Ben Elton - Two Brothers

But what could he do? Jazz musicians couldn’t turn down work because there were pretty girls attached. They’d never work at all.

‘Congratulations, Kurt,’ he said, ‘looks like I’m your new band fixer then.’

‘You betcha, Daddy!’ Kurt replied. ‘We’ll make this joint jump!’

And from the moment the three of them walked together down into the darkened cellar, breathing in the stench of the previous night’s booze and tobacco and following the morning’s toilet bleach, they did exactly that. They made the joint jump.

It was, without doubt, the best job Wolfgang had ever had.

And not just because Kurt was a ridiculously generous employer who paid at least twice what Wolfgang could have got elsewhere. The main cause for Wolfgang to celebrate was that Kurt was a genuine fan. He loved his jazz in a way that only the young love their music. Like a first love. Their discovery, defining them and their generation. To Kurt jazz was a religion, a way of living. He knew every record just in from the States and the names of half the side men in New Orleans. But he didn’t use this knowledge to impose his vision on his club. He respected Wolfgang absolutely and gave him a completely free hand.

‘Just make sure it’s out there, Daddy,’ he said. ‘Blow it hot hot hot!’

Wolfgang could scarcely believe his luck.

‘All the other assholes I’ve worked for don’t give a damn about the music,’ he told Frieda on the morning after his first night at the Joplin. ‘Those cloth-eared pricks only play jazz because it brings in the gangsters and the flappers; they’d play nursery rhymes or bloody Wagner if they thought it would pay. Even the ones who pretend to understand the music would be happy if we played Alexander’s Ragtime Band and The Yankee Doodle Boy back to back all night. But Kurt’s different, he’s got soul . He only bought the club so he can listen to the band. It’s like his own great big grown-up toy.’

‘That’s nice,’ Frieda observed dryly between sips of coffee and bites of black bread. She was working away at some statistical papers and did not look up. ‘I dealt with three cases of rickets yesterday.’

‘Oh?’ said Wolfgang rather surprised. ‘That can’t have been much fun.’

‘It was heartbreaking actually. Lack of nutrients, pure and simple. They don’t need a doctor, they need a meal. The city Oberbürgermeister says that a quarter of all school kids in Berlin are under normal height and weight due to malnutrition. Imagine that. In the twentieth century.’

Wolfgang was of course somewhat deflated at Frieda’s reaction to what he’d imagined was wonderful news.

‘What’s rickets and malnutrition got to do with my new job?’ he asked.

‘Nothing really. Except that with the city slowly starving to death it’s nice that one big kid got his own club to play with, that’s all.’

‘And you’re saying that it’s Kurt’s fault the country’s completely fucked, are you?’

‘Don’t swear. The boys might be awake. They’re picking things up you know.’ Frieda continued to tick and cross boxes on the forms she was working on.

‘Well, there speaks the great radical! Swearing is the language of the proletariat, isn’t it? I thought you were supposed to be all for the working bloody class?’

‘I want a fairer world, not a coarser one, Wolf.’

‘You sound like your mother.’

‘And that’s a criticism, is it?’

‘You decide.’

‘Wolf, I’m just asking you to watch your language a bit. Edeltraud told me that a couple of days ago in the Volkspark an old gentleman patted Otto on the head and Ottster told him to fuck off.’

‘Good for him. You don’t mess around with a man’s hair, that’s well known. They’d kill you for it in the south side of Chicago.’

‘Edeltraud thought it was funny, which is of course half the problem.’

Wolfgang lit up another Lucky, his fourth of the morning, but with the money he would now be earning he could afford to smoke as many as he liked.

‘Look, I don’t want to talk about Edeltraud, or old gits in the park. I want to know why you seem to feel that my new job’s got something to do with you treating kids for rickets.’

‘Come on, Wolf,’ Frieda said, putting away her papers and taking her cup and plate to the sink where she managed to crush a cockroach with a serving spoon. ‘You know very well that all these people getting rich quick is making a terrible situation worse. If your Kurt can afford to buy his own nightclub he must have got the money from somewhere.’

‘What? From starving children?’

‘Indirectly.’

‘He got it from nowhere , Frieda!’ Wolfgang replied angrily. ‘He borrows money and he buys things, then he waits for the mark to go down and pays back the debt. Simple jazz economics. Wish I had the guts to do it. He didn’t get rich flogging old ladies’ jewellery in Belgium, he’s just smart, that’s all.’

Frieda sat down again and tried to smile.

‘Look, I’m sorry, Wolf. I’m being unfair, I know that. It’s just very hard at work. I never thought my first job as a doctor would be watching children die. You know TB’s up 300 per cent on pre-war levels?’

‘No, I didn’t know, as it happens. I haven’t had time to study the city’s medical statistics. I’ve been busy working all night making sure my own kids don’t starve. And my wife for that matter.’

Frieda took his hand across the table and squeezed it.

‘Yes. I know. And of course I’m glad about your new boss. It’s terrific that he likes your music.’

‘You know how much I hated trotting out tea dance music in Wannsee and Nikolassee for the old ladies,’ Wolfgang said, ‘but I did it because we need to eat and because you want to work in a public-funded medical centre where they pay you bugger all.’

‘I know. I know,’ Frieda conceded.

‘And now I’ve actually got a gig I enjoy , I thought you’d be pleased.’

‘I am. I am pleased, Wolf, and I mean it, I’m sorry. Sometimes my work gets to me, that’s all. And I am grateful for how hard you work for us, you know that.’ She leant across the table and kissed him. ‘It’s not quite how your marriage plan was supposed to work out, is it? I seem to recall I was going to support you.’

‘Yes, you were.’

‘A jazz man supporting a doctor.’ Frieda smiled. ‘Only in Germany! Only in Berlin.’

EVERYBODY CAME TO the Joplin.

High life. Low life. Good guys. Bad guys.

Plenty of beauties, plenty of beasts.

From day one the place simply throbbed with easy money, booze, sex, drugs and jazz.

The sex and the drugs were supplied principally by Kurt’s friend Helmut the ‘queer pimp’, whom Wolfgang now discovered dealt in narcotics as well as prostitutes.

He regularly offered Wolfgang both.

‘Take your pick,’ Helmut loved to say expansively, pointing out various exquisite young girls (and boys) who were club regulars and whom Wolfgang had no idea were prostitutes. ‘Take two and make yourself a sandwich. Don’t worry, they’re all clean as whistles. Six months ago they were at finishing schools; now, I’m afraid, Daddy’s poor and growing girls and boys must eat.’

Wolfgang politely declined the offer of sex but he was happy to accept the occasional chemical stimulant. They were long nights and the trumpet is a demanding task master.

He didn’t tell Frieda of course. But Frieda wasn’t there and he didn’t have to play by her rules. Not at the club.

He was after all a jazz man. Jazz men didn’t play by anybody’s rules. That was the point. A little cocaine with your champagne? A puff of something dreamy to chase along the single malt? Why not? How could a man say no?