Two Brothers by Ben Elton

Author:Ben Elton [Elton, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical
ISBN: 9781409080497
Publisher: Bantam Press
Published: 2012-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Romantic Gesture

Berlin, 1935

UP UNTIL THE age of fourteen and a half, Otto and Paulus had done pretty much everything together. Laughed together. Fought together.

Fallen in love with the same girl together.

And killed together.

The last and most terrible of these bonds had of course been born of urgent necessity; they had had no choice. When Otto decided to attack again, forming what he called his retribution squad with a view to mugging a storm trooper, the brothers parted company.

‘We’ve done worse before,’ Otto said darkly when Paulus expressed his complete opposition to the plan. ‘You’ve done worse, you know that.’

‘Shut up about that, you stupid bastard!’ Paulus hissed. ‘We should never talk about that outside, do you hear?’

‘I’ll talk about what I like,’ Otto replied, ‘and I’ll do what I like. And I’m going to do this.’

‘Then you’re completely crazy,’ Paulus said. ‘You’ll be killed and it’ll break Mum’s heart.’

But Otto was adamant. The time had come to fight back. A line had to be drawn, a counter-attack mounted. No matter how minor or insignificant a gesture it was, somebody had to do something.

Dagmar loved the idea.

In fact, her eyes positively gleamed with excitement when Otto revealed his plan on one of the many evenings the three of them spent smoking cigarettes together in Dagmar’s pastel pink bedroom. The thought of action, vengeful action, was like a tiny spark in the darkness of her nightmare existence.

‘But what do you mean, “retribution squad”?’ she asked.

‘Exactly that,’ Otto said, trying to seem casual and matter-of-fact. ‘Me and a bunch of other Jewish lads from around our way are going to beat up a Nazi. There’s even a couple of non-Jew kids who want to be in on it, Commies and the like,’ he went on, ‘but we won’t let them. This is our fight.’

‘Exactly,’ Paulus replied. ‘Which is what the police will think too when they come to get us.’

‘They won’t know Jews did it,’ Otto said. ‘I’ve thought it through. We’ll take the bloke’s money so it just looks like a robbery. Anyway, even if they do blame us, what more can they do to us?’

‘Are you crazy? Haven’t you seen what they did to Dad in their camp? What they did to Herr Fischer?’

Invoking the fate of Dagmar’s father had the opposite effect to what Paulus had wanted. It fired up Dagmar to further encouragement, which was of course all Otto needed to hear.

‘That’s right, Pauly,’ Dagmar exclaimed with bitter venom,

‘they killed my dad. They killed him, Pauly. And now Otto’s going to give one of them a good hiding. If there was any justice in the world, Otto would kill the bastard.’

‘No!’ Paulus protested.

‘I will if you want me to, Dags,’ Otto said eagerly. ‘I really will. I’ll stick my fucking knife in his throat.’

‘No,’ Dagmar said, quietening down. ‘No, I don’t want you to kill one. Not for me. Pauly’s right about that. They’d come after us all for sure. There’d be a riot. But if you mug one you can make it look like a robbery.

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