Twelve

They must get away soon, she told herself every morning as she awoke. The time was coming nearer when Veelee would need to examine his tanks and his world without Jews in the compound of violent men at Wuensdorf. He would have to make a choice; she could see no other way and she thought about nothing else. Before the worst happened she would ask for the protection of his love for her and Paul-Alain and speak of their situation once and for all. They must leave Germany if they were going to survive. They had to emigrate, but where? Not to France. If they went to France Veelee would not feel that he had solved the problem. Where? Though she moved from one solution to another, she was unable to put her anguish into words, to take the action which she knew was their single salvation.

Paule slept less. Whenever she awoke in the night she would run to the baby’s room to reassure herself that he was safe. The more concerned she became with safety the lighter she slept. She was pale, there were dark circles under her eyes and the new hollows in her cheeks made her seem more starkly beautiful. Because she was determined not to admit to anyone—not to Veelee, not Gretel, not Gisele, not Clotilde, not to anyone—that she was frightened and ill, her manner became more and more sarcastic about the Fuehrer and his government. No matter where they might be or with whom, she felt compelled to explain to new acquaintances and old friends that she was a Jew.

The unequal civil war in Berlin expanded. The SS, the government, the army, and an increasing number of citizens were massed against the Jewish population consisting of old men, women, children, theatrical producers, dispensing chemists, artists and sculptors, clergymen, milliners, brokers, watchmakers, butchers and sausage makers, furriers, veterinary surgeons, booksellers, teachers, dentists, and sundry other mighty warriors totalling six percent of the national population.

To keep from talking about the only thing on her mind Paule tried to fill the flat with people when Veelee was home. She took on a bewildering brightness at night. They went out a great deal too, and Hansel was able to persuade her to stop volunteering to strangers the information that she was a Jew. “After all,” he said, “bears are bears, but they do not roam through the forest setting traps to catch themselves.” He suggested that she must teach herself that at present there was a system in Germany which could not last and that she, like everyone else, must live within that system for the time being. She compromised by agreeing that she would not say she was a Jew unless she was asked. “You must have had very poor training at being Jewish,” Hansel said. “No other Jews I know carry on the way you do.”

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.