Blood Brothers (7 page)

The altar candle shines, struggling with the smoky air. It’s attached to a piece of string that runs along a wall, then feeds through the keyhole to somewhere outside. A simple and silent alarm system. If a stranger should approach the summer house, maybe the nightwatchman or even the police, then the sentry will give it a yank: the candle will fall over. Darkness. Everyone is to keep quiet. But who would come now, in the middle of the night?

By way of a change, and to settle the hungry bellies, cooking chocolate is passed round in hefty slabs. Every man sinks his teeth in the marks left by his predecessor. Ulli, now in his maturity, reminisces about his years of implacable struggle with the police, the welfare authorities, the educators in the
borstals. They refused to allow him freedom, streets, bars, waste ground, girls. So he fought back. With hands and feet against his confining enemies. “Die of hunger, sure! But at least where I wanna be!”

The sound of voices outside. The sentry’s, yes, but a couple of others’ as well. But the alarm candle stands there stubbornly. Ulli reaches across and dinches it. Choked cries from outside, the voice of the sentry: “Ulli … Ulli, everyone out!” The door is locked, the sentry has the key. Rip the rags from the covered window! Ulli forces his way through, he’s out. Four other lads after him. They’ll do. Outside, a brief struggle, fought out in near silence. The sentry is freed and opens the door. The five who liberated him drag a couple of strangers into the summer house. A fresh sentry is posted, the candle is relit. Pull the boys into the light. Ah, they’re no strangers. Members of a rival gang, enemies of Ulli’s. They supposed they would be able to catch Ulli, who usually stays out here on his own, and beat him to a pulp. Punishment. Of course, decides Ulli. But in a fair fight. The assaulted sentry takes one of them, Ulli the other. Queensberry rules, natch.

Everyone scoots back against the wall to leave the middle of the room free for a ring. Ulli first. It’s soon over, to general regret. A swift punch from Ulli sends his antagonist sprawling onto the empty bottles. One of them breaks on his tough nut. A harmless cut, but blood everywhere. The boy’s had enough. He presses his handkerchief against the wound and accepts a half-pint of schnapps from his enemies. The second contest: both lads light into each other like savages. Neither of them has a clue about boxing. They thrash and mill around, clumps of hair fly this way and that, the de rigueur nosebleed. The spectators laugh and joke. The combatants grin
wildly with their blood-smeared faces. The whole thing takes a comic turn. Okay, says Ulli, that’s enough. It’s his birthday, and he’s in a mood for forgiveness. The other lad gets given a hefty dose of alcohol as well, then they both mooch off. Everyone knows they won’t betray the party. If they did, they are well aware that they would land up in the emergency ward. Betrayal is something that can only be washed clear with blood, and plenty of it.

So on with the party! Bottles do the rounds. One dead soldier after another is tossed into the corner. The gramophone whines away. Whirling chaos, getting louder and louder: alcohol. With frightening speed, the boys on the floor turn into mute quadrupeds. Then someone hurls a word into the chaos: “Wimmin!” Lust flares up in the boys: yes, women! On the corner of Kolonie- and Badstrasse there’s always an old bird or two. Two lads set out. Return with a woman who won’t see forty again. Ulli straightaway sorts out the compensation question by tossing her a ten-mark note: “For the lot!” Jonny, guest of honor, and boss of an allied gang, makes a start. Then the birthday boy, and after him, everyone, everyone … The prostitute lies on a sofa of piled-up potato sacks, smokes one cigarette after another, and takes it in her stride. At the end of an hour, she’s earned her ten marks. She has to climb over a knot of boys, lying there lifeless, to get to the door. Silence in the summer house. The altar candle lights a sorry scene …

8

WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN TO ME,
Ludwig asks himself in the chill of prison. And comes up with a prompt answer: a few months’ penitentiary for something you didn’t do, and then you’ll be sent back to the institution. Another three years, basically. What will the Blood Brothers think has happened to him? He has no chance of communicating with them. Not a chink of light anywhere in the grim outlook. He drops onto his bed and stuffs the coarse sheet into his mouth. But he’s not able to check his violent sobbing.

The official at the peephole is heartily used to the sight. Eating, drinking, sleeping, answering the call of nature and crying, the whole gamut from silent contained weeping to hysterical wailing. A nice job, allowing the prisoner to beat himself up, by depriving him of the least thing that might take him out of himself, be it no bigger than a fly. That self-recrimination during pretrial detention spares the investigative magistrate quite a bit of trouble later. The worn-down captive will confess everything and more, just to escape the modern torture of remand and get to face a court.

The following morning Ludwig is told: “Get ready … you’re moving to remand prison in Moabit.” Along with a dozen other prisoners, he is pushed into the waiting-pen. The official calls
out their names from a list. After each name, he appends the bleak destination: “Tegel,” or “Plötzensee,” or “Moabit,” as he does after Ludwig’s name. “Everyone out!” Into the van that does the rounds of the various prisons. Through a tiny gap, Ludwig is able to see a few inches of Alexanderplatz, and before long they’ve reached Moabit, their first destination. Policemen accompanying the van deliver the prisoners and their files into the hands of the prison guards. Through the ground-floor office windows, Ludwig is once more afforded a glimpse of free people, speeding cars and ding-a-linging trams. Then there’s the stereotypical summons: “Come along with me.” A glass-roofed and flower-grown passageway connects the office space to the prison itself. The official unlocks the door.

All at once there’s no more flowers or friendliness. Prison is gray-on-gray chiaroscuro. Spiraling up into infinity is a system of bare-iron staircases. Floor upon floor. Cell by cell, in a radial pattern, all dominated by the tall watchtower in the middle, where alarm bells go off at the least suspicion. Trusties in blue prison uniforms polish the linoleum floors of the corridors to an even deeper shine. The iron brooms scratch back and forth, back and forth. There’s plenty of time here. Many months, if not years. Guards snoop through peepholes at their quarry, lawyers weighed down with files hurry into the consulting rooms to be taken to their clients — their murderers or black marketeers. Little squads of remand prisoners are marched off to the bathroom, to the doctor or to exercise. A prison full of bustle, but the human voice belonging to prisoner number so-and-so is just a shy whisper. Ludwig is taken to reception. Taken everywhere. Here in this well-secured prison, not one prisoner takes a step outside his cell without the law three paces behind him.

“Empty your pockets,” says the guard. Shirt and socks are taken off Ludwig as well. Then a shower of institutional property rains down on Ludwig. Wool blankets, sheets, shirt, socks, handkerchief and neckerchief. Each item carries the stamp of the institution. Next, a shower. “D’you have lice?” “No, sir.” The guard stands by as Ludwig reluctantly strips off, and then greedily grabs at his clothes. Turns the pockets inside out, checks the linings, feels the material for any items that might have been sewn in, looks in his boots, searches for contraband: money, knife or rope that might be used in a suicide or attempted escape. And lo, in the corner of a pocket, he finds a little end of string that might do to squeeze a throat shut. It’s promptly confiscated and noted, and joins the rest of the impounded stuff. From the shower he goes to the governor. A prison file on Ludwig comes into being. A senior guard takes the new bod to his cell, instructs him in the house rules, on bed-making (very important!) and on keeping his cell clean.

The heavy door clangs shut, Ludwig is on his own. He makes his bed, eyes the three tattered books on the shelf, and sees a few square yards of sunlit sky through the barred window. That’s about the size of it for the next few months. And then? A few more, courtesy of the institution. But already Ludwig is certain he will take the first opportunity he gets to run away from the institution. Back to Berlin. He’s going to find the wretch who played the trick with the left-luggage ticket on him.

Over the next few days, Ludwig has a couple of meetings with the investigating magistrate. After that, the straightforward case is ready to go to court. Of course the boy stole wallet and luggage ticket at the same time. Take him away,
sergeant. Ludwig gets the odd visitor in his cell. The work inspector asks whether Ludwig wants to work or not. Threading glass beads, it’s well paid. For ten thousand beads a tad bigger than the head of a pin, the state will pay ten pfennigs … so long as the prisoner hasn’t lost his marbles after the first five thousand. The prison teacher comes along, and asks about the level of Ludwig’s education, what he likes to read, whether he wants to take part in the curriculum. The evangelical minister promises to send along his Catholic colleague, and a representative of the youth department takes lots of notes. The next day Ludwig is taken to the prison doctor: “Any syphilis or clap?” “No.” “Okay, take him away. Next, please. Any syphilis or clap?”

With the mark that cost him so dear, Ludwig buys cigarettes. Fifty at two pfennigs apiece. The smell of the rough tobacco wafts out into the corridor and tickles the nostrils of a desperate trusty. He takes a look round: no guards. He raps quietly on the door of Ludwig’s cell, then, with his mouth pressed to the crack, whispers: “Mate, this is yer trusty. You got ’nything to smoke in there?” Ludwig answers in the affirmative. “Can you slip me a couple of fags at supper time? So that the guard doesn’t see.” Ludwig promises him five cigarettes, and he has an idea. He asks the trusty whether there was any chance he could smuggle a note to the outside. The trusty thinks there is, in the next couple of days some pals of his are being released, they could take a note. But now Ludwig doesn’t have a pencil. He says the words through the crack in the door for the trusty to take down.
To Jonny, in Schmidt’s pub, on Linienstrasse. Arrested for stealing left-luggage ticket, but I’m innocent! Get me some food and smokes, Ludwig.
The trusty promises, but says: ten cigarettes!
Okay. That evening at supper, ten cigarettes are slipped into the trusty’s waiting grip.

Three days later. The guard unlocks the door: “Okay, come with me to the governor, there’s a package waiting for you.” Jonny’s got the note, it flashes through Ludwig’s mind. Right. Before Ludwig’s eyes, the governor opens the parcel. On top is a letter, Ludwig recognizes Jonny’s writing straightaway.
Dear Ludwig, I’ve learned of your misfortune through the Welfare Office, and am sending you food and cigarettes. Thinking of you always, Auntie Elsie. PS Uncle Jonny sends his best.
The governor disregards the harmless note, and carefully checks the contents of the parcel for hidden missives. All he finds though is cake, chocolate, salami, cigarettes and a bag of sugar. As a remand prisoner, Ludwig is allowed to take it all back to his cell with him. But it’s not just the possession of foodstuffs that makes him so deliriously happy. No, it’s the fact that Jonny and the other lads outside are thinking of him, and sent a parcel the instant they got his note, the fact that they didn’t let him stew once he was gone, that’s what makes him so boisterous. Carefully he deposits cake, salami and everything else in the little wall cupboard. And of the hundred cigarettes, he sets ten aside to give the trusty for the prompt execution of his wishes. He means to give him a share of the other things as well, if it’s all right with the guard.

He’s just picked up the bag of sugar when it splits open, and white sugar rains down into the bottom of the box. Could have been worse. In fact it wasn’t bad at all. Ludwig holds the empty bag and gawps inside it. The inside of the paper is covered with writing! Jonny’s hand. The bag is a magnificent messenger. Ludwig leans back against the door so that no one can watch him through the peephole. Then he carefully takes
apart the bag at the seams.
What happened, old man? What’s with this luggage receipt you keep talking about? The note you sent us is completely baffling. What are you in for? For running away from the home? Or was there really some story with a left-luggage receipt? There’s no chance of seeing you, of course. First, we’re not relatives, and then it’s safer not to, innit? Write again, as before. But not to us, in case the police pick up anything. When the time comes for them to take you back to the home, then make a break for it! We’re all expecting you. Jonny, aka Auntie Elsie, and the rest of the Blood Brothers.

Ludwig reads the note till he knows it backwards, then rips up the paper bag and stuffs it down the toilet. The lads! Oh, the lads! And Jonny! My God, that’s friendship for you. Thinking of you, even when you’re up shit creek. At lunchtime he means to slip the trusty his next batch of cigarettes. Damn! It’s someone else. Who knows if he’s on the level? No chance of further communications to Jonny.

Three weeks pass in the endless monotony of prison. Then he is sent the charge sheet by the juvenile welfare office. Theft of a wallet; contents: ID in the name of such-and-such, ninety marks in cash, and a left-luggage ticket. Further, falsification of official documents (because he signed his original statement with a false name). In breach of paragraphs — and — … A few days later he is summonsed to appear before the juvenile court in Neue Friedrichstrasse. The day before the court date he is told: “Get yourself ready, you’re going back to the police station.” Checks out with the superintendent, returns the prison property. Then back to the convict bus, the pen at police HQ, the reception area, and finally his new cell. The following morning: “Get yourself ready, you’re going to court.”

An underground passage connects HQ with the juvenile court. “Do you plead guilty to theft?” “No.” Evidence. Witnesses. The rightful owner of the luggage, the official, the policeman who booked him. A representative of the welfare office is also in attendance. Everything works like clockwork. “Counsel for the prosecution.” “…  therefore I argue … to be served concurrently, making a sentence of eighteen weeks.” “Accused?” “It wasn’t me, Your Honor, a stranger gave me …” “Have you anything else to say?” “No.” “The court will retire to deliberate.” “In the name of the people: four months in prison, minus time already served in remand … On probation for three years, transferred back to the institution at H.… Accused, do you accept the sentence?” Ludwig thinks. If he doesn’t, he stays in remand. No, anything to get out, even if it’s only back to the home. “Yes, sir.” “Final, as of four minutes past eleven.”