Ernst Haffner - Blood Brothers

Jonny, Konrad and Erwin are the first. On the dot of eleven they’re standing by a lamp post bearing the street sign 80th Street, Section 2 (provisional). Only thing is, there is no 80th Street. After four paces in the direction indicated, a credulous so-and-so would find himself perched on top of a barbed-wire fence instead of turning down any street. Why, and to what purpose, that sign has been affixed to where it is, that’s the sweet secret of the planning department of the city of Berlin … No one to be seen far and wide. There’s no buildings yet, in these latitudes. Waste ground, gypsy caravans; summer houses, large and small; rotted planks and fences that decades of practice have kept in position. This is home to Ulli and his boys. A part of the world that might have been invented for discreet and silent disappearances.

Here comes Ulli’s envoy. They’ve seen each other before. Somewhere between the planks and the barbed wire, there’s a little gap. The four boys skip through it, and find themselves in deep mire. In Indian file, each holding on to the coattails of the one before, their guide leading the way, the group feel their way through the dark. Their feet plod through little ponds, get snarled up in discarded mattresses, stumble over pots and pans and other detritus. Something runs across their path that was never a path; it could have been a cat or a rat or a rabbit. At last they get to a dark summer house. Their guide whispers the password through the keyhole: “Hungry bellies, parched throats.” The doors are thrown open to hunger and thirst.

The sudden incursion of fresh air has brought turmoil to a thick fug of tobacco. The atmosphere is as dank as in a laundry. Ulli, the birthday boy, accepts congratulations and small contributions, and calls on them to be seated. Slowly the new arrivals adjust to the smoke. There is no furniture as such. There wouldn’t be any room anyway. A few blankets and potato sacks have been spread over the bare floorboards, and the birthday guests sit and squat and sprawl over them. Against the wall is an upended orange box, with a three-foot altar candle set on it, burning. Next to that a good dozen or so full bottles of schnapps and wine. Against the opposite wall, muffled under a horse blanket, a gramophone. The guide sets off to pick up the next batch of Blood Brothers. In due course, they and the last pair settle themselves, rather intimately, on a potato sack. “No Ludwig?” asks Ulli. Jonny tells him: “He’s disappeared for a week now. No one has any idea where he can have got to …” The conclusion that Ludwig’s disappearance is involuntary is one they have all come to by now. The police have nabbed him, they think.

Sixteen gang members are assembled in the summer house. Someone puts a record on the gramophone, and covers it over again with the horse blanket. “ Hoch soll er leben! ” it drones out from under. Applause for Ulli. A bottle of cognac does the rounds. The last boy gets the grisly lees. “Parched throats!” Parched throats of lads from fifteen to eighteen. Only a couple are older. Is it showing off, their thirst for alcohol? The cognac is chased with a bottle of plum brandy. It too is drained. Then cigarettes are passed round. From outside the door is unlocked. The sentry is relieved. Each one does half an hour. A dance tune animates them all to quiet whistling and humming along.

The altar candle shines, struggling with the smoky air. It’s attached to a piece of string that runs along a wall, then feeds through the keyhole to somewhere outside. A simple and silent alarm system. If a stranger should approach the summer house, maybe the nightwatchman or even the police, then the sentry will give it a yank: the candle will fall over. Darkness. Everyone is to keep quiet. But who would come now, in the middle of the night?

By way of a change, and to settle the hungry bellies, cooking chocolate is passed round in hefty slabs. Every man sinks his teeth in the marks left by his predecessor. Ulli, now in his maturity, reminisces about his years of implacable struggle with the police, the welfare authorities, the educators in the borstals. They refused to allow him freedom, streets, bars, waste ground, girls. So he fought back. With hands and feet against his confining enemies. “Die of hunger, sure! But at least where I wanna be!”

The sound of voices outside. The sentry’s, yes, but a couple of others’ as well. But the alarm candle stands there stubbornly. Ulli reaches across and dinches it. Choked cries from outside, the voice of the sentry: “Ulli … Ulli, everyone out!” The door is locked, the sentry has the key. Rip the rags from the covered window! Ulli forces his way through, he’s out. Four other lads after him. They’ll do. Outside, a brief struggle, fought out in near silence. The sentry is freed and opens the door. The five who liberated him drag a couple of strangers into the summer house. A fresh sentry is posted, the candle is relit. Pull the boys into the light. Ah, they’re no strangers. Members of a rival gang, enemies of Ulli’s. They supposed they would be able to catch Ulli, who usually stays out here on his own, and beat him to a pulp. Punishment. Of course, decides Ulli. But in a fair fight. The assaulted sentry takes one of them, Ulli the other. Queensberry rules, natch.

Everyone scoots back against the wall to leave the middle of the room free for a ring. Ulli first. It’s soon over, to general regret. A swift punch from Ulli sends his antagonist sprawling onto the empty bottles. One of them breaks on his tough nut. A harmless cut, but blood everywhere. The boy’s had enough. He presses his handkerchief against the wound and accepts a half-pint of schnapps from his enemies. The second contest: both lads light into each other like savages. Neither of them has a clue about boxing. They thrash and mill around, clumps of hair fly this way and that, the de rigueur nosebleed. The spectators laugh and joke. The combatants grin wildly with their blood-smeared faces. The whole thing takes a comic turn. Okay, says Ulli, that’s enough. It’s his birthday, and he’s in a mood for forgiveness. The other lad gets given a hefty dose of alcohol as well, then they both mooch off. Everyone knows they won’t betray the party. If they did, they are well aware that they would land up in the emergency ward. Betrayal is something that can only be washed clear with blood, and plenty of it.

So on with the party! Bottles do the rounds. One dead soldier after another is tossed into the corner. The gramophone whines away. Whirling chaos, getting louder and louder: alcohol. With frightening speed, the boys on the floor turn into mute quadrupeds. Then someone hurls a word into the chaos: “Wimmin!” Lust flares up in the boys: yes, women! On the corner of Kolonie- and Badstrasse there’s always an old bird or two. Two lads set out. Return with a woman who won’t see forty again. Ulli straightaway sorts out the compensation question by tossing her a ten-mark note: “For the lot!” Jonny, guest of honor, and boss of an allied gang, makes a start. Then the birthday boy, and after him, everyone, everyone … The prostitute lies on a sofa of piled-up potato sacks, smokes one cigarette after another, and takes it in her stride. At the end of an hour, she’s earned her ten marks. She has to climb over a knot of boys, lying there lifeless, to get to the door. Silence in the summer house. The altar candle lights a sorry scene …

WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN TO ME,Ludwig asks himself in the chill of prison. And comes up with a prompt answer: a few months’ penitentiary for something you didn’t do, and then you’ll be sent back to the institution. Another three years, basically. What will the Blood Brothers think has happened to him? He has no chance of communicating with them. Not a chink of light anywhere in the grim outlook. He drops onto his bed and stuffs the coarse sheet into his mouth. But he’s not able to check his violent sobbing.