Ben Elton - Two Brothers

Finally the hosts themselves entered the ballroom, having clearly concluded that they could expect no further arrivals to join the party, no matter how long they stood at the doorway. Canapés were brought out by yet more members of staff and soon after that a buffet appeared. Some ten metres of white linen-clad table, laden with food for two hundred.

Paulus and Otto did their best.

Time and again they returned to the sumptuous spread, enjoying more fresh meat in one evening than they’d eaten in the previous three months. Followed by bowl after bowl of the various desserts, fiercely determined to try them all.

Dagmar sat with them, picking sadly at a single chicken leg and staring at all the empty tables around her.

‘ None of my friends came,’ she said. ‘Not one. I’ll never forgive them. Any of them.’

‘We came, Dags,’ Paulus said, through a mouthful of strawberries whipped in cream and sugar.

‘Yeah, we’re here,’ Otto added, looking at her over a fork loaded with rare roast beef. Otto had decided to return to the savoury tables in order to start the whole meal again.

‘You don’t count, Otto. I knew you and Paulus would be here. But no one else, not one, not even the Jewish ones. Why wouldn’t the Jewish ones come?’

‘I expect they were worried that the SA would give them a kicking at the door,’ Paulus said. ‘I don’t mind admitting I was.’

‘Me too,’ Otto said darkly. ‘Which is why I came prepared.’

‘What do you mean?’ Dagmar asked.

Otto attempted an enigmatic smile. Somewhat spoilt by the layer of cream that surrounded his mouth.

‘Leave it, Otto,’ Paulus said.

‘No,’ Dagmar insisted, ‘what do you mean, Otts?’

Otto glanced about himself and then, putting his hand into his breast pocket, pulled out a flick-knife. A neatly executed twist of his fingers snapped out the blade which he then used to impale a new potato from his plate and put it in his mouth.

Dagmar’s sad eyes gleamed momentarily with excitement.

‘Wow, Otts! You look like a gangster in a movie!’ she gasped.

‘Put that away!’ Paulus snarled. ‘How many times, Otto! It’s one thing taking precautions, it’s another bragging about them. If you got found with that they’d show no mercy, you know that.’

‘Yeah,’ Otto replied grimly, ‘and neither would I.’

Then Otto stuck his knife into a blood-red slice of roast beef on his plate and offered it to Dagmar, who took it from the vicious-looking point, with an excited giggle.

Paulus wasn’t giggling. ‘Don’t be such a bloody prick! Put it away. Fuck, Otto, you can’t go flashing a knife around. The cops are bound to have spies in a big Jewish business like this. I’ve seen some of the waiters sneering behind their bow ties. If one of them sees that and reports you, you’re dead. There’s Gestapo outside, you know.’

Reluctantly Otto closed the blade and put it back in his pocket.

‘Yeah, well, maybe you’re right,’ he said. ‘But whoever does catch me had better watch out because I’ll tell you this, Pauly, this is one bad Jew boy who won’t be going quietly.’

‘Good for you, Otto,’ Dagmar said angrily. ‘You stick it in one of those pigs. I hope you kill a hundred!’

‘A hundred’s not enough,’ Otto snarled. ‘One Jew is worth at least a thousand of them and that’s how many I’m going to kill. Just you wait.’

‘Yeah, and what about Mum if it’s you that gets killed?’ Paulus snarled back. ‘As if she doesn’t have enough to worry about.’

For a moment the three of them ate in silence.

‘At least now I know who my real friends are,’ Dagmar said. ‘I shan’t need to bother writing to anyone else from America but you.’

‘Well, that’s certainly something to celebrate,’ Paulus grinned. ‘Come on, let’s get some more of that strawberry cream stuff.’

‘Why don’t you get me a plate too, Pauly,’ Dagmar said. ‘I’d like to try some now.’

‘At your service, ma’am,’ Paulus said leaping to his feet, delighted at having been the one selected to do her bidding.

When he had gone Dagmar turned to Otto.

‘Show me again,’ she whispered.

‘What?’

‘Show me your knife.’

‘Yeah, right. OK,’ Otto said, taken aback but also delighted. ‘It is pretty hard, isn’t it?’

He took it out and discreetly flipped it open once more.

Dagmar leant forward and put her finger against its wicked point.

‘Do you really think you could do it?’ she said, her voice a little unsteady. ‘Really stick it into a Nazi?’

‘Of course I could,’ Otto replied, ‘if I had to. I reckon it’d feel great. I’d enjoy it.’

A spasm of excitement passed across Dagmar’s beautiful face.

‘I know you could, Otts,’ she breathed. ‘And I love it.’

Otto’s fingers tightened around the hilt of the knife.

‘But you mustn’t, of course,’ she added quickly. ‘Paulus is right, it’s too risky… I’m just glad you could, that’s all.’

Then with a glance across the room to see that Paulus was fully occupied at the dessert table, Dagmar took up a napkin and, under the guise of pretending to wipe something from Otto’s cheek, leant forward and kissed him.

Not a little girl’s kiss. But something older and more knowing, something closer to how Jean Harlow had kissed Clark Gable in Red Dust .

‘That’s to remember me by,’ she said. ‘Now, quick, put that knife away before someone sees.’

Otto was so surprised and flustered that he almost cut his fingers off as he closed the blade and slipped it back into his pocket.

Paulus returned with the plates of dessert.

‘What’s up?’ Paulus said to Otto. ‘You’ve gone bright red.’

‘Bit of food,’ Otto said quickly, ‘went down the wrong way.’

In the centre of the sparsely occupied ballroom, the Fischers, who had been making the rounds of their few guests, had arrived at Wolfgang and Frieda.

‘I must say,’ Herr Fischer remarked, ‘I had expected better of Berlin. To think that people are so craven, it is astonishing.’

Fischer was swaying slightly, having clearly had a number of glasses of wine.

‘You mustn’t blame them, Herr Fischer,’ Frieda said. ‘People know that their names will be taken, you saw the Gestapo outside.’

‘But that is exactly why those with a position in society should show themselves. And lead by example. Otherwise they’re cowards!’ Herr Fischer said. ‘This government rules not by law but by fear!’

The drink was making him indiscreet, his voice was slightly raised.

‘Hush, dear,’ Frau Fischer said, looking at the hovering waiters with concern, ‘we must remember where we are.’

‘And again, that is the point,’ Herr Fischer went on defiantly, although lowering his voice slightly. ‘Everyone is terrified to speak the truth. Well, I am done with this country now and may say what I like. In fact –’ Herr Fischer leant forward conspiratorially — ‘I gave a valedictory interview to the Berlin correspondent of the New York Times this afternoon. The man was witness to what happened outside my store on April the first. He himself was manhandled.’

‘I wish you’d left it, dear,’ Frau Fischer said. ‘Talking about it can’t do any good now.’

‘I will not leave the land of my fathers with my tail between my legs, my dear. We are not running, we have been driven out and I’m damned if I’ll make a secret of it.’

Once more Frau Fischer looked nervously about her.

‘I think they’re serving coffee, dear,’ she said.

‘Yes, and we really should be going,’ Frieda added. ‘The boys have school in the morning and I must be at the clinic.’