Ernst Haffner - Blood Brothers

Vinegar Cinema? On the corner of Brunnen and Volta is a big vinegar factory. The whole area has the biting reek of vinegar. People here keep their lips pressed together when they go by on the pavement. The smell makes his mouth water. There is a cinema next to the factory, so what else are they going to call it? It’s the Vinegar Cinema.

Still feeling very uncertain, Ludwig walks into a doorway and watches from there to see if a taxi draws up in front of the cinema. There it is, and it’s Jonny. He looks around. Ludwig charges across the street. “Hey, Jonny!” He can’t repress his joy; a few tears, wiped away with the back of his hand, spurt from his eyes. There’s no one better than Jonny in a situation like this. He firmly shakes Ludwig by the hand, and steers him into a bar. A small instant calmative, then Ludwig can tell him all about it in some quiet café. After a beer and a short, Ludwig calms down. They walk to a small café. They are the only customers in the back room, and Ludwig has the floor. First there’s an excellent brew, and a torte with whipped cream. Things that haven’t been part of Ludwig’s world for a long time. He talks. Starts off with the fellow outside Stettiner Bahnhof. “We’ll put a crimp in his style,” says Jonny.

At the end of half an hour, Jonny is fully up to speed. For the next few days, things will be a bit ticklish for Ludwig. He will have the police looking for him. And if he is caught, then that’ll be the end of his probation and he’ll have to do four months. But the long-term outlook isn’t bad. He’s not a serious criminal. And no fewer than five gang members feature on the police wanted list, just because they fled borstals. The authorities would have their work cut out if they were going to chase after every runaway youth. So long as he doesn’t rub it in …

AT 7 A. M.Willi Kludas is woken by his little namesake. “Hey, Willi, there’s been a blizzard. Come on, we’ll go with the street cleaners, there’s always help taken on when it’s snowed.” In no time Willi is alert. As he gets dressed, he chokes down a couple of the leftover rolls from yesterday, and gives his little friend the last two. In the kitchen they hold their heads under the cold tap; Silesian Olga even has a rag for them to dry their heads on. Hurry, hurry, says little Willi. Jacket on, collar up, and cap. In the courtyard, the little fellow suddenly stops in the slush. “Have you got any papers, you need to show them.” Papers? Forget it, Willi Kludas. They don’t issue you with papers in the institution when you do a runner. Then I’m not going neither, the little fellow wants to say, out of solidarity, when all at once he gets an idea.

He can hardly speak for excitement, and it takes him a while to when he finally can. “You’ve still got twenty pfennigs, ain’t you? We’ll go out and buy a broom handle with that, and they’ll give us the side of a tea chest for nothing … Then we’ll rig up a snow shovel at Olga’s, and I know she’s got a broom too, an ancient thing. And then we’ll go round the shops. ‘Morning. Your bit of pavement looks parlous. Don’t think your customers will be willing to risk their necks on that. But if you like, we can get it cleaned up for you, nice and cheap …’ And I bet we’ll have earned us a couple of marks by afternoon. Isn’t that a good idea?” They dash into the nearest soap shop. A broom handle costs fifteen pfennigs, and they are able to pick up the lid of a box of soaps for nothing. Silesian Olga is flattered and cajoled till she coughs up her old broom and a few nails. The snow shovel is put together in no time, and the two Willis rush off.

To Breslauer Strasse. Their timing is perfect. The shopkeepers are just opening their stores, and, half-asleep still, are staring at the night’s slushy gift. Third time lucky. A bony little confectioneress biddy. Willi Kludas gives the pusher its initiation, the little man scratching after with the broom, and asks in the shop for some ashes to strew. At the end of half an hour, the snow is cleared away, and the biddy pays them each thirty pfennigs, and a bag of sweet leftovers. They’re in the black. They threw in the dairy basement next door. Just a few yards, but it’s thirty pfennigs between the two of them. Across the road, the big dry-cleaning business is too cheap to spare any change, they’ve sent their pallid girl trainee out on the street. Keep going, Willi. Here a nibble, there none. Here has been cleaned already, there they’re kept talking till they’re blue in the face, over a few pfennigs.

At the end of five hours, the boys are way up on Frankfurter Allee, and things are getting stickier. Clean pavements as far as the eye can see. “Call it a day, Willi?” “I think so too, Willi.” They stop for dinner in a cheap restaurant. Three courses, with soup and a wedge of pudding. Then they do the accounts. Even after paying for dinner, they each have four marks and change. Willi Kludas hasn’t had this much money since forever. They park their tools at Silesian Olga’s. Who knows, maybe it’ll snow again tonight. Olga is delighted with a paper twist of sweets, and here are twice forty pfennigs for the night ahead.

My God, doesn’t Berlin look different when there’s something in your pockets that jingles! Even if it’s only four marks. Willi Kludas walks through the streets at the side of his friend, with a luminous grin on his face. Their bellies are full, they have cigarettes in their pockets, they have paid for the night, and they’re in the money. “Say, what do you think about going to the cinema?” asks the younger Willi. “Pritzkow’s only costs forty pfennigs.” The Pritzkow cinema on Münzstrasse is not just a cinema where they show Westerns and cop shows. It also serves as a warming hall and a dormitory for those sufficiently flush to be able to afford the entrance money. For forty pfennigs, anyone is entitled to a seat from ten in the morning till eleven at night. There he can watch the show six times over or else sleep through it, he can take his pick. In the terms used by the regulars, you don’t pay entrance money just so that you walk out again two hours later. At Pritzkow’s you pay sleeping money, and you hang around accordingly. The narrow little cinema is jam-packed at all hours. The boys and youths sit pressed together, some staring with fascination, some in stupor at the cacophonous screen, or they’re already making back their sleeping money. Gently slumped on the seat in front or the neighbor’s shoulder, or with sagging head counting their waistcoat buttons.

Willi Kludas stares at the screen open-mouthed. For him this modest production is something of a miracle. He had no idea there was such a thing as sound films, and those girls up on the screen … they’re so bonny … and the way everything jiggles on them when they walk … The way they throw themselves at the well-dressed gentlemen and snog them … hot damn! And their sweet singing voices … and how they flip their skirts in the air when they dance. Willi Kludas shifts around on his chair, his face is burning and his sweaty fingers are tying knots. To get a girl like that … to watch a girl … In the interval he asks his little namesake if he had ever seen a girl in the altogether. He himself hadn’t, not properly. Where could he have? At sixteen he was put in the borstal. Someone there had had a lot of pictures of fat naked women. This boy loaned the cards out to his friends at night. In return for cigarettes, or a piece of sausage, or the meat ration at dinner. Then the boys would go up to the window to get a proper look at the cards. For half an hour at a time they would stand there gawping at the naked photographs, and then in bed afterwards … well, what else was a boy going to do? And then there was Otto Kellermann, a lad with golden hair and pale skin like a girl’s, who called himself Ottilie, and if you wanted your turn with Ottilie you had to pay as well …