Martin Amis - The Zone of Interest

‘How d’you mean, worse ?’

‘You don’t deceive them any more,’ said Zulz. ‘Well you don’t, do you Paul. There are very unpleasant scenes nearly every time.’

‘And that’s all my fault, is it?’

‘Keep your hair on, Kommandant. Hear us out at least… Paul. Please.’

I sat there seething. ‘Very well. What, in your view, do I happen to be doing wrong?’

‘Your inductionary address. Paul, my friend, it’s… It’s very basic. You sound so insincere. As if you don’t believe it yourself.’

‘Well of course I don’t believe it myself,’ I said in a businesslike manner. ‘How could I? You think I’m off my head?’

‘You know what we’re getting at.’

‘… The business of the barrel, mein Kommandant,’ said Professor Entress. ‘Can we at least do away with that?’

‘What’s wrong with the business of the barrel?’ The barrel: this was a wheeze I dreamt up in October. Concluding my speech of welcome, I’d say, Leave your valuables with your clothing and pick them up after the shower. But if there’s anything you especially treasure and can’t afford to be without, then pop it in the barrel at the end of the ramp. I asked, ‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘It stirs unease,’ said Entress. ‘Are their valuables safe or aren’t they?’

‘Only the juvenile and the senescent fall for that 1, Kommandant,’ said Zulz. ‘All we ever find in the barrel’s a jar of blood-thinners or a teddy bear.’

‘With respect, Sturmbannfuhrer, give the megaphone to 1 of us,’ said Dr Bodman. ‘After all, we’re trained to reassure.’

‘Bedside manner, Sturmbannfuhrer,’ said Dr Rauke.

Rauke, Bodman, and Entress took their leave; Zulz ominously lingered.

‘My dear old friend,’ he said. ‘You should take a rest from the ramp. Oh, I know how dedicated you are. Go easier on yourself, Paul. I speak as a physician. As a healer.’

A healer? Ja, pull the other 1. But why did I swallow, and why did my nose itch, when he said my dear old friend ?

So much for the smaller picture. On the macro scale, I’m overjoyed to report, the canvas is blindingly bright!

It’s a good time — as autumn becomes winter, and as 1943 impends — for us to ‘take stock’, to have a bit of a breather and look back on the past. We’re not all of us superhuman, not by any manner of means; and there have been moments, during this great Anstrengung of ours (like the terrifying reverse before Moscow), when I succumbed to an almost dreamlike vertigo of weakness and doubt. No longer. Ach, vindication is sweet. Wir haben also doch recht!

The Deliverer made it clear in his major oration of October 1 that the Judaeo-Bolshevik stronghold on the Volga was approximately ¾s overrun. He prophesied that the city would fall within the month; and although this proved overly optimistic, nobody doubts that the swastika will be rippling over the ruins in good time for Christmas. As to the remaining population, Hauptsturmfuhrer Uhl tells me that the women and children will be deported, and all the menfolk shot. And this decision, whilst stern, is surely correct — due tribute to the scale of the Aryan offering.

Triumphalism tempts me not in the slightest, for National Socialists never boast or crow. We unsmilingly turn, rather, to a mature assessment of the historic responsibilities. Eurasia is ours; we will purify even as we pacify, whilst also fanning out, as acknowledged suzerains, over the resistless nations of the West. I raise my glass to General Friedrich Paulus and his valiant 6th Army. All hail our ineluctable victory in the Battle of Stalingrad!

Szmul finally came up with a body count for the Spring Meadow.

‘That’s a bit steep, isn’t it?’

‘If anything, sir, it’s probably an underestimate.’

‘Na. So now I divide by 2, ne?’

‘I’ve already done that, sir.’

The figure was always going to be fairly high, true, as it included not only the transports up to the time when cremation was first employed, but also the prisoners in the Stammlager who died of natural causes during the winter of 1941–2, when the coal-fired crema near the Ka Be was out of action for a considerable period of time.

Still. 107,000…

‘We were all very stirred by your speech,’ said Hannah at breakfast.

I calmly buttered my roll. ‘It went down tolerably well, I fancy.’

‘Think. 14 Brownshirts! A massacre. Have you ever known that many men die at once?’

‘Ach. It happens.’

‘Brown,’ she said. ‘Such a gorgeous colour. With beautiful associations.’

‘… What associations, Hannah?’

‘The soil, of course. The earth .’ She reached for an apple. ‘Shame about the last hour, Pilli. How many cases of hypothermia and frostbite?’

‘Yech, it should’ve been a 1-minute silence per martyr. Not 3.’

She said, ‘ Kurt and Willi ’s on at 5. I heard the little extract. Sounds intriguing. Paul, let’s listen to it together. Like we used to.’

The unfamiliar congeniality of her tone put me on my guard. But what was there to fear from Kurt and Willi ? I slapped my thigh and said, ‘ Kurt and Willi ? Yes, let’s. I love Kurt and Willi . Haven’t heard from Kurt and Willi for months. A bit “off”, mind you — die BBC! — but where’s the harm in Kurt and Willi ?’

Just the 1 transport that day, at 13.37. Baldemar Zulz did the necessary with the megaphone. We apologise for the lack of sanitary facilities in the boxcars. All the more reason, though, for a hot shower and a light disinfection — because there are no diseases here and we don’t want any . Frightfully good, that, I had to admit. The stethoscope, the white coat (the black boots) — awfully good. Oh, and would diabetics and those with special dietary needs report to Dr Bodman after supper at the Visitors’ Lodge. Thank you . Fearfully good, that, really 1st rate…

In the Little Brown Bower, as the atmosphere suddenly worsened and there was that dry-throated mutter we all know so well, I felt a cold damp presence invade my ungloved left hand. Took a look: I had been latched on to by a little girl of 4 or 5. My reaction was strangely slow in coming (to rear back with a snarl); I stifled it, and was able — with great effort and greater unease — to do my duty and go on standing there as required.

*

16.55: the master bedroom.

‘Has it begun yet?… Oh and did Willi ever buy that car?’

Sitting on a chair with her back to the window, and warmly colourful against the damp gauze of the autumn sky, Hannah was significantly attired. There were but the 2 items of apparel (I couldn’t see if she were wearing slippers): the royal-blue kimono with which I presented her on the occasion of our wedding (the fringed sash, the vast sleeves); and, next to her skin, that special white Unterkleid, or ‘camisole’. This 2nd garment was also a gift bestowed on Hannah by her husband; I picked it up in Kalifornia the day before she joined me here at the KL (though when I suggested, the next night, that we ‘try it out’, madam seemed not best pleased). Albeit controversial, it was a gorgeous article of clothing, a semi-transparent creamy white veneering of the sheerest silk, smoother than a baby’s sit-upon…

‘Some light comedy,’ I said, rubbing my hands together as I relaxed on the settee at the end of the bed. ‘ Kurt and Willi ’s what we want — not all that propaganda. How’s Kurt’s mother-in-law? That’s always good for a laugh.’

She said nothing and reached for the dial.

A jaunty run on the accordion gave way to the muttering and clinking of a typical Bierstube in the Potsdamer Platz. Kurt and Willi exchanged ‘the German greeting’ — rather apathetically, in my view — and then we heard the accents of Berlin (you know, with the ‘g’ sounding like a ‘y’ und so, ne?).