Read Online Blood Brothers by Ernst Haffner - Free Book Online

contributions, and calls on them to be seated. Slowly the new arrivals adjust to the smoke. There is no furniture as such. There wouldn’t be any room anyway. A few blankets and potato sacks have been spread over the bare floorboards, and the birthday guests sit and squat and sprawl over them. Against the wall is an upended orange box, with a three-foot altar candle set on it, burning. Next to that a good dozen or so full bottles of schnapps and wine. Against the opposite wall, muffled under a horse blanket, a gramophone. The guide sets off to pick up the next batch of Blood Brothers. In due course,they and the last pair settle themselves, rather intimately, on a potato sack. “No Ludwig?” asks Ulli. Jonny tells him: “He’s disappeared for a week now. No one has any idea where he can have got to …” The conclusion that Ludwig’s disappearance is involuntary is one they have all come to by now. The police have nabbed him, they think.
    Sixteen gang members are assembled in the summer house. Someone puts a record on the gramophone, and covers it over again with the horse blanket. “ Hoch soll er leben! ” it drones out from under. Applause for Ulli. A bottle of cognac does the rounds. The last boy gets the grisly lees. “Parched throats!” Parched throats of lads from fifteen to eighteen. Only a couple are older. Is it showing off, their thirst for alcohol? The cognac is chased with a bottle of plum brandy. It too is drained. Then cigarettes are passed round. From outside the door is unlocked. The sentry is relieved. Each one does half an hour. A dance tune animates them all to quiet whistling and humming along.
    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 theborstals. 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