Martin Amis - The Zone of Interest

‘Indeed there was.’ I went on boldly (Gerda being Gerda), ‘Sorry, old thing, but does Ehrengard count? Can I help with that?’

‘Oh yes.’ With gloved hands and quivering forearms Gerda hoisted a tureen the size of a bidet from oven to hob. ‘Oh yes, the dead ones count. They don’t have to be alive. When Hartmut was born and I applied for the gold Mutterkreuz — what were they going to say? No gold Mutterkreuz for you. One of them died so you’ve only got seven ?’

I stretched in my chair and said, ‘Now I remember. When you moved from silver to gold, Tantchen. With Hartmut. It was a proud day. Here, can I do anything?’

‘Stop being ridiculous, Neffe. Stay where you are. A nice glass of — what’s this? — Trockenbeerenauslese. There. Have a rollmop. What are you giving them?’

‘The children? Cold cash as usual. Strictly calibrated by age.’

‘You always give them too much, Neffe. It goes to their heads.’

‘… I was thinking, dear, that there might be a slight difficulty if your tenth is a boy,’ I said (such babies were automatically called Adolf, and assigned the same godfather). ‘You’ll have two Adolfs.’

‘That’s all right. We’re already calling Adolf Kronzi. In case.’

‘Very wise. By the way I’m sorry I called Rudi Rudi. I mean I’m sorry I called Helmut Rudi.’

Rudi’s name was changed, by court order, after Rudolf Hess, the noted mesmerist and clairvoyant (and number three in the Reich), flew alone to Scotland in May 1941, hoping to negotiate a truce with somebody he’d vaguely heard of called the Duke of Hamilton.

‘Don’t apologise,’ said Gerda. ‘I call Rudi Rudi all the time. Call Helmut Rudi, I mean. Oh and remember. Don’t call Ilse Ilse. Ilse’s now called Eike. Named for Frau Hess, so Ilse’s now Eike .’

While she laid a table for seven and readied two highchairs Aunt Gerda told anecdotes about various members of her domestic staff — the (scatter-brained) governess, the (shifty) gardener, the (sluttish) housemaid, and the (thieving) nanny. Then she went still and grew thoughtful.

‘They don’t have to be alive,’ she said. ‘The dead ones count.’

Meanwhile, Gerda’s husband, the Director of the Party Chancellery, the mastermind of the Wilhelmstrasse, was on his way to join us here at the old family home at Pullach in southern Bavaria. And where was he coming from? From the mountain retreat at the Obersalzberg in the Bavarian alps — from the official residence known as Berchtesgaden, or the Berghof, or the Kehlsteinhaus. Bards and dreamers called it the Eagle’s Nest…

With sudden indignation Gerda said, ‘Of course they count. Especially these days. Nobody would ever get to ten if they didn’t.’ She laughed scoffingly. ‘Of course the dead ones count.’

It was mid morning. Uncle Martin stood bent over the hall table, sorting and stacking the vast accumulations of his mail.

‘You’ve a good memory for the skirted staff on the third floor of the Sicherheitsdienst, haven’t you, Neffe? Knowing you. You dog. I need some help.’

‘How may I oblige?’

‘There’s a girl there I… Here, carry some of this, Golo. Put your arms out. I’ll load you up.’

With the world war now turning on its hinges, with the geohistorical future of Germany in question, and with the very existence of National Socialism itself under threat, the Reichsleiter had much to attend to.

‘Priorities, Neffe. First things first. See,’ he said forgivingly, ‘the Chief loves his vegetable soups. You could almost say he’s become dependent on his vegetable soups. And so might you, Golo, if you’d sworn off all meat, fish, and fowl. Well then. It transpires that his dietary cook at the Berghof is tricked out with a Jewish grandmother. And you can’t have someone of that sort cooking for the Chief.’

‘Obviously not.’

‘I fired her. And what happens? He rescinds it — and she’s back!’

‘It’s the vegetable soups, Onkel. Does his uh, does his companion ever cook?’

‘Fraulein Braun? No. All she ever does is pick the movies. And take photographs.’

‘Those two, Onkel, does he, do they actually…?’

‘Good question.’ He quickly held an envelope up to the light. ‘They certainly disappear together… You know, Golo, the Chief won’t take his clothes off even for his personal physician? Plus he’s fanatical about cleanliness. And so’s she. And when it comes to the bedroom, you have to… you can’t… you have to roll up your…’

‘Of course you do, Onkel.’

‘Steady it. Use your chin… Consider the matter from this angle, Neffe. The Chief went on from a Viennese dosshouse to become the king of Europe. It’s fatuous, it’s frivolous to expect him to be as other men are. I’d love some actual details — but who can I ask?… Gerda.’

‘Yes, Papi,’ she said, moving nearer as she passed by.

‘I want an explanation.’

‘Yes, Papi?’ she said, backing away.

In physical outline, the Bormanns resembled the Dolls. Gerda, my age, and a grand-looking woman, with many shades of painterly beauty in her face, was just over six foot in her clogs. And Uncle Martin was an even more compressed and therefore widened version of the Commandant — but darkly and sleekly attractive in his way, with a playful air and stimulating eyes. There was something juicy about his mouth; it was always ripening for a smile. Indicatively, too, Martin never seemed at all daunted by Gerda’s height; he strode along as if she made him taller, and this despite his proud paunch and his desk-job backside. He said,

‘The Christmas tree.’

‘They ganged up on me, Papi. They went behind my back to Hans.’

‘Gerda, I thought we saw eye to eye on religion at least. One drop of that gets into them and they’re poisoned for life.’

‘Exactly. I blame Charlemagne. For bringing it to Germany.’

‘Don’t blame Charlemagne. Blame Hans. Never again. Clear?’

‘Yes, Papi,’ we heard her whisper as we moved on.

Uncle Martin’s workroom, in Pullach: the ranks of gunmetal filing cabinets, the index-card consoles, the acres of sectioned table space, the stocky strongbox. I again thought of Doll, and Doll’s office and study — those two shameful poems of irresolution and neglect.

‘Onkel. What are you doing about Speer? The man’s a menace.’ For once I spoke feelingly: the youthful Minister of Armaments and War Production, with his startling simplifications (rationalising, standardising), was capable, as I then saw it, of postponing defeat by at least a year. ‘Why haven’t you acted?’

‘It’s too soon,’ said Uncle Martin, lighting a cigarette. ‘The Cripple’ — Goebbels (der Kruppel) — ‘is up Speer’s rump for now. And he has the ear of the Transvestite’ — Goring (der Transvestit). ‘But Speer will soon find out how weak he is against the Party. Which is code for me.’

Also smoking, I lay sprawled on a leather sofa to his right. I said,

‘Do you know why the Chief’s so sweet on him, Onkel? I’ll tell you. It’s not because he — I don’t know — streamlined the production of prismatic glass. No, he looks at Speer and he thinks, I would’ve been like that, I would have been him — an architect, a free creator — if I hadn’t been summoned by providence.’

Martin’s swivel chair had slowly turned towards me. ‘Well?’

‘Just make him seem like any other grasping satrap, Onkel. You know, creating difficulties, whining about resources. The bloom’ll soon go off him.’

‘Give it time… All right, Golo. Buna.’

As we entered the drawing room for midday drinks Uncle Martin was saying, ‘I sympathise, son. It’s enough to drive you wild. I get the same endless hand-wringing about the POWs and the foreign labour.’