m sure. How could you doubt it?’

Then suddenly he said it.

‘I still love you, Dagmar. I kept my promise. I want you to know that. I’ve loved you every single day. On the ferry to England. In the hostel and the internment camp. Through the war years. Fighting in North Africa and Italy and behind a desk with the army of occupation. Then in London and for all those long, long boring years since I’ve loved you every minute of every day. I never stopped loving you and I never will.’

He hadn’t meant to say it and yet somehow he had to tell her. He wanted so much for her to know that he had kept the promise he whispered into her ear at the Berlin station in 1939.

‘And on the train?’ Dagmar said, a wicked little smile playing on her lips.

‘Train?’

‘The train to Rotterdam, Otts. When you made love to Silke.’

He was absolutely stunned. It was the last thing he had expected her to say. He could feel himself reddening. Actually feeling guilty. It was so unfair; seventeen years of emotional self-denial and the first thing she brought up was him and Silke.

‘Oh,’ he heard himself saying. ‘So she told you.’

‘Of course, Otts,’ she said, laughing now. ‘We were cooped up together in an apartment for years. Girls talk. Oh, don’t look so bothered, Ottsy. I was just teasing you. You were being so serious about how much you loved me. I couldn’t resist! She told me it was nothing, she told me you were tongue-tied with guilt in the morning. That all you could think about was me.’

‘Well…’ Otto said, embarrassed, ‘that’s true, actually. We were drunk, you see. And it was an unusual situation.’

He could still scarcely believe that this was what they were discussing.

‘And she did turn out quite pretty in the end, didn’t she? Who would have thought it back in the twenties?’ Dagmar laughed again. ‘Please don’t look so upset, Otts. You promised to love me, not to remain celibate. I don’t imagine you’ve been a monk since 1939.’

She stamped her cigarette out on the ground and accepted another. Otto thought of Billie doing the same thing on the Thames Embankment. Just a few days before and a universe away. For a mad moment he wondered if Dagmar knew about Billie too. She was in the Stasi after all.

‘But you do still love me best of all, Ottsy. That’s nice, I must say. Very nice.’

‘I just wanted you to know. About my promise. I won’t say it again.’

‘Why not? I don’t mind.’

‘Well, it isn’t relevant, is it?’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘No more now than it was then. You chose Paulus, Dagmar,’ Otto said. ‘He was the one you loved.’

As Otto mentioned his brother’s name he realized it was the first time he had done so. How could it have taken him so long?

‘Paulus, Ottsy?’ Dagmar said with a sad sad smile.

She tilted her head back and looked up at the sky. The clouds were grey but there were hints of sun rippling through them. There was no breeze and the smoke rose vertically from her mouth. After a little while she looked back at him and her eyes were glistening as if she was going to cry.

She seemed about to say something but then stopped, drawing instead once more on her cigarette. Finally her face seemed to harden a little with resolve and the words came.

‘Oh, Otto,’ she said as a tear trickled from her eye. ‘I never loved Paulus.’

For a moment he wondered if he had heard her correctly, but there could be no doubt he had. The tears now flowing down her cheeks were proof of that.

‘Dagmar,’ Otto said, aghast, ‘what do you mean? How can you say you never loved him? You told us… at Wannsee. On the beach. That you’d chosen Paulus.’

‘Yes. That’s right, Otts,’ and she could not look at him now. ‘I chose him.’

‘Then what are you saying?’

‘Oh, Otto. Otto,’ Dagmar said, and it sounded almost as if she was scolding him. ‘So good, so true. Just like his brother. Those terrible Stengel twins, eh? I didn’t deserve them. I always knew that. But then I never forced them to fall in love with me either.’

‘Dagmar, please tell me what you’re—’

‘Paulus was the clever one, Ottsy.’ Dagmar ground out her butt, then took the lighter and another cigarette from the packet in Otto’s hand, her fingers lingering for a moment on his. ‘Don’t you see? I chose the clever one. Surely you understand?’

‘Not really, no,’ Otto said, although he thought that perhaps he was beginning to.

‘I wasn’t interested in love, Otto. I didn’t have that luxury. I was a Jewess trapped in Nazi Berlin. The mob had just burned my mother to death. I was interested in survival.’ Dagmar lit her cigarette and collected her thoughts. ‘I worked it out on the night you saved my life. On Kristallnacht. Do you remember what you said? When we got to your mum’s apartment, me sitting there on the floor, hugging my little toy monkey. I still have it, you know. You said you were going to kill Himmler. That was your reaction to the Night of the Broken Glass. You were always saying that sort of thing. You were the boy who brought me the Brownshirt’s buttons. Pauly never did anything like that. Pauly was too clever, too calculating. Pauly always had a plan. He had a plan that night too. He told you to forget stupid ideas like killing Nazis. Because you had to become a good German so that you could look after me. It was a good plan. But sitting there listening to it, not saying a word, I could see damn clearly that the wrong twin was going to have to carry it out. I needed the clever one. The calculating one. Not the wild one who wanted to kill Himmler. I didn’t think I’d stand a chance with you.’

The cigarette packet fell from Otto’s limp fingers. He stooped to retrieve it from the ground. Some children ran past the bench where they were sitting. He glanced up to see their legs flash past.

A boy chasing a girl.

Somewhere Otto could hear a band playing.

‘You decided that night, then? On Kristallnacht?’ Otto said, his words emerging as if from some strange other place. ‘You decided to tell Paulus that you loved him?’

‘Don’t judge me, Ottsy.’

‘Did you tell him then? That night after I went back to school?’

‘No.’ Her voice was tense but steady, almost as if it was a relief finally to be telling the truth. ‘Pauly was dead set on his path; he was going to escape from Germany and be an English lawyer and build the future. I knew that if I was to keep him for myself I must handle him with care. I had so much to turn around and so little time in which to do it. After all, poor Pauly thought I loved you.’ The tune the distant band were playing finished. A smattering of applause drifted across the park. Then they struck up again. More marching music. Did they never tire of it?

‘And did you?’ Otto asked, and he was shocked to realize how eagerly he leapt upon the point. Had he won, after all? Had the pendulum to which he and his brother nailed their hearts as boys swung once again in his favour? ‘Did you love me?’

‘Oh, Otto, Otto,’ Dagmar replied wearily. ‘You’re a man now, not a boy. Surely you can see? Don’t you understand? I never loved either of you.’

Otto flinched as if he had been struck. Dagmar too looked almost taken aback at herself, shocked at her own honesty. At the pain she was inflicting.

‘I know how awful that must sound,’ she went on quickly. ‘I adored you. You must know that. Those crazy Stengel boys who loved me so. But even then we all knew that if it hadn’t been for Hitler, me loving you would never even have been a question. Ours was a Saturday world, that was all. One day a week. And one fine Saturday I would have been gone. Away. Abroad. I was going to marry a millionaire just like my daddy was.’

Otto stared at the ground between his feet.

‘Yes, that’s what Silke always said.’

‘Yes, I imagine she would have done,’ Dagmar observed tartly, ‘but Hitler did