Ernst Haffner: Blood Brothers

THE NIGHTTIME EQUIVALENTto the Rückerklause is Schmidt’s on Linienstrasse. Of course it’s busy and there’s a din of brass band music all day here as well. But, after dark, the bustling little bar becomes a thronging, teeming scene. The beer tap isn’t idle for a minute, and every chair is occupied twice over. And whoever hasn’t got one at all leans against the stage or just stands anywhere he can, beer glass in hand. The inevitable paper chains, essential for producing a festive atmosphere, are permanently shrouded in thick tobacco fumes, even though a ventilator is doing its best to restore law and order to the air. The band plays energetically and without a break. Generous rounds of beer and shorts sustain them. Sustain them to the point that the alcohol starts to affect the tunefulness of their playing. That’s when Schmidt’s really comes into its own. Then the whole bar becomes one roaring foot-stamping chorus.

Jonny needs to dig up his eight fellows from various nooks and crannies to tell them he’s scoped out a cheap billet for the night. Two marks for the whole lot of them. It’s in a warehouse on Brunnenstrasse. For two marks the nightwatchman will let them in at ten. But at six o’clock tomorrow morning they’ll have to be on their way again. Straw and large crates they can curl up inside are provided. At half past nine the gang set off.

On the stroke of ten, they’re all close to the billet. Three of them are at the gate. The others are waiting nearby in the passage, to nip in the second the nightwatchman opens the door. Before they even hear him, there’s a furious growling and yapping behind the door: the guard dog. Then the door is unlocked, and one by one they sneak inside. The watchman locks the door after them. The bitch howls with rage and disappointment. She doesn’t understand her master. Normally she is under orders to go for anyone’s legs, and just now, with this collection of deeply suspicious individuals, she is kept on a short leash. The nightwatchman slopes on ahead with the snarling dog. The Blood Brothers bring up the rear after a respectful interval. The door of the low storehouse is unbolted, and Jonny has to put down his two marks. Then the old man goes through all their pockets. He’s looking for matches or lighters in case one of the scapegraces should get it into his head to smoke in there … With all that straw and dry wood around. That would be a right old firework. The guard dog tries a parting snap at the boys. But the studded collar reminds her that only non-paying guests are to be shredded. The boys are just finding their way round the dark windowless space when the old man locks them in. The freed dog sniffs crossly at the crack between the floor and the bottom of the door. Just let them try and get out …

The boys grope around in the dark. They catch themselves on nails, and as soon as someone thinks he’s found a good spot, a few piled-up crates come crashing down about his ears. By the time everyone has found a place in a crate or on a bale of straw, it’s striking eleven. In a few more minutes, they’re all asleep. Only the mice are upset about the intrusion.

Were one able to see them, the huddled bodies of the boys in the crates and the straw, in their so-called beds, there would probably be only a voice of pity. Sixteen-year-old Walter, with his pigeon chest bulging out the front of his shirt and his Basedow pop-eyes … And Erwin, also sixteen, a beanpole, whose stringy arms show not the merest trace of muscle. Or quiet, dreamy Heinz: he is using his jacket as a pillow, his shirt is a filthy rag. Ludwig, the eighteen year old from Dortmund who fled from the institution a year ago, has tunneled so deeply into the straw that there’s nothing of him to be seen, and the mice scamper across his body. The boys all look wretched. Only Jonny retains an expression of bold resoluteness, even in sleep.

In the predawn dark of six, they’re all standing out on Brunnenstrasse again. The cold they couldn’t shake from their bones during the night now hurts like an acute pain. Frail Walter is gibbering so badly that they take him in their midst and make him jog-trot a ways to get him a little warmed up. Broken up into their usual subgroups, they are heading for Alexanderplatz. To the Mexiko. That opens at six. A cup of hot broth, no matter how thin and stale, will do them the power of good.

Hands cupped round the mugs, the Blood Brothers sit in a corner, tanking warmth … PA music at a volume that would have gratified a symphony orchestra, from 6 a.m. till three o’clock the next morning. Pimps, prostitutes, gang members, wrestling associations, casual criminals and vagrants, bourgeois slumming it, and detectives looking for someone. That’s the Mexiko. A few years ago, it was a small pub that failed for lack of custom. Now it proudly advertises as Europe’s most prominent restaurant. The new owner clipped a few pictures of Indians from Moritz’s picture book, and plastered the four walls of his premises with cheap and cheerful copies. Set out some artificial palm trees, painted over the windows so no one could see in or out, and called his work a Mexican cantina.

The Blood Brothers are sitting quietly at their table. Another day ahead of them. They face it without a plan. A man walks into the pub, a stranger, not a regular. Looks about him inquiringly, and makes for their table. The eighteen-year-old Fred, Jonny’s lieutenant, leaps up, knocks a few of the others out of his way, and crashes out onto the street with the stranger in hot pursuit. Excitement in the establishment. What was that about? Police? But none of the customers has ever seen the man before. And they know all the local rozzers. The gang is puzzled. It feels inadvisable to stay any longer in this place. Jonny divides up the rest of the money equally, splits the gang up into four pairs, and sets them to look for Fred in all the usual places — with allied gangs, in hidey-holes. Even if he manages to get away from the stranger, Fred won’t risk going back to the Mexiko. So he’ll need to find out where the gang have got to. The rendezvous is eight o’clock at the homosexual bar the Alte Post on Lothringer Strasse. The four pairs head off in four different directions.

IN THE INSTITUTION,the atmosphere has been mutinous for several days now. A small group, headed by the twenty-year-old Willi Kludas, have fixed on a kind of passive resistance. It was discussed at night in the dorm, and traitors and blacklegs were threatened with extreme measures: the sanctions were beating, beating and more beating. The director and educators were powerless in the face of the consequences of this passive resistance, up to and including acts of sabotage. Half the work gangs called in sick, suddenly people came down with the most obscure conditions. And the rest, while seeming to work, actually did more harm than good. The overseers were livid, threatened physical punishment or putting on report, but they were not able to prove any malicious intent. The youths smirked at each other as they put their heads down and went on “working.” They were starting to enjoy themselves.

In the buildings, dozens of windowpanes inexplicably broke. Locks stuck. Workmen had to be hired to extract sand and grit from the works. In the bathrooms, toilets were blocked, electric lights and fuses burned out en masse. Documents and entire files disappeared, or blue ink was spilled over them. The boys couldn’t wipe the grins off their faces. This was some campaign that Willi had come up with, this was something else. The educators went round with pale faces and gritted teeth. They no longer had the nerve to approach the director. Woe betide any boy they caught red-handed. But the system of lookouts worked, and everything the authorities tried was ineffectual or only made matters worse.