The Zone of Interest (15 page)

He stepped out, the boy, and not alone. Accompanying him was one of the Block Kapos, with his triangular green Winkel (denoting felon), his bare arms tattooed to the thickness of a sleeved singlet, his spiky pate a mere continuation of the stubble that framed his mouth. I said,

‘Who are you?’

The Kapo looked me up and down. And who was I, for that matter, with my height, my frosty blue eyes, my landowner’s tweeds, my Obersturmfuhrer armband?

‘Name.’

‘Stumpfegger. Sir.’

‘Well leave us, Stumpfegger.’

As he turned to go he made a half gesture, raising his arm for a moment and then letting it drop. It seemed to me that he wanted to pass a proprietorial hand over the fuzz of the boy’s black hair.

‘Dov, walk with me a while,’ I said carefully. ‘Master Dov Cohn, I want to talk to you about Bohdan Szozeck. You may be unable to help me, but you should not be unwilling to help me. No harm will come to you because of it. And some good will come of it whether you help me or not.’ I took out a pack of Camels. ‘Have five.’ What was the value of five American cigarettes – five bread rations, ten? ‘Salt them away somewhere.’

For several paces the boy had been rhythmically nodding his head, and I started to feel almost sure he would give me my answer. We halted, under the ensnared lamps. It was now night, and the black sky very faintly crepitated with coming rain or coming snow.

‘How did you end up here? Relax. Have some of this first.’

It was a Hershey bar. Time slowed . . . Carefully Dov freed the cellophane wrapping, stared for a moment, and gave the brown nub a reverent lick. I watched. He would be an artist with this delicacy; it would probably take him a week to carve it to nothing with his tongue . . . Hannah had talked about Dov’s eyes: rich dark grey, and perfectly round, with little inlets on the line of the diameter. Eyes made for innocence, and confirmed in innocence, but now protuberant with experience.

‘You’re German. Where from?’

In a firm voice that nonetheless occasionally leapfrogged an octave, he told me his story. It was unexceptional. Flushed out of a Jews’ House in Dresden, along with the rest of his family, in the autumn of ’41; a month in the holding camp of Theresienstadt; the second transport; the leftward selection, on the spur, of his mother, four younger sisters, three grandparents, two aunts, and eight younger cousins; the survival of his father and two uncles for the usual three months (digging drainage ditches); and then Dov was alone.

‘So who looks out for you? Stumpfegger?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, with reluctance. ‘Stumpfegger.’

‘And Professor Szozeck for a while.’

‘Him too, but he’s gone.’

‘D’you know where?’

After a still moment Dov again started nodding.

‘Bohdan walked here from the Stammlager to say goodbye. And to warn me not to go looking for him at the villa. Then he went back. He was waiting. He was sure they’d come.’

Dov knew everything.

On his last morning, Bohdan Szozeck went to the Ka Be (to have the dressing changed on his infected knee) and got to the villa garden later than usual, about half past nine. He was in the conservatory when the Commandant, with one hand pressed to his face, came reeling out of the glass doors of the breakfast room – in pyjamas. At first (and here I felt stirrings on the back of my scalp) Bohdan thought that Doll, swaying there in his blue and white stripes, was a
prisoner
: a Zugang (his stomach still fat, his clothes still clean), drunk or mad or just wildly disorientated. Then Doll must have caught sight of the tortoise as it inched across the lawn; he picked up the shovel and brought the flat blade down full strength on its carapace.

‘And he fell over, sir. On the gravel – really hard. Backwards. His pyjama bottoms, they’d come undone and tripped him up. And he fell over.’

I said, ‘Did Doll see the professor?’

‘He should’ve hid. Why didn’t he hide, sir? Bohdan should’ve hid.’

‘What did he do?’

With a pleading face Dov said, ‘He went out and helped him up. And put him on a stool in the shade. And fetched him a bottle of water. Then the Commandant waved him away.’

‘So . . .’ I considered. ‘Bohdan knew. You said he knew they’d come for him.’

‘Naturlich. Selbstverstandlich.’

‘Because?’

His eyes were exophthalmic with all they knew.

‘Because he was there when the Commandant showed weakness. He saw the Commandant cry.’

We walked back up the slight slope of the defile. Halfway to his Block I gave him the rest of the Camels plus ten US dollars.

‘You’ll put that somewhere safe.’

‘Of course,’ he said (almost with indignation).

‘Wait. Does Doll know you were Bohdan’s friend?’

‘Don’t think so. I only went to the garden twice.’

‘. . . Okay. Now, Dov, this is our secret, all right?’

‘But sir. Please. What should I tell him?’

‘The Blockaltester?’

‘
He
doesn’t care. No. What should I tell Stumpfegger? He’ll want to know what we talked about.’

‘Tell him . . .’ I must have been thinking about this, on some level, because the answer was ready and waiting. ‘All day yesterday at the Stammlager,’ I said, ‘there was a man standing in the corridor between the wire and the fence. A Kapo. In handcuffs. He had a sign hanging from his neck. It said
Tagesmutter. Kleinaugen.
You know what that means?’

Dov knew.

‘Tell Stumpfegger that I put him there. Tell him I’m conducting an investigation ordered by Berlin. Can you tell him that?’

He smiled and thanked me and hastened off into the dusk.

And into the snow. The first grey snow of the autumn, grey snow, the colour of ash, the colour of Dov’s eyes.

Tagesmutter. Kleinaugen.
Childminder
.
Short Eyes
.

It seemed to be intermittent and non-systematic, but I
was
being followed. Being followed had happened to me often enough when I worked for Military Intelligence (the Abwehr), and you quickly developed a subsense for it. When you were being followed, you felt as if an invisible string connected you and your monitor, your sharer: depending on the intervening distance, you felt it loosen or tighten. When it was tight: that was when you twisted your head round – and saw, in your wake, a certain figure jolt or stiffen.

The man who walked behind me was a Haftling, in stripes. He was a Kapo (evident from his girth alone), like Stumpfegger, but he wore two triangles, green and red; he was a criminal and a political. This could mean a lot or it could mean almost nothing; it was possible that my shadow was merely a persistent jaywalker who had once shown some interest in democracy. But I didn’t think so – he had a dour, sour look to him, a penitentiary look.

Why
was I being followed? Who was the instigator? It was always foolish to underestimate the paranoia of the Geheime Staatspolizei (which here meant Mobius, Horder, Off, etc.), but they would never enlist a prisoner, let alone a political. And the only subversion I had committed so far was the tendering of bad advice.

Common sense pointed to Paul Doll. That there had been illicit contact between Hannah and me was known to only four people: the principals, plus Boris Eltz and the Witness, Humilia. Only two people, then, could have alerted the Commandant – and it wasn’t Boris.

This coming Sunday Hannah and I would both attend a piano recital and drinks party in the Officers’ Club, to honour the signing (with Italy and Japan) of the Tripartite Pact on September 27, 1940. I hoped to be able to tell her that Humilia had been turned.

More promisingly, the day after that, at five-thirty, I was scheduled to bump into Hannah at the Equestrian Academy. I would be feigning an interest in riding lessons. Hannah would be making inquiries about buying or leasing a pony: Paulette and Sybil had their eye on a shaggy Shetlander called Meinrad. In my thoughts I was mapping out a letter; it would be a heavy call on me to write it; I was going to say that for prudential reasons our friendship, or whatever it was, would have to end.

‘How many bucks did you bag?’

‘Me? None. I fired in the air. It’s an appalling pursuit. You see a beautiful animal nibbling on a rosebush, and what do you do? Chew it up with two barrels’ worth.’ He took off his spectacles, breathed on the glass, and applied his crumpled handkerchief (he did this every three or four minutes). ‘Quite nice countryside. Even a decent hotel on the lake. It’s not all hovels and yurts. But why did I say yes? Wolfram Prufer. I had two dinners with him
à deux
. A remarkably stupid young man. Mr Thomsen, Dr Seedig tells me there’s no ethyl acetate. I don’t know what that means. Do you?’

‘Yes. No colorimetric measurements. We have the acetic acid. But there’s no ethyl alcohol.’

For a while we talked about the shortage, or the non-existence, hereabouts, of ethyl alcohol. We then moved on to the sorry state of the hydrogenation plant.

‘Well, tell that to Berlin. Mr Thomsen, have you thought about my proposal?’

‘I have. The modifications you suggest sound quite sensible. On the face of it. But you’re forgetting something, Mr Burckl. For the most part we’re dealing with Jews.’

Burckl’s large brown eyes lost all their light.

‘I can assure you’, I went on, ‘that in the office of the Reichsleiter there’s no disagreement about this. The entire upper echelon is unanimous on the point.’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘Let me summarise. And here I’ll actually be quoting the very words of the Reichsfuhrer . . . Genetically and constitutionally, the Jew is averse to all work. For centuries, for millennia, he has lived very happily, thank you very much, off the host nations of the diaspora. Work, hard graft, is the preserve of the guileless Gentile, while the Jew, chuckling happily to himself, grows sleek and rich. Physical work – it simply isn’t in them. You’ve seen the way they skive and malinger. Brute force is the only language they understand.’

‘. . . Get on with it, man.’

‘As for the idea of increasing their rations – that’s laughable, quite frankly. Put a square meal inside a Jew and you’ll never get a stroke out of him. He’ll lie back thinking of milk and honey.’

‘I say again – Szmul.’

‘Szmul is a false analogy, Mr Burckl. Szmul works towards no foreseeable goal. Here at Buna, the Jews’ll be well aware that the moment we’re on line their usefulness will come to an end. So they’ll impede us at every turn.’

This gave Burckl pause. He said grumblingly, ‘Until six or seven years ago there were plenty of Jews at Farben. High up, too. Excellent men. Notably diligent.’

‘Saboteurs. Either that or stealing patents and selling them to the Americans. It’s well known. It’s documented.’

From the yard came a series of screams – unusually piercing and prolonged.

‘“Documented”. Where? At the Ahnenerbe? You’re boring me, Mr Thomsen.’

‘You’re disconcerting me, Mr Burckl. You’re flying in the face of one of the cornerstones of Party policy.’

‘Produktive Vernichtung,’ said Burckl with cold resignation. ‘But Vernichtung
isn’t
produktiv, Mr Thomsen.’ He turned his head sideways. ‘I’m a businessman. I understand that here we have a people that it is opportune to exploit. How to do it ergonomically, that’s the thing. Anyway. I won’t be needing your Uncle Martin. We’ve got another route to the Chancellery.’

‘Oh?’

‘Not the Reichsleiter, not the Reichsmarschall, not the Reichsfuhrer. The Reichskanzler himself wants a meeting with an IG delegation – on quite another topic.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘Weaponised poison gas. Mr Thomsen, I’m going to go ahead with my reforms, inasmuch as I can without your support.’ He held my eye. ‘You know, with the Jews I’ve never seen what all the fuss is about. In Berlin, half the time, I couldn’t even tell a Jew from an Aryan. I’m not proud of saying this, but I was personally quite relieved when they brought in the Star. Otherwise how can you tell? . . . Go on, delate me. Have me burnt at the stake for heresy. No. No, certainly not. I’ve never seen one good reason for all this fuss about the Jews.’