Ben Elton - Two Brothers

Frieda was just completing her notes on Frau Schmidt’s condition when there was a knock at the door.

It was Meyer, Frieda’s co-worker and her least favourite colleague. He was a Communist who believed the clinic should have a political as well as a medical mission and considered it his duty to attempt to indoctrinate his patients. An idea Frieda found both presumptuous and immoral. It was Meyer who had objected to her employing Edeltraud when she was in distress, because it was an action guided by sentiment and not political activism.

Doctor Meyer’s face usually wore a smile. A patronizing, supercilious one which suggested that sooner or later it was historically inevitable that whoever he happened to be talking to would come to understand the wisdom of what he said. This morning, however, Meyer’s face was dark. He was carrying a newspaper that he put down on Frieda’s desk without saying a word. He did not need to, the headline was quite loud and clear enough, announcing as it did ‘necessary’ measures which were to be taken against Jews forthwith. These included an order that Jewish doctors were no longer to be allowed to treat non-Jewish patients.

‘Well, Frau Schmidt,’ Frieda said having read with mounting horror the first few paragraphs of the story, ‘it seems you will have to find another doctor.’ There was a moment’s silence before Frieda added gently, ‘Unless of course you choose to defy these criminals. Obviously I would appreciate it if you did.’

‘Criminals?’ Frau Schmidt replied, her jolly face becoming almost imperceptibly harder. ‘They are the government, Frau Doktor . They cannot be criminals.’

‘The Communists govern in Russia,’ Meyer exclaimed, ‘but your Hitler calls them criminals.’

For a moment there was silence. Frau Schmidt and Meyer glaring at each other, and Frieda, having sunk slowly into her seat, simply staring down at the file to which only a moment before she had been adding case notes.

‘Ten years I have served this community,’ she said quietly, almost to herself. ‘In all that time I knew no Jew nor Gentile, only patients.’

Frau Schmidt began hurrying to finish buttoning her coat and gather up her things. ‘I am sorry for you, Frau Doktor . Truly I am,’ she said, but she was looking anywhere except at Frieda.

‘Have I enriched myself, Frau Schmidt?’ Frieda demanded with sudden passion. ‘Did I put up my doctor’s plate in the Wilhelmstrasse and cheat honest Germans out of fat fees as apparently all Jew doctors have been doing?’

Frieda knew that haranguing this embarrassed, insignificant, working-class woman was pointless, but then what was the point of anything? If a few million like her chose simply to defy the decree then everything would be all right again. Frieda’s anger was rising, the injustice of what was happening was so overwhelming.

‘Or, instead, did I work fifty or sixty hours a week for a government clerk’s pay in this very building, during which time amongst many other things I delivered your bloody babies, Frau Schmidt! Vaccinated them! Saw them through measles and whooping cough and God knows what else!’

‘Your people,’ Frau Schmidt stammered, grabbing up the newspaper from the desk and pointing to its leading article, ‘have been spreading lies abroad. Slandering the Fatherland. See, it says so, it’s a proven fact.’

‘My people? My people? Forgive me, Frau Schmidt, but I had been under the impression that the residents of Friedrichshain were my people or else why have I gone out to them at all hours of the night when they were sick? Was it in order to secretly drink the blood of their children, Frau Schmidt, as I am accused of doing? Have I ever drunk your children’s blood? Please tell me that?’

The woman was embarrassed but neither was she to be cowed. She held the newspaper in her hands as evidence.

‘I know you have not done these things, Frau Doktor , but many of your race have and if you yourselves can’t stop them then Herr Hitler must. Surely you see that. He has been very patient. I know it isn’t you, Frau Doktor , but those others, they must be stopped. They have been slandering Germany abroad and our Jews must be punished so that those Jews will not do it again. We are victims too you know. We have also suffered!’

The victims. Of course. That was how Hitler couched it every time. He and his followers were the injured party. Even as they set up their private concentration camps and torture chambers, they were victims . Acting with heavy heart and in self-defence, having been ‘provoked beyond endurance’.

Frieda wanted to reply but no words came. What could she possibly say? That was the dreadful thing about these incredible lies that were now spouted daily in the national press. Even to deny them gave them credence. To deny to this woman, who had known her for ten years and whom she had seen through six pregnancies, that she was somehow part of a global conspiracy to destroy Frau Schmidt’s ‘race’ and rule the world? What was there to say?

What would there ever again be to say?

Frau Schmidt took up her bag, red faced and unhappy but determined none the less.

‘ Herr Doktor Meyer,’ she said, ‘I shall be pleased to be seen by another doctor on my next appointment. As regrettably Frau Doktor Stengel is no longer allowed to treat me.’

Meyer took the newspaper from the woman and pointed to a paragraph buried deep in the article.

‘In fact, Frau Schmidt,’ he said, ‘as you can see, for the time being this boycott is voluntary. It is true that the government has made it clear that it will shortly introduce a law banning Doctor Stengel from practising, but for the time being it remains your decision if she treats you.’

Frieda almost smiled. Funny old Meyer, still the pedantic committee room politician debating subclauses. As if ‘voluntary’ meant anything any more.

It was clear from Frau Schmidt’s face that it did not mean anything to her. She took her leave and waddled from the room as quickly as she could.

After she had left Frieda slumped further into the chair behind the desk that she no longer had any right to use.

‘So it’s really true? I’m to be banned from practising?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ Meyer said, his lip quivering with anger. ‘In fact it seems you’re not to be allowed to do anything at all. From tomorrow there is to be a boycott of all Jewish businesses.’

Frieda looked once more at the paper: ‘massed popular demonstrations announced’.

She almost laughed. ‘Funny, eh? How can you announce a popular demonstration? They have to order their protestors to demonstrate spontaneously.’

‘Well, Dr Stengel,’ Meyer began, unable even now to resist the temptation to score a political point, ‘perhaps now you can see why we Communists have always—’

‘You Communists!’ Frieda interrupted furiously. ‘Yes, what about you Communists! Where are you now? A month ago you had millions of members. A hundred deputies in the Reichstag. You had a bloody thug army just like they do. You weren’t much smaller than they are. What happened? Where are they? Where are you ? Isn’t anybody going to fight?’

Meyer looked at her coldly. ‘Our leaders have—’ he began.

‘Your leaders have run away to Moscow, looking after themselves while their followers are murdered! Why don’t they “announce” a “popular” demonstration? Why don’t the Social Democrats? The Church? The Army? Why doesn’t anybody ! Those fucking Nazi bastards don’t even have a majority.’

Frieda never swore. And even on this desperate morning she felt wrong in doing so. After all, the one thing Hitler should not be able to take away from her was her own personal standards. Only she could give those up.