An Infinity of Mirrors (17 page)

“Do you think Veelee has resigned?” Paule asked tensely.

“Well, he's rather out of the combat area, so to speak,” Hansel said. “He's doing quite delicate work of a diplomatic and intelligence nature, as it were.”

“What has that got to do with his honor?” Paule asked. “If he and all other officers resign, there will be no Hitler. When there is no Hitler, a sane government can run the country and the officers can return to their posts. Even if he was sent to South Africa or the Antarctic, he is still an army officer. If Hans has resigned, then Veelee must resign.”

“But it is a matter of personal choice, isn't it, dear?” Gretel said. “I mean, they can't all be expected to resign. You heard what Brauchitsch said about the oath.”

“What oath? Hitler is a criminal. Would Brauchitsch or Veelee honor their oath to a criminal?”

“For some it is more complicated,” Hansel said hastily. “What Brauchitsch said after Hitler made him Army Chief of Staff—”

“Brauchitsch?” Gretel exploded. “My God, how much is there left which you haven't told us yet?”

“Brauchitsch said, ‘Why should I take action against Hitler? The people elected him, and the workers and all other Germans are perfectly satisfied with his successful policy.'”

Paule said, “Veelee must resign.” Her voice broke. “He must. This is our last chance. Our last chance.” She walked out of the room.

“Don't you believe it, darling,” Hansel called after her. “Hitler's good luck can't last forever. We'll get him eventually. Rome wasn't destroyed in one day.”

Paule waited for a letter from Veelee through eight days of discussion and debate in his great-grandfather's houses. Hansel, who kept in close touch with the Bendlerstrasse, was dismayed at first that his resignation did not seem to have had the tiniest effect. Brauchitsch agreed with Hitler to relieve sixteen high-ranking generals of their commands. Forty-four others were transferred to different duties. Hitler named himself War Minister and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. Keitel became Hitler's
lakaitel
, and the iron-brained Ribbentrop became Foreign Minister. “There are only three groups left now,” Gretel said. “Nazis, non-Nazis, and anti-Nazis.”

“What is Veelee?” Paule asked.

“Veelee is a tank commander,” Hansel told her, “so he is non-Nazi.”

“Why?”

“Well, he certainly isn't Nazi. And since Hitler has shown that he values tanks very highly, how could Veelee be anti-Nazi?”

When the letter from Veelee finally arrived, delayed because of the difficulty of getting it out of Spain, Paule went to her room and saw no one except Paul-Alain and Clotilde for two days. When Gretel pleaded to know what was happening, Clotilde could only say sadly, “She doesn't talk at all, Madame. She just keeps writing, then tearing it up, then writing again.”

“What is she writing?”

“I think it is a letter to her husband.”

Dearest Willi:

I have your letter which tells of your “surprise” at the changes made in the army, of Blomberg's effrontery in marrying a prostitute, and of Hitlers charges against General von Fritsch. You express the usual professional anxieties over Keitel's ascension and you remember Brauchitsch with reserved regard and you write as though this were the sort of intrigue one must expect in a boys' school
.

What about your army? What has become of that army which was using the upstart Hitler, which was there to protect your wife and son? Who will protect us from your government now? In all of your large country must we remain in Wusterwitz because it is the only place you can feel that we are safe from your leader?

What about the honor of your army which has been sent to kneel at his feet at the snap of his fingers? Your honor has empty eye sockets, is deaf, and is bred without a sense of smell or taste—it can touch filth and not withdraw in horror. How will your beloved country be saved from the pit of horror which your leader and your army has dug for it? Can you say that
—

Paule destroyed this letter too, then solved her quandary by writing to him only we-are-all-fine-and-Paul-Alain-is-such-a-big-boy letters, which she posted to him once a month. She became so silent that her presence among others was oppressive.

In April, when Brauchitsch advised Hansel that his resignation could not be accepted and that he was “suspended” until recall—which would be soon—Hansel wept in his happiness and Gretel beamed like a lighthouse.

Fifteen

Hitler had occupied Austria in March and was in a forgiving, expansive mood. The army was very grateful, and Paule was doomed to listen to army gossip all through the spring and summer until she could bear it no longer. When Fritsch, the former Commander in Chief of the German Army, actually accepted reinstatement by the Fuehrer's gracious sufferance and, after having had shame and disgrace lavished on him, humbly accepted a post as Colonel in Chief of the Twelfth Regiment of Artillery, Paule could tolerate army prattle no longer. She told Gretel she must return to Berlin because she had to begin to think about a school for Paul-Alain and thanked her with all her heart for her loving kindness. The two women wept together. Paule pointed out that, after all, Gisele and Philip were back in Berlin and that by now she was quite German enough to be able to take care of herself, so Hansel and Gretel bid her Godspeed and she returned to the flat in Charlottenburg.

Paule wanted to demand that Veelee make a choice between his wife and son, and his passive non-Nazism, but she could not for the same reason that she had prayed night after night when her father was about to leave a wife. She was inside a family, her own family, and if she resisted too strongly she might find herself alone. She could not find the strength to overcome that fear.

The horror began again on the morning of the second day of her return to the city. The bell rang and the loathesome block warden was slouching against the frame of the door when she opened it. He brushed past her into the large sunny parlor and sat down. “Are you pregnant, Frau von Rhode?” he asked. He spoke in a Saxon dialect whose intonations, even in normal conversation, were those of a highly insulted person complaining strenuously. In the uniform of his office the block warden had the right to enter any flat at any time and to ask whatever questions he felt necessary.

“No, Herr Waegel.”

“The Fuehrer looks for more good Germans, Frau von Rhode. But your husband has not been home for some time, hey? It is better not being pregnant, hey?”

“Yes, Herr Waegel.”

“Are you a subscriber to the
Sturmer?”

“No, Herr Waegel.”

“Then how can we be sure that you know that Jews are our burden and scourge, Frau von Rhode?”

“Our Fuehrer tells us that, Herr Waegel.”

“You are a Jew, are you not, Frau von Rhode?”

“Yes, Herr Waegel.”

“This is a nice flat. A big flat for one woman and a baby and two servants. You have a wireless set. How much did you give to Winter Relief, Frau von Rhode?”

“My husband, Colonel Wilhelm von Rhode, Herr auf Klein-Kusserow und Wusterwitz, makes the contributions to Winter Relief for us, Herr Waegel.”

“I am sure he is generous. He is a German soldier. He understands honor. He knows his duty.”

“He understands, Herr Waegel. He knows.”

“Still, one must not create a bad impression, Frau Colonel von Rhode.” He got up and shuffled to the door. “Heil Hitler.”

That one must not create a bad impression underscored everything everyone did in Berlin, Paule thought. The Fuehrer had issued a special decree proclaiming that no one could be forced to subscribe to the Party newspaper. But it made a bad impression if one did not. There was no law that one must do thus and so, but almost anything might happen if one did not.

“I said Heil Hitler, Frau von Rhode.” The block warden was still waiting in the open doorway.

“Heil Hitler, Herr Waegel,” Paule replied with spirit.

The flat faced the back of the SS Fuehrerschule, the advanced training college for SS officers at #1 Schlosstrasse. Paule was aware of the diffident and very correct young SS men when she walked with Paul-Alain in the Schlossgarten. But she was even more conscious of the almost continual presence of a particular SS Obersturmbannfuehrer. Whenever she walked in the park he would come striding along and greet her heartily. Once he lifted Paul-Alain for a drink at the water fountain, and he tipped his cap pleasantly to Paule before walking away.

One morning as she sat in the mid-October sun and the cold air, watching Paul-Alain as he played with other children at the swings, the SS Obersturmbannfuehrer appeared from out of nowhere and asked permission to sit beside her. She did not answer, but moved over on the bench to make plenty of room.

“We pass each other so often,” the SS Obersturmbannfuehrer said pleasantly, “that I feel we are neighbors.” Paule did not answer. “I am SS Obersturmbannfuehrer Eberhard Drayst,” he said.

“How do you do?” Paule said without looking up.

“And you are Frau von Rhode?” he said.

“I am Frau Colonel Wilhelm von Rhode.”

“I know. I have become so interested in seeing you in this park that I took the liberty of calling for your dossier.”

“How delicately you put it.”

He chuckled. “I learn that your husband is in Spain, that your father was the great French actor Paul-Alain Bernheim, that one of your brothers-in-law rejected the Fuehrer at the time of the disgraceful Blomberg-Fritsch incident, and that another brother-in-law is a factor in our Foreign Office. You are a Jew.” He paused. She turned slowly to look at him and he smiled brilliantly, his eyes crinkling. “You have a most interesting dossier. Most of them are quite dull, you know.”

“Perhaps it is better to be dull?”

“It is best to be a beautiful Jew like you, Frau Colonel von Rhode.”

She stood up instantly and called Paul-Alain. When he looked up wonderingly she called him more sharply, and he trotted to her side and they left the park at once. She almost ran to assuage the fear rising within her, thinking vaguely that she could not come back to the Schlossgarten again, yet knowing that no matter where she went he would move in his dainty and deliberate way to find her. When they reached the flat she removed from the bureau Veelee's service pistol which he had taught her how to fire. She loaded the magazine, then placed the gun in the small, shallow drawer of the table beside the front door. That afternoon she ordered chain locks for the front and back doors, and she would not hear the locksmith's protests that he could not possibly come to install them until the next day. She went to his shop and said she would wait there until closing time if necessary, but that the locks had to be on her doors before evening. Grumbling, the man went with her, and the locks were installed.

Paule and Clotilde went over the food supply, made a list to augment it and the provisions were in the apartment before noon the next day. Explaining to Clotilde that times were much too tense for either of them to go out in the evenings without escort, she drilled the maid over and over again to be sure that the chain locks were fastened if she were in the apartment alone. If for any peculiar reason Paule were called away, Clotilde must not, under any circumstances, unchain the doors unless she heard Paule's voice—and
only
Paule's voice—ask her to open up.

Paule heard no more from SS Obersturmbannfuehrer Drayst, nor did she see him again on the street, but she did not relax her guard.

Sixteen

On November 7th, at about eleven
P.M.
, word came that Gisele had been stricken with appendicitis. A call had gone out for blood donors; Miles-Meltzer was the wrong type, but Paule's blood matched Gisele's.

She reached the hospital at eleven-forty
P.M.
, and she and Philip sat in a waiting room waiting for her to be summoned for the transfusion. Philip was deeply frightened. He had not shaved since early morning, and the dark bristles on his cheeks, over the dazzling finery and under the specially shaped silver spectacles, made him seem almost shabby. He did not speak for a long time but merely sat with his hands clenched in front of him, his forearms dangling between his legs as though concealing the attitude of prayer. All at once Paule heard his controlled, attentively educated voice. He spoke in English, something he had never done before with her.

“One of our junior conselors at our Paris Embassy was murdered today. I am quite sure it is going to make trouble. It would be best if you stayed close to home next week, Paule.”

“Why, Philip?”

“The killer was a Jew. A boy, seventeen years old. He was crazed, we think, by what had happened to his parents. Dreadful affair all around. Poland issued a new law which took its citizenship away from Poles who had been resident abroad for a long time. Straight away our government packed all Polish Jews into trains and sent them off to the Polish frontier, because they were stateless.” He sighed. “We kept their possessions except the clothes they wore. They were warned not to take food, and they were thrown out of the trains at the frontier, then driven through the swamps into Poland. Sleepy children, men of eighty, pregnant women—five or six thousand people. The Poles would not let them in—because of the new law, you see. They are still out there in that swamp in this terrible winter. Many have died in the last twelve days. The boy's parents—the killer's parents—are out there.”

“Oh, Philip, what a world this has become.”

“Yes. And I have been sitting here since they told me Gisele might have peritonitis and I have been explaining with great care to myself that such a thing as Gisele being stricken has no connection with the acts of the government I serve.”

Paule kissed his hand. “It would be rank superstition to think any other way,” she said.