Two Brothers

Seeing him and rejecting him had been too traumatic.

‘I broke the sacred bond of the Saturday Club,’ Dagmar lamented with a sad smile, having dried her eyes.

‘The Saturday Club rules were made for a civilized society,’ Paulus said. ‘Nobody should have to deal with the sort of dilemmas we do. It just isn’t fair.’

Paulus offered to go and make some more pretend coffee but Dagmar didn’t want any.

‘It’s repulsive anyway,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why we drink it. Boredom again of course. Something to do.’

The conversation became stilted.

They were both thinking about Otto.

Soon Dagmar said she was tired and thought she’d go to bed.

For perhaps the first time in his life Paulus was actually pleased to leave. It had been devastating for him to have been so close to Otto and then to have to watch from a window as he disappeared into the night alone. He had tried to be strong about it for Dagmar’s sake but now, like her, he needed a moment for himself.

As he went downstairs Frau Fischer appeared at the sitting room door and asked him to come in for a moment.

Paulus had imagined that she would want to talk about Otto. Ask him to try and exert some influence in persuading his brother not to return. But Frau Fischer brushed over the subject of Otto. It was Dagmar she wished to talk about.

‘You’re her only visitor now,’ Frau Fischer continued. ‘One or two of her old friends have tried, but she won’t see them. It’s her pride, you see, she used to be such a golden girl, so much the centre of attention, and now she can’t bear being an object of sympathy. She never really had any Jewish friends, I’m afraid, apart from you and… well. Apart from you. She went to the very best school, you see, and we never really saw ourselves as Jewish anyway.’

‘So she’s lonely?’ Paulus asked. ‘Of course I know that.’

‘I don’t think it’s so much the loneliness as the inactivity that’s really killing her. It’s all right for me. I’ve had a life but she’s only sixteen and she’s going crazy. She used to love teas and parties and dances and all sorts of lovely jolly things. And of course she was such an athletic girl too. With her gymnastics and her swimming, which meant everything to her. Now all of that’s been taken away and I feel like… I feel like I’m watching her fade.’

Paulus looked at his feet, he didn’t know what to say. Frau Fischer had never been one to unburden herself, even before her retreat into herself.

‘I don’t really know why I’m speaking to you about this, Pauly,’ Frau Fischer went on. ‘You’re a Jew too and of course subject to the same restrictions as she is. There’s not much you can do to help, I know. I just… I just wish somehow I could get her out of the house.’

‘Well some restrictions are being lifted for the Olympics,’ Paulus said, attempting a positivity he didn’t feel. ‘Not the swimming pools I don’t think but I reckon we’d be OK going to a park.’

The mention of the Olympics brought a look of angry despair to Frau Fischer’s face.

‘Those games will break Dagmar’s heart,’ she said. ‘I remember when Berlin won the right to stage them back before the Hitler time. Dagmar danced around the room and made her daddy book her extra swimming lessons right there and then. She might have competed you know. Even at sixteen it’s possible she could have qualified. And if not for Berlin perhaps for Tokyo in 1940. But that’s a fantasy now, she hasn’t trained properly for two years, and anyway no German selection committee would choose a Jew. We’re not even Germans any more, not since Nuremberg. Those damned games will be a torture for Dagmar every day they are on. She had always said she would attend every event.’

Paulus was silent. There really was nothing he could say.

‘I’m sorry, Paulus,’ Frau Fischer said. ‘It’s quite late and I’m keeping you from getting home and it isn’t safe out there. Run along, dear. There’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing any of us can do.’

Paulus left the Stengel house with a heavy heart. He knew that Frau Fischer was right. Dagmar was changing. Getting listless and depressed. Fading, Frau Fischer had said, and horrible though it was Paulus knew the description was a good one. He wanted more than anything else to be able to help. To be able to give Dagmar something of her life back. To be the cause of bringing a bloom back to her cheek. But he could not. He was a Jew like her and a Jew in Germany was powerless.

Paulus did not mention Otto’s appearance at the Fischers’ house to Frieda and Wolfgang when he got home. However, when Silke came to the Stengel apartment the following Sunday to give her weekly report, Paulus was privately not surprised to hear that Otto’s growing tolerance of his situation had been interrupted.

‘I’m worried about him,’ Silke admitted. ‘He was really different today. I thought he was settling down but now he’s back to being as angry as he was when he first left.’

‘Has he been fighting?’ Frieda asked anxiously. ‘Is he in trouble?’

‘No,’ Silke replied, ‘but I think it’s coming. He was so bitter today. He hardly spoke on our walk and he wouldn’t take me in to tea. He said he didn’t want to eat with the bastards. Lately he’s been so relaxed about it too. We’ve been laughing at the other boys and making jokes but today he was right back to just wanting to kill them. And then there’s the problem of the Hitler Youth.’

‘What about it?’ Frieda asked, very concerned.

‘Well, you must have read that they’re going to make it compulsory for every kid in the country to join. It’s been all over the news.’

‘We’ve rather given up on reading the German papers,’ Frieda said gently. ‘Not much fun in them for us. There’s a Jewish sheet we see sometimes.’

‘Well, they are,’ Silke went on. ‘Every German child belongs to Hitler and he wants to make it absolutely clear that he’s their real parents and not their family.’

‘How horrible,’ Frieda said, shaking her head. ‘Perhaps people will finally begin to realize what they’ve let themselves in for?’

‘Too late now, I reckon,’ Silke said. ‘Anyway, the point is Otto’s saying he won’t join.’

‘But why?’ Frieda asked. ‘He’s already at a Napola school so what’s the difference?’

‘That’s what I said, but for some reason he seems to have drawn a line. He says he just will not put on another Nazi uniform. I tell him I wear one and I’m a Communist but he says it’s different for a Jew.’

‘So he still says he’s a Jew?’ Frieda asked, almost smiling.

‘Of course he does. You know Otto,’ Silke replied. ‘I thought I was stubborn. It’s such a shame because things have been going really well for him at school despite him trying for them not to. He’s a boxing champ, which they love, and of course they’re thrilled about me.’ Silke went the shade of red which occurred whenever she mentioned herself and Otto in the same breath. ‘I go there in my BDM uniform and they think I’m his girlfriend.’

Frieda smiled. ‘And are you, Silke?’ she asked.

Silke went even redder.

‘No!’ she said, slightly too loudly. ‘You know which girl Otto thinks about. Same as Pauly does. Dagmar of course.’

‘But you have been seeing a lot of him,’ Frieda pressed.

‘Yes and I want to be able to keep seeing him and this business of the Hitler Youth becoming mandatory could make things go very wrong. If Otto refuses to obey the law, his teachers won’t be able to help him even if they want to. He’ll be arrested; it could actually mean a concentration camp.’

Wolfgang had been silent as he almost always was but now quite suddenly he slammed down his glass, spilling whatever foul-smelling spirit it was he’d been drinking on to the closed lid of his piano.

‘He can’t,’ Wolfgang said in what was almost a croak. ‘He can’t go there. I know what they do.’

They all turned to him. Wolfgang never spoke of his experiences in the camp. He rarely spoke of anything much any more, particularly if he’d managed to find something to drink. Now, however, he was shaking with emotion. ‘My little Ottsy can’t go there,’ he said, ‘he just can’t. The only way to survive in there is to beg and plead. With his character he’d be dead in a week.’

‘I know. I know,’ Silke said, ‘but what can we do? You know Ottsy, he’s so