Martin Amis - The Zone of Interest

There persist three reasons, or excuses, for going on living: first, to bear witness, and, second, to exact mortal vengeance. I am bearing witness; but the magic looking glass does not show me a killer. Or not yet.

Third, and most crucially, we save a life (or prolong a life) at the rate of one per transport. Sometimes none, sometimes two — an average of one. And 0.01 per cent is not 0.00. They are invariably male youths.

It has to be effected while they’re leaving the train; by the time the lines form for the selection — it’s already too late.

*

Ihr seit achzen johr alt , we whisper, und ihr hott a fach .

Sie sind achtzehn Jahre alt, und Sie haben einen Handel.

Vous avez dix-huit ans, et vous avez un commerce.

You are eighteen years old, and you have a trade.

BORIS ELTZ WAS going to tell me the story of Special Train 105, and I wanted to hear it, but first I asked him,

‘Who’ve you got on at the moment? Remind me.’

‘Uh, that cook in Bunatown and that barmaid in Katowitz. And I’m hoping to get somewhere with Alisz Seisser. The sergeant’s widow. He’s only been dead a week but she seems quite keen.’ Boris gave some background. ‘The trouble is she’s off home to Hamburg in a day or two. Golo, I’ve asked you this before. I like all kinds of women, so why do I only fancy the lower classes?’

‘I don’t know, brother. It’s not an unendearing trait. Now please. Sonderzug 105.’

He folded his hands behind his nape and his lips slowly parted. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it, with the French. Don’t you find, Golo? You can’t quite rid yourself of the idea that they lead the world. In refinement, in urbanity. A nation of proven funkers and toadies — but they’re still supposed to be better than anyone else. Better than us gross Germans. Better even than the English. And a part of you consents to it. The French — even now, when they’re completely crushed and squirming, you still can’t help yourself.’

Boris shook his head, as if in ingenuous wonderment at humanity — at humanity and its crooked timber.

‘These things run deep,’ I said. ‘Continue, Boris, if you would.’

‘Well I found I was relieved, no, happy and proud that the ramp was looking its best. All swept and hosed. Nobody very drunk — it was too early. And such a pretty sunset. Even the smell had dropped. The passenger train pulls in, all festive. It could’ve come from Cannes or Biarritz. The people disembark unassisted. No whips, no truncheons. No cattle cars awash with God knows what. The Old Boozer gives his speech, I translate, and off we go. All so very civilised. Then along comes that fucking lorry. And the jig was up.’

‘Why? What was in it?’

‘Corpses. The daily berm of corpses. On its way from the Stammlager to the Spring Meadow.’

He said that about a dozen of them half flopped out over the tailboard; he said that it made him imagine a crew of ghosts being sick over a ship’s side.

‘With their arms swinging. Not just any old corpses either. Starveling corpses. Covered in shit, and filth, and rags, and gore, and wounds, and boils. Smashed-up, forty-kilo corpses.’

‘Mm. Untoward.’

‘Hardly the height of sophistication,’ said Boris.

‘Is that when they wailed? We heard the wail.’

‘It was a sight to see.’

‘Mm. And a lot to uh, construe.’ I meant that it was not just a spectacle but also a narrative: it told a long story. ‘A fair bit to take in.’

‘Drogo Uhl thinks they never did. Take it in. But I think they just blushed for us — mortally blushed for us. For our… cochonneries . I mean, a lorry full of starved corpses. All a bit gauche and provincial, don’t you think?’

‘Possibly. Arguably.’

‘So insortable . You can’t take us anywhere.’

Misleadingly undersized and misleadingly slight, Boris was a senior colonel in the Waffen-SS: the armed, the fighting, the battle SS. The Waffen-SS was supposed to be less straitened by hierarchy — more quixotic and spontaneous — than the Wehrmacht, with lively disagreements running up and down the chain of command. One of Boris’s disagreements with his superior, over tactics (this was in Voronezh), turned into a fistfight, from which the young major general emerged without a tooth in his head. That was why Boris was here — among the Austrians , as he often put it (and demoted to captain). He had nine more months to go.

‘What about the selection?’ I asked.

‘There was no selection. They were all certainties for the gas.’

‘… I’m thinking, What don’t we do to them? I suppose we don’t rape them.’

‘Much. Instead we do something much nastier than that. You ought to learn some respect for your new colleagues, Golo. Much, much nastier. We get the pretty ones and we do medical experiments on them. On their reproductive organs. We turn them into little old ladies. Then hunger turns them into little old men.’

I said, ‘Would you agree that we couldn’t treat them any worse?’

‘Oh, come on. We don’t eat them.’

For a moment I thought about this. ‘Yes, but they wouldn’t mind being eaten. Unless we ate them alive.’

‘No, what we do is make them eat each other. They mind that… Golo, who in Germany didn’t think the Jews needed taking down a peg? But this is fucking ridiculous, this is. And you know the worst thing about it? You know what really rots in my craw?’

‘I suspect I do, Boris.’

‘Yeah. How many divisions are we tying up? There are thousands of camps. Thousands. Man hours, train hours, police hours, fuel hours. And we’re killing our labour! What about the war?’

‘Exactly. What about the war.’

‘How does all this connect to that?… Oh, look at her, Golo. Her with the dark crewcut in the corner. That’s Esther. Have you ever seen anything a tenth as sweet in all your life?’

*

We were in Boris’s little ground-floor office, which commanded a wide and level view of Kalifornia. This Esther belonged to the Aufraumungskommando, the Clearance Detail, one of a rotating pool of two or three hundred girls who busied themselves in a shed-cluttered yard — a yard the size of a soccer field.

Boris rose to his feet and stretched. ‘I came to her rescue. She was clawing up rubble in Monowitz. Then a cousin of hers sneaked her in here. She got found out, of course — because she didn’t have any hair. They marked her down for the Scheissekommando. But I stepped in. It’s not that difficult. Here, you just rob Peter to bribe Paul.’

‘And for this she hates you.’

‘She hates me.’ Bitterly he shook his head. ‘Well I’ll give her something to hate me for.’

He tapped with his fountain pen on the glass, and went on tapping till Esther looked up. She gave a great roll of the eyes and returned to her task (she was curiously engaged — squeezing out tubes of toothpaste into a cracked pitcher). Boris got up and opened the door and beckoned.

‘Miss Kubis. Take a postcard, if you would.’

Fifteen years old, and Sephardic, I thought (the Levantine colouring), and finely and tautly made, and athletic, she somehow managed to trudge, to clump into the room; it was almost satirical, her leadenness of gait. Boris said,

‘Please be seated. I need your Czech and your girlish hand.’ He smiled and said, ‘Esther, why do you loathe me so?’

She plucked at the sleeve of her shirt.

‘My uniform?’ He handed her the fine-pointed pencil. ‘Ready? Dear Mama colon. My friend Esther’s writing this for me… because I hurt my hand. So, Golo, a report if you please. While out gathering roses full stop . How’s the Valkyrie?’