Two Brothers

‘That’s right,’ Otto replied, clearly pleased at having for once wrong-footed his know-it-all brother. ‘As far as I’m concerned I am a Jew. I just need a convenient relative to prove it.’

‘You’re not a Jew, Otts!’ Paulus protested. ‘That’s the point! Can’t you see you’re safe?’

‘I don’t want to be safe!’ Otto said. ‘I want to be a Stengel and the Stengels are Jews.’

‘Please tell me this is a joke, Otts,’ Paulus said. ‘It’s perverse. It’s also potentially suicidal. Nobody wants to be a Jew in Germany.’

‘What a shame, eh, Mum,’ Otto said, ‘that it wasn’t the other way around back in 1920 in the hospital. Then we’d have all been happy, wouldn’t we?’

This remark brought Paulus up short. Otto could see that his point had hit home.

‘Well, Pauly?’ Otto pressed on. ‘Would you have liked that? Do you really wish it was you who didn’t have to be a Jew any more? Even if it meant having to leave home and go and live with foster Nazis?’

‘Yes,’ Paulus said firmly. ‘And not because I’d be able to go swimming and study properly again. But because if I had proper rights as a citizen I could help Mum and Dad and Pops and Grandma. And you come to think of it. Things are going to get a lot worse, you know, and having a tame German in the family might be pretty useful. I’d be happy to take the job.’

‘I think that’s a very sensible answer, Pauly,’ Frieda said.

‘Yeah, Mum?’ Otto said, with a touch of a sneer. ‘Well I think Pauly’s famous brain might not be working so well today. Tame Germans! Come on, Pauly, they’re all tame. That’s the bloody problem. We know lots of them, whispering to us that they don’t approve of what’s happening. Apologizing with their eyes for not saying hello to us in the street. What good do they do? Nothing. Bugger all. Just like Silke’s precious bloody Commies! I keep telling you, when things do get worse, the only people who will be able to help us is us. We’re going to need to stick together. Which is why I need to find a kike in my tree.’

‘Well,’ Frieda said, ‘you can have a go, Otto, but I’d be surprised if you’ll find one. I only ever met your birth grandparents once but they looked pretty volkisch to me.’

‘I have to look. I’m going to find some Jew in my blood if it kills me.’

‘Otto, if you do find any,’ Paulus said solemnly, ‘it probably will.’

‘Thanks a lot, Pauly,’ Wolfgang said, refilling his glass with spirits, ‘that really cheers us up.’

A Country Excursion Saxony, September 1935

THE FOLLOWING DAY Paulus and Otto went to Friedrichshain town hall in search of the names and addresses of Otto’s natural grandparents.

‘If it wasn’t a matter of life and death it’d actually be quite funny,’ Paulus said on their return. ‘The place was absolutely packed. Jews, gypsies, Nazis, all scrabbling at the town records. They’ve got this big chart on the wall with all these different family tree models, white circles for Germans, black circles for Jews…’

‘Surprise surprise,’ Wolfgang remarked from his piano stool.

‘And then mixed circles for the Mischlinge. The idea is you put your great- grandparents in the various circles and that way you can work out whether you qualify to sit on park benches or not.’

‘And did you find anything out,’ Frieda asked, ‘about Otto’s family?’

‘Only on his mother’s side,’ Paulus said, ‘and then only their names and their home village. It’s in Saxony.’

‘I’m going to find them,’ Otto said firmly. ‘I’ll cycle — it’s only a hundred and twenty kilometres.’

When Silke heard about the trip she insisted immediately on going along for the ride. She had only just got back from her epic march to Nuremberg and having tasted the freedom of the open road and nights out camping under stars had no desire to return to the drudgery of life in her mother’s apartment where her stepfather treated her as an unpaid servant.

‘It’ll be easy to get off school,’ she said. ‘I’ll just say it’s BDM business. I am Youth and I belong to the Fuhrer, don’t you know!’ she added, quoting party rhetoric with a wicked laugh. ‘I have a special place in his heart and in his plans so my teachers can go screw themselves! Ha ha! It’ll be a good thing to have me along in my uniform anyway, Otts. A lad on his own out there with a bike and backpack who’s not in the Hitler Youth is a dead set target. They’ve banned all the other youth clubs, even the Catholic bird-watchers. The country’s swarming with HJ and believe me there’s plenty of them looking for a fight. They go for any kid who isn’t in the gang. If you’re with me, it’ll just look like you’re in civvies.’

And so the very next morning Otto and Silke set out together with their sandwiches and apple juice, a blanket each, a little canvas tent and a few marks to buy food along the way.

The first part of the journey meant cycling all the way across Berlin from the south-east to the north-west, a dirty, sweaty business on what was a warm late September morning. Soon, however, they picked up the old Hamburg road and found themselves rolling happily along an almost empty country road which meandered its way through the glorious countryside of Brandenburg towards Saxony and would eventually lose itself in the beautiful Elbe valley, where they planned to camp that night.

It was a wonderful day bathed in perfect sunshine, and Otto found himself forgetting all his terror for the future as he revelled in the simple unfettered freedom of the open road.

‘Hitler weather’, people called it, and it was true that the summers since the Leader had seized power did seem to have been longer and more pleasant than those under the Weimar.

‘Bloody hot, eh, Otts!’ Silke said as she laboured at her pedals, leaning forward over the handlebar in order to lend more power to each pumping motion of her legs.

Good legs too, Otto could not stop himself from thinking, as he glanced across the dusty lane at his travelling companion. The skirts of the BDM uniform were fully calf-length but Silke had tucked the hem of hers up into her knickers to make it easier to ride. Her legs were thus fully displayed, and the flexing and unflexing of her muscles cast nice shadows across her tanned thighs and calves as she rode.

How strange, Otto mused, that scrappy little Silke should end up having nice legs. He rubbed the sweat from his eyes and took in the pleasant sight. Who would ever have thought it?

Firm, shapely legs. Girl’s legs. Not spectacular like Dagmar’s, but then no girl had legs like Dagmar’s. Hers were endless, slim and delicate, like some fabulous, human gazelle. Silke’s legs were not long at all and certainly not skinny. But nice nonetheless. Friendly and strong. No longer covered in grazes and sticking plasters either. Otto did not think he’d ever seen Silke’s knees before without the scabs and plasters and as often as not some dirty inky scribble. Now they were clear and smooth. The only evidence that remained of a thousand fights and falls were one or two little scars that stood white against the copper skin.

Amazing. Silke had been ‘one of the boys’ for so long that it was quite a shock to realize she’d ended up turning into a girl after all. She even had curves. When had that happened? Skinny little Silke with curves? They seemed simply to have arrived overnight.

‘Isn’t Silke growing up?’ Frieda had remarked recently. ‘I always thought she’d turn out pretty.’

And she had.

An old friend with a big smile and a disposition as sunny as the reflections that sparkled in the corn-blonde hair blowing in the breeze behind her as she panted over her handlebar.

Good old Silke.

Such a dear, old friend.

‘Poor Pauly, eh?’ Silke shouted. ‘Bet he wishes he was here.’

‘Yeah!’ Otto called back. ‘Sitting in school surrounded by the enemy studying for a job they won’t let him have. And he thinks he’s the clever one! Ha!’