An Infinity of Mirrors Page 5

  “I take it you do not admire the French?” Maître Gitlin asked.

  “If we were weaker we would, of course.”

  “You are saying it is a question of politics?”

  “Germans don’t understand politics—and I don’t say that as a soldier. We are trained in politics and we know nothing. Politicians, who are rarely trained in our politics, know even less.”

  “I quite agree with you.”

  “It is amazing, really. For all the unity we have when we are strongly led, we cannot seem to figure out a way to create leaders who emerge from a unified people. But in time, in good time. That is Hanover out the window. I am a Pomeranian. When I was a boy a conscript from Hesse never spoke about joining the army, but of joining the Prussians. We haven’t been a nation long enough, you know.”

  Gitlin snorted. Paule stared at Veelee with total wonderment, struck with this incredible contribution of intellectualism, in addition to everything else he had.

  “Still,” Veelee said, “we are better off for it than the French, who understand politics so well that they pimp for it and send it out into the streets to prostitute its meaning, until only the basest Frenchmen are willing to pursue such a career—mongrels and manipulators and the wearily cynical who fondle governments as they shuttle past. It is a kind of perversion.”

  “Better a perversion for politics than a perversion for war, if I may say so.”

  “Please!” Paule said. “No more of this. And don’t tell me that you two are just fooling.”

  “Just an abstract discussion, darling.” Veelee looked at her and shrugged, and for an instant she had the feeling it was all over his head, too.

  “Of course,” the Maître said. “The art of conversation is not necessarily dead. That’s all, Paule.”

  “It would be nicer if you practiced on music,” Paule said. “Saint-Saëns versus Wagner, or a conversational theme like that.”

  “We were discussing education, which is even more harmless,” Veelee said, moving up his next set of gambits into the firing line, his memory serving him without flaw. “The French attitude toward their politics, I think, is the fault of their basic education—in the family unit, that is, where it counts. The ability to deceive self, then to deceive life, begins with the family unit. The goal of the French family is not obedience but animal gratification and Saturnalian existence. With such goals how can they find unity? Each man’s sensual gratification differs from each other’s. And that is anti-family—that is the cult of the individual. That is the total service of self and only of self. A family is a group of people, just as a nation is a group of families, and if the group has divisive goals there is no more group. What France needs is a stern and demanding father. Your revolutionary slogan has come to mean Libertinism, Equal Rights to Self-indulgence, and the cold, anti-social Fraternity of self having intercourse only with self.”

  In reply Maître Gitlin’s voice answered almost too precisely, adding paragoges to the ending of each word, so that the effect was a caricature of precision. “Frenchmen live to live, not to die,” he said.

  “And I envy that, Maître,” Veelee answered. “I even think it is true to an extent—at least to the extent that each country’s solution will contrast with the other’s because of the basic differences in our education.”

  “I hope you are right, and for that reason,” the Maître said. “Thank God for the difference too, I say.” He stood up. “Please excuse me. I must get some air.”

  Veelee stared at the slammed door of the compartment. “I’m sure I’ve offended him,” he said, not having the slightest idea how he had done it, “but these long train rides are so dull.”

  Paule continued to stare at Veelee with new, awed eyes. He had revealed a casual brilliance which she had never imagined he possessed. It was to be many years before she could convince herself that he was not an intensely mental man.

  Lieutenant-Colonel Wilhelm von Rhode, Herr auf Klein-Kus-serow und Wusterwitz, had been a part of the German Army since he had entered the cadet school and his first uniform at Berlin-Lichterfelde when he was nine years old. He could have been educated at a grammar school, but old-timers among the senior officers, such as the formidable von Seeckt, all thought the Kadettenanstalt background to be much more stylish.

  It was indeed a military school. Even the chaplain wore spurs under his robes and held the rank of captain. Before each meal the Officer of the Day would shout, “Let us—PRAY!” A barracks order read:

  After the night prayer the Officer of the Day will command: “GO TO SLEEP!” The cadet will undress as quickly as possible, place his clothes in the regulation place, go to bed, place his right arm under his head, left arm over the blanket, and fall asleep immediately.

  A company of one hundred cadets slept in each barracks and the lights burned all night long to protect the younger boys from the older ones and to permit the NCO who cleaned boots to do his work and to beat off older boys. The cadets were always under supervision. There was not a door which could be locked so that a cadet might be alone for the briefest period. Two hundred cadets dined at each session; thirty cadets were assigned to each classroom; ten cadets studied together in each living quarter. In the extraordinary instance of leave being granted to attend a funeral or a wedding, the cadet was required to report at once to the garrison commander nearest his destination. Riding was the only excuse for being out of uniform. Part of the system was to starve the Cadet Corps; cadets were not allowed to receive parcels from home. This tightened disciplinary efficiency; one of the severer penalties was barring the cadet from lunch or dinner.

  Veelee never told his father how he hated the Kadettenanstalt because he assumed that his father would expect him to hate it, as his father had hated it. He had twenty-five minutes for recreation each day which he could squander on walks or spending the five marks per month the cadets were allowed for stamps, supplies, and everything else. The Kadettenanstalt was a fortress of unreality which conditioned the future officers for a place in its extension, the palace of unreality which was the German Army. It was an army which honored suicide when circumstances might have marred the community’s illusion of what an army officer was and how he lived. Blunders marred that image, and it was the duty of a brave soldier and an honest fellow to kill himself to wash the stain away. If an officer was insulted by an inferior—such as a civilian whom he could not, in any case, challenge to a duel—suicide was the only way out. Veelee was taught when he was eleven years old that if a drunk came around a corner and there was no reason to deduce why he should not become offensive, the officer should cross the street quickly before the drunk could reach him. However, if the officer moved too late and the drunk struck him or cursed him, the officer must either draw his sword and hack the man to pieces on the spot or kill himself. If neither, and the encounter were witnessed, the officer would be cashiered from the army.

  By graduating from the Kadettenanstalt into the army, the cadets could grow to men while still remaining boys at their games, and they could predict the contours of their lives. Veelee spent nine years as a cadet. In the fall of 1914 he graduated in the top eleven percent of officer candidates in his class. He passed his examinations for the general certificate for higher education six months earlier than the general rule, partly because of the outbreak of the war and partly because he had volunteered for service at once in order to escape.

  Because Veelee was qualified as a cavalry officer, under the mysterious logic of armies he was not assigned to cavalry. He found himself in the renowned Preussisches Jegerregiment 2, which held the elite of the Prussian Army and was equal, in the service, to the Guards. Eighty percent of the officers in the regiment commanded by Colonel Prince Ernst von Sachsen-Meinigen were of aristocratic stock. It was a regiment of Rangers, part of the Alpine Corps, and within four months of having been posted, Veelee distinguished himself in the Rumanian campaign of 1915 and was promoted from ensign to sub-lieutenant. He was then decorated with the Iron Cross
, second and first class, for distinguished service during the battle of Hermannstadt in September 1916. He was made lieutenant in February, 1918, when he was twenty years old, and posted to the staff of the Marine Corps in Flanders, stationed at Bruges, where he served directly under Captain Wilhelm Keitel of the General Staff. They were assigned to maintain liaison with the navy.

  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 im
possible 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.”