Two Brothers

‘Well, that’s certainly something to celebrate,’ Paulus grinned. ‘Come on, let’s get some more of that strawberry cream stuff.’

‘Why don’t you get me a plate too, Pauly,’ Dagmar said. ‘I’d like to try some now.’

‘At your service, ma’am,’ Paulus said leaping to his feet, delighted at having been the one selected to do her bidding.

When he had gone Dagmar turned to Otto.

‘Show me again,’ she whispered.

‘What?’

‘Show me your knife.’

‘Yeah, right. OK,’ Otto said, taken aback but also delighted. ‘It is pretty hard, isn’t it?’

He took it out and discreetly flipped it open once more.

Dagmar leant forward and put her finger against its wicked point.

‘Do you really think you could do it?’ she said, her voice a little unsteady. ‘Really stick it into a Nazi?’

‘Of course I could,’ Otto replied, ‘if I had to. I reckon it’d feel great. I’d enjoy it.’

A spasm of excitement passed across Dagmar’s beautiful face.

‘I know you could, Otts,’ she breathed. ‘And I love it.’

Otto’s fingers tightened around the hilt of the knife.

‘But you mustn’t, of course,’ she added quickly. ‘Paulus is right, it’s too risky… I’m just glad you could, that’s all.’

Then with a glance across the room to see that Paulus was fully occupied at the dessert table, Dagmar took up a napkin and, under the guise of pretending to wipe something from Otto’s cheek, leant forward and kissed him.

Not a little girl’s kiss. But something older and more knowing, something closer to how Jean Harlow had kissed Clark Gable in Red Dust.

‘That’s to remember me by,’ she said. ‘Now, quick, put that knife away before someone sees.’

Otto was so surprised and flustered that he almost cut his fingers off as he closed the blade and slipped it back into his pocket.

Paulus returned with the plates of dessert.

‘What’s up?’ Paulus said to Otto. ‘You’ve gone bright red.’

‘Bit of food,’ Otto said quickly, ‘went down the wrong way.’

In the centre of the sparsely occupied ballroom, the Fischers, who had been making the rounds of their few guests, had arrived at Wolfgang and Frieda.

‘I must say,’ Herr Fischer remarked, ‘I had expected better of Berlin. To think that people are so craven, it is astonishing.’

Fischer was swaying slightly, having clearly had a number of glasses of wine.

‘You mustn’t blame them, Herr Fischer,’ Frieda said. ‘People know that their names will be taken, you saw the Gestapo outside.’

‘But that is exactly why those with a position in society should show themselves. And lead by example. Otherwise they’re cowards!’ Herr Fischer said. ‘This government rules not by law but by fear!’

The drink was making him indiscreet, his voice was slightly raised.

‘Hush, dear,’ Frau Fischer said, looking at the hovering waiters with concern, ‘we must remember where we are.’

‘And again, that is the point,’ Herr Fischer went on defiantly, although lowering his voice slightly. ‘Everyone is terrified to speak the truth. Well, I am done with this country now and may say what I like. In fact –’ Herr Fischer leant forward conspiratorially — ‘I gave a valedictory interview to the Berlin correspondent of the New York Times this afternoon. The man was witness to what happened outside my store on April the first. He himself was manhandled.’

‘I wish you’d left it, dear,’ Frau Fischer said. ‘Talking about it can’t do any good now.’

‘I will not leave the land of my fathers with my tail between my legs, my dear. We are not running, we have been driven out and I’m damned if I’ll make a secret of it.’

Once more Frau Fischer looked nervously about her.

‘I think they’re serving coffee, dear,’ she said.

‘Yes, and we really should be going,’ Frieda added. ‘The boys have school in the morning and I must be at the clinic.’

‘Then before you go,’ Herr Fischer went on, taking Wolfgang by the hand and speaking carefully like a man who knows he’s had too much to drink and wishes to disguise it, ‘there is something else I must say. My wife and I owe those splendid boys of yours a great deal.’

‘Please, forget it,’ Wolfgang interrupted, ‘you gave them each a hundred marks at the time, they couldn’t believe their luck.’

‘It’s quite possible that they saved Dagmar’s life that day,’ Herr Fischer went on, ‘or at least saved her from the most terrible sort of attack. I can never repay them for that.’

‘Dagmar’s their friend,’ Frieda interjected. ‘You really mustn’t—’

‘All I’m saying is I won’t forget,’ Herr Fischer said. ‘Dagmar, Frau Fischer and I will be Americans soon and I have friends who have friends in Congress. I beg you to write to me… if things become… well, if they… if you ever feel you are in need.’

Wolfgang looked Herr Fischer in the eye.

‘Thanks very much,’ he said. ‘I hope you mean it, Herr Fischer, because I think there’s a very good chance we’ll be taking you up on that offer.’

‘I mean it most sincerely,’ Herr Fischer replied, squeezing and shaking Wolfgang’s hand. ‘You and Frau Doktor Stengel are fine, fine people and those are two very precious boys you have there. My wife and I will never forget them.’

Auf Wiedersehen Berlin, 1933

DAGMAR NEVER GOT the chance to be the American girl she dreamed of becoming because she and her family never left Berlin.

Later, looking at the photographs of the arrest in the newspaper, it was pretty obvious to Frieda and Wolfgang that the Gestapo had held back deliberately. They could have taken Herr Fischer into custody as he had left his house, but by catching the famous store owner with his feet on the very steps of a first-class carriage, they made him look all the more like a sneaky, pampered fugitive attempting to make his getaway. The caption underneath it in the Volkischer Beobachter read: Not so fast, Jew! The German people want a word with you!

The expression of surprise on Isaac Fischer’s face, captured forever by the photographer (whom the police had conveniently alerted to the arrest), showed that he had no inkling of what was coming. It was a cruel and terrible blow.

The Fischers had driven to the station from Charlottenburg in their gleaming Mercedes, confident in the knowledge that soon they would once more be living in a country where they were safe from robbery and assault.

It is true that the journey had been made somewhat unpleasant by an article in the morning paper, reporting on the party that had been held at Kempinski’s on the previous night. The article was not in the social pages as it would have been had it been published just a year before, a gushing description by a female fashion correspondent of the gorgeous gowns and wealthy elite dancing till dawn. This report was in the news section and it was a damning and violent attack headlined Food for two hundred gorged by scarcely forty Jews. The article went to great length to describe dish by dish how a handful of rich, spoiled Jews had arranged for themselves quantities of food which they could not possibly consume while true Berliners tightened their belts against the hard economic times and stern tasks the nation faced.