Two Brothers (42 page)

But she knew that Otto would not
want
that chance.

He loved his family. His mother, his father, and his grandparents. He was inseparable from his twin brother no matter how much they might fight. And in a strange way Otto had even decided that he loved being a Jew. Because Otto was the fighter of the family, fiercely loyal and worryingly reckless. He loved a cause and Hitler had given him the cause of all causes. And now along with everything else in Otto’s life it was to be pulled from under him.

Frieda could not speak.

‘What, Mum?’ Otto asked again. ‘What are you trying to tell me?’

It was Wolfgang who said it. Wolfgang spoke less and less these days. Preferring to smoke in silence when his lungs permitted and drink whatever he could find. But he spoke now. Briefly strong again for Frieda.

‘You’re adopted, Otts,’ he said gently, his hollow cheekbones casting deep shadows across his thin, prematurely aged face. ‘Mum had twins but one of them was stillborn. Your natural mother died in childbirth and you had no father. We took you as our own. Right there and then on the day you were both born. Neither you nor Pauly had been alive an hour when we first put you together. And that’s how it’s been ever since.’

‘You’re our twins,’ Frieda said softly, ‘our beloved boys. But you didn’t start life inside me, Otts. Though I love you like you did.’

Both boys simply stared open-mouthed.

‘We never gave it a thought,’ Frieda continued quickly, ‘it didn’t matter to us. You’re our boys, that’s all. But then Hitler came and suddenly it mattered.
Blood
mattered. Blood, blood, bloody blood! They never shut up about blood! It’s a fetish, a perversion. It’s insane. I’ve referred patients for a hundred transfusions. We never once used to ask what the donor’s damned religion was!’

Frieda tailed off. Both boys were still staring in silent shock. It was Wolfgang who tried to be practical, tried to move past the emotion by bringing the conversation back to specifics.

‘The thing is, Ottsy,’ he said, ‘with these new laws, everybody’s family history is going to be investigated by law. They are going to decide once and for all who is a Jew in their eyes, and who isn’t. Mum, Paulus and me are Jews, Otts. And you aren’t.’

Still Otto could not reply; he had sunk into a chair, the knife still in his hand.

‘Blimey, Otts, mate,’ Paulus said, forcing a laugh into his voice. ‘That’s good news, eh? Who’d have thought it? Looks like you’re off the hook. We should celebrate.’

Now Otto found his voice, turning to his brother. His blank, drained face suddenly vivid red with anger.

‘You think I want that! You stupid bastard! You think I want to be off the fucking hook?’

‘Otto,
please
,’ Frieda said.

‘You can’t tell me off,’ Otto said rounding on her, ‘you’re not my mum!’

‘Don’t say that, Otto,’ Frieda gasped. ‘Never say that. Not ever! I am your mum.’

‘You just said I wasn’t your son! Pauly’s your son. I’m not. I come from God knows where! I’m not even a Jew. Who am I? I’m no one!’

‘That’s not true, Otts,’ Wolfgang said. ‘You’re one of us. Our family. It’s only the Nazis who are doing this to us. I—’

‘Why didn’t you tell me before! All these years you’ve known that I’m not your son!’

‘You
are
. You are our son!’

‘Hey, Otto!’ Paulus said sharply, and now his face was angry too. ‘Don’t attack Mum! This is a shock to me too you know. But really, what does it matter? Like Mum says, blood is crap. Race is crap.’

‘Family isn’t!’ Otto replied.

‘Exactly, and that’s what we are!’ Paulus said. ‘What happened when we were born happened, that’s all. Lots of kids got adopted after the war. Personally if I were you I’d be pleased.’

‘Pleased?’ Otto gasped. ‘Are you crazy?’

‘Of course I’d be pleased!’ Paulus was as angry as Otto. ‘Because I’d know I was no less your brother and Mum and Dad were no less my parents. The only difference would be that I wouldn’t have an entire country wishing I was dead …’

‘
I
wish I was dead!’

‘No!’ Frieda wailed.

‘That’s just stupid!’ Paulus said. ‘So what if you’re not a Jew?’

‘I am a Jew,’ Otto protested. ‘I don’t
want
to be one of them. I nearly killed one tonight. Why are you telling me this now? I’m a Jew!’

‘Because you were going to find out anyway,’ Frieda said. ‘You have to see that, Otts. The Gestapo is going to go through every detail of every single person in Germany. Everyone is going to be categorized. Your history is documented. The adoption forms are at the hospital. Your birth certificate is at the town hall. We had to tell you and we have to make a plan …’

‘Plan! What plan?’ Otto said through tears. ‘There is no plan! Because there’s no me! There’s no Otto Stengel. He never existed. I don’t exist.’

Otto grabbed his coat and once more made for the door.

‘Otto! Please!’ Frieda cried, tears running down her face.

‘Otto, stop,’ Paulus demanded, ‘you have to stop.’

‘Who are you shouting at?’ Otto said with a wild and angry snarl. ‘Who are you giving orders to? You’re not my brother!’

Family Trees

Berlin, 1935

OTTO SPENT THE night on a bench in the People’s Park amongst the fairy-tale statues but the following morning, as dawn broke over the city, he went home. He was cold and stiff and his heart still ached but his tears had dried. He knew that the pain and the confusion he was feeling, the fear of rejection, the isolation and the loneliness, were not his parents’ fault. They were Hitler’s, and the Nazis were now more his enemy than ever.

He climbed the six sets of stairs in order to avoid using the creaking lift at so early an hour, and let himself into the darkened flat. Inside he found his mother sitting exactly where he had left her and where she had clearly sat all night. He rushed forward and threw his arms around her.

‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Don’t be, Ottsy. Don’t be,’ Frieda whispered. ‘Goodness, look at me, crying again. I didn’t think I had any tears left in me.’

She hugged him tight.

‘I’ve been so worried. Pauly looked for you till one in the morning. Wolfgang tried too but he got tired. We called your friends. They all thought you’d been picked up for … for what you did yesterday evening.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Otto repeated. ‘I shouldn’t have run. I just wasn’t thinking straight.’

‘You know that we love you both just the same,’ Frieda went on. ‘You and Paulus, our two boys.’

‘Yeah, I know, Mum. They can’t break us apart,’ Otto said. ‘They never will.’

Silent tears were running in streams down Frieda’s cheeks.

‘Not in our hearts, baby,’ she whispered. ‘Not in our hearts.’

Otto felt the wet tears against his own face as he hugged her. He knew what she was saying, the salty agony glistening on her cheeks confirmed it.

‘Are they going to take me away, Mum?’ he asked.

Frieda could not bring herself to reply.

Wolfgang had appeared at the door of his and Frieda’s bedroom and had been listening.

‘We think so, Otts,’ he croaked through his tobacco-and TB-ravaged voice. ‘We have to presume so. The newspapers say the police are supposed to identify “racially valuable stock”. The SS have been setting up orphanages. Himmler’s collecting kids.’

‘God. What
are
these people?’ Frieda said under her breath. ‘Can they truly be
human
?’

Fear replaced grief on Otto’s countenance. His face shining white in the pale dawn that was creeping in at the windows. It was a rare sight for his parents to see. Otto had become so adept at disguising terror over the years that they had imagined him fearless. But the prospect of being put into the care of the SS seemed for a moment at least to overwhelm even him.

‘I’ll hide,’ Otto said finally. ‘If they come for me I won’t be here, I’ll go underground. I’ll hide.’

‘Then they’ll take us.’ It was Paulus who spoke from the twins’ bedroom door.

‘Always the voice of reason, eh, bro?’ Otto replied with a bitter smile.

‘You know it’s true, Otts,’ Paulus said. ‘I don’t like saying it any more than you like hearing it but if they come for you and don’t find you they’ll punish us. I don’t mind. I’ll run, I’ll fight, just like you would. But Dad can’t go back into that camp.’

Otto nodded. He knew that was true.

Wolfgang turned away, ashamed to be identified as the most vulnerable member of the family.

‘You’re right, Pauly,’ Otto said. ‘
Obviously
. You always bloody are. I’ll let them take me.
Then
I’ll run.’

‘Well,’ said Frieda, ‘I imagine we have a few weeks to consider things. Let’s try to do it calmly, eh? Hope for the best, plan for the worst as they say. You’ve been out all night, Otts. I’ll make you some toasted bread and cheese and a mug of chocolate.’

‘Thanks, Mum,’ Otto said. ‘Best mum in the world.’

The Stengels were not the only people hoping for the best in the weeks that followed the announcement of the Nuremberg Laws. As the long summer of 1935 turned finally to autumn it seemed as if the whole country could speak of nothing else but family history.

The new rules officially defining what constituted a Jew sparked a frenzy of genealogical research. Everybody in Germany was to be racially classified and even the most proudly Aryan types began referring nervously to their family trees in terror that they might find a Jew lurking somewhere on a branch. All across the Reich, church records, parish lists, gravestones, bible inscriptions, ancient deeds and transactions were consulted minutely by both individuals and the police in an effort to establish the racial credentials of the whole population.

Credentials which, as Wolfgang dryly observed, were supposed to be self-evident anyway.

‘I don’t know why they have to go through this fuss,’ he said bitterly, ‘surely all they need to do is look for the hunched figures with sloping foreheads, noses like grappling hooks and dripping knives in their hands and that’ll be the Jews!’

‘It’s horrible,’ Frieda said. ‘All the Aryans are terrified of finding a Jew in their line and all the Jews are desperate to find an Aryan. I’ve been having people come in all day at the surgery asking me for medical records. People are going about praying that their grandma was raped by some bacon butcher because it’s actually better to be descended from an Aryan sex criminal than a Jewish charity worker.’

It was this remark of Frieda’s that led Otto to announce he had had an idea.

The four of them had been discussing the new laws over dinner, as they had done on every evening since the night that Otto and Paulus learnt the truth about their family history.

‘
You
had an idea, Ottsy,’ Paulus gasped with mock wonder. ‘Is this a first? Should we celebrate?’

Otto punched Paulus. Whatever fears the future might hold for them, the twins were still the twins.

‘Yes, I’ve had an idea,’ Otto said. ‘Why should I wait for the Gestapo to investigate my history? I should do it myself. If I can find a Jew somewhere way back, then they won’t take me away.’

‘Oh, Otto,’ Frieda murmured, ‘that is such a brave and lovely thought.’

Wolfgang stretched his thin bony hand across the table to squeeze Otto’s.

‘Thanks, son,’ he whispered. ‘You’ve got nerve, I’ll give you that.’

Paulus, however, was having none of it.

‘You’re crazy!’ he said, tearing angrily at a piece of black bread as if it was Otto’s head and then drowning it in his plate of goulash. ‘Completely crazy. Every Jew in Germany wants a couple of Gentile grandparents and you’re trying to find a Jew?’

‘That’s right,’ Otto replied, clearly pleased at having for once wrong-footed his know-it-all brother. ‘As far as I’m concerned I
am
a Jew. I just need a convenient relative to prove it.’

‘You’re
not
a Jew, Otts!’ Paulus protested. ‘That’s the point! Can’t you see you’re safe?’

‘I don’t
want
to be safe!’ Otto said. ‘I want to be a Stengel and the Stengels are Jews.’

‘Please tell me this is a joke, Otts,’ Paulus said. ‘It’s perverse. It’s also potentially suicidal. Nobody wants to be a Jew in Germany.’

‘What a shame, eh, Mum,’ Otto said, ‘that it wasn’t the other way around back in 1920 in the hospital. Then we’d have all been happy, wouldn’t we?’

This remark brought Paulus up short. Otto could see that his point had hit home.

‘Well, Pauly?’ Otto pressed on. ‘
Would
you have liked that? Do you really wish it was
you
who didn’t have to be a Jew any more? Even if it meant having to leave home and go and live with foster Nazis?’