‘Papers,’ the Gestapo man demanded. He was of course dressed in the usual gangster get-up, black leather trenchcoat and Homburg hat. All he needed was a Thompson sub-machine gun tucked under his arm in a violin case and he could have been in an American movie.
Silke handed over her passport and exit visa, while Otto sat up and reached for his in the jacket he had put at the other end of his bunk.
‘What is your business abroad?’ the officer snapped, having gone through the documents, a task made difficult by the fact that he wore leather gloves.
‘Just a little Dutch holiday before my Otto goes into the Wehrmacht,’ Silke said. ‘We will be back in a day or two.’
‘We couldn’t bear to be out of the Fatherland any longer,’ Otto added. ‘We might miss a parade.’
The Gestapo man clearly did not much like Otto’s tone, nor did he think much of two such young people having the wherewithal to travel first class. However, their papers were in order and so, having thrust them back, he left them in peace. Or at least as much peace as could be had with the officer and his soldiers stamping and banging their way along the carriage to the compartments beyond.
‘Well. Looks like that’s it. You made it. You’re out.’
‘Yes,’ Otto replied. ‘I’m out.’
Through the window they could see those for whom departure had been denied being herded together on the platform under armed guard.
Together they began to put their compartment back into daytime order. Both selfconsciously aware of their proximity as their hips touched while they folded up the top bunk into its wall cavity and turned the bottom one back into a seat.
‘Seems funny to be coy now,’ Otto said, ‘after—’
‘We were drunk,’ Silke said quickly. ‘We’re not drunk now. And it was dark. Makes rather a big difference.’
‘The attendant is supposed to do this while we go and eat a huge breakfast,’ Otto said.
‘I’d rather do it myself,’ Silke said, reddening.
Hurriedly she gathered up her undersheet, screwed it into a ball and pushed it out of sight.
Afterwards they sat together on the seat and Otto gave Silke his passport and ID, the ones he had shown to the Gestapo man.
‘So,’ he said, ‘you take these back then.’
‘Yes.’ Silke buried the documents deep in her handbag. ‘I take them back and give them to Pauly. He’s got someone who can change the photograph.’
Then Otto reached to the bottom of his own bag and produced a second set of papers.
‘And here’s Pauly’s, with the photo already changed. He’s bloody efficient, isn’t he, my bro.’
Otto stared at the documents.
‘Paulus
Israel
Stengel,’ he said. ‘Fuck. They know how to twist the knife, don’t they?’
The train was pulling away, rolling slowly past the failed fugitives. All silent now, desperate figures, every protest stilled. Faces blank and cold with anguish as they watched their last hope of freedom leaving the station without them.
Otto looked down at the papers in his hand, at the large ‘J’ stamped across them, the letter that had condemned every yearning face they passed.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s go and have breakfast. We’ve paid a fortune for it, we should eat it.’
They got up and made their way down the very same corridor along which they had stumbled tipsily only a few hours earlier.
‘First and last time I’ll ever travel first class, I imagine,’ Silke said.
Otto did not reply. That privacy which they’d paid for had taken such a very unexpected turn.
Why did he feel as if he’d betrayed Dagmar?
It was so stupid. After all, she’d rejected him for his brother, and it was very possible that he would never see her again anyway. He didn’t intend to remain a monk for the rest of his life, so what did it matter who he made love to?
Even someone as unexpected as Silke. A friend. A dear old friend.
But still he felt deflated. Wretched almost. As if he’d despoiled something fine and noble.
Because he loved Dagmar. His first and only passion. He had told her so at the café at the Lehrter Bahnhof.
And then just a few hours later he had been in bed with another girl. What was that, if not a betrayal?
At the door to the restaurant car Silke stopped and turned to look at him.
‘Don’t feel bad about it,’ she said.
Otto was completely taken aback. How had she known what he was thinking?
It was that woman thing again, they always seemed to know.
‘I wasn’t! Really, Silke,’ he protested.
But she interrupted him.
‘You were and you know it. You were feeling bad about last night. But please don’t. For my sake. I’d hate it so much if you did. It was my idea … I wanted to, you see … Dagmar said I get what I want but I don’t think I do at all … but last night, for just a moment, I did.’ Now she reached out her arms to hold him. ‘The thing is, I might never see you again and the whole world’s about to go to hell and …’
‘Silke.’ Otto tried gently to pull himself away. ‘Don’t.’
‘I
know
. I know you love Dagmar,’ she said hurriedly. ‘Of
course
I know. But it wasn’t you last night anyway, was it? That’s the point. It wasn’t you.’
Otto was surprised. ‘Who was it then?’
‘Why that new fellow!’ Silke said with a big broad smile that did nothing to disguise the tears standing in her eyes. ‘Mister Stengel, of course. That very new, very handsome, freshly minted, soon-to-be Englishman. It was him.’
‘Of course,’ Otto said quietly, ‘that’s right, it was just Mister Stengel.’
‘So that’s all right then. No need to feel bad on his behalf, eh!’
For a moment they faced each other. There was a longing in Silke’s pale blue eyes.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Eggs. Eggs and fresh rolls.’
But she was holding him once again.
‘We could skip breakfast,’ she said quickly, urgently, ‘me and Mr Stengel. We could go back to our compartment. Not you but that soon-to-be Englishman, the man from last night …’
For a moment Otto hesitated. Remembering those honey-freckled shoulders and golden curls, the strip of sunlight streaked across them. Her breasts moving as she brushed her teeth. The little wisp of hair at her arm.
And last night. That unexpected blur of drunken passion.
She was a very pretty girl.
But he loved Dagmar and he had promised that he would always love her. And Herr or Mister, Englishman or German, Paulus or Otto, whatever his name might be, yesterday, today or in the future, he would keep that promise.
Early Breakfast
London, 1956
‘WE PARTED AT Rotterdam. Silke took the train back to Berlin and I took the ferry to Britain. I never saw her again.’
Stone was staring at the dark moonlit waters of the Thames. ‘I never saw any of them again. I watched the continent disappear over the horizon and my whole life disappeared with it.’
Billie sipped at her tea. The fourth mug of the night. They’d been talking for hours. The taxi drivers had changed shifts. The rubbish barges had begun to remove London’s daily tonnage of trash to wherever it was they took it. And there was a pale light beginning to glimmer in the sky.
‘I entered England on Paulus’s visa, took his name and the place that Mum had managed to get for him at Goldsmith’s College. Humanities.’
‘How’d dat go?’
‘Not great.’
‘What with you not bein’ as clever as your brudder and all?’
‘I lasted about three months. I tried. I really did but it was pretty grim. The charity had found a place for a clever kid. They wanted Paulus. A kid who could one day make a difference. Put something back in exchange for his good fortune. Help build the new world and all that. Instead they got me. I felt so guilty.’
Billie put her arm around Stone.
‘So
that’s
why all those law books be lyin’ around your flat gathering dust,’ she said. ‘You’re tryin’ ta be your brudder. You’re
still
tryin’ ta replace him.’
Stone didn’t reply. Instead, he snuggled a little closer. Embracing the tenderness. The companionship.
‘So what shall I call you now, boy?’ Billie asked. ‘Are you Paul? Or are you Otto?’
Stone didn’t reply for a whole minute or more.
‘I think,’ he began eventually, ‘I think I’d like you to call me Otto.’
‘There,’ she said and kissed his cheek, ‘was that so difficult?’
‘As a matter of fact it was,’ he said, ‘it is.’
‘So tell me this, Otto,’ Billie said.
And still Stone flinched. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘First time in seventeen years.’
‘You tell me this, Otto,’ Billie repeated, putting her head on his shoulder, ‘why do you have to feel so guilty? It was all Paulus’s idea, after all.’
‘I know,’ Stone replied. ‘I know. But all the same, I’ve always felt unworthy of the life I took. Destiny had me dying in the Wehrmacht, but Pauly was too clever for destiny. He cheated fate and died instead. Mum, Dad, Paulus. All dead. The best of the Stengels. Only the adopted son survived.’
‘Do you think they’d look at it that way?’ Billie asked.
‘No. Of course not.’
‘Then I think you should show a bit more respec’ to their memory,’ Billie said. ‘And you know what else I think?’
‘What?’
‘I think I need to find a loo.’
Arm in arm they returned to near the bridge, where there was a public toilet.
‘Romantic eh?’ Billie laughed. ‘Too much damn tea.’
The dawn was really not far off now. There was more than a hint of it in the dark sky but neither of them wanted to go to bed.
‘I can do college on no sleep,’ Billie said. ‘Damn, I’m the best they got even when I
am
asleep and they know it too.’
‘I bet they do, Bill,’ Stone said.
‘So let’s get us some breakfast.’
It wasn’t difficult to find a café. London’s early morning shift of workers was already mingling with the previous night’s party-goers. Men in overalls and donkey jackets starting their day squeezed around Formica-covered tables next to men in dinner jackets and girls in pearls who were having a fry-up at the end of theirs.
Stone and Billie found a little corner in a greasy spoon near Waterloo Bridge and sat down to egg, beans, fried bread, toast and more tea.
‘This is my kind of night,’ Billie said, viewing the feast with satisfaction. ‘Apart from you hitting that guy, of course.’
Stone shrugged.
‘I’d do it again any time,’ he said. ‘It’s my rule.’
‘Yeah, you said. So come on then, you’re in England, you’re in school. What happened?’
‘Nothing much more to tell, Bill.’
‘Tell it anyway.’
‘Well, like I said, I got away with it for a while at college. They made a lot of allowances for me being foreign and adjusting to a new country and all that. Then just as it was starting to get embarrassing, the war broke out and I got interned as an enemy alien.’
‘They did that?’ Billie asked in surprise. ‘To Jews?’
‘Well, they couldn’t tell, could they? So they interned everybody. I didn’t mind. I thought they had a point. After all, if you think about it, I
wasn’t
a Jew, was I? I was a German travelling under a false identity. I didn’t have any sympathy with the ones who complained about internment. The British had their backs to the wall after all.’
‘And, of course, it got you out of college.’
Stone conceded that with a smile. ‘That was a bonus. Anyway, they let us all out pretty soon and I went straight into the army. That was how I got my British citizenship. It was after Dunkirk and they needed all the help they could get.’
Billie shook the brown sauce bottle over her second egg.
‘You must have been pretty lonely.’
‘I was very lonely. Very lonely indeed. The thing was, I didn’t really want to make friends … I was sort of …’
‘Wallowing in it?’
Stone laughed, spreading Golden Shred marmalade on his toast. ‘I suppose you could say that.’
‘I guess you had good cause, baby. More than most, that’s for sure. Did you get news from home at all?’
‘No. We could probably have corresponded via Switzerland in the early stages of the war but Paulus decided that with so many lies to cover the safest thing was to maintain separation. All mail from abroad was read by the Gestapo, of course.’
‘An’ from the day you left, Paulus became you? He was Otto Stengel, the ex-Napola boy?’
‘That’s right. Silke took my papers back to him. Paulus had found some old scrivener who changed our photos. There was a lot of forging going on around that time, as you can imagine. People trying to get that J off their papers. Apart from that, it was easy. All the addresses and family history were the same. I’d left the Napola but not yet joined the Wehrmacht. He just joined instead of me.’