Martin Amis - The Zone of Interest

‘No, it wouldn’t.’ She looked around. ‘Nothing else has lasted, has it, from that time. Not even a building or a statue.’

I produced a pack of Lucky Strike; we both took one, and the flame of my lighter was solid and still (no wind, no weather). ‘Mm, I suspect I know why you were unhappy when I — when I reappeared.’

‘Look, I don’t want to be mean. But what makes you think I’ve stopped being unhappy? I’ve gone on being unhappy. I’m unhappy now.’

This in turn was acknowledged. She said,

‘Don’t think it’s just you. I’ve been living in dread of seeing anyone at all from back then. I don’t think I could even bear seeing little Humilia. Who’s all right, by the way.’

Her tone was untheatrical — flat and straight, like the level address of her eyes. The dense dark brown hair was the same, the wide mouth was the same, the manly squareness of the jawbone was the same. Two vertical furrows had established themselves on either side of the bridge of her nose — and that was all.

‘I have to be in town by three anyway. At noon I’ll be gone.’

‘… If that’s neurotic, or just plain weak, then I’m just plain weak. It was too much for me. I wasn’t up to it.’

My eyebrows continued to undulate sympathetically, but I found that the whole of my being, and not just my heart, resisted this — rejected it; and with a firmness I couldn’t yet understand. I said nothing.

‘I can’t stop imagining I’ll see Doll. That’s how nuts I am. I’d die if I saw him.’ She shuddered, she writhed, and said, ‘I’d certainly die if he touched me.’

‘He can’t touch you.’

There was a long silence. There had been several long silences. And now St Kaspar’s reproachfully sounded the quarter-hour.

‘Can we talk more blandly for a while? Go on about your job. And then I’ll calm down.’

‘Well, it’s not quite a change of subject,’ I said; but I too felt the need to talk more blandly, for a while. So I told her about my job. The eight million completed questionnaires, and the five grades of classification, all the way from Nonincriminated to Major Offender.

‘The fifth one. That’s the one my late husband qualified for.’

‘Sorry. Yes.’ I hesitated. ‘But let me — let me be earnest and tell you about the side of it that really interests me.’

My extracurricular work had little to do with victors’ justice (as if, after a war, there was any other kind). It concerned itself with the Bundesentschadigungsgesetz, or the guidelines on reparations: victims’ justice. In this case indemnities for murdered relatives, for years lost to slavery and terror, and for persisting physical and mental debility (and for the theft of all assets and belongings). My friend David Merlin, a Jewish lawyer and a captain in the US Army (and one of our most brilliant and reviled denazifiers), had recruited me a year earlier; and at first the whole thing felt deeply pertinent and also deeply fanciful — who, at that stage, could imagine a Germany, not only sovereign and solvent, but also sorry? No longer. The new reality — emergent Israel, back in May — was like an injection or an impregnation; and Merlin was already planning an exploratory mission to Tel Aviv. She said,

‘That’s the best thing you could be doing. And all power to you.’

‘Thanks. Thanks. So, anyway, my days are full. I’m busy at least.’

‘Mm. I’m not.’

She said she was having to do more for her folks now — her mother’s hips, her father’s heart.

‘And I teach conversational French for five hours a week. I can’t do any written stuff because of my spelling. You know, the dyslexia. So all I do, really, is raise the girls.’

Who now appeared, drifting into view at the far end of the pond as the half-hour sounded. They came to a halt — and it was clear that they’d been assigned to come and check on their mother. Hannah waved, and they waved back before drifting off again.

‘… The twins like you.’

I swallowed hard and said, ‘Well I’m very glad, because I like them and always have. And isn’t it nice that Paulette can now walk tall with Sybil? There you are, I’ll be a friend of the family. I’ll come down every now and then on the train and take you all out to lunch.’

‘… I’m sorry, but I can’t take my eyes off that swan. I hate that swan. See? Its neck’s clean enough, but look at the feathers. They’re grimey-grey.’

‘Like the snow in Poland.’ First white, then grey, then brown. ‘When did you leave?’

She said, ‘I probably left the same day you did. When they bundled you off. May the first.’

‘Why so soon?’

‘Because of the night before. Walpurgisnacht.’ Just for a moment she brightened. ‘Apart from the obvious, what do you know about Walpurgisnacht?’

‘Go on.’

‘Back there, the girls were very excited. Not only about the bonfire and the fireworks and the roast potatoes. They had this book they liked terrorising themselves with. Walpurgisnacht is meant to be the time when you can cross the boundary between the seen and the unseen worlds. Between the world of light and the world of darkness. They loved that. Can I have another cigarette?’

‘Of course… A friend of mine, a late friend of mine said the Third Reich was one long Walpurgisnacht. And he talked about the boundary, but the boundary between life and death, and how it seemed to have disappeared. April the thirtieth. Wasn’t that the night when the curious creature in the Wilhelmstrasse put himself out of his misery?’

‘Was it? Well, it’s also my birthday. Anyway.’ In an intent tone she said, ‘I do want to ask you about this because I’m not sure I saw it right. Look how vile-natured that swan is.’

The swan — the furiously affronted question mark of its neck and beak, its black-eyed stare.

With slight unease I said, ‘Oh yes. There’s a bit about Walpurgisnacht in — can it be Faust? The witches fuck, the he-goat shits …’

‘That’s good .’ She flexed her brow and went on, ‘He asked me into the garden. Watch the roman candles. He said Szmul, he said Szmul wanted to give me a birthday present. Now try and imagine you’re there.’

The three of them in the gaining twilight. Beyond, down the slope, the Walpurgisnacht blaze and, perhaps, the upward whoosh of a rocket. The sunset, the first stars. Sonderkommandofuhrer Szmul was on the other side of the garden fence. In his stripes. The atmosphere, she said, was like nothing she’d ever experienced or read about or heard about. Looking glazed, the prisoner drew from his sleeve a long tool or weapon, a kind of spike with a narrow crosspiece. And all was uncertain, all was pretend.

Doll kicked the gate open and said, Come on then…

Szmul stood his ground. He parted his shirt and put the point to his chest. (As she said this she held out her joined hands at arm’s length.) And Szmul looked her in the eye and said to her,

Eigentlich wolte er dass ich Ihnen das antun.

And Doll said, Oh, what use are you then?

And shot him in the face. He had his gun out and he shot him in the face. Then he crouched down and shot him in the back of the neck.

When Szmul stopped quivering Doll turned slowly on his haunches and stared up at her.

Eigentlich wolte er dass ich Ihnen das antun. Really he wanted me to do this to you.

‘As he said it Szmul looked me in the eye. I used to see him almost every day and he never did that. Looked me in the eye.’ For a moment she seemed surprised by the cigarette she was holding, and drew on it and dropped it to the ground. ‘Doll was covered in blood. God, what a bullet does… And still trying to smile. I suddenly knew who he’d been all along. There he was, a nightmarish little boy. Caught doing something plainly disgusting. And still trying to smile.’