An Infinity of Mirrors (7 page)

Keitel was a swot, a prodigiously dull and feverishly ambitious grind, sixteen years older than Veelee. He was a plebeian Hanoverian, light on talent, and his awe at being permitted to roam at large among the Prussian aristocracy flagellated his deep sense of inferiority. Keitel seemed to have understood quite early in life that he could never expect to have position and power; all he asked was a chance to stand close to the powerful in photographs. The mountaineering tools for his painful ascent were complete acquiescence to all authority, subservient adulation for all above him in rank, and a shrewdly cultivated German instinct for resentment. However, he was a gorgeous man in uniform, the model figure of soldierly erect-ness and calm bearing. One day the Fuehrer himself was to say of Keitel that he had the brains of a doorman at a movie palace, and a German ambassador to Italy was to comment that Keitel had the mathematical ability of a milkmaid.

At first, Keitel was almost subservient to his lieutenant, but he decided soon enough that Veelee was much too offhand for his taste—even unappreciative. Worse, Veelee's uncle, Admiral Ludwig von Schroeder, Commander of the Marine Corps, was determined that Rhode should become the youngest captain in the Prussian Army. An admiral's whim is forged of steel, and on August 2, 1918, the promotion came through. Keitel was exasperated beyond endurance because the young man had made no effort to insure that his captain was invited to any of the Admiral's social functions, and Keitel resented it. There was talk. The Admiral had let it be known that his nephew had displayed much “tact” with the navy but that Keitel had been too “straightforward”—the last time in his career that he was to be accused by that word. Keitel remained deeply hurt until Veelee redeemed himself by organizing the retreat of one hundred and seventy thousand marines from Flanders to the Rhine in less than a fortnight, bringing every man to the German bank of the river on the day before the final date specified by the terms of the Armistice. Keitel was proud of Rhode then, because Keitel was decorated for the operation. They were almost friendly for two months—until Veelee was posted to the headquarters of the Supreme Command at Kolberg. Keitel was the senior, but von Rhode was called. It was too much. Rhode had been moved up to where Hindenburg and the power were, and Keitel was left behind.

The peace terms were a brutal shock to the German people. They had been taught to believe that the war had been forced on them, and after defending themselves as best they could and even going so far as to dismiss their Emperor to institute a most undesired republican form of government, they felt that they were entitled to some form of reward, not the calumny of Versailles.

Incredibly, the German Army was to be reduced to a total of ninety-six thousand men, recruited for twelve years, and four thousand officers, serving for twenty-five years. The nation was forbidden to possess military airplanes, tanks, or any offensive weapons. The General Staff was to be dissolved and not reconstituted in any form. Dire restrictions were placed upon fortifications. There were to be no U-boats, and the navy was reduced to the equivalent of a fleet of Maori war canoes. The German Emperor was charged with “a supreme offense against international morality and the sanctity of treaties.”

While politicians ranted, the army acted. It established a cadre upon which the future war of justice would be fought. The General Staff was re-established—disguised as the Office of Troops—and it assembled a group of staff officers who would guide a greater army. Secret courses in military science were established at universities. Officer candidates beyond the limit were trained by the Prussian police force. The treaty did not limit the number of non-commissioned officers, so the new army started out with forty-six thousand of these. By 1923 each senior officer in the miniature army was trained to command a division; each junior officer a regiment; each NCO a company; and each private was a reserve NCO.

In 1808 Scharnhorst had instituted reforms which had transformed the Officer Corps of the German Army. Officers were to be elected by the Corps itself, not nominated by the Kaiser, and a Court of Honor would have complete authority over members of the Corps, effectively removing them from the jurisdiction of civilian courts of justice. The Officer Corps became a caste. Its members viewed themselves as knightly servants of the Emperor, not of the nation. The elite within this caste were men of vivid military ability and an extraordinary oneness of perspective, and all members of the Corps were encouraged to express themselves freely on any matter to do with the service. This was the code. A captain could differ with a general in the hope that the differences could lead to improved professional excellence. Clausewitz had described the Officer Corps as “a kind of guild with its own laws, ordinances, and customs”; all that it did on its own behalf was held to be good because it maintained the army's immunity from parliamentary control and because nothing could change unless they themselves changed it.

The army had been the family profession of the Rhode-Kusserows since the beginning of the Thirty Years' War in 1618. They were among the leaders of the army which was the state, the religion, and the iron fist that held together the sprawled Hohenzollern possessions. A von Rhode had been the second of Masters of Ordinance in the Prussian Army. There had been two von Rhodes on the General War Commissariat under Fried-rich Wilhelm I. The Académie des Nobles produced seven von Rhodes who were Brigade-Majors appointed by the Kaiser, and they had helped to found the communications and intelligence systems to be used by the future General Staff.

Veelee's liaison assignment was with the Freikorps Grenzchutz Ost, which was defending the eastern portion of Pomerania against an invasion by the Polish Army in the late spring of 1919. From June to December, 1919, he was second General Staff Officer of a brigade stationed near Hanover, and from 1920 until October, 1922, he served as instructor at the Cavalry Training College in that city.

At the end of October, 1922, Veelee was transferred to Berlin to undertake two illegal instructional courses for General Staff officers at the College of Engineers in Berlin-Charlottenburg. This was a group of buildings well known to be a civilian college, and to make sure that there could be no misunderstanding, Veelee was issued an official civilian student card and ordered to attend the lectures attired in civilian clothes.

After casual duty, in 1924 Veelee was a captain on the General Staff of Reichswehr Gruppen Kommando 2, in Kassel. In April, 1927, he was transferred to the Troops Office. He became a major in 1930, the year of the terrible agrarian crisis when forty-three estates had to be sold by auction in the Pomeranian county of Schlochau alone, and though he came through it with few debts, many of his friends were ruined. But everything faced ruin in Germany in 1930: the government, the economy, and national morale. The Communists were gaining everywhere in the country and the army told itself that a new way had to be found to do the same things.

In December, 1931, Veelee was detached from active duty as Lieutenant-Colonel and transferred, with the diplomatic rank of Legationsrat, to the German Embassy in Paris.

Veelee and Paule stopped kissing reluctantly when they heard Maître Gitlin at the curtained door of the compartment. Veelee moved into his seat by the window and recommenced his gazing and daydreaming. The Maître looked more jovial.

“Feeling better, Maître?” Paule asked.

He smiled at her and nodded, but he spoke to Veelee. “It has occurred to me, Colonel, that the Germans are beloved of God because they have always given Him so much more to forgive.”

Paule grinned at him, and looked at Veelee, who was so handsome that her heart stopped. “Let us say, rather, Maître, that He loves you both equally,” she said, “because you have such opposite tastes in sinning.”

Seven

It is not always impossible to remember when the great changes happen, but it is a slippery business. Even if they are understood at the time, the poignant days go from the memory quickly. To see or to understand the moment of unmasking change—that second when the shimmer of childhood vanished, the light stab of pain which presaged death, the glance and chatoyant smile which brought eleven grandchildren—is given only to travelers in lands which they had not remotely imagined.

When the Nord-Sud Express halted at the Friedrichstrasse Station in Berlin, Paule exchanged gossamer for iron. As her feet touched the platform a brown-shirted squad of SA toughs came parading past her in military formation, singing out their words in coarse cadences,
“No more Jews. Death to Jews. Down with Jews. Death to Jews.”
They didn't linger; they merely marched up the platform and back again, then continued through the station to another platform, leaving behind them a wake of not disapproving people, some of whom were wearing inane, good-humored grins.

A high, ice-covered, spiked gate seemed to clang shut upon the life behind Paule. “It really happens here then, Veelee?”

“Nonsense. That was an outrage. They were ruffians. There is an election coming up and they were probably paid a few pfennigs to march about and sing their filthy song.”

“They are
paid
to say that?”

“Of course.”

“And the people who pay them know that Germans will vote their way because the men say such things?”

He stared at her with uncertainty while the crowds churned around them on the platform. “I don't understand it,” he said haltingly. “It has something to do with all the unemployment and the fear. I mean to say, really, Paule, it isn't normal.”

She was white with astonishment; her first thought was of her father, who had said that it was the Jews who had saved and made and sustained the renaissance of art and letters in Europe after the long dark ages. Jews were her father and Maître Gitlin, Sarah Bernhardt, Proust and Henri Bergson. As soon as she was alone she must find out about these grotesque election slogans which the slack-mouthed young men had sung so happily for tiny amounts of money. Her hands clung to each other so that they would not shake. Veelee had been talking to her, perhaps explaining, but she had not heard him clearly. Now something caught his eye in the crowd. He waved and bellowed, “Gretel!” then cried out with delight as though the impossible had happened, “My sisters are here!”

Maître Gitlin got off the train slowly and finished directing the porters about their baggage. “Are you all right, Paule?” he asked. “You are very pale.”

“It's just the excitement,” she said.

A tall, gray-eyed, handsome woman came whinnying and charging through the crowd and took Paule in her arms and covered her with kisses. “Oh! You are beautiful!” the woman said. “He never said how beautiful you are.”

“Paule, this is my sister Gretel,” but before Paule could respond another sister was upon her, squealing with pleasure. Gisele was tiny. She had dark red hair, smoked cigars after dinner, was passionately committed to Ibsen, Hauptmann, and Shaw—in that order—and had won prizes for her roses. Gretel was tall and slender, four years older than Veelee and two years older than Gisele. She was as blond as Veelee, had his wonderful smile, knew everything that had happened that morning in the German Army as well as all of its regulations, codes, manuals, and shibboleths, never read books, and did thirty-five minutes of calisthenics each morning and evening.

Veelee introduced Gretel's husband. He wore the uniform of a full general, had gray moustaches with soaring ends, a monocle, very naughty light-blue eyes, and a laugh like a lumber saw. Then Gisele pulled her husband into view. He was an important figure at the Foreign Office; thin, wore a pince-nez, a magnificent cravat and flashing stickpin, tons of cologne, and an English-cut suit and bowler. Then Paule introduced Maître Gitlin to everyone while Gretel told them she had secured the most wonderful apartment for them in Charlottenburg.

It was a sunny, six-room flat, with high ceilings, on the second floor of a four-story building facing the Friedrich Karl Platz across the Spandauerstrasse from the Schlossgarten. Gretel lived two streets away; Gisele was on the same street, two doors down. Biedermeier abounded in the apartment: chairs and tables with curved underframes and legs, high-backed chairs with smooth wooden plats, gilded swans, cornucopias, griffins, and foliage carved out of birch, pear wood, and grained ash. The rolled horsehair upholstery under flowered calico made Paule happy; her new world also had old-fashioned reassuring comforts. The wallpaper shouted welcome in many shapes of fruits and flowers, and there were draped curtains, multicolored tablecloths and carpets. There were vases filled with flowers from a dozen of Veelee's friends. Paule couldn't wait to get to work and change it all; she decided to spare only the canary, the gramophone, and the prodigious collection of records.

The marriage ceremony went off to Maître Gitlin's satisfaction. Gretel, Gisele, and their husbands were official witnesses, and they all celebrated earnestly at Horcher's afterward. Before he went back to Paris, Maître Gitlin explained to Veelee that Paule's father had left her an income of fifteen hundred marks a month while she lived outside France. He did not elaborate on Paule's fortune, nor did Veelee show any interest—he was overwhelmed at their combined riches. His pay was eight hundred marks a month, a very handsome sum; at a time when the economic crisis had caused all civilian salaries to be reduced, the income of army officers remained unchanged.

On her third day in Berlin, while he was still on leave, Paule and Veelee went to Klein-Kusserow, where the von Rhode family had lived throughout their recorded history. Klein-Kusserow had eighty-six souls. The family's second seat in Pomerania, Wusterwitz, had sixty-seven people. Everything was clustered around the large wooden main houses. There was a minister who had a tiny church, a schoolmaster, a blacksmith, a police constable; all the other people were tenants and farm hands. The crops were turnips, barley, rye, and potatoes, although Veelee said that as he remembered it the principal crop was fir trees. He said proudly that Pomeranian cattle could eat food from which goats turned away. The glacier had left eskers, kettles, marshes, and boulders. The highest point in the region was three hundred and two feet—hummocks tufted with green forests. Somewhere between the bogs and the hummock tops the people struggled to harvest crops from an acid, young, unfriendly soil.