Martin Amis - The Zone of Interest

‘Paul!’

‘Yes yes .’

When we arrived at the theatre in Furstengrube and hurried, just before the lights went down, to our seats in the middle of the front row, a murmur of envious admiration swept the house; and I confess to feeling a lovely warm glow of pride, albeit 1 tinged with poignancy. Everybody there, I’m sure, chalked up the Kommandant’s tardiness to an impulsive ‘bout’ in the master bedroom. Alas. How could they know of Frau Doll’s miserable deficiencies in this sphere? I looked sadly at Hannah’s beautiful face — the width of the Mund, the strength of the Kiefer, the savage Zahnen — and then the darkness came.

… I was soon wondering if I would ever again be able to attend a mass assemblage without my mind starting to play tricks on me. It wasn’t like the last occasion, when I became gradually immersed in the logistical challenge of gassing the audience. No. This time I at once imagined that the people behind me were already dead — already dead, and recently exhumed for immolation on the pyre. And how sweet the Aryans smelled! If I rendered them into smoke and flame, the burning bones (I felt confident) would not forsake that fresh aroma!

And then, do you know, in the fever of my ‘trance’ (this was during the final bit, the ballet und so) it seemed to me that the Deliverer urgently needed to be apprised of my discovery. Even as they pass through nature to eternity, the children of the Teutons do not rot and reek . We would go together, he and I, and present these findings to the bar of history, so that Clio herself might smile and hymn the courage and justice of our cause… Then, dismayingly, it was all over, and the darkness fled in a cataract of acclaim.

I turned, beaming, to my wife. Who was now completely hideous — with stretched and quivering Kinn, with blood-red Augen, and a bubble of mucus in her left Nasenloch, which abruptly popped.

‘Ach,’ I said.

… There were long queues for the toilets, and when I regained the foyer my wife was standing in a group that included the Seedigs and the Zulzes, plus Fritz Mobius, Angelus Thomsen, and Drogo Uhl. Pawed at by the beaming Ilse Grese, Boris Eltz, who, clearly, was disgustingly drunk, sat to the side with his face in his hands.

‘Choreographed by Saint-Leon,’ Mobius was saying to Seedig. ‘Music by Delibes.’ He turned and gazed down at me from his great height. ‘Ah here’s the Kommandant. I take it you’ve heard, Paul. Because you don’t look too clever.’

This was doubtlessly true. In the lavatory I found that the two wedges of newsprint in my boots were sopping with perspiration. As a result, perhaps, I felt intolerably parched, and I took from the rusting faucet 2 cupped handfuls of warm and yellowy water. After an uneasy couple of minutes there followed several jolts of projectile vomitus, which I skilfully directed into the tin trough of the urinal. 5 or 6 SS came and went whilst I did this. Now Mobius raised his voice, saying,

‘Manstein’s been turned and is in retreat. Zhukov gave him a mauling 50 kilometres to the west.’

There was silence. I swivelled and paced with my hands folded behind my back. I heard a squelching sound.

‘Stepped in a puddle earlier on!’ I cried with a resurgence of my customary verve. ‘Both feet too. Just my luck.’ At this point I felt I had to say something — all eyes were on me — in my capacity as Kommandant. ‘… So!’ I began. ‘The 6th Army fights on alone, nicht? It so happens that I’m quite “up” on Stalingrad. Young Prufer, no? He has a… I am confident,’ I said, ‘I am more than confident that Paulus will take all the necessary measures’, I went on, ‘to ensure that he doesn’t get encircled.’

‘Herrgott noch mal, Paul, he’s already encircled,’ said Mobius. ‘Zhukov smashed through the Romanians weeks ago. We’re noosed.’

Thomsen said, ‘Farewell to the oil of the Donetz basin. Forward to the oil of the Buna-Werke. Now tell me, Frau Doll, tell me, Frau Uhl — how are your lovely girls?’

… The next day my Volksempfanger, which quite properly confines itself to the Nationalsozialistische station, was going on about our ‘heroic stand’ in the Caucasus. The 6th Army was likened to the Spartans at Thermopylae. But didn’t the Spartans all get killed?

Hannah’s started doing something very queer in the bathroom. I can only see her lower extremities — because she’s on the chair by the towel rack, nicht? Her long-toed feet flex and stretch, as if she… Some sort of erotic reverie, I suppose. She’s thinking of her nights (her afternoons, her mornings) doing God knows what with friend Kruger. It’s thoughts of Kruger (and a post-war liaison?) that whisk her Fotze to the boil.

Well, it’s nothing to do with Thomsen. They never went near each other except at functions. Now he’s gone, Steinke is of course off the payroll (and to forestall any chance of future embarrassment I’ve had him dealt with, utilising the concordant modality).

Kruger lives. Hourly I await corroboration from the Chancellery.

Then 1 more piece of the jigsaw will slot into place.

Young Prufer, unlike his hapless sibling, went home for Christmas. And I lost little time in bearding him on his return, saying,

‘Did you know they were encircled?’

‘Yes. They’ve been encircled for well over a month.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me? I looked a real…’

‘I couldn’t risk it, Sturmbannfuhrer. It’s now a very serious offence — putting something like that in a letter. Irmfried said it in baby code.’

‘Baby code?’

‘Our private language. So only I’d understand. I’m sorry, sir, but I didn’t want to put him in a spot. I reckon he’s got enough to be going on with. He says they all look like icicles. 2 weeks ago he watched some men decapitate the rotten carcass of a mule. They ate the brains with their bare hands.’

‘Mm. But for a German soldier… How’s morale?’

‘Could be higher, quite honestly. On Christmas Eve the men were weeping like children. They’ve convinced themselves that they’re being punished by God for all those things they did in Ukraine. Last year.’

‘Na. Last year.’ I grew pensive, and after a while Prufer said,

‘But let me put your mind at rest, mein Kommandant. There’ll be no thought of surrender. Those boys aren’t just crack soldiers — they’re National Socialists. None more so than Friedrich Paulus, who seems to be made out of tempered steel. They’ll fight to the last bullet.’

‘Have they got any bullets?’

Prufer’s earnest young face sustained a rise in emotion, and his voice thickened.

‘A German warrior knows how to die, I trust. I think a German warrior understands what is meant by Sein oder Nichtsein. Oh, I think so. A German warrior knows what that involves, I believe.’

‘So how will it go, Wolfram?’

‘Well. The Generalfeldmarschall will have to commit suicide of course. Eventually. And the 6th will go down in a storm of glory. It’ll cost the enemy dear — of that we may be certain. And who’ll be the victor in the end, Paul? German prestige. And German honour, mein Kommandant!’

‘Indubitably,’ I concurred. I sat up straight, I drew in breath. ‘You’re right about the prestige, Hauptsturmfuhrer. When a ¼ of a 1,000,000 men joyfully give up their lives — in the service of an idea…’

‘Yes, Paul?’

‘ That issues a communiqué, Wolfram, that will make the world tremble. Guerre à mort . No surrender!’

‘Bravo, mein Kommandant,’ said Prufer. ‘No surrender. Hear him! Hear him!’

And it was going so well, it was going so well for once, and they were are all calmly undressing, and it was quite warm in the Little Brown Bower, and Szmul was there, and his Sonders were darning their way through the throng, and it was all going so beautifully, and the birds outside were singing so prettily, and I found I even ‘believed’ for a moist and misty interlude that we really were looking after these deeply inconvenienced folk, that we really were going to cleanse them and reclothe them and feed them and give them warm beds for the night, and I knew someone would spoil it, I knew someone would ruin it and madden my nightmares, and she did, coming at me not with violence or anathema, no, not at all, a very young woman, naked, and tensely beautiful, every inch, coming at me with a shrug, then a gesture with her slowly raised hands, then almost a smile, then another shrug, then a single word before she moved on.