Ben Elton - Two Brothers

During the moment of confusion when the room seemed to have twice as many bodies in it as a moment before, Wolfgang was able to grab at his wallet and press it into his wife’s hand.

‘Here, take what I have, there’s a little money — for the boys,’ he said, before leaning forward into her desperate embrace and whispering, ‘The number. Call it, ask for Helmut, tell him.’

Then the SS men dragged Wolfgang away.

As the last one, the Gestapo man, was leaving, his figure framed in the doorway, Otto pulled his knife from his pocket. There was a click and the blade sprung open. A vicious gleaming spike. Otto raised the weapon, blind hatred in his eyes, poised to spring. Paulus saw the danger just in time and shoulder-charged his brother, sending him sprawling on the floor as the door to their apartment closed.

‘You lunatic!’ Paulus snarled. ‘You stupid bloody lunatic. Do you want to get Mum killed as well?’

Otto turned on his brother, furious for a moment, then blank, and then, quite suddenly, he began to cry. Perhaps it was the words ‘as well’ which set him off. Had their father been dragged away to be killed? Both boys knew it was possible. Probable.

Paulus cried also. Perhaps Frieda would have done so too but she was too busy searching in Wolfgang’s wallet.

Outside they heard the groan and clank of the lift as it began its descent.

FOR AN HOUR or so after Wolfgang’s arrest, Frieda tried continuously to call the phone number that she had found in Wolfgang’s wallet, but received no answer.

Paulus and Otto sat on the couch, scarcely able to speak. So sudden and absolute had been the disaster that had befallen them. They knew precisely what sort of danger Wolfgang was now in. This had not been an arrest in the way such a thing was recognized in other countries. With the reading of rights and the arrival of lawyers. The possibility of a defence, even of innocence. Too many husbands and fathers had been arbitrarily abducted over the previous eighteen months for the Stengel boys to be under any illusions that their father would be given a chance to defend himself. It was perfectly possible that Wolfgang was already dead.

‘Just like Dagmar’s dad. At the station,’ Otto said finally. ‘One minute you see him, a second later he’s gone.’

Paulus glared at Otto. ‘It’s not going to be like Dagmar’s dad,’ he said, and then repeated it, quietly, almost to himself. ‘It’s just not.’

Frieda put down the phone.

‘I’ll wait fifteen minutes and then call again. Have either of you boys ever heard your father mention anyone called Helmut?’

But the boys had not.

Frieda tried to pass the time by making herself some tea and hot chocolate for the boys.

Then they heard the noise of the lift approaching their floor once more and dared for one moment to hope.

But it was Silke.

She had come around intent on rehearsing her own grievances. Her relationship with her mother’s Nazi boyfriend had gone from bad to worse. Right from the start Silke had refused to accept his authority in the house and for that reason he had taken to slapping and spanking her. She was fourteen years old and was of course deeply outraged at this and so became all the more defiant, which in turn outraged the SA man. And also astonished him. He had clearly imagined that by living with Silke’s mother he had acquired for himself two servants for the price of one. He expected his clothes laundered, his food cooked and his cigarettes and beer brought to him while he sat hogging the gas heater. Edeltraud herself was completely cowed and terrified of losing him. As the fiancée of an SA man she was a ‘somebody’ in her block for the first time in her life. The SA were all powerful, they did what they liked, and if anybody objected there were three million more of them around the corner spoiling for an uneven fight. Edeltraud simply adored going about knowing that all the old bitches who used to sneer at her and call her a whore must now be pleasant to her, and so she always sided with Jürgen against her daughter. Silke had therefore taken to keeping out of the way as much as she could, and often took refuge at the Stengels’ apartment, where she was always welcome.

She had come there now, nursing a swelling ear and a sore backside courtesy of the newly awoken German man, but she soon realized her troubles were as nothing compared to those that had befallen her old friends. And befallen her also, for Wolfgang and Frieda were as much family as she’d ever known.

‘Is there anything your Brownshirt stepdad could do, do you think?’ Otto asked but without any hope at all.

‘Are you kidding? He has no idea I still come here,’ Silke replied, ‘and if he did he’d probably actually kill me. Besides, those guys were SS, that’s different. Jürgen’s only a stupid little prick of a corporal in a street gang really. He’s a big man in our block or when he’s hitting me but out in the real world he’s just a scared little rat. The only Nazis that listen to him are the other apes on our street corner.’

Frieda brought some hot chocolate for Silke and together they tried to think. Frieda noticed that there was still broken glass on the floor from the destruction of Wolfgang’s Georg Grosz print and began to clear it up. Paulus went and got some parcel tape and carefully repaired the torn picture. Despite the SS man having put his fist through it, no pieces had actually come away and so it was possible to make it look almost new, from the front at least.

Paulus hung the now glassless print back up where it had been. A small act of defiance.

Then once more they heard the lift creaking and clanking outside in the well of the building, followed by a heavy footfall outside, and again for a tiny moment they dared to hope.

But the figure who a moment later was standing there in the shadows was not their father. The boys did not know who it was at all, but Frieda did. Even if she had not seen him for eleven years. Not since that day at the market during the Great Inflation when he had been selling his works for a pittance.

‘Good evening, Frau Stengel,’ the man said, remaining in the dark. ‘I hope I do not intrude.’

‘Well, no,’ Frieda stammered, ‘no, of course not… Herr Karlsruhen… what a very unexpected surprise. Boys, go to your room please and shut the door, take Silke.’

The surge of hope that Frieda had felt on hearing footsteps had been replaced by complete astonishment at the utterly unexpected appearance of this figure from her distant past. Now, however, as the youngsters retreated with many a wary glance at the shadowy figure in the doorway, hope rose within her once more. This man had once been infatuated with her but he had wronged her. Could it be that his conscience was troubling him? Had he come finally to make amends?

Could it be that somehow his sudden reappearance could be of assistance to Wolfgang?

From what detail she could make out, Karlsruhen certainly looked like a man of influence. A very different figure to the lean and angry stallholder who had been peddling his work for peanuts during the inflation. Clearly he was once more a person of substance. More so even than when Frieda had first known him. More portly and more expensively dressed in his big cashmere coat and holding his silver-topped cane.

Frieda did notice that the collar of his coat was turned up high and his wide-brimmed hat had been pulled low. As if he had not wished to be recognized when he entered the building.

After all, he knew what she was. She had once spat the fact in his face.

‘Goodness, Herr Karlsruhen,’ Frieda said, ‘this is a surprise. Won’t you have some tea?’