He had been thinking about it all week.
A foreskin wouldn’t stand up against a proper search of family history, of course. But it might do in an alleyway, in a cellar. When the wolves were in your face.
If you waved it about a bit and shouted. Loud and clear and furious and certain. They seemed to respond to that sort of thing.
And now the time had come to test the idea.
With his ex-friends and old enemies closing in, nine against two, it was time to try the big bluff.
‘Take a look at little Paulus, Emil,’ Paulus shouted, pulling up the leg of his football shorts with the hand that did not hold a broken chair. ‘What do you think of this big boy?’
Paulus reached up into his groin and pulled out his penis, shaking it at his surprised assailants.
‘Ever see a Jew boy with foreskin?’ Paulus crowed, putting down his chair leg and pulling down his pants. ‘So how about you suck on this, arsehole! Come on, Otto, show the twat what a real German dick looks like.’
Otto didn’t like it. Exposing himself in public seemed like black humiliation to him. On the other hand, they were so heavily outnumbered.
Slowly Otto laid down his corner flag and dustbin lid and pulled down his trousers.
The rest of the team loved it. They howled with laughter as Paulus waved his dick at Emil, who just stood there looking witless, unable to think of a rejoinder.
‘Tell your old man next time he insults decent Germans he’ll have to deal with the Stengel boys!’ Paulus shouted.
Otto just snarled and pulled up his pants.
Outside the hut a whistle blew. The opposing team would be waiting. The ref getting impatient.
‘So are we going to play football or what?’ Paulus shouted. ‘Let’s beat these bastards, eh?’
The incident was over. Emil turned away, confused. One or two of the other lads slapped Otto on the shoulder. He told them to piss off.
Paulus and Otto played the game. Giving it everything they had as always. Occasionally exchanging glances, mutually acknowledging their lucky escape. Both aware of the doubtful confused looks they were getting from Emil and the other openly Nazi members of the team.
It was of course their last game.
Football was over for them. Years of fun, sport and comradeship, stopped dead.
They both knew they could never risk going back.
They left the field the moment the final whistle blew. Their team had won and Otto had scored twice but the Stengels didn’t hang around to celebrate. There were no songs or scuffles or wild cheers. Otto was not hoisted high on shoulders as previously he would have been. They’d won but they had nothing to celebrate. Their entire world had collapsed.
‘I think we should have fought,’ said Otto as they stood waiting for their train.
‘Don’t be bloody stupid, we’d have been killed.’
‘Yeah. But we had to show them our dicks.’
‘So what? Who cares?’ Paulus asked, genuinely surprised.
‘I care. I suppose you and me are just different, that’s all,’ Otto said.
After that there was silence until the boys got home.
To face another humiliation.
From now on such things would be a daily occurrence.
Edeltraud was there, with Silke. And Edeltraud’s boyfriend, Jurgen, now her fiance. The respectful young man who had come cap in hand to the children’s first concert recital five years earlier. The boys had seen him many times since then, although less so in the last year or two.
And never in the brown uniform of the SA.
‘Say goodbye to Edeltraud, boys,’ Frieda said. ‘She won’t be coming around any more.’
‘Of course she won’t!’ Jurgen snapped. ‘It is not fitting that a German woman should be a servant to Jews. You must know that.’
The boys looked at Edeltraud. Her face was hard, her chin set.
And at Silke, whose eyes were red with tears. Her chest heaving, weeping silently.
‘Tell me, Jurgen,’ Frieda asked quietly, ‘was it fitting, ten years ago, for a Jew to take in a seventeen-year-old street kid with an infant in her arms?’
‘You exploited her! You made her work for you!’
Frieda looked at Edeltraud.
‘Edeltraud, you can’t believe that’s true.’
Edeltraud avoided Frieda’s eye. ‘You’re Jews’ was all she would say.
‘Whatever we are, it’s what we’ve always been. All these years, together in this apartment. So much laughter, so many tears. You and Silke and us. What’s changed?’
‘What’s
‘Money?’ Frieda asked. ‘What money? She has been paid as always. More than most girls would have got.’
‘Her notice. We want a month’s notice.’
‘But she is resigning, Jurgen,’ Frieda said quietly. ‘Surely you know that she is not entitled to notice.’
‘She is not resigning. You are
‘How? How am I forcing her to leave?’
‘By being Jews,’ Jurgen said. ‘This is a racial dismissal. Give her the money and be grateful I do not demand more!’
Frieda went into the kitchen. To the biscuit barrel, where she kept her household supply of cash.
‘You know, Edeltraud,’ Frieda said quietly, ‘I’ve always known that sometimes you took a little from here when I wasn’t looking. A few extra marks here and there. I never said anything.’
The boys looked at Edeltraud in astonishment. Such a thing would never have occurred to them. Silke stared hard at her mother. Edeltraud went red-faced but said nothing.
Wolfgang had been sitting at his piano, not facing his ex-maid and her storm-trooper boyfriend.
‘Would you like a schnapps, Jurgen?’ Wolfgang asked, turning around for the first time. ‘You’ve been happy to take one in the past.’
The young SA man remained silent standing beside Edeltraud on the blue rug where Silke and the boys had played happily so many times when they were small.
Frieda held out her hand to Edeltraud with some money.
‘Goodbye, Edeltraud,’ Frieda said. ‘For more than ten years, you’ve been family. I shall remember you that way.’
‘You’re Jews,’ Edeltraud repeated. It seemed to be all that she could say. The shield with which she kept her conscience at bay.
She snatched at the money and stuffed it into the pocket of her apron.
‘Edeltraud! Silke! Come!’ Jurgen ordered.
Edeltraud turned to go but Silke hesitated.
‘Paulus, Otto,’ she said, speaking for the first time. ‘I am still a member of the Saturday Club and I always will be.’
‘I said come!’ Jurgen shouted.
And they were gone.
Thirteenth Birthdays
THE STENGEL TWINS and the Nazi Party shared another birthday that February but this time it was the
