Martin Amis - The Zone of Interest

It is urgently necessary, then, that we retroactively ‘normalise’ our past dealings, you and I. As a qualified Referendar, I have given the thing a good deal of plodding thought, and here is the version, and the sequence, I think we should stick to. It sounds complicated but it’s really very simple. The key is your certainty that Doll no longer knows the status or whereabouts of Dieter Kruger.

Now memorise this.

In the letter brought to me by Humilia, you asked me to do you a service, and said you could be found on Fridays at the Summer Huts. At our meeting there, I agreed to make inquiries about DK — reluctantly, because (of course) I resent anything that distracts me from my sacred mission at the Buna-Werke.

This second communication, the one you hold in your hand, is my report. Doll knows about the first letter, and it’s likely he knows about the second (again, we were observed). If he starts to question you — then be quick to open up, freely. And when he asks you what I discovered, you should simply announce that you’re not going to tell him. I will now inquire about DK (and so no doubt will your husband).

From here on we cannot meet, except communally — and no more letters. I have to say that I am deeply uneasy about what you propose for your side of it: your plan, so to speak, for the home front. As things stand, Doll will have no reason to strike out at you. But if your plan works, he won’t need a reason. Still, you seem resolved, and this decision is of course yours to make.

Let me now say something from the heart.

The letter continued for another two pages.

Her plan, it should be noted, was to do everything in her power to hasten the psychological collapse of the Commandant.

‘Take that look off your face, Golo. It’s absolutely nauseating.’

‘… What?’

‘The meek smile. Like an altruistic schoolboy… I see. So there’s been some kind of breakthrough, has there. And that’s why you’ve clammed up on me.’

I was in the kitchen making breakfast. Boris had spent the night (under a heap of old curtains on the sitting-room floor) and was now crouched down rebuilding the fire, using crunched-up pages of The Racial Observer and The Stormer . Outside, the fourth week of uncompromising October weather, with low, heavy clouds, constant rain and wet mist, and, underfoot, a boundless latrine of purplish brown slime.

Referring to The Stormer (an illiterate hate-sheet run by Julius Streicher, the child-molesting Gauleiter of Franconia), Boris said, ‘Why do you take this wank mag? Old Yid Drugs Teen Blonde. Officers aren’t supposed to read The Stormer in camp. It’s the Old Boozer’s personal directive. He’s that refined. Well, Golo?’

‘… Don’t worry, I won’t be laying a finger on her here. Ruled out.’

‘The Hotel Zotar and all that?’

‘Ruled out.’ I asked him how many eggs he wanted and how he wanted them (six, fried). ‘Nothing clandestine. I’ll only be seeing her in company.’

‘You’ll be seeing her on the ninth of course.’

‘The ninth? Oh yeah, the ninth. Why do they go on about November the ninth?’

‘I know. You’d think they’d murder anyone who dared mention it.’

‘I know. But they go on about it… Doll and the Poles, Boris.’

‘Bunker 3?’ Boris laughed happily and said, ‘Oh, Golo, the state of old fat-arse. Christ. With his wall-eyed hangover. And his fluttering hands.’

‘Not everyone’s brave, my dear.’

‘True, Golo. Excellent coffee, this. Mm, the Poles. Well, even I thought it was a bit on the sporty side. Telling three hundred circus strongmen they’re about to be topped.’

‘Still, you assumed…’

‘That Mobius had done the necessary. Which he had. But Doll. We mustn’t be mean, Golo. Let’s just say Doll was beholden to his brown trousers.’

‘And everyone could tell.’

‘He gave out a whimper and sort of waggled his arms in the air. Like this. Mobius went, Commandant! And Doll’s breath smelled of sick.’

‘Anyway.’ I refilled our cups, adding Boris’s three sugars and stirring them in. ‘Anyway, you went ahead with it.’

‘They were Home Army. It was the first sensible order I’d had in months… Mm, they certainly knew how to die. Chest out, head up.’

We ate in silence.

‘Oh, stop it, Golo. That look.’

I said, ‘Indulge your old friend. I won’t do it often. Most of the time I’m in agony.’

‘About what? The waiting? About what?’

‘Being here. This is… This is no place for delicate feelings, Boris.’ Yes, I thought. I used to be numb; now I’m raw. ‘Being here.’

‘Mm. Here.’

After some thought I said, ‘I’m going to take a vow of silence on Hannah. But before I do I just want you to… I’m in love.’

Boris’s shoulders went slack. ‘Oh, no .’

I gathered the plates and the cutlery. ‘All right, I don’t disagree, brother. It’s hard to imagine it ending well. Now. That’ll do.’

We sat smoking in the other room. The illustrious mouser, Maksik (newly arrived), his undercarriage an inch from the floor, was nosing round the low kitchen shelves; abruptly he sat and, in incensed irritation, scratched his ear with a violent hindpaw.

‘She’s not bad, is she…’ Boris meant Agnes. ‘Oh and Esther — Esther’s fine for now, by the way. I got her off the vet detail,’ he said with (I thought) a touch of smugness. ‘Too much outdoor work. Yes, and I saw Alisz Seisser. Had you heard?’

‘Yes. Roma or Sinti?’

‘Alisz is a Sintiza,’ he said wistfully. ‘So sweet.’

‘So she’s ruled out too.’

‘Mm. Give Alisz so much as a peck on the cheek, and you’re breaking the law. The Law, Golo, for the Protection of German Blood.’

‘And German Honour, Boris. What do you get for that?’

‘Depends who you are. It’s usually all right so long as you’re the Aryan. And so long as you’re the man, of course. But me, I’m on probation.’ He took his lower lip between his teeth. ‘And it’d be just like them to give me another year here. Oh, and nice news from Egypt, isn’t it.’

‘Mm,’ I said. This was the defeat of Germany’s ablest soldier, Rommel, by the British at El Alamein. ‘And why’s everyone gone quiet about Stalingrad?’

Boris examined the coal of his cigarette. ‘I haven’t done it for years, but I’m thinking more about the past. Now.’

‘We all are.’

It was a Tuesday. That afternoon at four o’clock Hannah came out of the glass doors of the breakfast room and took a five-minute turn round the garden — under an umbrella, and wrapped up in a kind of hoodless duffel coat. She didn’t look in what she knew to be my direction. I was up in the Monopoly Building, where they keep all the uniforms, the boots, the belts…

Paul Doll was not her first lover.

1928, and Hannah had just enrolled at the University of Rosenheim in southern Bavaria (French and English); Dieter Kruger was on the faculty (Marx and Engels). With two friends she started going to a course of lectures he was giving — for the simple reason that he was so handsome. We all had mad crushes on him . One day he took her aside and asked her if she felt passionate about the Communist cause; she untruthfully said that she did. He then asked her to come along to the weekly meetings he chaired in the back room of a downtown Kaffeehaus. This was the Group. So it emerged that the husky Kruger was not just an academic but also an activist, not just a don but a streetfighter (there were running battles — with guns, even grenades: the Roter Frontkampferbund versus an array of Right factions, including the NSDAP). He and Hannah began an affair and moved in together, more or less (it was known as taking adjacent rooms ). Kruger was thirty-four; Hannah was eighteen.