Blood Brothers by Ernst Haffner

Author:Ernst Haffner [Haffner, Ernst]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59051-705-5
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2015-03-03T05:00:00+00:00

12

DURING LUDWIG’S TIME IN CHOKEY, lots of things have changed in the gang. All the boys have got new clothes. A few, Fred, Jonny and Hans, have new wardrobes from head to toe, with good suits and even winter coats. There’s money sloshing around as well. Jonny straightaway organizes a collection for Ludwig among the Brothers. “To help him forget his time inside.” Ludwig is presented with forty-two marks. He is to buy himself a coat with the money, and various bits and pieces he needs. On the evening of the day Ludwig made his successful break for freedom, there is a big pub crawl in his honor. All the boys are really glad to have him back. And the fact that he ran away so fearlessly in an underground station, that lifts him up a peg or two in everyone’s eyes. While the geezer who gave Ludwig the stolen luggage chit, he’d better count his bones if they ever catch up with him. The meanness. When he could have just gone up to him and said: “Hey, this is a stolen ticket. Do you want to pick up the suitcase? We’ll go fifty-fifty.” That would have been appropriate, but this … He’d better watch it!

Ludwig is worried about showing up at so many bars in one night. It would just take one little raid in one of them and he’s in shtook, seeing as he’s got no papers. Papers, papers … Jonny muses. Then: “Come with me.” They head over to Grenadierstrasse, Berlin’s ghetto, the street of the little illicit businesses and dives. Jonny exchanges a few words with an old Jewess standing by a cellar opening. She calls a boy up out of the cellar and sends him off on an errand. After a few minutes, he returns with a little wrinkled-looking Jew in a greasy kaftan. The old man’s beard and hair are a greenish tangle, his small eyes peer restlessly this way and that. The Jew takes Jonny and Ludwig into his shop.

The term “shop” is a wild exaggeration. You could purchase its entire stock and have change from ten marks. A few venerable biscuits, the inevitable garlic, a few packets of kosher margarine. The shop is just a blind anyway, a mask for other, better lines of business that don’t need stock. They go into a dark windowless back room. The Jew sits down between Ludwig and Jonny on an erstwhile sofa. Devout, submissive and innocent, the old fence folds his black-veined hands together. “What are the gentlemen looking for?” “My friend here needs papers,” begins Jonny. “Papers … oh …” Straightaway, the old man becomes suspicious and reserved. False papers are a difficult business. Jonny is offering fifteen marks for a police registration certificate or an unemployment card. The old man’s fingers are playing nervously with his kaftan, fear and cupidity are in equipoise. No, he doesn’t do papers. He is an honest man. Yes … But … he knows someone who does do that sort of business.

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