Ben Elton - Two Brothers

‘But, Dags,’ Otto found himself protesting, almost as if they were back in her pink bedroom arguing about their futures together instead of picking over their past, ‘a police woman? It’s just so unlike you. I mean, you must have absolutely hated it.’

‘Hated it, Otto?’ Dagmar replied, her eyes suddenly gleaming. ‘I loved it. It was my fucking dream job. I was the hunter now. I was the bastard. All those little people of Berlin who’d sneered and laughed while my life was stolen were going to feel the toe of my boot every chance I got! I put on that uniform, pinned back my hair, went out on to the streets of Berlin and made life hell for anybody I could. I soon realized that in fact that was what the whole of the Stasi was there for, to make life hell for Germans. How perfect. How fucking ironic! I fucking loved it.’

‘And that was it?’ Otto asked, startled by the sudden venom. ‘That’s where you’ve been ever since? Making life miserable for the people of Berlin?’

‘Exactly,’ Dagmar replied. ‘I couldn’t have turned back even if I’d wanted to. By the time the West began to prosper I was in too deep and I knew too much. I’d made my bed, Otto. They don’t let you leave the Stasi. If you try, they kill you.’

‘So you’re trapped.’

‘I suppose so. But don’t feel sorry for me, Otto. My life is good — better than yours in Britain, I think. As a Stasi girl I have the best food and the best wine. Caviar if I want it. We party people keep all the luxuries for ourselves, you know. I still live in Pauly’s flat with my fashion magazines and any books I want and Western music too, all the stuff we deny to everybody else we keep for ourselves. I wonder what dear Silke would have made of that? Of the shitty corrupt little world her beloved Stalin made? And best of all, I still get to persecute the good citizens of East Berlin. The ones who let Hitler steal my life. The ones who looked away. The ones who stood in a circle around me and my parents and shouted that we should be made to lick the street.’

‘Dagmar, you can’t hate for ever.’

‘Can’t I? Try and stop me. I will hate for every second I’m on this earth. And when I’m gone and my body turns to dust, then each molecule of what was once me will still be hating.’

It was getting dark now. Young couples had replaced the children on the path through the gardens.

The story was almost over.

Otto had all of his answers now but one.

‘And me, Dagmar, when did I re-enter the picture?’

‘Oh, they’ve had their eye on you all along. Right from 1946.’

‘Me?’ Otto asked, very surprised.

‘Don’t be flattered. They watch all the Germans who work for the Allies. Big and small. They study their pasts, looking for ways to force them to work for us. They connected me to you via Silke’s marriage to Pauly. I’m her, don’t forget, and my married name is Stengel. It didn’t take them long to spot the Jew Stone in the British Foreign Office who had once been a Stengel and to work out that his sister-in-law worked for them.’ Otto actually laughed.

‘Do you realize,’ he said, ‘you’re talking about the Saturday Club? Paulus, Silke, you, me. Still connected, still a gang. Could anyone looking at us back at the beginning ever have imagined?’

‘Every German story took a wrong turn in 1933, Otts. We’re not so special.’

‘I guess so. So they still don’t know who you really are, then?’

‘I don’t think they do. You can never be sure. They love secrets and they bide their time. They certainly did with you. Once they’d made the connection between us they put me on notice that one day they’d require me to bring you to Germany. I think they were waiting for you to rise in your profession a bit.’

‘No luck there, I’m afraid,’ Otto said. ‘I’ve not been much of a success at the FO at all. Or anywhere else for that matter. Same grade I started in.’

‘We noticed,’ Dagmar observed dryly. ‘Anyway, a few months ago my bosses must have decided that now was as good a time as any to try and make use of you, and I was instructed to find a way to lure you over. I knew what that was all right.’

‘Yes,’ Otto murmured, ‘you certainly did.’

‘I told them the surest way to get to you was for me to assume the identity of a dead Jewess whom you had loved.’

‘So that’s you pretending to be Silke pretending to be you. Quite a labyrinth, Dags.’

‘That’s the way we like things in the Stasi. The more shadows and lies the better. So we re-established the Dagmar identity, made it official in case MI6 were watching.’

‘Which by the way they were.’

‘And here you are, Otto. It isn’t all so very complicated really.’

‘Maybe not for you, Dagmar. But it seems pretty bloody tortuous to me. I’m not the clever Stengel twin, remember.’

Dagmar looked at him and her eyes softened a little.

‘You were clever enough to come to me and save my life in 1938, Ottsy. I’d have burned to death.’

She put her hand on his and squeezed it a little.

‘But despite that, Dagmar,’ Otto said, removing her hand, ‘it seems you’ve been quite happy to entrap me.’

‘Otto. I work for them. They don’t give you a choice in these things. If I hadn’t done it they’d have just pretended to be me.’

‘Pretended to be you, pretending to be Silke, pretending to be you,’ Otto corrected.

‘Yes, that’s right. Besides –’ and she gave him a little smile, a smile he hadn’t seen since the days of the pink bedroom — ‘I wanted to see you. I thought you’d want to see me.’

‘I did, Dags. You damn well know that. But the question is, what happens now?’

‘They’ll try to persuade you to spy for them inside the British Foreign Office. They’re waiting for you over there.’

Dagmar nodded towards a bench situated beyond Snow White, which had been empty moments before but on which were now sitting two solid-looking men in the Homburg hats.

Otto stared across at them.

‘The uniform doesn’t change then? Different totalitarian ideology, same hats.’

‘Yes, just the same.’

Otto sighed and lit a cigarette.

‘One last fag, eh?’ he said. ‘The thing is, Dagmar, I can’t help them.’

‘They can be very persuasive.’

‘No. I mean really. I really can’t. You see, they want a spy in the Foreign Office, but in fact I won’t be working for the Foreign Office when I get back.’

‘Really? When was this decided?’

‘Today. Here in the People’s Park. I’m going to resign. And I won’t be studying for any law degrees that I don’t have the brains to get any more either.’

‘You’ve been studying law, Ottsy?’ Dagmar asked, very surprised.

‘Trying to. Since 1947. You see, I’ve been trying to live the life Pauly lost. Isn’t that silly? Ever since you caused him to give me his name and his prospects I’ve felt responsible. I’ve been trying to be him. For his sake and for Mum’s — she did so love what she thought he’d become. But I’m going to stop now because it’s obviously ridiculous. Suddenly I understand that. I can’t be him and he wouldn’t want me to. I’ve been Paul Stone for seventeen years but when I get back I’m going to start being Otto Stengel again. I don’t know how I’ll do it or what I’ll do — sweep roads probably — but one thing’s for sure. Whatever I do become, it’ll be more fun than what I’ve been trying to be. And I’m afraid it won’t be any use to the Stasi. Unless they want a spy in a woodwork class and an amateur jazz band, because I’ll certainly be joining those.’

Dagmar smiled.

‘Is there a girl?’