An Infinity of Mirrors (5 page)

The counsel for the departed, Maître Gitlin, read a short service over the coffin at the cemetery.

As required by German Army regulations, Lieutenant-Colonel von Rhode, on applying for permission to marry a foreigner, had no trouble whatsoever in securing approval from the Reichsministerium through his superior officer, General Klarnet, even though the woman was a Jew. This was a tribute to his family's ancient traditions in the military service of his fatherland.

Five

The law office of Maître Gitlin was in his large apartment, as was the custom, on the ground floor of a building on the Boulevard Malesherbes above the Place St. Augustin. It opened onto a glass-roofed garden containing exotic plants and flowers. The office itself had lawyers' reassurances of leather and mahogany, with tiers of brightly oiled books in rich colors. One glass wall, which was illuminated during the day by sunshine and by floodlights at night to comfort Maître Gitlin, contained eleven gorgeous tropical birds: a hoopoe, a lilac-breasted roller, an emerald cuckoo, an orange dove, and others—all poised in flight or perched alertly, all frozen by taxidermy as brilliant, as unfeeling, and as lacking in significance as the history of lawyers on earth. Maître Gitlin had a gramophone record, activated by a foot pedal beneath his desk, which simulated the yawping and twittering of the stuffed birds.

Maître Gitlin was a rounded man who resembled what the Lord Buddha might have looked like had he practiced law in Judea in 345
B.C.
He seemed asleep most of the time, but it was only that his eyes were turned inward. He lived in bachelor comfort, never revealing his right hand's contents to the left. He greeted Paule as his daughter, for he had been her father's lawyer since Bernheim's first contract.

First, Gitlin turned on the bird record because it delighted Paule, then got down to business. “Today is the day of Ste. Florentina,” he said, “who received from St. Leander a long and beautiful letter which has been preserved.” Paule loved his openings because they revealed what he must think about as he sat in this gay place for most of his days all alone. “Because it is appropriate to your father's will and to its spirit, I will read the opening of the letter. To both of us, your father was St. Leander in a way, and you most certainly have always been the quintessence of Ste. Florentina.”

“I have? What was she like?”

Maître Gitlin held up his hand. “I am a lawyer. It would be indiscreet to discuss personalities.” He took up a book and read: “‘Casting about, for what rich heritage I could leave you, I have thought of all kinds of things, but they have seemed vain to me, and I have put them away from me as one brushes away with the hand importunate flies. Nothing that I have seen under the sun is worthy of you, but I have found, above the skies, an ineffable and mysterious gift which I cannot possibly praise highly enough. Daughter of candidness and innocence, never fly away from the roof where the turtledove, our mother, has placed our young. Rest now on the breast of the Church. I groan at the thought that another might snatch away your crown, you the better part of myself, you my buckler, my cherished gage, holy victim on whom I count to rise from the abyss of my sins.'” The Maître blew his nose. “Lovely letter, isn't it?” he asked.

“I know about Papa's ineffable and mysterious gift.”

“What was it?”

“Himself.”

“It was more than himself. He made you a Jew, too. But such a unique Jew as has not lived for perhaps seventeen centuries.”

Paule was puzzled. “Why?”

“You are like a Christian, born without the sense of original sin,” Gitlin said. “Because of your father's ineffable and mysterious gift you cannot understand the weariness and anguish, and perhaps sometimes even the shame, of being a Jew. He instructed you only in the glory.”

“Maître, don't believe that. I live—I read and I listen. I know there are certain people who are against … but only what Papa said has any meaning.”

“So be it. Now, the other part of your inheritance.” He riffled at the papers. “The estate provides approximately four hundred and ten thousand dollars in American securities, as valued on June fifteenth, 1932—a low market. There are cash deposits of over one and a half million Swiss francs held in a number account in the Société de Banques Suisse in Geneva. You will have no difficulty remembering the number: it is your birthday run backward—year, month, and day of the month—and it is your father's wish that you reveal the number to no one except your children, and then only through me or other legal counsel. You own the apartment at Cours Albert I and a small apartment on the Avenue Gabriel. Mme. Citron, Miss Willmott, and Clotilde Grellou are to receive ten years' salary, payable as you see fit, to begin when they choose to retire.

“Your father wishes a bronze plaque, in the shape of a gramophone record, to be imbedded in the floor of room number three hundred and three at the Hôtel de la Gouache, at Versailles, on which is to be inscribed the words
La Tristeza No Es Verdad
, your father's personal philosophy and the title of his favorite tango. I will take care of that. His personal jewelry is valued at five hundred forty-three thousand, seven hundred and seventy-seven francs and is to be found in the large, leather-bound record book in his study entitled
Bernheim's Visit to the Rand
, which had been converted into a strongbox. The twelve automobiles, the lodge at Megève, the villa at Cap Ferrat, the small house at Deauville, and the hotel at Biarritz are wholly owned by the Bahama Corporation, registered in the Republic of Panama and now owned by you through the Liechtenstein company, Hirondelle Imports, which has a broad charter, you may be sure. I should like to be permitted to buy the HispanoSuiza and the Lagonda sports car—not that twelve cars will be too many for you, but because I see the chance for a bargain here. Ah, thank you.

“Now, the formidable production of income from oil holdings in Texas, Colorado, and Venezuela is held in a number account in the Union de Banques Suisse, Nyon branch, canton of Vaud, together with a portfolio of investments in department stores in Japan, England, and Peru, in citrus holdings in South Africa, and a listing of industrial shares which will be presented to you at the bank on recitation of another number which is your birthday recited
forward
. I am obliged to repeat that your father desires that the numbers of your Swiss accounts be repeated to no one but your children, and then only through a lawyer. In the event of your death before issue, the entire estate is to go to the Organization for Rehabilitation and Training. Are there any questions, my dear?”

“But … I had no idea that … I mean, the way Papa spent his money how can there be so much left?”

“A good question.”

“You cannot conceive of the way he spent money, Maître. He did not have a single financial inhibition. There is one tailor—this is not a myth, because I have the letter from his sister—who went into a monastery after Papa took his business to the man's competitor. Why, Teloge, the hatter, sent Papa a pair of stunning sapphire cuff links one Christmas for the sake of his good will.”

“Yes, I know,” Gitlin said thoughtfully, “but in a forest when a tree is cut another grows in its place. Nature provides. So it was with your father. His fortune—and as you see, it is a considerable fortune—was left to him by—uh—I think, eight grateful women who were extraordinarily devoted to him. It flabbergasted him each time the news of a legacy came to him. He was never able to remember meeting the woman who left him the extensive oil holdings. He had asked me to write a discreet letter to her attorney requesting photographs of her, but when they came he insisted it was all a mistake, that he had never seen the woman before in his life. But the extraordinarily intimate wording of the will which so vividly, even excitingly described the three days she had spent with him at the Hôtel de la Gouache, left no doubt that he did have knowledge of her.” Gitlin sighed with wonderment, but recovered himself at once. “As for the rest, he lived on his income of fifty thousand francs a week from his theatrical activities and equities.”

“Maître Gitlin—”

“Yes, my dear?”

“I will be married in ten days.”

“Married?”

“Yes.”

“Isn't it … don't you feel that ten days is so soon after—”

“Yes. But … Maître Gitlin, I am going to marry Lieutenant-Colonel Wilhelm von Rhode of the German Army. In Berlin. On the second of July.”

“The German Army?”

“Yes.”

“Did your father know of this?”

“He … he knew of the possibility.”

Maître Gitlin rubbed his hand hard down his face. “That is terrible news, Paule. I had to say that and I apologize to you now. For years I have sat here and I have thought of the day when I would wish you all the happiness there is. I want to cry, but—please I—I won't cry. I am your father now. Such words as these won't help you, will they? I must help you.”

Paule reached across the desk and took his left hand in both of hers, and then bent over and kissed it. Leaning back, she smiled at him serenely, saying, “What you are feeling are old thoughts, from a hundred years ago. He loves me. Can there possibly be anything anti-Semitic about him loving me?”

“You will live in Berlin?” He rubbed his left hand softly. His eyes were grief-stricken.

“Yes. And his family is one of the oldest, most significant … Every man in his family for almost a thousand years has been a commander in the Prussian Army. Veelee says what he means, and he means what he says.”

“There are other Germans in Germany beyond his family, Paule,” Maître Gitlin reproached her gently. “But we will not talk about the probable. For the moment let us face the legal problems of such a marriage.”

“But, Maître—” She thought he was embarrassing both of them by attempting to dissuade her. He understood, and smiled at her sadly. “No, no,” he said, “I will not try to dissuade you, darling. You love him. He loves you. I want to help you. And this is not just a matter of your estate—it is a matter of the possible safety of your children—”

“Maître!”

“Forgive me. I will rephrase. Make that—of the possible happiness or unhappiness of your children, if any, and since you will live in Germany, perhaps your own happiness as well.” He got up and dragged his chair from behind the desk and sat down, taking her hands in his.

“We must think of three things at the outset, Paule.
a
, The question of your nationality after marriage;
b
, the question of your child's nationality; and
c
, the foreseeable financial problems with relation to the German State. Yes? All right. As to the first, from the day of your marriage—unless most specific and somewhat complicated arrangements are made to the contrary—you will be of German nationality without retaining your French nationality. Do you want that?”

“No,” she answered in a low voice.

“Then I must go with you to Germany and we will appear at the French Embassy in Berlin to express formally your desire to retain your French nationality. We will then appear before a German registrar with your intended husband, and there a civil marriage ceremony will be performed. In this manner, legally—and the Germans are legal to the point where they will kill you if you question this—you will be a French national and a German national simultaneously. Now, children. Again there are two choices. Not in the same spirit this time because you must consult the father of the child or children, and naturally he is as proud of being a German as you are of being French. It will be a matter of incalculable importance to him that his child be German. Therefore an agreement must be reached before you leave France—and please, please believe me, my darling Paule, that is the only way.”

“But what agreement?” She looked ready to weep.

“I will explain the law first. Under the first choice the child will be of German nationality only, without restrictions. Under the second choice, the child may fall under the classification called
sujet mixe
and be of German and French nationalities simultaneously. Both nations will claim the child as a member of their respective nations on behalf of
ius sanguinis
. Germany will claim the child in all countries except France. The French practice differs in that it bestows the
father's
right upon a Frenchwoman who, though being married to a foreigner, has retained her French nationality.” Maître Gitlin paused to mop his forehead with a large white silk handkerchief. “Please do not bear this child in Great Britain or the United States, because it will then have a third nationality bestowed upon it by way of the
ius soli
interpretation which is practiced in those countries.”

“What am I to do?”

“Today, if possible, you must speak to your fiancé about the possibility of children. You must tell him what is the truth: that you feel the pride in France which you know he feels in Germany, and that, since the child will be a part of both of you, he must have the right to choose his country himself when he reaches majority.” He leaned forward and suddenly spoke with great emphasis. “You must do that, Paule. I cannot explain to you what I know about Germany and what I feel about Germans, but I have explained this and you must do it.”

She sat very still and looked into his eyes. “It is my husband's country, Maître. It will be our home. I must love it as my own, because of my husband. But if there are children it is right to have it done as you have said.”

“Yes.”

“It is my husband's country so it will be mine,” she said, and her voice trailed off.

Maître Gitlin cleared his throat brusquely. “As to your property. By an act of December 8, 1931, any German citizen in possession of property or fortune of value beyond fifty thousand reichsmarks and liable to German taxation—and this is certainly your case—must pay twenty-five percent of the respective money value of the said property and fortune on leaving the Reich, if the authorities suspect said citizen is leaving for good.”