Ernst Haffner - Blood Brothers

Evening. The gang is sitting in Max’s in Linienstrasse. Ludwig and Willi are expected any minute. Jonny splits everyone up into three groups, and gives them their mission: a supermarket in the east. Tomorrow is the last of the month, and the shops will be doing booming business. Best moment for pickpocketing. The head of each band of three will lift the purse and give it right away to the second man, who’ll slip it to the third. The three groups will work independently of each other in the shop. The gang has been doing this for months now. In department stores and weekly markets and market halls.

Generally, it’s the thin change-purses of working-class mothers that get it. You just need to reach into the shopping baskets, the nets and the pockets. The money’s lying on top. The support, the weekly wage, a whole month’s pay. It was Fred who set the gang on the path of pickpocketing. The idea turned out to be so brilliant that they’ve been flush ever since. As long as Ludwig was in prison, everything went well. The day Ludwig turned up, Jonny gave orders not to tell Ludwig anything about the source of the gang’s money for now. Jonny had a notion that Ludwig wouldn’t be a willing participant in these escapades. He thought he might have to do something to talk him round first. Ply him with money and then, if Ludwig showed distaste or alarm, to confront him with it: What are you on about? You were happy to take our money, weren’t you? You didn’t think we’d won the lottery? So don’t be a mug, and roll your sleeves up.

Willi walks into the bar in a high state of excitement, no Ludwig: “You’re all to go to Schmidt’s. Ludwig’s waiting there. He’s got the piece of work who gave him the ticket!” Damn it! The excitement. To Schmidt’s, right away. In separate groups, unobtrusively as ever. Ludwig is sitting at a table near the band. Jonny, Willi and Fred join him, the others hang around near the door. In case the fellow tries to do a runner … That’s him at the back, with his girl. A geezer of twenty-odd, sharp suit, nice coat, well turned out. “Are you quite sure it’s him, Ludwig?” asks Jonny. “Positive!” Jonny walks up to the table. In his curt decisive way, he asks the little spiv to follow him out back.

In a corner, Jonny indicates Ludwig, who is there as well. “Here, I expect you remember my friend?” “What’s all this about? I’ve never seen you before, either of you,” replies the stranger. Now Ludwig remembers the voice as well. “Let me remind you then … Stettiner Bahnhof … The left-luggage ticket …” Ludwig says slowly. The spiv flushes red and turns pale, then he tries to brazen it out: “Oh, you’re that swindler! You stole the suitcase and stiffed me!” Jonny’s fist makes short hard contact with the point of his chin. “Listen, fellow. My friend here has done eight weeks in remand for you, and was sentenced to four months. You can choose what you want to do: either we’ll find a copper and get you sent down, or else you come along with us like a good fellow. This thing needs sorting out, wouldn’t you say?”

The spiv stands, pale and shaking, by the wall. “Go with you where?” “Leave that up to us. We’re not going to kill you. Tell your sweetheart you’ve been called away, and come with us.” The fellow goes over to the girl, Jonny and Fred are waiting at the door. “Where are we taking him, Jonny?” “To Ulli’s summer house, Koloniestrasse.” Fred goes ahead in a taxi, to alert Ulli. The spiv walks out, flanked by Jonny and Ludwig. The other Blood Brothers follow at a suitable distance.

By the time they get to the summer house, everything has been prepared for bringing the miscreant to justice. Ulli, the chief, is present with a few of his boys. A sentry is posted to guard against surprises. Ulli, who doesn’t have a dog in this fight, acts as the impartial judge. Jonny is the prosecutor, Ludwig the star witness. The accused is seated on the same orange crate that a while ago served as a drinks cabinet on the occasion of Ulli’s birthday. Heinz is instructed to defend. The accused says his name is Hermann Plettner. What did he live on, asks Judge Ulli. “None of your beeswax!” “Ever been in welfare?” “Oh, leave it out!” Then Ludwig describes what happened. How Hermann approached him outside Aschinger’s, gave him the ticket and a mark, and how he, Ludwig, was subsequently arrested. Now it’s the turn of the defendant. “I never knew that chit was hot. I picked it up off the pavement.”

Prosecutor Jonny speaks: “A particularly low-grade villain … he should have admitted he’d stolen the ticket and gone shares with Ludwig. That would have been on the level. But this here is a crook who’s too much of a coward to get the chestnuts out of the fire himself, and would rather involve an innocent party, for a mealy mark, claiming the chit was his property. Such a person is a villain who deserves no sympathy. Fit punishment, in my view, is twenty-five blows with a dog whip on his bare behind. Should the accused refuse the punishment, then have him handed over to the police without further ado …”

Hermann Plettner leaped to his feet when he heard the punishment. His defendant Heinz can only point to the outside possibility that the ticket had actually been found and picked up by the defendant. “Whether he stole it or found it, it’s moot. All we need to know is that the bastard lied, in the full knowledge that Ludwig would have to pay with his freedom,” Jonny intervened.

Judge Ulli withdraws to consider his verdict. By the time he returns to the summer house, the accused is already in tears. Verdict: handed over to the police or twenty-five lashes with the dog whip. After each set of ten strokes, an interval of ten minutes. Punishment to be with immediate effect. Hermann Plettner is lying curled up in the corner in a ball, whimpering. “So what’s it to be then? Police or whipping?” Jonny asks, unmoved. The condemned man slithers across to Jonny on his knees, says to Ludwig: “Please, please, let me go … I’ll give you … here, my watch, my money … there’s over twenty marks there … let me go!” “Police or whipping? Make up your mind, will you?” Howling, begging, wailing, but no answer. “All right then, police. Ludwig, come with us,” decrees Jonny. “No, no … beat me.” So it’s the whipping.

The orange crate is moved to the center of the room. Who’s the executioner? Ludwig, you? Ludwig quickly declines. Fred volunteers for the task, strips off coat and jacket, and stands there with the leather dog whip in his hand. “Trousers off, Plettner!” The condemned man has to lie across the crate. Two boys hold his legs, two more press his face into his balled-up trousers, to stifle his cries of pain. The first blow comes hissing down on the naked flesh. The body rears up, and the four assistants need all their strength to hold on. There’s a soft gurgling crying through the trousers. Blow after blow comes down. Jonny counts them coldly and pitilessly. Ludwig turns away. The first set of ten lashes.

A ten minute break. Plettner is lying next to the crate. The welts across his arse are swelling, blood-red. “Please, please … no more …” the whimpering begins again. “Enough,” says Jonny. The next lashes slice open the swollen skin across the welts. Blood spurts out, starts to trickle down the thighs. Implacable, not letting up in the least, Fred completes the second set of ten. Plettner’s bottom is a bloody mess. Plettner is draped motionless across the crate. “Water,” says Jonny. Half a bucket is emptied over Plettner’s head and the blood is washed off. “Jonny, that’s enough,” says Ludwig. It’s Ulli’s decision whether Plettner is to receive the remaining five lashes or not. “All right, let him go.”

It’s not so easy. Stood up on his feet, Plettner promptly crumples in a heap. Someone is told to go for schnapps. Wet handkerchiefs are placed on the raw bleeding buttocks, and then the punished criminal gets his trousers put back on. He is lying on his front, wailing quietly like a little child. A shot of rum brings him round. Jonny addresses him: “You’ve been spared the last five lashes. You can thank Ludwig for that. As far as we’re concerned, the business is at an end. If you’re sensible, it’s over for you too. You know we can find you anytime.”