Martin Amis - The Zone of Interest

‘They’ve got trucks running around on manoeuvres,’ said Zulz, ‘with Tank painted on their sides.’

‘America will make no difference,’ said Uhl. ‘Nil. We won’t even feel its thumb on the scale.’

Frithuric Burckl, who had barely spoken, now said quietly, ‘That was very far from being our experience in the Great War. Once that economy gets going…’

I said, ‘Oh, incidentally. Did you know this, Major? There was another conference in Berlin on that same day in January. Chaired by Fritz Todt. Armaments. About restructuring the economy. About preparing for the long haul.’

‘Defatismus!’ laughed Doll. ‘Wehrkraftzersetzung!’

‘Not a bit of it, sir,’ I laughed back. ‘The German army. The German army is like a force of nature — irresistible. But it’s got to be equipped and supplied. The difficulty is manpower.’

‘As they empty the factories,’ said Burckl, ‘and put the lot of them in uniform.’ He tubbily folded his arms and crossed his legs. ‘In all the campaigns of ’40 we lost a hundred thousand. In the Ostland, now, we’re losing thirty thousand a month.’

I said, ‘Sixty. Thirty’s the official figure. It’s sixty. One must be a realist. National Socialism is applied logic. There’s no great mystery to it, as you say. So, my Commandant, may I make a controversial suggestion?’

‘All right. Let’s hear it.’

‘We have an untapped source of labour of twenty million. Here in the Reich.’

‘Where?’

‘Sitting on either side of you, sir. Women. Womanpower.’

‘Impossible,’ said Doll contentedly. ‘Women and war? It flies in the face of our most cherished convictions.’

Zulz, Uhl, and Seedig murmured their agreement.

I said, ‘I know. But everybody else does it. The Anglo-Saxons do it. The Russians do it.’

‘All the more reason why we shouldn’t,’ said Doll. ‘You aren’t going to turn my wife into some sweaty Olga digging ditches.’

‘They do more than dig ditches, Major. The battery, the anti-aircraft battery that held up Hube’s panzers to the north of Stalingrad, and fought to the death, they were all women. Students, girls…’ I gave Alisz’s thigh a final clasp, then raised my arms and laughed, saying, ‘I’m being very reckless. And terribly indiscreet. I’m sorry, everyone. My dear old Uncle Martin likes chatting on the telephone, and by the end of the day it’s coming out of my ears. Or out of my mouth. Well, what about it, ladies?’

‘What about what?’ said Doll.

‘Joining up.’

Doll stood. ‘Don’t answer. Time to spirit him away. Can’t have this “intellectual” corrupting the womenfolk! Now. In my house it’s the gents who withdraw after dinner. Not to the Salon but to my lowly Arbeitzimmer. Where there will be cognac and cigars and serious talk of war. Sirs — if you would.’

Outside, the night was lined with something, something I had heard about but had yet to experience: the Silesian talent for winter. And it was September the third. I stood buttoning up my greatcoat, on the steps, under the coach-house lantern.

In Doll’s cluttered office all the men except Burckl and me talked shoutily about the wonders being worked by the Japanese in the Pacific (victories in Malaya, Burma, British Borneo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Manila, the Bataan Peninsula, the Solomon Islands, Sumatra, Korea, and West China) and lauded the generalship of Iida Shojiro, of Homma Masahuru, of Imamura Hitoshi, of Itagaki Seishiro. There was a quieter interlude, during which it was calmly agreed that the sclerotic empires and dithering democracies of the West were no match for the ascendant racial autocracies of the Axis. Things got noisier again while they discussed the forthcoming invasions of Turkey, Persia, India, Australia, and (of all places) Brazil…

At one point I felt Doll’s eyes on me. There was an unexpected silence and he said,

‘Looks a bit like Heydrich, nicht? There’s a resemblance.’

‘You’re not the first to see it, sir.’ Apart from Goring, who might have been a burgher out of Buddenbrooks , and apart from the ex-champagne salesman and aristocrat-impersonator, Ribbentrop (whom London society, during his absenteeist ambassadorship there, nicknamed the Wandering Aryan), Reinhard Heydrich was the only prominent Nazi who could pass for a pure Teuton, all the others being the usual Baltic/Alpine/Danubian mishmash. ‘Heydrich was in and out of the courts defending his ancestry,’ I said. ‘But all those rumours, Hauptsturmfuhrer, are quite baseless.’

Doll smiled. ‘Well let’s hope Thomsen here avoids the early death of the Protektor.’ He raised his voice, saying, ‘Winston Churchill is about to resign. He’s no choice. In favour of Eden, who’s less Jew-ridden. You know, when the Wehrmacht marches back victoriously from the Volga, and from what used to be Moscow and Leningrad, they’ll be disarmed by the SS at the border. From now on we’ll—’

The telephone rang. The telephone rang at eleven o’clock: a prearranged call from one of the Sekretar’s secretaries in Berlin (an obliging old girlfriend of mine). The room remained obediently still as I talked and listened.

‘Thank you, Miss Delmotte. Tell the Reichsleiter I understand.’ I rang off. ‘I’m sorry, gentlemen. You’ll have to excuse me. A courier is about to alight on my apartment in the Old Town. I must go and receive him.’

‘No rest for the wicked,’ said Doll.

‘None,’ I said with a bow.

In the sitting room Norberte Uhl lay like a toppled scarecrow on the sofa, attended to by Amalasand Burckl. Alisz Seisser sat rigid and staring on a low wooden bench, attended to by Trudel Zulz and Romhilde Seedig. Hannah Doll had just gone upstairs, and wasn’t expected to return. To no one in particular I said that I would see myself out, which I did, pausing for a minute or two in the passage at the foot of the stairs. The distant thunder of bathwater being run; the very slightly adhesive sound of bare feet; the scandalised creaking of the floorboards.

Out in the front garden I turned and looked up. I was hoping to see a naked or near-naked Hannah through the upstairs window, gazing down at me with parted lips (and inhaling huskily on a Davidoff). In this hope I was disappointed. Only the drawn curtains of fur or hide, and the trusting rectangular light from within. So I started out.

The arc lamps moved past in hundred-yard intervals. Huge black flies furred their grillwork. Yes, and a bat skittered past the creamy lens of the moon. From the Officers’ Club, I supposed, borne by the devious acoustics of the Kat Zet, came the sound of a popular ballad, ‘Say So Long Softly When We Part’. But I also detected footsteps behind me, and I turned again.

Almost hourly, here, you felt you were living in the grounds of a vast yet bursting madhouse. This was such a moment. A child of indeterminate sex in a floor-length nightgown was walking fast towards me — yes, fast, much too fast, they all moved much too fast.

The small shape strutted into the light. It was Humilia.

‘There,’ she said and handed me a blue envelope. ‘From Madam.’

Then she too turned, and walked quickly away.

Much have I struggled… I can no longer… Now I must… Sometimes a woman… My breasts ache when I… Meet me in the… I’ll come to you in your…

I walked for twenty minutes with such imaginings in my mind — past the outer boundary of the Zone of Interest, then through the empty lanes of the Old Town until I reached the square with its grey statue and the iron bench under the curving lamp post. There I sat and read.