water that frightened him so much. Many years later explanations were offered: his wife said it was a desperate wish to destroy himself; a prison psychologist interpreted it as some sort of baptismal desire; and Peter – who heard Pauli talk about it in his sleep – said it was straightforward heroism and in keeping with Pauli’s desire to be a soldier. Pauli himself said it was fear that drove him from the safety of the boat into the water; he felt safer with his brother in the sea than alone on the boat. But that was typical of Pauli, who tried to make a joke out of everything.
Little Pauli was a strong swimmer and unlike his brother, he was able to divest himself of the oilskin and prepare himself for both the coldness and the strength of the currents into which he plunged. But, like his brother, he was soon disoriented, and couldn’t see past the big waves that washed over him constantly. He swam – or, rather, flailed the heaving ocean top – hoping he was heading back towards the coast. Above him the clouds raced overhead at a speed that made him dizzy.
The squall kept moving. It passed over them as quickly as it had come, moving out towards Bornholm and Sweden’s southern coast. The racing clouds parted enough to let sunlight flicker across the waves, and then Pauli caught sight of the yellow bundle that was Peter.
Had Peter been completely conscious, it’s unlikely that the smaller child would have been able to support his brother. All drowning animals panic; they fight and thrash and often kill anything that comes to save them. But Peter was long past that stage. He’d given up trying to survive, and now the cold water had produced in him that drowsiness that is the merciful prelude to exposure and death.
Peter’s yellow oilskin had kept him afloat. Air was trapped in the back of it, and this had pulled him to the surface when all his will to float had gone. They floated together, Pauli’s arm hooked round his brother’s neck, the pose of an attacker rather than a saviour, and the other arm trying to move them along. The coast was a long way away. Pauli glimpsed it now and again between the waves. There was no chance of swimming that far, even without a comatose brother to support.
They were floating there for a long time before anything came into sight. It was a boy at the oars of a brightly painted rowboat, trying to get to the Valhalla, who saw first a yellow floppy hat in the water, and then the children, too. The oarsman was little more than a child himself, but he pulled the two children out of the water and into his boat with the easy skill that had come from doing the same thing with his big black mongrel dog, which now sat in the front of the boat, watching the rescue.
The youth who’d rescued them was a typical village child: hair cut close to the scalp to avoid lice and nits; teeth uneven, broken and missing; strong arms and heavy shoulders, his skin darkened by the outdoors. Only his height and broad chest distinguished him from the other village youths, that and the ability to read well. To what extent it was his height, and to what extent his literacy, that gave him his air of superiority was debated. But there was a strength within him that was apparent to all, a drive that the priest – in a moment of weakness – had once described as ‘demoniacal’.
The seventeen-year-old Fritz Esser looked at the two half-drowned children huddled together in the bottom of his boat and – despite the pitiful retching of Peter and the shivers that convulsed Pauli’s whole body – decided they were not close to death. He rowed out to where the poor old Valhalla had settled low into the water, its torn sail trailing overboard and its rudder carried away. ‘It will not last long,’ he said, ‘it’s holed.’ Pauli managed to peer over the edge of the rowboat to see what was left of their lovely Valhalla, but Peter was past caring. Esser, aided by the black mongrel, which ran up and down the boat and barked, tried to get the Valhalla in tow, but his line was not long enough, and finally he decided to get the two survivors back to dry land.
He put them in an old boat shed on the beach. It was a dark, smelly place; the only daylight came through the chinks in its ill-fitting boards. Inside there was space enough for three rowboats, but it was evident that only one boat was ever stored here, for most of the interior was littered with rubbish. There were furry pieces of animal hide stretched on racks to dry. There was flotsam, too: a life preserver lettered ‘Germania – Kiel’, torn pieces of sails and old sacks, broken oars and broken crates and barrels of various sizes arranged like seats around a small pot-bellied iron stove.
Esser wrapped sacking round the boys and poked inside the stove until the sparks began to fly, then tossed some small pieces of driftwood into it and slammed it shut with a loud clang. The necessity of closing the stove became apparent as smoke from the damp wood issued out of the broken chimney. It was only after the fire was going that the boy spoke to them. ‘You’re the Berlin kids, aren’t you? You’re from the big house where old Schuster does the garden. Old Frau Winter. Are you her grandchildren?’ He didn’t wait to hear their reply; he seldom asked real questions, they found out soon enough. ‘You come here with your mother, and the flunkeys, and your father comes sometimes, always in some big new automobile.’
Peter and Pauli were huddled together under some sacking that smelled of salt and decaying fish. As the stove flickered into life, and the air warmed, the hut became more and more foul. But the children didn’t notice the odour of old fish or the stink of the tanned hides. They clung together, cold, wet and exhausted; Pauli was looking at the flames in the tiny grate, but Peter’s eyes were tightly closed as he listened to Fritz Esser’s hard and roughly accented voice.
‘I hate the rich,’ Esser said. ‘But soon we’ll break the bonds of slavery.’
‘How will you do that?’ asked Pauli, who, typically, was recovering quickly from his ordeal. It sounded interesting, like something from his 101 Magic Tricks a Bright Boy Can Do.
Esser wracked his brains to remember what the speaker from the German Social Democratic Party had actually said. ‘Capitalism will perish just as the dinosaurs perished, collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. Then the working masses will usher in the golden age of socialism.’
Half drowned he might be, but Pauli could perceive the majesty of that pronouncement. ‘Is that how the dinosaurs perished?’ he asked.
‘You can scoff,’ said Esser. ‘We’re used to the sneers of the ruling classes. But when blood is flowing in the gutters, the laughing will stop.’
Pauli had not intended to scoff but decided against saying so while the role of scoffer commanded such a measure of Esser’s respect.
‘We have a million members,’ Esser continued. He spat at the stove and the spittle exploded in steam. ‘We’re the largest political party in the world. Soon they’ll start to arm the workers and we’ll fight to get a proper Marxist government.’
‘Where did you find out all this?’ Pauli asked. It sounded frightening but the strange boy was not unfriendly: just superior. His chin was dimpled and his brown eyes deep and intense.
‘I go to meetings with my father. He’s been a member of the SPD for nearly ten years. Last year Karl Liebknecht came here to give a speech. Liebknecht understands that blood must flow. My father says Liebknecht is a dangerous man, but my uncle says Liebknecht will lead the workers to victory.’
‘Did your father tell you about the dinosaurs and the blood in the streets and all that?’ asked Pauli.
‘No. He’s soft,’ said Esser. He stoked the fire to make it flare. ‘My father still believes in historical evolution. He believes that soon we’ll have enough deputies in the Reichstag to challenge the Kaiser’s power. If Germany had a proper parliamentary democracy, we’d already be running the country.’
Pauli looked at his saviour with new respect. It would be just as well to remain friends with a boy who was
