Ben Elton - Two Brothers

‘Thanks a lot!’ Frieda tried to joke. ‘Not thinking of me then!’

‘Don’t worry, baby,’ Wolfgang smiled. A hollow-cheeked, gap-toothed smile. ‘My balls are made of steel, you know that. The SA used to break their toes on them.’

Wolfgang liked this joke and he made it often in the weeks after his return, always causing Paulus and Otto to grimace, Silke also, who continued to spend as much time at the Stengel apartment as she could.

‘We don’t really want to hear about you and Mum and that sort of thing,’ Paulus said.

‘Yeah,’ Silke agreed, ‘it is pretty yucky hearing old people talk about sex and stuff.’

Wolfgang smiled. ‘It’s hard to think of you kids being squeamish about anything any more,’ he said, ‘not now.’

Wolfgang glanced at the floor.

At the space where previously the thick blue rug had been.

Of course one of the first things Wolfgang had learnt on his return from prison camp had been about what had taken place in the apartment on the night of his arrest. How his wife had nearly been raped and his two thirteen-year-old sons aided by Silke had bludgeoned and then suffocated Frieda’s attacker to death on the very floor on which they were now standing.

‘Please, Wolf,’ Frieda said, a shadow passing across her face, ‘I try never to think of that.’

‘I know, Freddy,’ Wolfgang replied. ‘It’s a terrible thing but I’m still so proud of the boys and Silke. I only hope I’d have the guts to do what they did.’

‘You would have, Dad,’ Otto assured him.

‘Yeah,’ Paulus agreed. ‘You wouldn’t have thought about it. We didn’t.’

The three young people exchanged glances. They rarely spoke of, or even referred to what had happened on that dreadful night, but it was always with them and often in their dreams.

If the subject was broached openly it tended to be on the occasions when Dagmar was making one of her increasingly rare visits. The fact that the other three members of the Saturday Club had gone through such a brutal and life-changing experience together was something of which she always seemed a little jealous. For all the fact that the twins loved her and her alone, she understood that Silke still shared one thing with them that she did not.

‘I’d have done it,’ she always insisted. ‘I’d have killed him, or at least I’d have done as much as Silke did.’

‘I helped roll him up!’ Silke would snap back defiantly. ‘And I helped chuck him in the river!’

‘Maybe you should tell your friends in the BDM about it,’ Dagmar remarked one day when, despite Frieda’s protests, the subject had arisen once more. ‘It could be one of your cosy campfire stories.’

Silke reddened; she was wearing her Bund Deutscher Mädel uniform. She always felt selfconscious when visiting the Stengels in her Nazi regalia but she had little choice. Like many working-class girls, her BDM uniform was by far the smartest and most serviceable outfit she owned. Besides which, on this occasion she was on duty, having come around to say goodbye before departing for the 1935 Nuremberg Rally.

‘I can’t believe they’re making you leave now, Silke,’ Frieda said, happy to find a way to change the subject. ‘The rally isn’t for another month.’

‘I know. But guess what? We’re walking there. It’s true! From Berlin to Munich. Kids are expected to do it from all over the country. Apparently it shows how tough and united we all are.’

‘They’re taking children away from their families for a month?’

‘Haven’t you heard the joke? What with the HJ and the BDM and the SA and the Women’s League, the only time a good German family meets up these days is at the Nuremberg Rally.’

Frieda smiled a sad smile. ‘And what about school?’

‘The party doesn’t care about education. Only loyalty.’

‘I do think,’ Dagmar sniffed, ‘that you might at least take off the armband when you visit. This is, after all, one of the few places in Berlin where we don’t have to look at swastikas.’

Silke certainly cut an incongruous figure in the Stengel living room, her thick blonde pigtails clamped beneath a jet black beret and a swastika emblazoned on the arm of her brown blouse.

‘It’s stitched on,’ Silke protested, ‘and don’t sneer like that. It isn’t my fault.’

‘No, of course it isn’t. None of this is anybody’s fault except the Jews themselves, is it?’

‘Come on, Dags,’ Paulus said. ‘Just because she’s in the League of Nazi Maidens doesn’t mean she’s a Nazi.’

‘I doubt she’s a maiden either,’ Dagmar observed.

‘Dagmar!’ Frieda protested.

‘I’m not a Nazi,’ Silke claimed hotly. ‘I’m a Communist, you know that.’

‘They’re the same thing,’ said Dagmar.

‘That is just a pig ignorant thing to say,’ Silke replied. ‘We Communists hate the Nazis.’

‘You don’t know anything about Communism,’ Dagmar replied loftily.

‘I know a lot more than you,’ Silke said. ‘I’ve been reading. We did a book burning and I pinched some Marx and Lenin. Lots of kids stole books. A friend of mine grabbed something called The Well of Loneliness because it’s about lesbians and she thinks she is one. Not all the BDM girls are Nazis, you know. Lots of us just have a laugh.’

‘What? Marching about?’ Dagmar snapped. ‘Sounds hilarious .’

‘We don’t do so much marching,’ Silke replied, her usual good humour returning. She rarely allowed Dagmar’s snootiness to irritate her for long. Partly out of sympathy for everything Dagmar had lost, and also because she had long since realized that the twins, whose approval she craved, would always take Dagmar’s side in the end. ‘There’s a fair bit of chucking medicine balls and jumping through hoops in your knickers and waving scarves about,’ Silke went on, ‘but it’s not like the Hitler Jugend . They’re not trying to turn us into soldiers. It’s much looser in the BDM because basically the party doesn’t really care about girls.’

‘You sound as if you actually like being in the BDM.’

‘Well, as a matter of fact I do. We do lots of camps and trips and I’ve learned to knit too.’

‘Yes, well, lucky for some,’ Dagmar commented dryly. ‘I must say it would be nice to go on a camp or an outing some time but you see we’re not allowed to go anywhere.’

‘Yeah, I know that, Dags,’ Silke said hotly. ‘And I’m sorry and all that but don’t forget you went on plenty of holidays before. I never went on one, not one. I got my first ever holiday with the BDM. Working-class people didn’t get that chance before…’ She stopped, slightly embarrassed. ‘I mean, not that I’m saying it’s better now. You know I don’t think that… It’s just, actually, it’s better for me , that’s all.’

‘I’m thrilled for you,’ Dagmar replied.

Frieda interjected, ever the peace-maker.

‘Well,’ she said gently, ‘I’m sure you’ll have a lovely time on your walk, Silke, and the rally will be very… interesting. The newspapers keep saying it’s going to be even bigger than last year, although I really don’t see how it can be. There were seven hundred thousand at the last one.’

The 1934 rally had been made into a hit movie called Triumph of the Will chronicling for the entire world the incredible scale of Nazi triumphalism. Frieda had gone to see the film out of a sort of grim fascination. No identification was required to buy a ticket. Nobody imagined a Jew would want to attend.

‘All those hundreds and thousands of rows of people,’ she said, ‘standing in perfect lines. Where did they all go to the toilet?’