An Infinity of Mirrors (14 page)

Sleep still would not come, and there were so many things to be done. The family were coming for dinner. She was too tired to eat lunch, so she took the baby out in the pram and walked around and around the Schlossgarten. Then she took a hot bath and tried to nap but still sleep would not come. After a long cold shower she felt better and went into the kitchen to consult with the cook about dinner. They would have batter-flake soup because Hans liked that, some eels with cucumber salad because it was one of Miles-Meltzer's favorites, some pork parcels for Gretel, some French beans with pears for Veelee, and a sago bowl for Gisele. The whole family would be happy. So would she be, Paule thought, if she could only get some sleep.

Everyone was on time and in high spirits—particularly Veelee. Hans pinched her and she appreciated that. Miles-Meltzer wore a pearl-gray cummerbund and sapphire studs; his black satin tie was floppy, in the bohemian manner, and he wore brushed silver spectacles with sapphire linch pins on either side. For the sixth year in a row he had been voted the best-dressed man in northern Europe—which meant the world, he explained, because the British had slipped horribly and there was no one else.

“But why only northern Europe?” Veelee asked over cocktails.

“That should be clear,” Miles-Meltzer said. “We don't include the Belgian Congo or America, do we? No, we only include those regions which produce well-dressed men.”

“Whoever told you that Englishmen are slipping must be drunk,” Hans said. “Who runs the poll, Ribbentrop?”

When dinner was served it seemed that it would be a tremendous success and the men told a series of hilarious stories about Goering, the full-time, overtime, any-time grafter, which they exchanged in rapid repartee.

During a pause between Goering stories, prompted by nothing else except his permanent interest in clothes, Miles-Meltzer said, “Herr Ribbentrop told me today that the Reichsfuehrer SS would call me tomorrow and invite me to become an Ehrenfuehrer.”

“What's that?” Paule asked.

“It's a sort of sinister idea, but childish, really,” Gisele said. “The Germans love uniforms and when the Reichsfuehrer SS saw the picture of Dr. Schacht wearing the uniform of the customs service, with the rank of colonel-general, he lit up with the idea of creating honorary SS colonels.”

“Oh. To suborn them. But how did that awful Herr Ribbentrop get into it?”

“Well, we have our own uniform, as you well know,” Miles-Meltzer said. “It was the first thing Ribbentrop did when he took over, designing that. Dark blue with little gold buttons, oak leaf clusters and that tiny gold dagger, and so forth. At my grade we have so much spun silver on the things that at the Wilhelmstrasse they call us the men behind the foliage. He is such an idiot, you know. He refers to the Fuehrer as ‘the Supreme War Lord.' However, he is presently embarrassed. Out of ninety-two of our higher officials only thirty-three are members of the Party. He said today that ‘aesthetic considerations alone' have made him sensitive to the need for more outward evidence of Party spirit in the Foreign Office. He fixed it up with Himmler to invite Weizsaecker and Division Chief Woermann into the honorary SS and now he's after me.”

“What are you going to do?” Paule said lightly. “Let's get up a picnic lunch next Sunday and go out and spend the day at the foot of that new statue to Fritsch at Zehlendorf.”

“Who's Fritsch?” Gretel asked. Veelee saw the expression behind Paule's eyes and gripped the arms of his chair.

“Fritsch? The pioneer anti-Semite. Dr. Goebbels says it's a wonderful statue, and being in charge of German culture, he should know. The statue shows a Germanic male—like Himmler, I imagine—kneeling on top of a monster, which is the Jewish race.” There was silence. Hansel reached for another bottle of wine from the sideboard and began to fill the glasses. “You can't be reading the newspapers,” Paule said, addressing everyone with nervous gaiety. “Last week Dr. Rosenberg stepped in and saved German music. He really did. A hundred and seventy years ago that old fool Handel had been silly enough to base his oratorios on the Old Testament, that pack of Jewish lies, but Dr. Rosenberg straightened it all out. Wasn't that wonderful?”

“Let's go to the Kabaret der Komicker,” Veelee said.

“Wonderful idea,” Gisele answered, and the others agreed with alacrity. As they got into their coats and were going down the stairs, Paule chided them for never really studying
Mein Kampf
. “Good heavens, what kind of Germans are you if you don't read
Mein Kampf
every day? I mean to say, where else can you find wonderful stuff like: ‘The Communists are all Jews. Bad working conditions are due to Jewish capitalists. Shopkeepers are being ruined by Jewish department stores. Jewish doctors and lawyers take bread from the mouths of the professions. Jews are everywhere. All troubles and hardships in life are due to Jews.' You'd be a very silly man to pass up an opportunity like a chance to join the SS, Philip, and you are absolutely right. You would look simply stunning in that uniform.”

Paule and Veelee returned to the flat very late. They had not spoken to each other for hours. Paule had behaved badly at the Kabaret der Komicker—and not only among members of the family. They were undressing in the bedroom, each seated on a side of the large double bed amid the highly polished, dark-red chairs and furniture.

“You were disgraceful tonight, Paule,” Veelee said at last. She did not answer.

“I didn't care about dinner—that's what a family is for, to have someone to talk to. What was insulting was that ridiculous laughter you kept forcing.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Kurt Unger said his grandmother was seriously ill and you laughed. Peter Witt said the farmers were nearly starving in some regions and you laughed. When Frau Krolich said she had changed dentists because one was trying to put her on the morphine habit, you laughed. When Professor Koch spoke so earnestly about his theories for getting more work out of the Italians, you laughed. Everything that was serious or tragic got a cheap, insulting, sarcastic laugh. Why did you do it?”

“I suppose I did it because I find those things amusing compared to other things which keep happening in your country.” She forced another false and irritating laugh. “We've just got to get used to it, that's what everybody keeps telling me.”

“You're talking about the damned Jews again, I suppose?”

“Yes, I am. Damned Jews like your wife and your son.”

“You and the boy don't come into that and you know it! You have the protection of the German Army, no matter what anyone tries to do.”

“I hope our protection is a little stronger than your army gave General Schleicher and his wife when they were murdered in their beds by your German government. No one in your protective army protested that, did they? If you ask me, you should start using your influence to see that Paul-Alain gets into the SS so we can have some real protection.”

He wheeled around on the bed and struck her heavily across the face with his open hand. Though she was knocked off the bed, he did not get up. She rose slowly and sat on the bed again. He stood up and stared down at her, breathing shallowly, his face drained of blood.

“It's just that I am a mother, Veelee,” she said staring at him sadly. “And Paul-Alain is a dirty little Jew, there's no denying that.”

“Stop it!”

He ran around the bed and took her by the shoulders and pulled her to him roughly. He was confused that he had hit her, but he was more confused about finding answers to everything she had been saying all that night. He wanted to make her feel safe and to let her know that he would love her forever, but he had not been trained to sort out things like this and they confused him. She looked at him as though she had retreated behind some shield and was watching him through a peephole.

“Listen to me, Paule,” he said desperately. “I have tried many times to talk to you about this, but you have always found some way of turning me off as though I were a wireless set. Gretel and Gisele have tried to talk to you too, but you elude us, you slip away into some other place in your mind and there is no following you there. I don't know why. I think about it all the time, but I swear to God I don't know why you won't talk about something which is changing us. If you would only pour out all these things! I am afraid that you are afraid to open the gates because what would race out of you could wash us away. But that could not happen, Paule. Because we love, and we are sure of that, and we will always be sure of that.”

Paule began to weep. He let go of her and walked to the window, wringing his powerful hands. When he turned to her again he spoke with anger against everything he was not able to understand. “Paul-Alain is the son of Colonel Wilhelm von Rhode, Junker auf Klein-Kusserow und Wusterwitz!” He tapped his chest. “He is the heir to the four hundred years my family have served this country with their blood. Do you think a rabble of gutter politicians can bring the German Army to its knees? My life is in the meaning of the German Army, and you are my life and the boy is my life.” What was the fault? How was it happening so fast that he could not see it to understand it and to stop it? Shapes lurked in the mists of his soldier's mind, but he could not bring them close enough. He had been trained to strike at what he could see, but he could not cope with faceless dread.

She held out her arms to him. She pulled him close to her and kissed his face over and over again. She wept softly, but she did not speak.

Thirteen

The winter of 1935 to the summer of 1937 saw the reintroduction of compulsory military service in Germany, the reoccupation of the Rhineland, the adventure in Spain and the full rearmament program in violation of the Versailles Treaty. Also during this time there were passed the Nuremberg Laws, which deprived all German Jews of citizenship, including Paul-Alain.

Keitel, whose son had married the daughter of General von Blomberg, the Minister of War, was immediately appointed Chief of the Wehrmacht. As a result of the appointment Veelee joked wryly that he expected any day to be transferred out of tanks into the Chaplain Corps.

Dr. Gross, head of the Political Office of the Party, had begun his press campaign for the total exclusion of all Jewish children from the schools.

The second demand for racial thought for a new straightening out of the school sphere concerns the racial harmony between teacher, pupil, and curriculum … fruitful education is only possible if the teacher and his pupils show the same racial attitude. The teacher of an alien race has become for us unthinkable; but the demand that the community of the school class itself, with which the instructor has to work, shall present a racial unity is just as essential. From this demand follows that those groups of the population of an alien race still living among us shall be fundamentally separated in the schools from children of our own kind.

In the spring of 1936, in a decree timed to coincide with the spirit of Easter, Dr. Rust, Minister of Education, ordered all Jewish children to leave ordinary elementary schools. Special Jewish schools were to be “established” everywhere. Segregation was the Fuehrer's solution for the future.

Paule forbid herself to think of the day when Paul-Alain would have to go to school. When he was two years old she began to make plans for his education, intending that the school laws should be circumvented. Veelee was unaware of all of this; he never read the newspapers, which he felt were “a lot of political lies.” At Wuensdorf no one ever talked about such things anyway. But he was spending more and more time with Paule, and only his exalting sweetness kept her steady. He stayed at Wuensdorf only when necessary, sometimes arriving home at midnight, and Paule tried to teach herself how to live with what she hated in order to keep what she loved.

On a summer morning in 1937, Hansel called Paule and invited her to lunch at the Adlon. “I've had this on my mind for years, my dear,” he said, “and I cannot suppress my carnality any longer.” She accepted with delight.

A page boy delivered her to Hansel in the lounge between the ballroom and the Raphael gallery. They were seated in the most distinguished corner of the red-leather bar, where the upholstery was worn.

Hansel ordered a half-bottle of champagne. “Paule, you grow more beautiful every day,” he said, toasting her.

“Heavens, who wouldn't look well in a carefree, happy-go-lucky country like this?”

“Just so.”

“Have you rented the ambassadorial suite for our assignation this afternoon, Hansel?”

“Careful. You will madden me with lust. I would have, you know—indeed, I intended to—but something else has come up.”

“Hmm.”

“But first, lunch.”

They ate carefully. Paule ate sparingly. The General had eel soup, roast wild boar, then—impulsively—tried some of the
Gedaempftes Taubenbrustchen mit Erbsen Franzoesische Art Pariser Fartolleln
. He had to do it impulsively, he explained, because his wife was always trying to stop him. When the meal was done and as he was sipping his second Calvados, he fell silent.

“Why are we here, Hansel darling?”

“Because I adore lunching with you.”

“No.”

“I don't?”

“We haven't lunched together in more than four months, and the last time it was because you wanted me to persuade Veelee to talk to Gretel about taking you off that diet.”

“As I get older I get more transparent. You would never catch Miles-Meltzer out like that.”

“Why are we here?”

“Well … business. The fact is I was talking with our Commander-in-Chief, General von Fritsch, this week. He was a comrade of Veelee's father, and naturally he's very fond of Veelee. He told me that Admiral Canaris, head of the Abwehr, was concerned about certain things, and he asked me to speak to Heinz Guderian—which I did.”