Ben Elton - Two Brothers

Paulus straightened himself up, throwing a wild cross, a classic sucker punch, and Otto was the sucker for imagining his brother beaten. Otto had reckoned it would be ten minutes before Paulus could form a proper sentence, let alone deliver a haymaker of a right hook that swung up from out of nowhere and caught Otto in the eye, sending him once more sprawling to the ground.

In all the club bouts Otto had fought he had never once been knocked down, and now his brother, his thoughtful, cautious, calculating brother, had decked him twice in no time at all.

‘Otto, are you all right?’ Silke cried out. She’d seen the boys fight before many times but never like this. Paulus and Otto fought all the time, but just whacks and scuffles. This kind of brutality they reserved for common enemies, not each other.

Silke knelt beside Otto, dabbing at his bleeding ear with the hem of her dress.

‘Get up,’ Paulus shouted, ‘get up and swear to me you’ll leave Dagmar alone. Otherwise you’ll get some more.’

‘God, you’re both pathetic. She’s just a stuck-up bitch anyway.’

‘Shut up, Silke!’ Otto said, brushing her away. ‘This hasn’t got anything to do with you!’

‘Yes it has! She lied to you both! She’s trying to break up the Saturday Club!’

‘Clear out of it, Silks,’ Paulus shouted, ‘this is between me and Otts.’

Now it was Paulus’s turn to be caught off guard. He really should have been paying attention to Otto, not Silke, because just then Otto seized the opportunity of Paulus’s momentary distraction to jump to his feet and commence another assault. This time he did not intend to underestimate his brother. Squinting through his rapidly closing eye, he put up his guard and steamed back into the fight. No flurry of punches now but a properly executed combination. By the book. Left jab, straight right, left hook, straight right again. Paulus tried to protect himself by going into a clinch but Otto saw it coming, feinting a hook and, when Paulus turned away from it, hitting him with a final cross before flattening him with a bone-crunching head butt, which was not out of any book but his own.

The fight was over and although technically Otto won with a knockout, it was evens on points, and both boys were probably equally dazed and bloodied at its conclusion.

‘Cor,’ Silke said, somewhat stunned, ‘you two really went for it.’

Paulus had been very slightly concussed by Otto’s final head butt but after a moment or two he raised himself up to a sitting position and wiped blood from his mouth.

‘Dagmar Fischer’s mine,’ he said quietly. ‘Just keep your bloody hands off her.’

‘What?’ Otto exclaimed fiercely. ‘I just whipped you! I won her! You keep your hands off.’

‘That’s not how it works with girls,’ Paulus grunted. ‘You can’t just win them in a fight.’

‘Well, what the hell were we fighting for then?’ Otto enquired, reaching out a hand to help Paulus up.

‘Because you’re both idiots!’ Silke exclaimed angrily. ‘And she’s just a lying, hoity-toity cow. I can’t believe either of you are interested.’

‘Yeah, well, you’re jealous of her,’ Otto said.

‘Am not.’

‘Yes you are!’

‘Why? Why would I be jealous of her?’

‘Because we like her, that’s why,’ Paulus said, laughing.

‘Huh! As if I care who you like,’ Silke shouted, but she was going red beneath her golden tan. ‘She’s a stupid bean pole and I don’t believe those tits are real. She’s putting tissues under her vest, I bet. But anyway you can have her if you like. I’m going home.’

Both boys were laughing now. Their fight forgotten in shared merriment at their old friend’s discomfort.

Silke turned on her heel and stomped off, leaving the boys to compare wounds.

The Saturday Club had suffered its first true division.

IT WAS STUNNING. Unbelievable. Incomprehensible. Incredible. Impossible.

Only yesterday, yesterday , everything had been fine.

And now out of the blue, that man had suddenly become Chancellor.

‘He hasn’t even got a majority!’ Wolfgang kept saying, over and over again as the Stengels sat down for supper that dreadful night. ‘The bastard was losing ground .’

It was true. They’d recently even begun to relax. All through the previous year he’d stalked them. That man . For month after month throughout 1932 every newspaper headline had seemed to bring him a little closer to their door. Louring over them like some murderous medieval golem. But just recently he’d been slipping. His vote had peaked. It was falling. Goebbels had begun to sound desperate. The crisis was passing.

‘And now just because of a bunch of cowardly fucking Junkers and that senile old cunt Hindenburg, he’s got his chance. Fuck them! Fuck them to hell!’

The boys looked up, their faces half shocked, half amused.

‘Please, Wolf!’ Frieda said, banging her water glass down in protest, trying to keep the fear from her voice, ‘not at the supper table! The children…’

Wolfgang mumbled an apology, biting his lip, his knuckles white around the schnapps glass which he had just refilled.

‘I don’t care, Mum,’ Otto said, stuffing his mouth full of food. ‘I think Hindenburg’s a cunt too.’

‘Otto!’

Frieda actually reached over and slapped him, something she had never done before in her life. ‘Don’t you dare use that disgusting language in front of me! Don’t you dare …’

She couldn’t continue, there were tears in her eyes now.

‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ Otto said, as shocked as his mother was. ‘I deserved it.’

‘No, Otto. I’m sorry. I can’t believe I hit you.’

‘It’s all right.’

Frieda got up and went around the table to hug Otto.

‘See what he’s done to us already, that terrible man .’

The four of them sat and ate for a few moments in silence. Bean soup and bread. There were cold cuts and beetroot to follow.

‘They think they can do a deal ,’ Wolfgang muttered, unable to keep his frustration to himself, tearing at the bread as if it was a Nazi neck. ‘A deal! With Hitler !’

‘Please, Wolf,’ Frieda said, ‘let’s leave it alone while we eat.’

Paulus had been looking at the evening newspaper, the one announcing the formation of Hitler’s cabinet.

‘The Nazis still only have a couple of seats,’ Paulus said. ‘The paper says he can’t do anything without the other party’s agreement. Perhaps Herr von Papen can—’

‘Oh they’re all bloody vons ,’ Wolfgang said. ‘ Von Hindenburg and Von Papen and Von bloody Schleicher and they think that means they’ll be able to tell him what to do. Like he was still a corporal and them all generals and field marshals… Oh thank you for letting me be Chancellor, now I’ll do what I’m told like a good little Nazi! Haven’t they heard him speak? Haven’t they seen his private army? Like fuck he’ll let them tell him what to do!’

‘Wolf, please , this isn’t helping.’

Later on, after supper, the family watched from their apartment window as the night sky flickered red and yellow from the light of the torch-lit victory procession that was stamping and shouting its way across the city.

Through the Brandenburg Gate.

That same crooked cross parading beneath it as had first appeared scrawled on the helmets of the Freikorps in 1920. Except this time the swastikas were not scribbled in chalk but flying red, black and crimson from a thousand banners. And the crowd that had gathered were not silent in protest but hysterical with joy.