Ernst Haffner - Blood Brothers

A rich and beautiful abroad. What are two beggars doing here? They don’t belong in the area. They’ve come from the other Berlin, from some musty cellar or squalid back building, to beg here. The other Berlin … There won’t be any hostels here like Silesian Olga’s. And there are almost no boys like themselves. If there are, then they’re on the hustle. Some are completely newly clad, if you walk along behind them, you can see that they’ve never even had their boots resoled, you can see the fresh leather gleaming under the arch between heel and sole. Their trousers are fashionably baggy and have a sharp crease. And the boys’ smell … oh, pomade, scent, aftershave. They must be raking it in.

Such are the thoughts of Willi and Ludwig as they move around the other, the western Berlin. They have decided to steer clear of their home turf around the Alex and Schlesischer Bahnhof for the time being, so as not to run into the Blood Brothers. Willi hasn’t been out west for four years. And this is the first time Ludwig has ever clapped eyes on Tauentzienstrasse. Once or twice he’d been as far as the Bülowbogen. Now they’re standing on the corner of Kurfürstendamm and Joachimstaler Strasse, gawping at the wonders, allowing the endless columns of cars to pass, watching the light shows of the madly appealing advertisements, allowing themselves to be barged and pushed out of the way. In a beer hall opposite Bahnhof Zoo, they eat a sausage and have a glass of beer. Then they stroll on. Without any aim in mind, following their noses, till they’re suddenly back at Bahnhof Zoo again. They stop under the meeting-point clock. “What’ll we do, Ludwig? It’s almost midnight.”

Two elderly gentlemen in furs are watching Willi and Ludwig, then they consult each other, and walk up to the boys. “Good evening, lads.” Willi and Ludwig jump. Police? Nah, won’t be, not smelling of scent like that. “Not hooked up with anyone yet, you two cuties?” Willi and Ludwig look at each other: they must think we’re tarts. “Come and have a drink?” asks the persistent gentleman. “Where?” says Ludwig finally, asking a question of his own. “Oh my goodness, somewhere nice …” “What about the Silhouette?” suggests his companion. “We don’t know that place,” Willi says. “What about letting us take you there?” “All right, and we’ll have a drink, won’t we, Willi?” “Orright.”

To Geisbergstrasse. The two lads are pushed through a doorway. When they part the curtains inside the door, they recoil and turn to leave. “What’s the matter, boys?” Ludwig mumbles something about working clothes and being badly dressed … such an elegant place … “Pah, nonsense!” Then they’re in the restaurant, and are welcomed by a man in a tuxedo. “The cloakroom is this way.” The two gentlemen take off their furs, and are standing in tuxedos too. Ludwig allows the maître d’ to take his coat, and stands there in his tattered jacket and defunct tracksuit bottoms. Willi doesn’t have a coat to part with. Someone else has got his anorak, and his suit hasn’t been the same since the Cologne — Berlin express. Willi blushes pink, and holds his hand in front of his bare throat. But neither the gentlemen nor the maître d’, nor the other no-less-elegant guests, are at all put out by the boys’ style. On the contrary, plenty of admiring looks go Ludwig and Willi’s way.

The two tuxes link arms with the boys, and conduct them into a little booth. While the gentlemen are busy choosing drinks, the boys take stock of their surroundings. The Silhouette is small, intimate, and the theme of the decor is a flaring provocative red. At the front, a bar and tables; left and right, little private booths. The wall coverings are red, as are the soft carpets; the lampshades are a glowing red. A sultry atmosphere, languorously underscored by the music. Gentlemen in stylish evening dress or tuxedos; ladies in full-length gowns with bare arms and half-bared bosoms. An overheated atmosphere of intense warped eroticism: women trying to catch the eyes of girls, men aroused by male flesh. No loud speech, no full-throated laughter. It’s hanging in the air like an explosive.

With their forthright and uncouth boyishness, Willi and Ludwig have aroused a certain amount of interest. Desires, weary of bathed and anointed bodies, flicker to life at the sight of the less clean, but rawer, prospect of these working-class boys. The waiter, polished as he is, brings sharply aromatic brandies in iridescent bumpers. He brings cigarettes. Ten pfennigs, the boys read on the stamp. The brandy flows down their throats like burning oil. Another, then a third, bring disinhibition. Willi and Ludwig fall into the “ Du ” form with the two tuxes, and relate escapades from their time in various homes.

A few hours ago, Ludwig and Willi watched the smart boy-prostitutes on Tauentzienstrasse and thought: they’re going with gentlemen into nice hotels to climb between white sheets … At three in the morning, two taxis draw up in front of a private hotel off the Kurfürstendamm. The two tuxes and the two boys, drunk and apathetic, walk in. Ludwig and Willi’s first night in the west of Berlin. The way from the north and east of the city to the west often seems to lead through the sheets of a private hotel.

*A German phrase that says the customer is king; used in a purely ironic sense during the GDR’s existence.

AT NOON,Willi and Ludwig are woken by the sound of a plangent voice at the door. The chubby descant of a woman outside calls upon the two guttersnipes to vacate the premises. Gradually it dawns on the boys where they are. In the white sheets of a private hotel. The distinguished gentlemen left after a while, and had each deposited a twenty-mark note. The distinguished gentlemen! Along with their silk-lined tuxes they had stripped off their manners. What was left were two scrawny little men whose wallets allowed them to buy young healthy, if half-starved, boys. Details of the night just past swim into the boys’ consciousness. “Yuck!” says Ludwig. “Yes, it makes me feel sick. Never again …”

They get dressed. The madam walks into the room without looking at the boys. She checks the beds, the wardrobe, goes through the whole inventory of the ruddy room. “Too bad you had to come along, we were just about to steal the fitted wardrobe,” Ludwig says cheekily.

They eat lunch at Aschinger’s. They’ve each got over fifty marks. “You know, Ludwig,” Willi begins, “I can’t stand it here. Where are we going to sleep? Hadn’t we better go back up north?” “But where? The gang’s got tentacles everywhere!” “What about Neukölln?” suggests Willi. “Neukölln? Jonny doesn’t get down there much. Sure, let’s go there. We can’t handle Kurfürstendamm.”

In the café of the department store on Hermannplatz, they brainstorm. What can we do with our money, the hundred marks? What line of work should we invest it in? Because one thing’s for sure, we’re going to have to work, yes, and we want to as well. Anything not to have to go back to the Brothers and rob working wives’ purses. Shall we deal? In razorblades, or bananas, or newspapers, or patented stain-removers? Sell neckties for thirty-five pfennigs at the weekly markets, or lace or stockings? Eh, eh? But each time they hit an insuperable obstacle: no papers! Any policeman can take them in for trading without a licence. “No, Ludwig, all that’s not on.” “But what do we do then, once we’ve got through our cash? What, Willi?” “Then our shitty old life begins again …” He sounds like a man about to commit suicide, the gas turned on, about to say his last words. “How great it would be, Willi, if we didn’t have to worry about welfare … if we had some proper papers …”