Martin Amis - The Zone of Interest

I am now faced with the duty of recording an unpleasant truth. As Hannah read, her face 1st showed horror, then puzzled concentration, until… Towards the end, each time, her free Hand was at her Kehle; after a while it slid downwards somewhat, and appeared to caress the Brust area (her Schultern, in addition, were tensely turned in on themselves). How I felt, as a husband, confronted with that, may be fairly easily imagined. And that wasn’t the end of it. Despite the obvious fact that she was aroused — despite the clear actuality that the female essences had stirred in her (the moistenings, the quickenings, the secret glistenings) — Hannah didn’t even have the common decency to take a bath.

And ever since she’s had this expression on her face. Contented, serene: in a word, unendurably smug. Moreover, she is physically abloom. She looks like she looked when she was 3 months pregnant. Full of power.

Mobius of the Politische Abteilung thinks we’ve got to do something about the Poles.

‘How many Poles?’

‘Not finalised. I’d say in the 250 range.’ He tapped the file on his desk. ‘A big job.’

‘250.’ It didn’t sound very big to me — but I was by now almost unhinged by the astronomical numbers relayed to me by Szmul at the Meadow. ‘Yes, I suppose that’s fairly extensive.’

‘And it’s our own fault in a way.’

‘How d’you work that 1 out?’

‘All that stuff at the tannery.’ He sighed. ‘Slightly insensitive, don’t you think?’

‘I’m sorry, old boy, I don’t quite follow.’

‘All those odds and ends should never have left Kalifornia.’

‘What odds and ends?’

‘Come on, Paul — wake up.’ He then said heavily, ‘All that rubbish from the pacification of the area round Lublin . Peasant clothes. Tiny slippers. Crude rosaries. Missals.’

‘What’re missals?’

‘Not really sure. I’m just going by Erkel’s report. Some kind of filthy prayer book, I expect. They’re very Catholic up there. Have you seen the condition of those men? It’s a scandal. How did we let that happen?’

‘Prufer.’

‘Prufer. This mustn’t wait. It’ll be touch-and-go as it is. They aren’t Jews, Paul. They aren’t old ladies and little boys.’

‘Do they know, the Poles?’

‘Not yet. They have their suspicions, of course. But they don’t know.’

‘What do they hope’ll happen?’

‘That they’ll just get dispersed. Sent hither and yon. But it’s too late for that.’

‘Oh well. Get the list to me tonight. Ne?’

‘Zu befehl, mein Kommandant.’

As the bearer of 2 Iron Crosses (2nd class and 1st), I am perfectly secure in my virility, thank you very much, and need make no nervous boasts about the force of my libido — in the matter of the carnal urge, as in everything else, I am completely normal.

Hannah’s tragic frigidity unmasked itself fairly early on in our marriage, just after I swept her off to Schweinfurt for our honeymoon (her initial unresponsiveness, earlier, as our intimacy bloomed, I had attributed to medical considerations; but these no longer obtained). Personally, I laid it at the door of Dieter Kruger. And yet I faced the challenge awaiting me with the proverbial brash optimism of youth (or of relative youth, being 29). I felt sure that, over time, she would begin to respond to my gentleness, my sensitivity, and my extraordinary patience — a stoicism fortified by the purity of my love. But then there was a further development.

We were wed at Christmastide in ’28. 1 week later, after our return to the environs of Rosenheim, Hannah’s intuition was officially verified: she was 6 weeks gone. And this changed everything. You see, I happen to adhere to the doctrine propounded by that great Russian writer and thinker, Count Tolstoy, who, in an oeuvre whose title escapes me (it featured a German name, which was what piqued my interest… Got it! ‘Kreutzer’!), calls for the eschewal of all erotic activity, not only during the months of gestation but also throughout the period of lactation .

It’s not that I’m particularly nauseated by natural processes in a female. It’s simply the principle of the thing: reverence for new life, for the priceless and inviolable formation of a fresh human being… We discussed it all quite openly, and Hannah, with a rueful smile, soon acceded to the superiority of my arguments. Paulette and Sybil were born in the summer of ’29 — to our inestimable joy! And then my wife proceeded to nurse the twins for the next 3½ years.

The atmosphere between us, it’s fair to say, grew increasingly strained. So by the time spousal relations were at last set to resume, we were — how shall I put this? — virtual strangers to each other. That 1st night, with the candlelit dinner, the flowers, the subdued lighting and soft music, the timely retirement, that 1st night was very far from being a success. After some preludial difficulties, I was in the end perfectly ready to perform — but Hannah proved quite unable to make herself mistress of her tension. It was no better the next night, or the next, or the next. I begged her to go back on her medication (or at least see the doctor and procure some sort of unguent), all to no avail.

The time was early 1933. And the Glorious Revolution was about to come to my aid. Permit me if I smile — just as Clio, the muse of history, must have smiled as she relished the irony. After the Reichstag Fire (February 27), and the myriad arrests that followed it, the very man who had brought such sadness to my bedroom became the source of erotic relief. I mean friend Kruger. Ach, but that’s another story.

Was it any wonder that, meanwhile, as a healthy young man with normal needs, I’d been obliged to look elsewhere?

To begin with there was a series of intensely lyrical, almost Edenic dalliances with various…

A knock at the door.

‘Come in,’ I said. ‘Ah. Humilia.’

With Mobius’s list.

Have you noticed, at night, whilst drowsing, that when you reach down to readjust the sheet, you often find that this necessitates lifting yourself free of it? And what an enormous effort it seems to demand of you. It’s a big thing, the body, a big, heavy thing, and this is a living body, mine — all right, soggy with sleep, but buoyant with life, life!

‘Vile morning, I’m afraid. Are we off then, Sturmbannfuhrer?’

‘Yes yes. I’m coming for pity’s sake.’

‘All is well, mein Kommandant?’

I joined Prufer on the skiddy porch. A grey mist, weakly pullulating with grey snow — fat wet flakes of it. I cleared my throat and said, ‘Which Bunker are we? I forget.’

… Stanislaw Stawiszynski, Tadeusz Dziedzic, Henryk Pileski — now and then, the night before, as I ran through Mobius’s ‘bill of fare’, I was able to put a face to a name. And I realised that at least some of these men were truly legendary workers, veritable Stakhanovites, human sawmills and steamrollers, who regularly did a whole month in the coal mine at Furstengrube, and then (after a few weeks humping railway ties) went back for more… Seated at my study desk, massaging my brow under the lamp, I began to have serious doubts about the measure Mobius proposed, and as a result (what with my other troubles) I drank far, far too much Riesling, vodka, armagnac, and above all slivovitz, and didn’t get to bed until 04.07.

So I was feeling very seedy indeed when, at 06.28, I took my place on the bench behind the table in the basement of Bunker 3 (redbrick, windowless). Also present, apart from Prufer, Mobius, and myself: 2 Agents from the Political Section, plus captains Drogo Uhl and Boris Eltz. There was also a translator from the Postzensurstelle whom Prufer dismissed: the Poles, he said, were all ‘old numbers’ and understood German well enough… Stacking his papers, Mobius coolly told me that he foresaw no complications. Uhl started to hum under his breath. Eltz lit a cigarette and muffled a yawn. And after a while I sat back and managed a contented albeit crapulent gurgle. I shouldn’t have had that Phanodorm at 05.05. Everything I looked at seemed to blur and ripple like a radiator giving off heat.