Two Brothers

She was suddenly a young woman, while they two still felt like little boys. Little boys, shuffling their feet, tongue- tied and pole-axed with ill-concealed longing. She had on a silken gown with a full-length skirt and a tight, strapless bodice which left them in no doubt that the figure Silke had once pronounced a fake was certainly nothing of the sort any more. The boys were struck dumb with admiration.

So mesmerized were they that at first they did not notice the tension on their friend’s lovely face and the sadness in her eyes.

They were, after all, thirteen-year-old boys and at that moment, speechless with longing, they weren’t looking at her face.

‘Welcome, Herr Stengel, Frau Stengel,’ Herr Fischer said. ‘You met my wife of course on that dreadful day when we collected Dagmar from your apartment, after these two fine lads had been her saviour, for which we will always be grateful… You are very welcome. Please. Do go on through.’

Herr Fischer then turned to his daughter.

‘Dagmar, you must greet your guests.’

Dagmar had seemed in something of a daze.

‘Yes, of course, Papa. Hello, Paulus. Hello, Otto.’

‘Wow, Dagmar!’ Paulus stammered.

‘Yeah. Wow,’ Otto echoed.

‘You look…’ Paulus began. He was trying hard to keep his focus on Dagmar’s face but was having a lot of trouble preventing his eyes from flicking downwards.

‘You’ve got…’ Otto was not even trying.

‘They look…’

‘They’re just…’

Dagmar went red. ‘Stop staring!’ she hissed.

‘I wasn’t!’ Paulus protested, going red himself.

‘Nor me!’ Otto lied too.

‘You were!’ Dagmar whispered ferociously. ‘Anyone would think you’d never seen me before.’

‘Not so much of you, we haven’t,’ Otto said.

At which Paulus kicked him.

‘Well, it’s very rude to gawp like that but I don’t care because this evening is absolutely horrible anyway! Now go through and get some ice cream which is all you probably care about anyway and I have to stand here with my parents and I just want to die!’

Then Dagmar turned away from them, sniffing loudly and dabbing at her eyes.

Somewhat at a loss, Paulus and Otto did as they were told and followed their parents through into the ballroom where even they, who had never attended an event remotely like it before, realized at once that things were not going the way they were supposed to.

The ballroom was empty save for them, their parents and twenty waiters.

‘Keep smiling, boys,’ Frieda muttered through a fixed grin. ‘I’m afraid we’re the first.’

Wolfgang’s smile at least was genuine. It was such a ridiculous situation. The four of them standing alone in the huge ballroom beneath the light of ten enormous crystal chandeliers outnumbered five to one by the waiters.

‘Well, I must say, that’s a lovely carpet, isn’t it?’ Frieda said bravely attempting to fill the emptiness with small talk. ‘I imagine it took absolutely for ever to weave. And the champagne is delicious, isn’t it! How is the fruit cup, boys? What a treat this is.’

Slowly as the minutes ticked by a few more guests drifted in until eventually there were perhaps forty or so people in a room that could comfortably have held two hundred.

People skirted around the obvious embarrassment.

‘There has been a flu of some kind going around,’ they assured each other. ‘Perhaps that has put some people off.’

Finally the hosts themselves entered the ballroom, having clearly concluded that they could expect no further arrivals to join the party, no matter how long they stood at the doorway. Canapes were brought out by yet more members of staff and soon after that a buffet appeared. Some ten metres of white linen-clad table, laden with food for two hundred.

Paulus and Otto did their best.

Time and again they returned to the sumptuous spread, enjoying more fresh meat in one evening than they’d eaten in the previous three months. Followed by bowl after bowl of the various desserts, fiercely determined to try them all.

Dagmar sat with them, picking sadly at a single chicken leg and staring at all the empty tables around her.

‘None of my friends came,’ she said. ‘Not one. I’ll never forgive them. Any of them.’

‘We came, Dags,’ Paulus said, through a mouthful of strawberries whipped in cream and sugar.

‘Yeah, we’re here,’ Otto added, looking at her over a fork loaded with rare roast beef. Otto had decided to return to the savoury tables in order to start the whole meal again.

‘You don’t count, Otto. I knew you and Paulus would be here. But no one else, not one, not even the Jewish ones. Why wouldn’t the Jewish ones come?’

‘I expect they were worried that the SA would give them a kicking at the door,’ Paulus said. ‘I don’t mind admitting I was.’

‘Me too,’ Otto said darkly. ‘Which is why I came prepared.’

‘What do you mean?’ Dagmar asked.

Otto attempted an enigmatic smile. Somewhat spoilt by the layer of cream that surrounded his mouth.

‘Leave it, Otto,’ Paulus said.

‘No,’ Dagmar insisted, ‘what do you mean, Otts?’

Otto glanced about himself and then, putting his hand into his breast pocket, pulled out a flick-knife. A neatly executed twist of his fingers snapped out the blade which he then used to impale a new potato from his plate and put it in his mouth.

Dagmar’s sad eyes gleamed momentarily with excitement.

‘Wow, Otts! You look like a gangster in a movie!’ she gasped.

‘Put that away!’ Paulus snarled. ‘How many times, Otto! It’s one thing taking precautions, it’s another bragging about them. If you got found with that they’d show no mercy, you know that.’

‘Yeah,’ Otto replied grimly, ‘and neither would I.’

Then Otto stuck his knife into a blood-red slice of roast beef on his plate and offered it to Dagmar, who took it from the vicious-looking point, with an excited giggle.

Paulus wasn’t giggling. ‘Don’t be such a bloody prick! Put it away. Fuck, Otto, you can’t go flashing a knife around. The cops are bound to have spies in a big Jewish business like this. I’ve seen some of the waiters sneering behind their bow ties. If one of them sees that and reports you, you’re dead. There’s Gestapo outside, you know.’

Reluctantly Otto closed the blade and put it back in his pocket.

‘Yeah, well, maybe you’re right,’ he said. ‘But whoever does catch me had better watch out because I’ll tell you this, Pauly, this is one bad Jew boy who won’t be going quietly.’

‘Good for you, Otto,’ Dagmar said angrily. ‘You stick it in one of those pigs. I hope you kill a hundred!’

‘A hundred’s not enough,’ Otto snarled. ‘One Jew is worth at least a thousand of them and that’s how many I’m going to kill. Just you wait.’

‘Yeah, and what about Mum if it’s you that gets killed?’ Paulus snarled back. ‘As if she doesn’t have enough to worry about.’

For a moment the three of them ate in silence.

‘At least now I know who my real friends are,’ Dagmar said. ‘I shan’t need to bother writing to anyone else from America but you.’