Brother Fish

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘“Why he don’t speak no proper English?” I ask dem boys.

  ‘“He’s German,” one o’ dem says. “He wants you to open your mouth.” I open mah mouth and he gone stick his finger inside and pull dis way den dat way. He is lookin’ in like I is a fuckin’ horse.

  ‘“Ja, gut, gut!” he says again. I can taste da tobacco on his finger and his breath don’t smell good. “Gut,” he say one more time, den he take out his finger and wipe it on da back o’ his britches. “Komm, boy!” he say, and he walk away, den he stop and says, “You come, schnell.”

  ‘“What yoh say please, sir?” I ask dat Germ-man real polite.

  ‘“He wants you to follow him,” one of his boys says. I follow him an’ he take me to a bush, like a hedge, an’ he say I should stand behind it. Den he point to mah britches.

  ‘“Open za button!” he says. I ain’t gonna do it. No way, man. I shake mah head.

  ‘“Nossir, I ain’t,” I says. He turns and says somethin’ to one o’ his boys.

  ‘“He wants to know if you’ve got any hair around your cock.” Dey’s laughin’, dey think it funny, man. I want to cry, but I ain’t gonna let da muth’fuckers get no satisfaction.

  ‘“I jus’ eleven year old, man!” I say. “Mah voice it jus’ done broke!”

  ‘“Nein,” one da boys says to dat Germ-man, “Nein, Papa.”

  ‘“Gut,” dat Germ-man say, and den he say somethin’ in da language an’ dem boys dey nods der heads. Den dey tell da matron I der man, dey gonna give me a “gut” home!’

  Shortly after his twelfth birthday the Kraus farm became Jimmy’s new home.

  With the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Sunday, 7th of December 1941, a surprised and angry America was kick-started into the war. Allowed to make up its own timetable to enter the war in Europe its treatment of aliens may have been different, but now an enraged American public wasn’t willing to listen to pleas of loyalty or even dispassionately examine the integrity of their Japanese-, German- and Italian-born citizens. President Roosevelt immediately reactivated the Alien Enemy Act of 1798 and issued two proclamations that together branded all German, Italian and Japanese nationals as enemy aliens and authorised their internment, travel restrictions and, if necessary, the confiscation of their assets and property.

  By the end of the first day the FBI had arrested several hundred German aliens after raids on their homes, detaining them even before war was declared on Germany. This rush for revenge did not include Otto and Frau Kraus, though Otto, by nature a pessimist, began to make frantic preparations. Five weeks later, all enemy aliens over the age of fourteen – that is, foreign-born Germans, Italians and Japanese – had to apply to re-register their domicile in America and be issued with certificates of identification, which had the effect of restricting their movement and their ability to sell their property.

  Otto and Frau Kraus were among the 300 000 German-born aliens to register, which meant they were restricted to the tomato farm and only allowed to attend church services if they were escorted by two American-born members of the congregation.

  Hysteria gripped the population, and the newspapers and radio warned of ‘the enemy in our midst’ so that soon people suspected anyone who spoke with the slightest accent to be potential aliens. Folk who’d been friends and neighbours with German, Italian and Japanese or, for that matter, any foreign-born couples, now fell over themselves to report them to the FBI. A German-born male looking for his cat by torchlight in his own garden in Newark was reported by his neighbour of thirty years, arrested for spying and jailed without trial.

  Church congregations turned on their foreign-born parishioners by refusing to supply an escort for them to attend Sunday worship. This sudden alienation by the pious included the local Lutheran church, whose members were essentially made up of the descendants of German and Swedish migrants and three foreign-born families, including the family of Otto and Frau Kraus. The legislation had been cleverly contrived to isolate the so-called enemy aliens without the congregation having to suffer the embarrassment of appearing to deliberately avoid people they had known, some all their lives. Frau Kraus felt secretly vindicated – she’d long since decided that Americans were fair-weather friends and, at best, a superficial people, while Otto, who liked to give the impression of a bluff and hearty regular guy, grew flustered and confused, flying into sudden rages and pointing out that he’d paid his tithe to the church for twenty years only to be rebuffed when he most needed its support.

  The minister, Pastor Karl Stennholz, a second-generation German American, visited Otto at home and suggested that if he paid his tithes to the church, ten per cent of his anticipated annual income, three years in advance, he felt sure the church would be able to intercede on behalf of him and Frau Kraus should the time come. He pointed out that the FBI had interviewed a number of ministers of religion concerning their foreign-born parishioners, sometimes with good results. Otto agreed, but insisted on a receipt and the return of his money if the war didn’t last the full three years. The minister silently registered this as a lack of good faith and immediately felt less inclined to defend Otto, telling himself that the bible clearly stated that the meek shall inherit the earth and perhaps he would do better when the FBI arrived to concentrate his efforts in the defence of Frau Kraus.

  With the proclamation of aliens issued almost weekly, Otto realised that he was running out of time. While his internment might be stayed, it also might not. It was time to outline his plans for the running of the farm in his absence, and after the evening meal that night, as his wife got up to get his pipe and tobacco, he bid her remain seated. Frau Kraus listened in silence, and when he’d completed his monologue, making sure she understood that there was no money in the bank she would be able to count on, he watched as she nodded then rose from her chair to fetch his pipe and tobacco and prepare his coffee, as usual.

  Ottto Kraus hadn’t expected any resistance, and so he was satisfied that his plans would be faithfully undertaken. He’d give his wife the money for additional turkey chicks, ducklings and day-old chicks, and agree to finance the purchase of a hundred young orchid plants, growing mixture and pots. All this was completed in the weeks immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and by the time the FBI arrived to interview him he’d done all he could to keep the home fires burning in his absence. He also told himself that he’d trained the Schwarze well enough and that he was sufficiently cowed to be a diligent and obsequious servant to Frau Kraus.

  Jimmy’s life on the farm was a hard existence of strictly followed orders. Herr Otto, as Jimmy was required to call him, didn’t believe that black people had sufficient brains to be allowed to use their initiative – the only way to teach them was to beat them. The twins would take great delight in showing Jimmy procedures that were incorrect to then watch as Otto took to him with a sulky whip he kept for the purpose. As patience was not one of Otto’s virtues, Jimmy was also frequently beaten for being unable to follow instructions delivered in a mixture of German and truncated English.

  Furthermore, Jimmy was regarded as outside help, in the same way a dog might be restricted to the farmyard, and wasn’t allowed to enter the house – though Frau Kraus, who never spoke to him, fed him the same food as she did her husband and the twins and Jimmy found himself eating better than he’d ever done. It was small compensation for a difficult existence. His meals were served piled together in a large enamel dish that, at dinner time, included the strudel mixed in with meat and veg. He wasn’t given a knife, fork or spoon and had no way of obtaining one, and so was forced to eat using his hands, licking the gravy from the surface of his plate. He’d take his meals in the washhouse with ice clinging to the edges of the windowpanes, and frequently had to shovel the snowdrifts from outside the door before entering. Once inside he’d sit with his back against the laundry hot-water tank, wrapped in an old blanket, with his feet propped against the heated pipe leading from the tank to Frau Kraus’s mighty Maytag. He became convi
nced he would never be warm again.

  Jimmy was a sad, lost and lonely boy going through the agony of early puberty, when young men begin the slow and confusing task of emerging from the agitated body of a child into adulthood. He masturbated at every opportunity, and his inability to muster the self-discipline to stop abusing his tortured penis, rubbed raw by his urgent needs, left him miserable and disgusted with himself. His life had been dominated by women, and he’d had little or no experience of adult men or how he was supposed to behave. He simply didn’t understand what was happening; nor could he explain his depression or suddenly changing moods. He felt as if he must be going mad.

  He watched the twins before they volunteered for the army, but they gave him very few useful clues into adulthood, teasing, shouting, playfully insulting and slapping at each other – no different to the way he’d handled himself with the boys in the orphanage. He watched carefully to see if they’d sneak away to masturbate at every opportunity as he did, becoming even more confused when they appeared not to have this necessity.

  Maybe it was just a nigger thing, or maybe he was sick? Then one of the boys caught him at it behind the tractor and shouted gleefully to his twin, ‘Hey, Jimmy’s pulling his putz!’ This had caused a great deal of merriment among the three men, with the twins continuing to tease him mercilessly until they’d finally left for boot camp. Despite their teasing, Jimmy found he had taken something positive out of the experience. Firstly, he now knew it was called, ‘pulling yo’ putz’, which on the face of it didn’t seem too harmful and, secondly, the fact that he wasn’t beaten meant it must not be considered either a sin or a sickness.

  He often thought of escaping, but he didn’t know how to go about such an endeavour. He’d been institutionalised from birth and was not streetwise, and had no idea how to survive on his own. Besides, he worked from sun-up until sunset and often beyond and was too weary at night to do anything other than fall into his rickety bed, often lacking even the energy to cry himself to sleep.

  He became deeply depressed and, with the departure of the twins, seldom spoke to or saw anyone except the ‘Germ-man’ and occasionally, when delivering a message, a grim-faced Frau Kraus whom he now called the ‘spider woman’ to himself. Frau Kraus would curl her top lip when she saw Jimmy approaching and once, in the presence of her husband, she’d spat at her feet as he drew closer. He only spoke when he was addressed, and then with his eyes averted.

  Jimmy, unable to communicate, became a silent observer, watching the Kraus household, seeing it for the cold and loveless place it was. When the weather grew warmer he’d gulp down his dinner and move around to the side of the house where, through a crack in the curtains, he’d spy on the family as they took their evening meal. In his childhood he’d often imagined having a mother, someone who cared for and loved him. Having no other mother-and-son relationship with which to make a comparison, Jimmy, observing Frau Kraus and the twins at the dining-room table and on other occasions, decided that he’d been fortunate to avoid this additional calamity in his life. He knew enough about women to stay well clear of this ugly, sharp-eyed one who spat at niggers.

  Despite the misery and the back-breaking labour, Jimmy was a quick learner. With the twins gone he helped Otto to harvest and pack the final tomato crop and to close the farm down, leaving only the Frau Kraus content to be maintained. He was competent with both a harrow and a plough behind the John Deere tractor, and by necessity had learned to drive the Dodge truck. Otto, along with all the enemy aliens, was restricted from entering any area designated as a military zone, and the town of Somerville, New Jersey, where they shopped and shipped their tomatoes and poultry, was designated as such a zone. With Otto and Frau Kraus, who couldn’t drive, restricted to the farm, Jimmy was required to deliver the produce and do the shopping. At thirteen he was tall enough to be taken as sixteen and, by means of a heavy bribe to the local sheriff, Otto obtained a truck licence for him.

  So that, by the 12th of January 1943, when the FBI arrived at the farm to interview the German couple, Jimmy had become a capable farm assistant while still being treated by his master with contempt. Otto had never once complimented him on a task well done, and in his arrogance simply congratulated himself for so completely whipping the boy into shape that Jimmy was now some sort of alter ego when it came to farm duties. By this time Otto was leaving more and more to the Schwarze, complaining of frequent and severe stomach cramps. He now spent two or three days each week in bed, refusing to allow Frau Kraus to call the doctor, one of the many members of the Lutheran congregation who had snubbed them. Ever dutiful and concerned for her sick husband, Frau Kraus would wring the neck of one of her beloved chickens and prepare a broth that she forced him to drink and that he churlishly complained had a distinctly bitter taste.

  Otto and Frau Kraus became caught up in the second great series of enemy-alien arrests when, at last, the building of internment camps, located at Crystal City and Seagoville in Texas and Fort Lincoln, North Dakota, was completed. The two FBI agents who now called at the farm to question them had previously paid a visit to Pastor Stennholz, the Lutheran minister.

  It was one of the days Otto had taken to his bed and Frau Kraus, wearing her polishing pads, had put the first movement of her husband’s favourite Wagner symphony on the gramophone and was skating hell for leather across the polished floors, so she didn’t hear the knock at the door. The two FBI agents, their persistent knocking ignored and hearing the strident music coming from the interior of the farmhouse, moved over to a window to witness a large woman wearing a floral dress with white apron, who appeared to be skating haphazardly across a large expanse of wooden floor wearing what looked like two large platters on her feet and a gigantic spider on her head.

  The interview with the Lutheran minister had prepared them somewhat for the confrontation. In the course of the interview he’d dutifully pointed out that Otto Kraus and his wife were loyal, hardworking citizens who paid their taxes and always contributed to the welfare of the church and, besides, their twin boys were in the American armed forces. On being questioned more closely he admitted that the Kraus family had kept to themselves and hadn’t as a rule joined in church activities, though, he was quick to point out, they’d never missed a Sunday service and contributed two cases of tomatoes to the annual church fete. Asked if they’d made any close friends with members of the congregation, the answer was again negative. Was there any particular reason for this? The minister hesitated, scratching his head. Finally he ventured, ‘Her, that is, Mrs Otto, she . . . well, she isn’t easy to approach, doesn’t have much to say for herself and they don’t encourage visitors to their farm.’

  ‘Would you say she’s secretive?’ one of the men asked.

  The minister laughed. ‘No, not in the way you may mean it. Silent. Nothing to say. Beaten down by life. She seems to be . . .’ he searched for a word, ‘. . . crushed.’

  ‘Not all there?’ one of the FBI men suggested. ‘You know . . . ?’ He brought his forefinger up to the side of his head and wiggled it.

  The minister of religion hesitated before replying, ‘Yes . . . perhaps, but I’d prefer to say harmless. Yes, that’s more the case, completely harmless.’

  Pastor Stennholz then told them that while he well understood the need for vigilance and was aware that national security was of primary importance, he felt that the Kraus family were above reproach, and while Otto might be a little domineering this was to be expected from a Prussian.

  ‘Prussian!’ both officers chorused, suddenly alerted.

  ‘Prussian’ and now ‘domineering’ were both key words. When asked if he could illustrate Otto Kraus’s domineering nature, the minister made example of his refusal to allow his sons to take up a baseball scholarship to attend college. The case against Otto Kraus was suddenly mounting. Denying his twin sons the opportunity to go to college was positively un-American behaviour, particularly as they’d excelled at baseball, the most American of sports.

 
‘I often think that the poor woman could do with a little relief away from him,’ the Lutheran minister now said lightly. ‘The boys too – the army will do them the world of good.’

  ‘Has he ever expressed any political opinions?’ they asked Pastor Stennholz.

  ‘No, never. Well, not to me, anyways.’ He appeared to be thinking, then added, ‘Which is strange, as he was a sergeant in the Great War – on the other side, of course. He certainly takes pride in his Prussian background, and still wears his waxed military moustache.’

  ‘Pride in his Prussian background, on their side, domineering, waxed military moustache, un-American denial of college and baseball scholarship, don’t encourage visitors.’ It was all the FBI officers needed to hear, and shortly afterwards they concluded the interview with the Lutheran minister.

  Approaching the farm they saw the words ‘KRAUS TOMATOES’ painted in large letters on the barn roof. They immediately concluded that, as the farm fell directly under the flight path of aircraft leaving Teterboro Airport, this blatant identification of the property was clearly intended for invading enemy aircraft. The noose about Otto’s neck was about to choke him.

  The interview with Otto and Frau Kraus went badly from the start. Otto had risen from his bed and insisted on standing to rigid attention behind his chair while the two FBI officers questioning him sat at the dining-room table. Otto’s great gut had burst through the two lower buttons on his pyjama jacket and his fly gaped slightly to reveal a very small, uncircumcised appendage resting in a nest of greying pubic hair. Frau Kraus was either too terrified or too embarrassed in the presence of the two officers to bring his visibly nesting penis to her husband’s attention. With every question asked, Otto would stiffen further to attention and shout, ‘Ja, sir!’ before proceeding to answer. When a question was directed at Frau Kraus he would immediately answer for her, spitting out the answer as if he was a sergeant in the army being questioned by two superior officers. Every once in a while he’d suddenly grip his stomach and double over. With his teeth clamped together, hissing with the pain of the cramps, he refused to complain or explain. When the spasm finally passed he immediately resumed his rigid position.