Martin Amis - The Zone of Interest

(I like numbers. They speak of logic, exactitude, and thrift. I’m a little uncertain, sometimes, about ‘one’ — about whether it denotes quantity, or is being used as a… ‘pronoun’? But consistency’s the thing. And I like numbers. Numbers, numerals, integers. Digits!)

19.01 very slowly became 19.02. We felt the hums and tremors in the rails, and I too felt a rush of energy and strength. There we stood, quite still for a moment, the waiting figures on the spur, at the far end of a rising plain, steppelike in its vastness. The track stretched halfway to the horizon, where, at last, ST 105 silently materialised.

On it came. Coolly I raised my powerful binoculars: the high-shouldered torso of the locomotive, with its single eye, its squat spout. Now the train leaned sideways as it climbed.

‘Passenger cars,’ I said. This was not so unusual with transports from the west. ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘3 classes ’… The carriages streamed sideways, carriages of yellow and terracotta, Première, Deuxième, Troisième — JEP, NORD, La Flèche d’Or . Professor Zulz, our head doctor, said drily,

‘Three classes? Well, you know the French. They do everything in style.’

‘Too true, Professor,’ I rejoined. ‘Even the way they hoist the white flag has a certain — a certain je ne sais quoi . Not so?’

The good doctor chuckled heartily and said, ‘Damn you, Paul. Touché, my Kommandant.’

Oh yes, we bantered and smiled in the collegial fashion, but make no mistake: we were ready. I motioned with my right hand to Captain Eltz, as the troops — under orders to stand back — took up their positions along the length of the siding. The Golden Arrow pulled in, slowed, and halted with a fierce pneumatic sigh.

Now they’re quite right when they say that 1,000 per train is the soundest ‘rule of thumb’ (and that up to 90 % of them will be selected Left). I was already surmising, however, that the customary guidelines would be of scant help to me here.

First to disembark were not the usual trotting shapes of uniformed servicemen or gendarmes but a scattered contingent of baffled-looking middle-aged ‘stewards’ (they wore white bands on the sleeves of their civilian suits). There came another exhausted gasp from the engine, and the scene settled into silence.

Another carriage door swung open. And who alighted? A little boy of about 8 or 9, in a sailor suit, with extravagant bell-bottomed trousers; then an elderly gentleman in an astrakhan overcoat; and then a cronelike figure bent over the pearl handle of an ebony cane — so bent, indeed, that the stick was too high for her, and she had to reach upwards to keep her palm on its glossy knob. Now the other carriage doors opened, and the other passengers detrained.

Well, by this time I was grinning widely and shaking my head, and quietly cursing that old lunatic Walli Pabst — as his telegram of ‘warning’ was clearly nothing more than a practical joke!

A shipment of 1,000? Why, it comprised barely 100. As for the Selektion: all but a few were under 10 or over 60; and even the young adults among them were, so to speak, selected already.

Look. That 30-year-old male has a broad chest, true, but he also has a club foot. That brawny maiden is in the pink of health, assuredly, and yet she is with child. Elsewhere — spinal braces, white sticks.

‘Well, Professor, go about your work,’ I quipped. ‘A stern call on your prognostical skills.’

Zulz of course was looking at me with dancing eyes.

‘Fear not,’ he said. ‘Asclepius and Panacea wing their way to my aid. I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art . Paracelsus be my guide.’

‘Tell you what. Go back to the Ka Be,’ I suggested, ‘and do some selecting there. Or have an early supper. It’s poached duck.’

‘Oh, well,’ he said, producing his flask. ‘Now we’re about it. Care for a drop? It’s a lovely evening. I’ll keep you company, if I may.’

He dismissed the junior physicians. I too gave orders to Captain Eltz, and pared my forces, retaining only a 12-strong platoon, 6 Sonders, 3 Kapos, 2 disinfectors (a wise precaution, as it transpired!), the 7 violinists, and Senior Supervisor Grese.

Just then the little bent old lady detached herself from the hesitantly milling arrivals and limped towards us at disconcerting speed, like a scuttling crab. All atremble with ill-mastered anger she said (in quite decent German),

‘Are you in charge here?’

‘Madam, I am.’

‘Do you realise,’ she said, with her jaw juddering, ‘do you realise that there was no restaurant wagon on this train?’

I dared not meet Zulz’s eye. ‘No restaurant wagon? Barbaric.’

‘No service at all. Even in 1st class!’

‘Even in 1st class? An outrage.’

‘All we had were the cold cuts we’d brought with us. And we almost ran out of mineral water!’

‘Monstrous.’

‘… Why are you laughing? You laugh. Why are you laughing?’

‘Step back, Madam, if you would,’ I spluttered. ‘Senior Supervisor Grese!’

And so, whilst the luggage was stacked near the handcarts, and whilst the travellers were formed into an orderly column (my Sonders moving among them murmuring ‘ Bienvenu, les enfants ’, ‘ Etes-vous fatigué, Monsieur, après votre voyage? ’), I wryly reminisced about old Walther Pabst. He and I campaigned together in the Rossbach Freikorps. What sweating, snorting chastisements we visited on the Red queers in Munich and Mecklenburg, in the Ruhr and Upper Silesia, and in the Baltic lands of Latvia and Lithuania! And how often, during the long years in prison (after we settled accounts with the traitor Kadow in the Schlageter affair in ’23), would we sit up late in our cell and, between endless games of 2-card brag, discuss, by flickering candlelight, the finer points of philosophy!

I reached for the loudhailer and said,

‘ Greetings, 1 and all. Now I’m not going to lead you up the garden path. You’re here to recuperate and then it’s off to the farms with you, where there’ll be honest work for honest board. We won’t be asking too much of that little young ’un, you there in the sailor suit, or of you, sir, in your fine astrakhan coat. Each to his or her talents and abilities. Fair enough? Very well! 1st, we shall escort you to the sauna for a warm shower before you settle in your rooms. It’s just a short drive through the birch wood. Leave your suitcases here, please. You can pick them up at the guest house. Tea and cheese sandwiches will be served immediately, and later there’ll be a piping hot stew. Onwards!’

As an added courtesy I handed the horn to Captain Eltz, who repeated the gist of my words in French. Then, quite naturally, it seemed, we fell into step, the fractious old lady, of course, remaining on the ramp, to be dealt with by Senior Supervisor Grese in the appropriate manner.

And I was thinking, Why isn’t it always like this? And it would be, if I had my way. A comfortable journey followed by a friendly and dignified reception. What needed we, really, of the crashing doors of those boxcars, the blazing arc lights, the terrible yelling (‘ Out! Get out! Quick! Faster! FASTER! ’), the dogs, the truncheons, and the whips? And how civilised the KL looked in the thickening glow of dusk, and how richly the birches glistened. There was, it has to be said, the characteristic odour (and some of our newcomers were sniffing it with little upward jerks of their heads), but after a day of breezy high-pressure weather, even that was nothing out of the…

Here it came, that wretched, that accursed lorry , the size of a furniture van yet decidedly uncouth — positively thuggish — in aspect, its springs creaking and its exhaust pipe rowdily backfiring, barnacled in rust, the green tarpaulin palpitating, the profiled driver with the stub of a cigarette in his mouth and his tattooed arm dangling from the window of his cab. Violently it braked and skidded, jolting to a halt as it crossed the rails, its wheels whining for purchase. Now it slumped sickeningly to the left, the near sideflap billowed skyward, and there — for 2 or 3 stark seconds — its cargo stood revealed.