An Infinity of Mirrors (18 page)

At that moment a nurse appeared and asked Paule to go with her. She went into the operating room and lay down beside the unconscious Gisele at one-five
A
.
M
. The transfusion was done quickly and in half an hour she was back in the waiting room with Philip. In a few minutes the doctor came out and said that Gisele would be fine, and after Philip had wept in Paule's arms she said that she was worried about Paul-Alain and must go.

“Be careful, Paule, please.”

“I am always careful now.”

“Not that they will do anything tonight. They never move that fast, because they pause for the propaganda effect.”

“I will be barricaded in the flat if trouble starts.”

Philip walked with her to the lift, thanking her again and again and pleading with her to let him take her home—he could take the same taxi directly back to the hospital. But she wouldn't hear of it; they would be bringing Gisele to her room soon and he must be there if she needed him. Philip gave her address to the driver, then warned her again to stay indoors until he called her. “The
Schwartzekorps
, the SS newspaper, said a very odd thing last week,” he said. “They said that the Jews in Germany would be hostages against attacks by world Jewry. This could be a start for such a policy.”

Paule kissed him good night, got into the cab; and started for the Freidrich Karl Platz.

Seventeen

While Paule was at the hospital, Dr. Goebbels was telling a group of party leaders that riots had been started successfully in the Kurhessen and Magdeburg-Anhalt districts to protest the assassination in the Paris Embassy by international Jewry that afternoon. He explained carefully that upon his suggestion the Fuehrer had decided that in the event the riots spread spontaneously throughout the Reich, they were not to be discouraged. Dr. Goebbels then dismissed the party leaders so that they could get the spontaneous riots organized as quickly as possible.

SA formations were used to burn down every synagogue in the Reich; to loot, destroy, arrest, torture, and murder all Jews encountered. Dr. Goebbels notified neither Himmler nor Goering of his plan. However, at eleven-fourteen
P
.
M
., SS Obersturmbannfuehrer Eberhard Drayst, who had just completed a disturbing interrogation of two Jewish women at police headquarters in the Koenigsallee, and who had gone to the offices of
Der Angriff
, Dr. Goebbels' newspaper, to file his information for propaganda use, learned the news of Dr. Goebbels' actions and immediately telephoned the news to his superior. SS Gruppenfuehrer Wolff located the Reichsfuehrer SS at twelve-three
A
.
M
., and Himmler arrived at Prince Albrechtstrasse at one-four
A
.
M
., ordered his full force into the streets, dressed as civilians, “to prevent large-scale looting,” and then dictated the following memorandum:

The order for this pogrom was given by the Propaganda Directorate and I suspect that Goebbels, in his craving for power—which I had noticed long ago—and also in his empty-headedness, started this action at just the time when foreign political situations are very grave. I have talked to the Fuehrer from my residence about these decisions and I have the distinct impression that he knew nothing about these events.

Next the Reichsfuehrer SS dictated a personal commendation to be placed in the service folder of SS Obersturmbannfuehrer Drayst, for his alertness in interpreting the significance of his information.

But Himmler filed a milder reaction to Goebbels' strike than other government officials. The rioting, which was as spontaneous as jewelry by Fabergé, began precisely at two-five
A
.
M
. throughout Germany. When Economic Minister Funk learned what was happening at two twenty-nine
A
.
M
., he telephoned Dr. Goebbels and said, “Are you crazy, Goebbels? One has to be ashamed to be a German. We are losing our whole prestige abroad. Day and night I am trying to conserve our national wealth and you throw it out the window. If this whole business does not stop immediately you can have the whole filthy mess.”

The Reichsmarschall was on a train when the demonstration began. He got the news at the Berlin railroad station, promptly went into a tantrum, and drove directly to the Fuehrer. Goebbels was irresponsible, he said; the effect of such a pogrom among influential people would be disastrous.

While blood was choking the gutters of German cities, Goebbels was summoned to Hitler's residence. After screaming at the Reichsmarschall to stay out of such matters, Goebbels improvised brilliantly by explaining that the Luftwaffe needed planes, that planes took money, and that therefore he had organized the demonstrations because the Jews would be willing to pay a large fine after this night's work. The Fuehrer agreed, and a fine of one billion reichsmarks was imposed on the German Jewish community.

The taxi pulled away from the Kreuzberg district, the Hill of the Cross, that Calvary which surrounded Gestapo headquarters so grotesquely, and moved down the Buelowstrasse and along the Klieststrasse toward the Kurfürstendamm. Paule thought she could hear screaming and the shattering of glass. People were running. The taxi stopped and the driver got out to try to find out what was happening. As Paule leaned out of the window to hear he grabbed a young man by the arm. “They are killing Jews!” the man gasped. “The SA are breaking everything, and the SS are killing everybody. They are going crazy. Let go! Let go!”

Paule heard the yelling above them and she and the two men looked up. Two men were pushing a struggling man out of a fifth-floor window. “Out, Jew! Out!” they were shouting, but their faces had the calm, determined expression of youths wrestling for a gold medal. The man came down, sliding through the air on a terrible scream. The driver and the young man scattered, and the body fell with a huge sound on the pavement and lay still, leaking rapidly. Only one of the men above stayed to watch it hit.

When Paule uncovered her eyes, the taxi driver had vanished. The taxi engine purred on with mechanical unconcern. As she screamed, a platoon of men on the run rounded the corner sixty feet ahead of her. Every ten feet or so they stopped and fired bursts from their guns into store windows. Tumbling out of the cab, Paule fell on her hands and knees, ripping her dress and tearing holes in her knees and stockings. Frantically, she climbed into the driver's seat of the taxi, not bothering to close the door, and moved the car forward. It was the first time she had driven a car in six years, and it lurched, it struck a running man and bowled him over. While his companions shouted at her, while two of them shot at her, the car fled wildly into the Buelowstrasse.

All around her the smashing and ruining was underway. Men were ripping books in half and slashing paintings in front of a bookstore. The contents of every kind of shop seemed to have been thrown out into the streets by one set of maniacs while another set hacked at them with axe and sledge hammer. She swung the car wildly down another street. No one paid any attention to her; they were already in hell, already doing what they would need to do for the rest of eternity, she thought. They were sightless in their wildness, but someday the axes and hammers must fall upon themselves.

A synagogue was in flames in the Grunewaldstrasse. She crossed the intersection at full speed, unaware that she was still screaming. The taxi came to a rolling stop just past the Stadtpark in the Martin Luther Strasse; one of the bullets had hit the gas tank. The street was deserted. Just ahead of her was the Friedenau S-Bahn and she walked toward it, stumbling and hysterical. She had to get home. She had to be with Paul-Alain. What were they doing to Paul-Alain?

There were few people in sight as she bought her ticket, and they seemed unaware of the chaos so close by. She huddled in the corner of the last car and pretended to be asleep, trying to concentrate on not thinking about the SS men dragging her little boy to the window of the flat and shouting, “Out, Jew! Out!” as they threw him into the street.

Paule left the S-Bahn at the Bahnhof West End and walked as quickly as she could along the Spandauerstrasse. Then, though her knees were bleeding badly, she began to run, at first in a trot, but soon, as she turned the corner into the Fried-rich Karl Platz, headlong, her breath coming out of her lungs like live steam. She unlocked the door carefully before she put on the landing lights above her. But before she could reach the switch, still gasping for breath, a hand closed over her mouth and another entered her bodice and slid down to grip her right breast. She tried to struggle, but hands wheeled her around and backed her along the short hall toward the recess under the stairs. As she was dragged past Herr Waegel's door, it opened, and a bar of light fell upon the face and uniform of her attacker. It was Obersturmbannfuehrer Drayst, that man from the Schlossgarten. Desperately she jerked her head back and managed to bite the hand over her mouth. While Drayst cursed, she screamed, “Herr Waegell Thank God, thank God.” Herr Waegel only grinned at her, nodded to Drayst, and closed his door.

She was flung backward into the recess and slammed against the wall. In an instant he was upon her, and she could feel the horror of his hand under her dress, fumbling with her clothes. His heavy shoulder pinned her to the wall and his broken voice babbled at her. “Oh, you sweet Jew, don't fight me, let me take you, how I love you say how you love me you Jew you beautiful Jew let me let me.” His fingers were inside her and his other hand was fighting to open his trousers when she kicked her knee upward with all her strength. Then the other knee, and he doubled up with a scream and rolled across the floor as she leaped over him and ran down along the short hall and up the stairs.

When she looked down from the first landing, Drayst was getting to his feet. His face, a ruin stamped with enormous pain, was looking up at her, and he came up the stairs after her as she missed a step and fell, sliding downward. She got to her feet and started up the stairs again, screaming wildly. At the first landing the door of one of the apartments was opened and a large man stood in it in nightdress with a woman behind him. “Herr Gehman,” Paule shouted, “help me, please help me.” The man started forward in bewilderment, but halted after three steps. Staring down the staircase, he began to back away. His wife looked down at Drayst, then pulled her husband backward into the apartment, and slammed the door.

As Drayst, crablike, pulled himself up by the bannister to the top of the stairs, Paule ran up the next flight. He moved slowly after her. All doors had closed and the landing was in darkness again. She pounded on the door to the flat. There was no sound inside. When she looked over the railing he was still coming, though now he was crawling. She beat on the door with both of her fists and screamed, “Clotilde! Please! Please! Open the door!” Now Drayst was at the landing, pulling himself toward her, gripping the balustrade, his eyes empty and his mouth working spasmodically. Then the chain bolt snicked, the door opened, and she fell into the entrance hall, rolling to one side so that Clotilde could slam the door shut. “Is the baby all right?” she asked hoarsely.

“Yes, Madame.”

Paule moved to the drawer of the entrance table and took out the gun. As Drayst's weight thudded against the other side of the threshold, she threw off the safety, shouted “Franz! Set to!” and fired all eight shots through the door. Then she fainted.

Eighteen

Miles-Meltzer reached the flat in thirty-five minutes. He saw the trail of blood on the stairs and the carpets of the landing, and he stared with sick apprehension at the bullet-shattered door. He pounded and shouted at the same time, “Paule! Open the door. Paule, dear. It's Philip.” Finally he heard the sound of slow footsteps. She opened the door, then closed it behind him and put the chain in place.

“They called me at the hospital, and told me what was happening.”

“How many Jews are dead?”

“I don't know. The Foreign Office says the SS has rounded up eighteen thousand for concentration camps.”

“Now they know.”

“Were you hurt?”

“We are leaving, Philip. We are leaving Germany. We are leaving Veelee. I want a diplomatic passport for Paul-Alain and Clotilde and me. Can you do it?”

“Of course.”

“May we have them by eight-thirty tomorrow morning—this morning?”

“You will have them.” He looked at her with anguish. “I could get a signal to Veelee in Burgos.”

“No.”

“He can be here by tomorrow night.”

“I will write to him and explain everything, Philip.”

He took her hands and kissed them. “I am glad you are going, you know,” he said. “Each time we have said this is only temporary. But this time it is the beginning of the end for us. You will leave on the Nord-Sud?”

“Yes.”

“Very well. I will be here at eight-twenty with a car and the papers and a truck for your baggage.” He clicked his heels and bowed.

“God bless you, Philip.”

After he left Paule went to Veelee's study, sat down at his desk, found paper and a pen, and began to write.

9 November, 1938

Dear Willi:

I have stayed six years and I have tried so hard, but now Paul-Alain and I will leave Germany this morning. Philip has been very kind and is arranging for diplomatic passports so that we may escape. The pogroms are sweeping your country as I write this
.

Last night, as, I watched your countrymen murdering Jews like me and your son, I realized that when I had pleaded with you to see what was happening to your country and implored you to take us away, I had been committing a selfish mistake. To remain with you, I was setting us apart from other Jews. You are a part of the monster—you are as much a part of it as Streicher. You are a different claw, but you are the German Army and the deaths and horrors it has condoned. I know that this will make it clear that our marriage is over. I never want to see you again. I will leave your grandmother's pearls with Philip and I will join her memory in your family
.