Two Brothers

Then she gave Otto a cigarette, a Gitane.

She had done the same thing many times. But this was different. Spine-tinglingly different. She lit the cigarette for him. Putting her full, soft lips around the end and taking the first puff before handing it to him.

What touched her lips then touched his.

Otto was literally quivering with desire. His hands were shaking despite his every effort to still them.

After he had taken a drag or two, she reached over and plucked it from his lips, took another deep draw herself and then put it back in Otto’s mouth. Her lipstick was red on the white paper, he could taste it along with the smoke.

Otto had never dreamt that having a ciggie could be so sexy or so sophisticated. He felt as if he’d grown up a whole decade between puffs.

When the cigarette was nearly burnt down, Dagmar took it from Otto’s lips for the final time and ground it out in the crystal ashtray that sat beside her dolls on the dressing table. Then she drew Otto towards her and kissed him, full on the mouth. This was no furtive, stolen moment, like it had been at the Kempinski hotel, but slow and rich and generous.

Her lips opened beneath his and then he felt her tongue brush against his.

Otto’s mind spun cartwheels in almost blind delirium. This was ecstasy pure and simple. He tried to concentrate; he was, after all, living through the most important and most ecstatic moment of his life.

The kiss lasted a moment longer before Dagmar stepped back and smiled at him.

Otto imagined the ecstatic moment was over but he had no complaints. Had he dropped dead then and there he would have died a happy boy.

But then he felt her soft lips against his ear.

‘You can put your hand in my blouse if you like,’ she whispered.

No dream had ever come more true.

For three long years Otto had wanted nothing so much on earth as to put his hand in Dagmar’s blouse and now quite suddenly that sublime moment had arrived.

She kissed him as he pulled at the sweet-smelling cotton, dragging the hem from beneath the waist of her skirt. Then he put his hand underneath, moving it upwards, across the soft skin of her ribs. He felt one of her breasts, first through her brassiere and then, slipping his fingers inside the wired garment, touched the nipple beneath.

He was shivering with excitement. And it seemed to Otto that so was Dagmar.

This was an unexpected development. It had never even occurred to Otto that she might feel passion too. He would never have flattered himself to imagine that a goddess such as she could reciprocate his desire. All he had ever dared hope was that she might tolerate it in return for undying devotion and lifelong service.

And yet she seemed to shiver too.

For a moment they stood together, pressed against the dressing table, lips working at each other’s mouths. Otto trying simultaneously to both lose himself in and yet also remember forever the extraordinary ecstasy of actually touching Dagmar’s breasts.

Then she pushed him away.

‘No more,’ she gasped. ‘We should stop before… Not because I don’t want to… but because I do…’

Dagmar reddened as the sentences trailed away.

Otto grinned a grin so broad it seemed to split his face in two. He had come so much further than ever he had dared to hope.

‘This is the best night of my life,’ he stuttered. ‘I mean literally. Honest. Just the best… literally.’

Dagmar smiled too. A true and genuine smile, a smile that for a moment seemed free of pain. The smile not of a hunted and a haunted Jew who was celebrating the mugging of an enemy, but simply of a young girl just turned fifteen who was growing up and had properly kissed a boy for the first time.

‘Thanks for my buttons,’ she said, tucking her blouse back into her skirt. ‘Although I don’t really think I want to keep them. Do you mind?’

‘No, I don’t think you should either,’ Otto replied, still red-faced with delight. ‘I’ll take them and chuck ’em, shall I?’

‘Only if you absolutely promise to throw them down the first gutter. If you kept them and they were ever found…’

‘Don’t worry.’ Otto smiled. ‘Paulus may be the clever one but I’m not completely thick you know.’

The mention of Paulus made them both think for a moment. Looking into each other’s eyes in silent acknowledgement that the dynamics of all their lives had changed.

‘I’d better go,’ Otto said.

He scooped up the buttons and made for the door, stumbling over the thick rug and nearly upsetting a little table crowded with stuffed toys and ornaments.

‘Ottsy,’ Dagmar said, ‘you know you and Pauly always tell me that one day I’ll have to choose?’

‘Yeah,’ Otto gulped.

‘Well, I have. I love Pauly but… I’ve chosen you.’

The Adopted Son Berlin, 1935

IT WAS VERY late when Otto returned home having, it seemed to him, almost floated across Berlin on a cloud of happiness, descending to earth only once in order to dispose of the buttons in a great mound of horse shit on Kopenicker Strasse.

It was late but to Otto’s surprise, Wolfgang, Frieda and Paulus were still up.

They were waiting for him.

His family.

‘About bloody time,’ Paulus snapped. ‘Mum and Dad want to talk to us and they won’t tell me what it’s about on my own so we’ve had to wait for you and I haven’t been able to study all evening.’

‘I’m heartbroken, mate,’ Otto said. ‘Oh, by the way, Dagmar’s agreed to be my girl. Sorry but that’s how it goes.’

Whatever Paulus had been thinking about his mother’s strange behaviour he forgot it at once in the face of this terrible pronouncement.

‘You’re lying!’

‘Ask her if you like,’ Otto replied. ‘Ring her, she’ll be up.’

The devastation on Paulus’s face made Otto wish he hadn’t put it so bluntly, but then he knew there was never going to be any easy way to say it.

Paulus got out of his chair; he looked close to tears.

‘Sorry, Mum,’ he said, trying to sound calm. ‘Whatever it is you want to say will have to keep. I’m tired, I’m going to bed.’

Frieda smiled. A sad smile.

‘No, Pauly,’ she said, ‘you have to stay. I want to talk to you both. You’ll have to fight about Dagmar another time.’

‘Fight’s over,’ Otto said smugly. ‘I’ve won.’

Perhaps it was the word ‘fight’ that gave Frieda pause for thought. She had been so intent on what she needed to say that she had not noticed Otto’s dishevelled appearance.

‘Where have you been, Ottsy?’

‘Out,’ Otto replied.

‘Is that blood on your shirt?’ Frieda asked, fear starting in her eyes.

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’