Martin Amis - The Zone of Interest

‘… Rest, Tantchen. Rest, my sweet.’

The next night she was weaker but more voluble.

‘Golo, he’s dead. I can feel it. A wife and mother can just feel it.’

‘I hope you’re wrong, dear.’

‘You know, Papi never liked Papi. I mean, Vater never liked Uncle Martin. But I stuck to my guns, Neffe. Martin had such a wonderful sense of humour! He made me laugh. And I wasn’t much of a laugher, even as a child. When I was very young I always thought, Why’s everyone making that silly noise? And even later on I could never see what people found so hilarious. But Papi, he made me laugh. How we laughed… Oh, talk to me Golo. While I rest. It’s the sound of your voice.’

I had a flaskful of grappa with me. I took a swallow and said,

‘He made you laugh. And did you always laugh at the same things, Tante?’

‘… Always. Always.’

‘Well here’s a funny story Uncle Martin told me… There once was a man called Dieter Kruger. I don’t want to patronise you, my angel, but it was a long time ago. Do you remember the Reichstag Fire?’

‘… Of course I do. Papi was so thrilled… Just go on talking, Neffe.’

‘The Reichstag Fire — three weeks after our assumption of power. Everyone thought we’d done it. Because it was made in heaven for us.’ I took another swallow. ‘Anyway, we didn’t. Some Dutch anarchist did it. And he was guillotined in January ’34. But there was another man called Dieter Kruger. Are you awake, Tante?’

‘… Of course I’m awake!’

‘And Dieter Kruger, Dieter Kruger had a hand in one of the Dutchman’s earlier arsons — a welfare office in Neukolln. So he was executed too. For good measure. Kruger was a Communist and a—’

‘And a Jew?’

‘No. That’s not important, Tante. What’s important is that he was a published political philosopher and a fervent Communist… So the night before the execution Uncle Martin and a few of his friends went down to death row. With several bottles of champagne.’

‘What for? The champagne?’

‘For toasts, Tante. Kruger was already a bit bashed about, as you’d expect, but they stood him up and ripped his shirt off, and cuffed his hands behind his back. And in a mock ceremony they awarded him all these medals. The Iron Cross with Oak Leaves. The Order of the German Eagle. The Honour Chevron of the Old Guard. Et cetera. And they pinned them on his bare chest.’

‘… Yes?’

‘Uncle Martin and his pals gave speeches, Tantchen. They eulogised Kruger as the father of fascist autocracy. Which is how he went to his death. A decorated hero of National Socialism. Uncle Martin thought that was very funny. Do you think that’s very funny?’

‘… What? Giving him medals ? No!’

‘Mm. Well.’

‘… He started the Reichstag Fire!’

On my last night she made an effort and rallied. She said,

‘We have so much to be proud of, Golo. Think of what he achieved, Uncle Martin. I mean personally.’

There was a silence. And an understandable silence. What? The intensification of corporal punishment in the slave camps. The cautious dissent on the question of the cosmic ice. The deSemitisation of the alphabet. The marginalising of Albert Speer. Uncle Martin wasn’t at all interested in the accoutrements of power, only in power itself, which he used, throughout, for unswervingly trivial ends…

‘How he took on the question of the Mischlinge,’ she said. ‘And the Jews married to Germans.’

‘Yes. And in the end we just let them be. The intermarried ones. Pretty much.’

‘Ah, but he got his Hungarians.’ She gave a soft gurgle of satisfaction. ‘Every last one of them.’

Well, not quite. As late as April ’44, with the war long lost, the cities razed, with millions of people half starved, homeless, and dressed in singed rags, the Reich still felt it made sense to divert troops to Budapest; and the deportations began. You see, Tante, it’s like that man in Linz who stabbed his wife a hundred and thirty-seven times. The second thrust was delivered to justify the first. The third to justify the second. And so it goes on, until the end of strength. Of the Jews in Hungary, two hundred thousand survived, Tantchen, while close to half a million were deported and murdered in ‘Aktion Doll’ in Kat Zet II.

‘Mm,’ she said, ‘he always insisted that that was his greatest accomplishment on the world stage. You know, his greatest contribution as a statesman.’

‘Indeed, Tante.’

‘… Now, Neffe. What’ll you do, my love?’

‘Go back to the law, in the end, I suppose. I’m not sure. Maybe keep at it as a translator. My English is getting quite decent. I’ve improved it by hook or by crook .’

‘What? It’s a hideous language, so they say. And you shouldn’t really work for the Americans, you know, Golo.’

‘I know, dear, but I am.’ OMGUS, the American Office of Military Government, and the five Ds: denazify, demilitarise, deindustrialise, decartelise, and democratise. I said, ‘Tante, I’m trying to find somebody. But the thing is — what’s her maiden name? I never asked.’

‘Golito… Why couldn’t you find a nice single girl?’

‘Because I found a nice married one.’

‘You look pained, dearest.’

‘I am pained. I feel I have the right to be pained about that.’

‘… Ah. Poor Golito. I understand. Who is the husband?’

‘They’re separated, and she won’t be using her married name. He’s being tried by the IMT.’

‘Those swine. Jewish justice. And was he a good Nazi?’

‘One of the best… Anyway. I’m getting nowhere. There’s nothing left you can look up.’ By which I meant that every file, every folder, every index card, every scrap of paper connected to the Third Reich was either destroyed before the capitulation or else seized and sequestered after it. ‘There’s nothing left you can look up.’

‘Golito, put a notice in the press. That’s what people do.’

‘Mm, I already tried that. More than once. Here’s a discouraging thought. Why hasn’t she found me? I wouldn’t be hard to find.’

‘Maybe she is trying, Neffe. Or I tell you what — maybe she’s dead. So many people are these days. And anyway, it’s always like that, isn’t it? After a war. Nobody knows where anybody is.’

With my flask on my lap I sat on at the bedside, thinking.

‘I wouldn’t be hard to find.’ Slowly I got to my feet. ‘It’s time, sadly, dear. I’ll have to take my leave of you, Tantchen. Tantchen?’

But Gerda was comprehensively, abysmally asleep.

‘Bless you, my angel,’ I said. I leaned over and put my lips to her waxy brow, and then joined the others in the truck.

Gerda had cancer of the uterus and died ten days later, on April 26, 1946. She was thirty-seven. And poor Volker, always a sickly baby and toddler, died the same year. He was three.

With me this had been the case for some time: I couldn’t see beauty where I couldn’t see intelligence.

But I saw Gerda with eyes of love and even on her deathbed she was beautiful. The stupid beauty of Gerda Bormann.

*

In September 1948 I sent myself on a fool’s errand.

The Fourth Germany, by that time, could no longer be very faithfully described as an almshouse on a slag heap. During the hyperinflation of my adolescence, money held its worth for only a few hours (on payday everyone did their week’s or their month’s shopping, and did it instanter ); by contrast, in the post-war period money was worthless to begin with. Once again the answer lay in a change of banknote. The currency reform of June 20 put an end to the Zigaretten Wirtschaft — a state of affairs in which a Lucky Strike became too valuable to smoke — and introduced the Soziale Marktwirtschaft, or the free market (no rationing, no price controls). And it worked.