Martin Amis - The Zone of Interest

She puts me in mind of Marguerite, of Pucci, of Xondra, of Booboo. It isn’t so much the sheeny make-up and the sections of extra Fleisch on view (and the shaven Achselhohlen!). It’s the look in the Augen — the look of artful calculation. The thing about such females, do you see, is that they’re continuously aware of Bett, of Sex. And whilst this is an appealing trait in a sophisticated companion, it is utterly excruciating in a wife.

I can only liken the sensation, when we’re alone… not to the aftermath of sexual failure but to its prospect . And that defies all intuition: for the last 8 months, with Hannah, there have been no failures (and no successes).

And she continues, downstairs, to look preoccupied and smug. Is she dreaming about the effeminate charms of Angelus Thomsen? I don’t believe she is. She’s just sneering at the thwarted virility of Paul Doll.

… Last night I was in my ‘lair’, quietly imbibing (in moderation, however, as I’ve reduced substantially of late). I heard the knob give its creak, and there she was, filling the doorway in her green ballgown, gloved to the elbows, her naked Schultern taking the coiled weight of her Haar. At once I felt my blood go loath and cold. Hannah stared at me, unblinking, until I turned away.

She advanced. Very heavily, and very noisily, she sat herself down on my lap. The armchair was fairly swamped by the crackling pleats of her dress. How I wanted this weight off me — how I wanted it off, off…

‘Do you know who you are?’ she whispered (and I could feel her lips against the down of my ears). ‘Do you?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Who am I?’

‘You’re a young single man, and a fucking fool of a Brownshirt, a violent fucking buffoon who marches with the Brownshirts. Who sings songs with the Brownshirts, Pilli.’

‘Go on. If you must.’

‘You’re a fucking chump of a Brownshirt who, tired of thinking dirty thoughts and playing with his Viper, falls asleep in his bunk and has the worst of all possible dreams. In this dream nobody does things to you. You do things to them. Terrible things. Unspeakably terrible things. Then you wake up.’

‘Then I wake up.’

‘Then you wake up and you find it’s all true. But you don’t mind. You go back to playing with your Viper. You go back to thinking dirty thoughts. Goodnight, Pilli. Kiss.’

Aspiration number 3. To shatter Judaeo-Bolshevism once and for all.

Now let’s think. We haven’t had much luck, so far, with Bolshevism. As for the Judaeo side of it…

Not long ago there was a widely discussed murder, in Linz, where a man stabbed his wife 137 times. People seemed to think this was somehow excessive. But I immediately saw the logic of it. The night logic of it.

We can’t stop now. Or what were we doing, what did we think we were about, over the last 2 years?

The war against the Anglo-Saxons does not resemble the war against the Jews. In the latter conflict, we enjoy, in military terms, a distinct advantage, as the other side has no army. And no navy and no air force.

(Reminder: have that word with Szmul soon .)

So let’s see. Living space. 1,000 Year Reich. Judaeo-Bolshevism.

Result? 2½ out of 3. Yech, I’ll drink to that.

Emergency summit in the Political Department! Myself, Fritz Mobius, Suitbert Seedig, and Rupprecht Strunck. Crisis at the Buna-Werke…

‘This cocksucker was mixing sand with the engine grease,’ said Rupprecht Strunck (a very slightly gross old party, if we’re perfectly honest about it). ‘To screw the gears.’

‘Wirtschaftssabotage!’ I lithely interjected.

‘And they’d weakened the rivets,’ said Suitbert. ‘So they’d pop. They also skewed the pressure gauges. False readings.’

‘Christ knows the extent of it,’ said Strunck. ‘There must be dozens of the shitpigs, with a coordinator on the floor. And there must be a mole. Inside Farben.’

‘How do we know that?’ asked Fritz.

Suitbert explained. The evildoers only tampered with equipment that was a long way away from ‘first use’. So by the time you deployed this or that piece of machinery, and the thing jammed, stalled, collapsed, or exploded, nobody had any idea who’d put it together. Strunck said,

‘They’ve got a fucking calendar of 1st use. Someone’s given them a fucking calendar.’

I smartly said, ‘Burckl!’

‘ No , Paul,’ said Fritz. ‘Burckl was just a sap. Never a traitor.’

‘And has the apprehended culprit been interrogated?’ I inquired.

‘Oh yes. He spent all last night with Horder. Nothing yet.’

‘A Jew I suppose.’

‘No. An Englishman. An NCO called Jenkins. We’ve got him in the crouchbox for now. Then Off will have a go. Then Entress with the scalpel. See how he likes that.’ Fritz stood, stacking his papers. ‘Not a whisper of this to anyone. Not a whisper to Farben, Doktor Seedig, Standartenfuhrer Strunck. Sit on your hands, mein Kommandant. Understood, Paul? And for the love of God, don’t go blabbing to Prufer .’

Of course the girls are dying to trot around on that little wreck Meinrad, but he’s got curb now and can hardly walk. Nor, for some time, have we been able to depend on the weekly ministrations of Tierpfleger Seisser! Ach. Now we just get the odd visit from Bent Suchanek, the schludrig muleskinner loosely attached to the Equestrian Academy.

She was a rare bird, a Judin Prominent in the SS-Hygienic Institute (the SS-HI), 1 of several prisoner doctors who, under close supervision of course, did lab work on bacteriology and experimental sera. Unlike the Ka Be (an indigent hospice or holding pound) and unlike Block 10 (a free-for-all of castrations and hysterectomies), the SS-HI bore quite persuasive resemblances to an establishment devoted to medicine. I went there for the introductory chat, but for our 2nd meeting I had her over to a quiet stockroom in the MAB.

‘Please sit.’

A Polish — German, her name was Miriam Luxemburg (and her mother was said to be a niece of Rosa Luxemburg, the famous Marxist ‘intellectual’), and she’d been with us for 2 years. Now women do not on the whole age gracefully in the KL — but it’s chiefly complete lack of food that does that (and even hunger, chronic hunger, can wipe away all the feminine essences in 6 or 7 months). Dr Luxemburg looked about 50, and was probably about 30; but it wasn’t malnutrition that had reduced her hair to a kind of mould and turned her lips outside in. She had some flesh on her and, moreover, seemed tolerably clean.

‘For security reasons it’ll have to be done around midnight,’ I said. ‘You’ll bring your own gear of course. What else’ll you need?’

‘Clean towels and plenty of boiling water, sir.’

‘You’re just going to give her a preparation, aren’t you? You know, 1 of those tube pills they talk about.’

‘There are no tube pills, sir. The procedure will be dilation and curettage.’

‘Well, whatever you have to do. Oh by the way,’ I said. ‘It’s possible that the directive may be subject to change.’ I spoke, as it were, conjecturally. ‘Yes, the orders from Berlin may quite possibly undergo modification.’

My initial offer of 6 bread rations having been dismissed with some hauteur, I now passed along a paper bag containing 2 sleeves of Davidoffs, and there would be 2 more to follow: 800 cigarettes. She intended, I knew, to expend this capital on her brother, who was struggling, somewhat, in a penal Kommando in the uranium mines beyond Furstengrube.

‘Modified in what way, sir?’

‘The Chancellery may yet opt’, I explained, ‘for a slightly different outcome. Wherein the procedure does not go well. From the patient’s point of view.’