Blood Brothers (14 page)

In a corner, Jonny indicates Ludwig, who is there as well. “Here, I expect you remember my friend?” “What’s all this about? I’ve never seen you before, either of you,” replies the stranger. Now Ludwig remembers the voice as well. “Let me remind you then … Stettiner Bahnhof … The left-luggage ticket …” Ludwig says slowly. The spiv flushes red and turns pale, then he tries to brazen it out: “Oh, you’re that swindler! You stole the suitcase and stiffed me!” Jonny’s fist makes short hard contact with the point of his chin. “Listen, fellow. My friend here has done eight weeks in remand for you, and was sentenced to four months. You can choose what you want to do: either we’ll find a copper and get you sent down, or else you come along with us like a good fellow. This thing needs sorting out, wouldn’t you say?”

The spiv stands, pale and shaking, by the wall. “Go with you where?” “Leave that up to us. We’re not going to kill you. Tell your sweetheart you’ve been called away, and come with us.” The fellow goes over to the girl, Jonny and Fred are waiting at the door. “Where are we taking him, Jonny?” “To Ulli’s summer house, Koloniestrasse.” Fred goes ahead in a taxi, to alert Ulli. The spiv walks out, flanked by Jonny and Ludwig. The other Blood Brothers follow at a suitable distance.

By the time they get to the summer house, everything has been prepared for bringing the miscreant to justice. Ulli, the chief, is present with a few of his boys. A sentry is posted to guard against surprises. Ulli, who doesn’t have a dog in this fight, acts as the impartial judge. Jonny is the prosecutor, Ludwig the star witness. The accused is seated on the same orange crate that a while ago served as a drinks cabinet on the occasion of Ulli’s birthday. Heinz is instructed to defend. The accused says his name is Hermann Plettner. What did he live on, asks Judge Ulli. “None of your beeswax!” “Ever been in welfare?” “Oh, leave it out!” Then Ludwig describes what happened. How Hermann approached him outside Aschinger’s, gave him the ticket and a mark, and how he, Ludwig, was subsequently arrested. Now it’s the turn of the defendant. “I never knew that chit was hot. I picked it up off the pavement.”

Prosecutor Jonny speaks: “A particularly low-grade villain … he should have admitted he’d stolen the ticket and gone shares with Ludwig. That would have been on the level. But this here is a crook who’s too much of a coward to get the chestnuts out of the fire himself, and would rather involve an innocent party, for a mealy mark, claiming the chit was his property. Such a person is a villain who deserves no sympathy. Fit punishment, in my view, is twenty-five blows with a dog whip on his bare behind. Should the accused refuse the punishment, then have him handed over to the police without further ado …”

Hermann Plettner leaped to his feet when he heard the punishment. His defendant Heinz can only point to the outside possibility that the ticket had actually been found and picked up by the defendant. “Whether he stole it or found it,
it’s moot. All we need to know is that the bastard lied, in the full knowledge that Ludwig would have to pay with his freedom,” Jonny intervened.

Judge Ulli withdraws to consider his verdict. By the time he returns to the summer house, the accused is already in tears. Verdict: handed over to the police or twenty-five lashes with the dog whip. After each set of ten strokes, an interval of ten minutes. Punishment to be with immediate effect. Hermann Plettner is lying curled up in the corner in a ball, whimpering. “So what’s it to be then? Police or whipping?” Jonny asks, unmoved. The condemned man slithers across to Jonny on his knees, says to Ludwig: “Please, please, let me go … I’ll give you … here, my watch, my money … there’s over twenty marks there … let me go!” “Police or whipping? Make up your mind, will you?” Howling, begging, wailing, but no answer. “All right then, police. Ludwig, come with us,” decrees Jonny. “No, no … beat me.” So it’s the whipping.

The orange crate is moved to the center of the room. Who’s the executioner? Ludwig, you? Ludwig quickly declines. Fred volunteers for the task, strips off coat and jacket, and stands there with the leather dog whip in his hand. “Trousers off, Plettner!” The condemned man has to lie across the crate. Two boys hold his legs, two more press his face into his balled-up trousers, to stifle his cries of pain. The first blow comes hissing down on the naked flesh. The body rears up, and the four assistants need all their strength to hold on. There’s a soft gurgling crying through the trousers. Blow after blow comes down. Jonny counts them coldly and pitilessly. Ludwig turns away. The first set of ten lashes.

A ten minute break. Plettner is lying next to the crate. The welts across his arse are swelling, blood-red. “Please,
please … no more …” the whimpering begins again. “Enough,” says Jonny. The next lashes slice open the swollen skin across the welts. Blood spurts out, starts to trickle down the thighs. Implacable, not letting up in the least, Fred completes the second set of ten. Plettner’s bottom is a bloody mess. Plettner is draped motionless across the crate. “Water,” says Jonny. Half a bucket is emptied over Plettner’s head and the blood is washed off. “Jonny, that’s enough,” says Ludwig. It’s Ulli’s decision whether Plettner is to receive the remaining five lashes or not. “All right, let him go.”

It’s not so easy. Stood up on his feet, Plettner promptly crumples in a heap. Someone is told to go for schnapps. Wet handkerchiefs are placed on the raw bleeding buttocks, and then the punished criminal gets his trousers put back on. He is lying on his front, wailing quietly like a little child. A shot of rum brings him round. Jonny addresses him: “You’ve been spared the last five lashes. You can thank Ludwig for that. As far as we’re concerned, the business is at an end. If you’re sensible, it’s over for you too. You know we can find you anytime.”

“Shouldn’t he thank us for the lashes?” butts in Fred, apparently still not satisfied. “Yes, he should say thank you, that’s only right,” Ulli concurs. Hermann Plettner is forced to thank his punishers. He hobbles over to Ulli: “Er … thank you.” “No, no, boy, that won’t do. You have to say: thank you very much for my lashes.” Plettner begins again: “…  thank you … very much … for … my … lashes.” Then Fred trumps everyone. He forces Plettner to kiss the whip that has his blood on it. Two boys escort him out to Koloniestrasse. They watch him unsteadily feel his way along the plank fencing … The gang’s court of justice has bloodily avenged the despicable deed.

*
The bear is the animal of Berlin and the origin of the city’s name.

14

JONNY IS HAVING A PRIVATE MEETING
with Ludwig and Willi. “This afternoon we’re going on the job. First, I just want you to watch how it’s done. I want you, Ludwig, to be attached to Fred’s group, and you, Willi, come along with me. I just want you to watch today, to observe and learn.” Now, at last, Ludwig knows where the money comes from. Pickpocketing! Ludwig has no chance to talk it over with Willi. Both of them listen in silence to Jonny’s revelations. For today, they are there in a purely passive role. They won’t agree to be involved in any actual stealing. That’s what both of them decide for themselves, and they resolve to talk about it with each other at the next opportunity.

The gang splits up at Alexanderplatz. Each group makes their own way east. Ludwig follows Fred, Willi walks along after Jonny. Fred’s band are detailed to work on the ground floor of the department store, Jonny’s section in the food hall, and Konrad and Hans are to work the elevators. Ludwig sees Fred press himself against a sale counter, which is thronged with housewives. The other two push in behind him, Fred is pressed against the women. These few seconds Fred takes advantage of. His hand slips into a canvas shopping bag. A little purse is swiftly transferred from Fred
to Georg, and from Georg to Erwin. Fred moves off. So do Georg and Erwin.

The elevator gives a little jerk that sends Konrad barging into a woman. He begs pardon. Behind his back, his hand passes on a little change purse …

Jonny heads for a stand where deep-frozen geese are on sale. An incredible pushing and shoving, because of the cheap wares. The eyes of the customers are all on the geese, and with one hand they test the goods. Jammed in between them are their shopping nets and bags. It’s like stealing candy, thinks Jonny, passing a purse on. After each strike the band is under instructions to go to a different part of the store. No more than one hour in the building as a whole. Then each group makes its own way back to headquarters on Badstrasse.

The gang are sitting in the windowless back room, sorting through the pickings. Five change purses and three little wallets, which are immediately fed to the flames. One wallet has the jackpot: four fifty-mark notes, the other two contain a total of ninety marks. The five purses contain one hundred and eight marks, forty pfennigs in all. Stamps, receipts and other papers are also burned. The takings of one single hour: three hundred and ninety-eight marks, forty pfennigs! Ludwig and Willi sit there in amazement. They try desperately to convey delight as the others do. But their eyes express chiefly fear and shock. “Well, what do you say to that, Ludwig and Willi? Nice line of business?” asks Fred. “If it wasn’t for me, all of youse would still be broke!” he crows. Gotthelf gets his share: twenty marks. Each of the boys gets thirty marks. What’s left goes into Fred’s keeping, he’s the treasurer. Ludwig and Willi pocket their share. If they refused it, that
would be tantamount to betrayal, and they would be looking at arse tartare like Plettner’s.

They arrange to meet up at ten in the Auto-Topp. Anneliese will be there too, so it’ll be a jolly evening. Till then, they’re all left to their own devices. Money’s not a problem, anyway.

Ludwig and Willi sit down in a bar and ponder. What are they going to do? Trying to talk the gang out of thieving is senseless. Every gang is either “for us or against us.” For us? “No, Ludwig, I’m not doing that!” “No, me neither, Willi.” Against us, then? That’s no better. “You can do what you like. But we want no part of it, isn’t that right, Willi?” “Yes, Ludwig, but we can’t tell them that.” “Then we leave the gang.” Alone again. All alone again in Berlin? Willi remembers the terrible nights and days of homelessness and hunger. But he’s got Ludwig now. If there’s two, it’s not quite so bad. “What about the thirty marks? Do we give them back, or hang on to them?” asks Ludwig. He supplies the answer himself: “If we give them back, we’d be starting off broke.” “I think it’s better we keep them …” says Willi, slowly and quietly, “I mean, it’s not as though the housewives are going to get them back or anything.”

They decide to disappear. The gang’s first thought will be that they’ve been arrested. The police are looking for both of them. Of course, it means giving up the Grenadierstrasse digs; that would be the first place the gang looked. It means giving up the odds and ends of property they’ve got in there; if they went back for anything, then Jonny would know the score. “We need to leave the Münzstrasse area, Willi. We’re too well known there.” “So where do we go?” Their decision doesn’t exactly make them happy, too many times already
they’ve known what it is not to have a penny in their pockets. But to go on the job with the gang? They might as well hand themselves in to the police right away. It’s inevitable that the gang will one day get caught. “And you, Willi, you’re twenty-one soon, so you’re done with child welfare. Then you can go around everywhere and say: my name’s Willi Kludas, and I want papers and I want unemployment … Your position is different from mine. I’m nineteen. They can keep me for another two years. But I’d rather go stealing from the rich if I’m skint. What the gang’s doing … they’re stealing from people that haven’t got much themselves. Did you see, there was an unemployment card in one of the purses. Those people will be hungry …”

They sit over their beer, pondering. No valid papers, wanted by the police, and go straight? That’s a trick no one’s yet pulled off, Ludwig and Willi. Only bettered by having no documents at all and trying to lead a law-abiding life! Go back to the institution you’ve run away from. Show some remorse and accept what’s coming. Take your reprimands and the occasional slap until you’re twenty-one. Then they may deal with you generously …

Ludwig and Willi trudge through the crowds and lights of Tauentzienstrasse. They feel they are in a foreign city. What’s Berlin? As far as they were concerned, Berlin was Münzstrasse and Schlesischer Bahnhof. It never occurred to them to go to the west of the city. Gray streets with one yard and then another behind and then maybe a third, that was home to them. Here they feel they’re somewhere else. In a rich and cheerful abroad, as it would appear. Everyone is wearing brand-new clothes, as though it were a holiday and
not some ordinary Wednesday. The shops are like palaces, in which His Majesty the customer
^*
is standing around idly, on the lookout for some precious knickknack or other. And the women — the ladies. Every one, apparently without exception, well dressed, fragrant, lovely. Even the little dogs the ladies press to their furs, or have trotting along beside them, are dressed in cute little blankets and have sparkling collars. And a dog, one little dog, a tiny bundle of fluff, actually wears little patent leather booties on all four feet. “Did you catch that, Willi?”

A rich and beautiful abroad. What are two beggars doing here? They don’t belong in the area. They’ve come from the other Berlin, from some musty cellar or squalid back building, to beg here. The other Berlin … There won’t be any hostels here like Silesian Olga’s. And there are almost no boys like themselves. If there are, then they’re on the hustle. Some are completely newly clad, if you walk along behind them, you can see that they’ve never even had their boots resoled, you can see the fresh leather gleaming under the arch between heel and sole. Their trousers are fashionably baggy and have a sharp crease. And the boys’ smell … oh, pomade, scent, aftershave. They must be raking it in.

Such are the thoughts of Willi and Ludwig as they move around the other, the western Berlin. They have decided to steer clear of their home turf around the Alex and Schlesischer Bahnhof for the time being, so as not to run into the Blood Brothers. Willi hasn’t been out west for four years. And this is the first time Ludwig has ever clapped
eyes on Tauentzienstrasse. Once or twice he’d been as far as the Bülowbogen. Now they’re standing on the corner of Kurfürstendamm and Joachimstaler Strasse, gawping at the wonders, allowing the endless columns of cars to pass, watching the light shows of the madly appealing advertisements, allowing themselves to be barged and pushed out of the way. In a beer hall opposite Bahnhof Zoo, they eat a sausage and have a glass of beer. Then they stroll on. Without any aim in mind, following their noses, till they’re suddenly back at Bahnhof Zoo again. They stop under the meeting-point clock. “What’ll we do, Ludwig? It’s almost midnight.”