It had an effect. The first youth’s face fell a little. Perhaps he was even considering dropping the whole thing.
But the other boy was clever. Clever and sly.
‘What outfit are you joining? Come on! Come on! Which regiment are these papers you have for?’
Paulus tried not to look at a loss but he knew he’d blown it. He was one of the best educated young men in Berlin but he knew absolutely nothing about the Wehrmacht.
‘I don’t have to—’
‘What outfit!’ the boy shouted. ‘Tell me now!’
‘Rifles …’ Paul blurted. ‘The infantry.’
‘There are more than a hundred infantry divisions in the Wehrmacht! Each containing a number of regiments! What is on your papers? Come on! Come on! No soldier who has had the honour to be summoned by the Führer would forget such a thing.’
Paulus was on the ropes and he knew it.
‘I won’t be shouted at by a boy!’ he said. ‘If you insist on keeping up with this bullshit then I demand that you take us to a police station.’
It was a horrifying indication of the level of danger they were now in that being taken to the police seemed to Paulus to be their best option. He did not like the way they were staring at Dagmar. If these boys decided to convince themselves that she and he were Jews, there was no telling what they would do, all alone on a deserted beach, hidden by sand dunes.
‘So,’ the meaner of the two leaders said triumphantly, ‘are you Jews? I think you are Jews.’
‘We should take them in,’ the first lad insisted.
‘What’s the rush?’ the meaner one replied, and it was clear to Paulus that the majority of the junior boys agreed with him.
‘So, bitch,’ the more popular leader said, putting his face close to Dagmar’s, ‘
are
you a Jew?’
The game was up and Paulus knew it. His best shot was a long one but it was all that was left. The lead boy was much closer than the others, who were all still hanging back somewhat selfconsciously. They were, after all, only boys, and Dagmar was a woman.
Paulus swung a fist into the vicious boy’s face, knocking him to the ground with a single huge blow. Then, in a movement so swift that it was really a follow-through from the blow, he jumped down and tore the dagger from the boy’s belt, pressing the blade to his throat.
‘OK!’ Paulus shouted. ‘Fuck off or he gets it. I’ll stick him, I swear! When you’re gone I’ll let him go, but not till then. Fuck off!’
The youngsters were not used to this kind of thing at all and were already stepping backwards in the face of Paulus’s shocking fury. But then the other lead boy spoke. His character, which Paulus had at first thought might be useful, now proved to be their undoing.
‘Stand ground!’ the first boy shouted. ‘Stand ground, I say! This swine has laid his hand on a
Hitler Jugend
dagger! Our weapon is our life! And like our life it belongs to the Führer! This man has stolen the Führer’s dagger! Our honour is in his hand!’
The boy Paulus had by the collar was whimpering as he felt the knife on his throat, but there could be no doubt that resolve amongst his comrades was stiffening.
‘Don’t worry, Hitler Youth Man,’ the first of the leaders assured his comrade, ‘if this Jew swine dares to harm you, he knows what he’ll get.’
It was a standoff that could go one of two ways, both the worse for Paulus and Dagmar.
Paulus dropped the knife.
Then another voice intruded on the scene.
‘What the FUCK do you think you’re doing, you little bunch of pricks!’
Paulus and Dagmar almost cried with relief. It was Otto.
He was standing on top of the sand dune. Two years older than either of the troop leaders. Muscular. Commanding.
Dressed in the same uniform.
‘You want to mess around with a Spandau district unit, do you, you little arseholes?’ Otto went on.
Paulus had told his brother to be sure to wear a uniform for the trip, and Otto had chosen his brown
Hitler Jugend
one because the school one was black and highly formal, and would have looked pretty grim after a day at the seaside.
It had been a fortunate choice. Not least because it carried on it the badges showing that Otto was of a considerably senior rank to that held by the two lead youths confronting Dagmar and his brother.
Paulus let the lad he was holding go. The boy snatched up his dagger from the ground, red-faced with fury but at a loss what to do.
The first of the troop leaders was in no such doubt. He leapt to attention.
‘This man will not show us his papers, sir—’
‘Well, of course he fucking won’t, he’s screwing the
Oberrottenführer’s
bird! Would you want to be identified?’
At this some of the junior boys in the troop began to snigger.
‘I just wanted to know if—’ the leader protested.
‘All you need to know,
sonny
,’ Otto went on, ‘is that
you
are a poxy little
Stammführer
while I am an
Oberkameradschaftsführer
.’ Otto patted the badge of rank stitched to the arm of his shirt, above the swastika armband. ‘And what’s more, an
Oberkameradschaftsführer
from the Spandau district, who, as I think you know, are the meanest toughest bastards in the whole HJ. Even our BDM
girls
could kick your arses. What could our BDM girls do?’
The boys knew the authentic voice of brutal authority when they heard it and replied at once.
‘They could kick our arses, Herr
Oberkameradschaftsführer
sir!’
‘That’s right,’ Otto snarled. ‘Now piss off all of you because there’s a queue to get under that oilcloth with this bit of skirt and none of you are in it. So say
Heil Hitler
and fuck off!’
Otto clicked his heels and gave the German salute.
‘
Heil Hitler!
’ came ten instantaneous replies.
After which the two young leaders and their little troop of boys hurried away as quickly as they could.
Once more the three of them were alone.
‘Shit.’ Paulus whistled. ‘Glad you came back, Otts.’
Dagmar sank to the ground.
‘I thought …’ she said. ‘I thought they were going to …’
‘But they didn’t, Dags,’ Paulus said quickly. ‘They didn’t, that’s what matters.’
‘I’m sorry I ran off,’ Otto said. ‘It was stupid and if I hadn’t done you wouldn’t have gone through any of that.’
‘You couldn’t have known, Otts,’ Dagmar said.
‘Of course I bloody could! There’s danger absolutely everywhere. We all know that and I should have stayed with you. And that’s what I came back to say, Dags. That I won’t leave again, all right? Whatever you feel about Paulus doesn’t make any difference. I still love you and I’ll still look out for you, just like we planned. I promise.’
‘No, Ottsy,’ Paulus said. ‘I think the plan should change.’
The Last Meeting of the Saturday Club
Berlin, February 1939
THE FOUR MEMBERS of the Saturday Club met under the clock at the Lehrter Bahnhof.
Or rather under the great crimson slashes of red that hung beneath the clock.
The cavernous interior of the station was festooned with swastikas. More so even than usual. Hitler’s fiftieth birthday was only weeks away and the station management had shown considerable ingenuity in finding places to hang banners where none already hung.
‘Just when you think there’s nowhere left to put a flag,’ Otto murmured.
‘Flags and parades. Parades and flags,’ Dagmar said, without bothering to lower her voice. ‘Don’t they ever get
bored
with it?’
‘Dagmar!’ Silke hissed in exasperation. ‘How many times? You don’t have the luxury of being able to moan.’
‘Nobody’s damn well listening, Silke!’
‘They are
always
listening.’
‘Come on, let’s not fight,’ Paulus begged. ‘Not on our last day together. You buy the tickets, Otts. I’ll try and get us a table at the café. The train doesn’t leave for another hour, we can have some coffee. Come on, Dagmar.’
Paulus led Dagmar away towards the station restaurant while Otto and Silke joined the queue at one of the numerous ticket office windows.
When they arrived at the window, the woman behind the glass gave the German greeting. It was a ridiculous sight. There was so very little room in her tiny cubicle that the woman was forced to make her gesture with a bent arm cramped close to her chest. More like the salutes Hitler gave himself at rallies, walking past a forest of outstretched arms, his own wrist merely flicked back at the shoulder in a selfconscious demonstration of absolute authority. Too busy, too weighed down with the cares of destiny to offer anything more than a limp parody of the straining adulation that surrounded him.
Otto returned the woman’s salute. He had to.
The German greeting, as it was called, was not compulsory, and the ticket woman was being quite a zealot in greeting every single customer in such a manner. But having
been
saluted, it was certainly dangerous not to return it. Otto had seen people beaten up in bus queues for such an insult.
His own salute was no less comically inadequate than the one the ticket woman offered. With people pressing from behind he was also too close to the glass to do it properly, and so he was forced to stretch his arm out sideways, being careful not to knock the hat off the person in the next queue.
‘
Heil Hitler
,’ Otto said. ‘Two tickets for Rotterdam please.’
It was just so absurd. Standing there with his arm stretched out sideways, invoking the name of the head of state while purchasing a train ticket. Otto doubted whether even the power-corrupted despots of Ancient Rome had expected imperial genuflections from their citizens in such mundane circumstances.
‘Identification and travel visas,’ the woman demanded.
Otto pushed two sets of papers under the window.
‘First class,’ he said loudly. ‘Sleeper berths.’
It was extravagant but it was what Paulus had suggested when they had been planning the trip. The journey was a long one and slips of the tongue were a constant worry. As Silke had just pointed out to Dagmar, you never knew when the Gestapo or one of their millions of eager informers were listening. It was said that people had been given away by their own children after talking in their sleep.
The woman in the booth looked from Otto to Silke with suspicion. He was just nineteen, she was eighteen. A glance down at their papers showed that they did not share a surname.
‘That’s right,’ Silke said from over Otto’s shoulder, ‘we’re going to use the journey to see if we can’t make a present for Heinrich to put in his Spring of Life orphanages! Wish us luck, won’t you?’
The woman issued the tickets with ill grace and Otto and Silke retreated from the window, both trying not to laugh.
A brief moment of levity in a strange and horribly bleak day.
‘Spring of Life!’ Otto scolded. ‘I thought you said not to draw attention!’
‘I was just pretending to be a good Nazi girl.’
They made their way to the restaurant where Dagmar and Paulus had already bought coffee and sandwiches.
‘Well, here we are,’ Otto said, laying the sleeper tickets on the table. ‘As Mum often says, “Everybody’s looking for Moses”, and here he is in the form of a ticket to Rotterdam.’
‘First class, eh, Silke?’ Dagmar said. ‘All right for some.’
‘It’s what we agreed on,’ Paulus reminded her, ‘and it’s worth it. We don’t want Silke getting searched carrying my papers on her way back. Those Gestapo are all peasant snobs. They’ll paw a girl in third class but bow and scrape to the ones in first. Besides, it’s a present from Mum, we can afford it.’
‘Yes, lucky your clever old mum thought to settle her money and property on Otto when she did,’ Dagmar said. ‘Every Jewish family should have an adoptive Aryan to look after the estate. Shame my parents never thought to adopt one. I might still be a millionaire.’
‘Nobody should be a millionaire,’ Silke said, ‘and one day nobody will.’
‘Bet you wouldn’t say that if
your
father had been one,’ Dagmar replied.
‘Well,’ said Otto, ‘nice to know you girls are as good mates as ever.’
They were all uncomfortably aware that the moment had almost come.
‘So this is it,’ Dagmar remarked after a moment’s silence. ‘The final meeting of the Saturday Club, eh?’
‘Not final, I hope,’ said Paulus, ‘but certainly the last one for a while.’
‘Might as well be realistic,’ Dagmar said. ‘There’s going to be a war. Do you really think all four of us will survive it?’