Busy being properly alive.
‘I know we said we wouldn’t meet up in the week but …’ he began over the phone.
‘Baby,
you
said dat, not me,’ Billie corrected him. ‘Personally I don’ like to make no rules. I like to be spontaneous.’
‘Spontaneous?’ Stone said. ‘That sounds like a nice thing to be. I think I can just about remember what it is.’
‘Well, let’s be spontaneous now then. Let’s go out for a drink on a school night. How’s dat for wild and reckless?’ Billie laughed. ‘Do’an worry, baby, it do’an mean we be married nor nuttin.’
They agreed to meet on Piccadilly and chose a little pub halfway down St James Street from the Ritz. As they entered Stone noted the looks they got from the other clientele. He was used to it but it always irritated him. Black people were still pretty rare in pubs up West and a white man with a black woman always drew attention. Particularly a woman such as Billie who was young, beautiful and dressed as ever in as eye-catching a manner as she could contrive. That evening she had on white stiletto shoes, tight denim pedal-pusher jeans and an equally figure-hugging pink cashmere sweater which extended over her bottom and was tied off at the waist with a black patent leather belt. To top it all off she wore a rakish tweed trilby hat perched on top of her magnificent jet black bouffant.
‘I know what they’re all t’inking,’ Billie whispered as Stone returned from the bar with their drinks.
‘They’re thinking “Lucky bastard”. That’s what they’re thinking,’ Stone replied.
‘No, man. They’re t’inking how much she chargin’ ’im an’ could I afford it meself.’
Stone set the drinks on the table. A pint of bitter and a port and lemonade on either side of their packs of cigarettes, hers French, his American.
‘So you jus’ felt like some company then?’ Billie asked.
‘Yes. I suppose. Something like that. This Berlin trip. It’s got sort of complicated.’
‘Everyt’ing about you is complicated,’ Billie replied with a laugh. ‘It’s kind of interestin’ an’ sort of cute but you don’ wanna overplay it. A girl could get bored only gettin’ to meet ten per cent of a fella.’
‘I thought you told me to keep my demons to myself,’ Stone said, smiling.
‘That was when I only knew you a week,’ Billie replied. ‘Now it’s been t’ree months. Maybe it’s time you let a couple out. You know, jus’ one or two every now and den.’
‘You’d really like me to?’
‘I just said so, didn’t I?’
And so Stone began to talk.
Talking about things he
never
talked about. Sharing something of the weight of history and emotion that he kept shut up in the locked suitcase of his mind.
Perhaps it was the cigarettes that set him off.
Billie was smoking Gitanes, the same brand Dagmar used to get from her French pen pal. The same brand that he and she had smoked together on the night when he’d brought her the buttons from the SA man’s shirt and she had chosen him over his brother. Even the design of the packet was the same as it had been in the thirties.
‘We mugged those guys,’ Stone said, drinking deep on his beer. ‘I can’t say I regret it even now. I can see the bastard like it only happened this evening, right there, through the bottom of my beer glass. And I’d do it again too. When we jumped them they were strutting up the street like they owned it. Like they all strutted. Strutting and marching and stamping around like they’d done something brave and special by ganging up in their millions in order to persecute a few scared little individuals. That was what always annoyed me the most, the way they acted as if their “revolution” as they called it had been somehow heroic. Like they’d had some long, legendary struggle. Jesus, the Nazi Party was only as old as me. We were born on the same day. And heroic? The best they could come up with for a martyr was a pimp called Horst Wessel who got knifed over a girl three years before Hitler even came to power. They had all these festivals and celebrations, every week it seemed like, commemorating their “years of struggle” and their “martyrs”. They’d parade around with their “Blood Banners” going on about what a fight they’d had saving Germany. Jesus, when you actually added it up they’d lost about ten yobs in pub fights, that was it. But every Nazi walked round like he’d been a Spartan on the bridge when all they’d actually done was push Jewish grannies off the pavement.’
‘So you rolled dese guys,’ Billie asked.
‘That’s right, we rolled them. Cornered them in an alleyway, me and four other kids, and kicked the shit out of them. You’d have done the same if your dad had been half crippled in a concentration camp like mine was.’
‘Ha! Do’an give me dat! You wasn’t doin’ it fo’ your dad, you was doin’ it cos o’ dis girl.’
Stone smiled.
‘Well. Let’s say I did it for various reasons,’ he said.
‘But you didn’t kill dem?’
‘No. Not that time. I’d killed a man before though.’
‘What?’ Billie said, quite horrified. ‘Before you were fifteen?’
‘Me and my brother did it. In our apartment. I knocked the guy out and then Paulus suffocated him. I used that little statuette that’s in my flat. The one of my mother.’
Billie grimaced at the horror of it, but there was something else in Stone’s story that also made her think.
‘Paulus?’ Billie asked looking quizzically at Stone. ‘So that’s your brudder den?’
‘That’s right.’
‘But your name’s Paul?’
‘Yes,’ Stone agreed warily.
‘So you’re called Paul an’ your brudder was called Paulus?’
‘So it would seem.’
‘What the matter wit’ your momma? She only know one name?’
Stone gave a noncommittal shrug and took another swig of his beer.
‘Don’t you want to know why we killed the guy?’
‘I guess you must a’ had a pretty good reason.’
‘We killed him because he was about to rape our mum.’
‘I s’pose they don’t come much better than dat.’
Stone told the story. Surprising himself by taking pleasure in divulging information that had not even been sought. He, who for twenty years had made a habit of giving nothing away until forced to. He told Billie about killing Karlsruhen and about the buttons he’d cut off the SA man for Dagmar. About how triumphant she had been and how she’d kissed him and let him touch her.
‘Sounds like a dangerous girl to be in love with if you ask me,’ Billie observed.
‘She was excited,’ Stone replied defensively. ‘We’d drawn blood. Stood up and fought back. Don’t judge her – they made her lick pavements and they murdered her father.’
‘I ain’t judging her, Paul,’ Billie replied. ‘I don’t judge anyone.’
Then he told her the rest of the story of that night.
About how he’d arrived home to discover the truth about his adoption.
‘I just felt so completely alone. Deserted. They were my family, my whole life, and suddenly I was no longer a part of the single greatest element of their lives, the terrible danger they were in. I was alone. It was so strange. I’d decided so completely that I was a Jew, you see.’
‘And suddenly you weren’t?’
‘No.’
‘You told me you were.’
‘Yes. That’s what I’ve told people ever since I came to this country. But I’m not. Sorry about that.’
‘Don’ matter to me.’ Billie shrugged. ‘Jew or non-Jew is two exactly similar t’ings as far as I’m concerned.’
Stone drained his beer, took Billie’s glass and was about to go to the bar for another round. Billie put her hand on his arm to stop him.
‘What’s your real name, Paul? Just so I know.’
Stone smiled.
‘Otto,’ he replied. ‘My real name is Otto.’
Into Exile
Berlin, 1935
OTTO WAS TAKEN from his family by a female council official and a policeman. They informed him that as a ‘racially valuable’ individual he was to be housed with a decent Nazi family. They told him he must come immediately.
‘Bring no money nor any significant possessions,’ the council woman explained. ‘You are coming home to the Reich and the Reich will support you. You need nothing from these Jews.’
‘My family,’ Otto said.
‘You have been deceived,’ the woman replied. ‘The Jew will only look after his own. All else is trickery.’
Otto went meekly. He kissed Frieda briefly, ignoring the distaste on the face of the government woman and then shook Wolfgang and Paulus by the hand.
‘Please, ma’am,’ Frieda asked, ‘are we not even to know where Otto will live?’
‘That information is of no concern to you,’ the woman replied sharply. ‘Your parenthood of this boy is illegal under the law and you no longer have any rights or interest in him whatsoever. You are to have absolutely nothing to do with him from this moment forth. Come, Otto.’
‘He is our son!’ Frieda cried, finding it difficult to keep control. ‘He has lived in this same apartment for all of his fifteen years.’
‘That has been his misfortune,’ the woman said, ‘but his Jew nightmare is over. He is a German now.’
Otto went to the door without even glancing back. It had already been agreed between him and Paulus that he would show no regret or affection for fear of provoking the Gestapo.
As the door of their apartment closed behind Otto, Frieda literally sank to the floor. Her still lovely face, habitually lined with care. Now contorted with grief.
It occurred to Frieda that her heart had been broken in this same place before. Leaving a sadness so great and all-consuming that the empty space it made would remain empty all her days.
When had that been?
Of course she remembered. In the hospital, in 1920 when the old nurse had taken away the little shrivelled grey bundle. Then she had felt as she felt now.
And it had happened again. Once more she had lost a son, and for the second time Paulus had lost his twin.
Outside in the corridor Otto said nothing as he entered the familiar, creaking, clanking lift with the woman and policeman and descended to the ground floor. Still silent he walked with his captors out of the front door and into the well of the building.
‘What about my bike?’ he asked, speaking for the first time.
‘Perhaps it will be sent for,’ the woman said. ‘I do not know.’
Otto got into the police car and allowed himself to be driven away.
He did not speak again as the car traversed the familiar streets through which the Saturday Club had roamed on so many happy yesterdays.
‘Cheer up, son,’ the policeman said. ‘A year from now you’ll have forgotten you ever knew those Jews.’
Otto waited until they were completely out of Friedrichshain before he acted but then he did so decisively. As the car pulled up at some lights, he simply opened the door and jumped out.
‘
Auf Wiedersehen
and fuck you,’ he said and ran.
He didn’t know where he was going and he did not expect to get far. It was the principle of the thing. The first protest. From day one Otto wanted them to know that they had made a mistake. That they had caught a live one and that their lives would have been easier if they’d left him where he was.
As he ran a whistle blew behind him. The copper had leapt out of the car and was shouting that the boy should be stopped. Almost immediately Otto found himself confronted by diligent citizens responding to the policeman’s call. Otto smashed his fist into the face of the biggest person blocking his way and as the man staggered back Otto buried his boot between the same unfortunate citizen’s legs. By which time the policeman had caught up. As he reached out to grab at Otto he too got a fist in the face.
‘Fuck you!’ Otto shouted once more.
The other passers-by who had been intent on stopping Otto fell back. Anybody who was prepared to physically attack a police officer in broad daylight was clearly out of control and they did not want to be the next person in his line of fire. Otto may have been only fifteen but he was very strong and an experienced fighter. He was also motivated by a blind fury which was plain for all to see. People stood aside and let him pass.
Otto ran on, pushing his way through the busy street, turning blindly left and right. It could not last long of course. Pretty soon other local beat officers responding to the whistles and the hubbub had joined the pursuit and before long Otto was surrounded and subdued.
They took him to the cells of the local police station where they beat him up pretty badly, but when he was brought before a judge Otto was let off with a caution. The council woman explained the situation and it was decided that you could not expect a lad brought up by vermin to become civilized in a single morning.
There was, however, no question of Otto going to a foster home now. It was clear that the Jews had turned him into a savage beast and that no normal family could control him. The party, however, could and would, and it was decided between the court, the Friedrichshain council and the local SS that Otto would be sent to a
Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalt
, or Napola for short, an institute for National Political Education. This was a grouping of supposedly ‘elite’ boarding schools, the purpose of which was to educate the Nazi officials and administrators of the future.