The Zone of Interest (18 page)

Now I said to Wolfram Prufer, ‘Excuse the dressing gown. Come on through.’ All right, I’d sworn off alcohol for the nonce, but I reckoned Prufer was due a gulp, after that kind of day, and it would’ve seemed unmanly not to join him. ‘Ihre Gesundheit. How’d it go?’

‘Pretty smooth, sir.’

In the yard of Bunker 3 a small fraction of the Polish contingent chose to die fighting (a barricade, quickly overrun), but the rest of them, 291 men, were uneventfully shot between 17.10 and 17.45.

‘Quite exemplary,’ said Prufer, with no expression on his unreadable face. ‘In its way.’

I refilled our glasses, and we talked on, dispensing, late as it was, with the usual formalities. I said,

‘Weren’t you surprised Mobius was so . . . unsubtle about it? I was expecting a stratagem of some kind. You know, some form of deceit.’

‘The deceit came yesterday. He told them they’d have to be taught a lesson, and he threatened to round up their families if they tried anything.’

‘What’s deceitful about that? That’s what we do, isn’t it?’

‘No, not any more. Apparently it isn’t worth the bother, so we stopped. Costs too much tracking them down. See, they’ve all been evicted and shuffled about. And besides . . .’

He proceeded to say that in any case these families, in large part, had already been bombed or strafed or hanged or starved or frozen – or, for that matter, shot in the course of
earlier
mass reprisals. Prufer drawled on,

‘And those children he mentioned, ½ of them, all the 1s that’re any good, have been packed off to the Reich and Germanised. So it’s just not worth the sweat.’

‘And those men,’ I said. ‘They simply . . .?’

‘No trouble at all. They had their soup and spent an hour or 2 writing postcards. When the time came a lot of them were singing. Patriotic stuff. And nearly all of them yelled out something like
Long live Poland
last thing. But that was all.’

‘Long live Poland. That’s a funny 1.’

Prufer stretched his neck and said, ‘There was almost another cock-up – ferrying the bodies away before their mates got back from work. We covered the carts but we couldn’t do anything about the blood of course. Wasn’t time. The men saw. It was tense. It was tense, mein Kommandant. Mobius thinks we may have to do another batch. Repeat the whole palaver.’

‘. . . Na. How’s your brother, Prufer?’

‘Which 1?’

‘The 1 in Stalingrad. Freiherr? No. Irmfried.’

Left to myself, I engaged in an hour of soul-searching, sprawled on the easy chair by the fire with the bottle on my lap. There was I (I mused), offing old ladies and little boys, whilst other men gave a luminescent display of valour. I was of course thinking with envious admiration of the Untersturmfuhrer. Facing down those massive Polacks like that, saying, with ice in his heart, ‘
Ihr weisst wie wir sind
.’

You know what we’re like.

That’s
National Socialism!

And mind you, disposing of the young and the elderly requires other strengths and virtues – fanaticism, radicalism, severity, implacability, hardness, iciness, mercilessness, und so weiter. After all (as I often say to myself), somebody’s got to do it – the Jews’d give us the same treatment if they had ½ a chance, as everybody knows. They had a pretty fair crack at it in November 1918, when the war profiteers, buying cheap and selling . . .

. . . I levered myself upright and wandered out into the kitchen. Hannah was standing at the table, eating a green salad from the bowl with the wooden fork and the wooden spoon.

‘Na ja,’ I said, with a huge intake of breath. ‘Front-line service. That’s the thing. I’ve ½ a mind to request a transfer. To the east. Where, even as we speak, Hannah, world history is being forged. And I want to be in the thick of it, nicht? We’re about to give Judaeo-Bolshevism the biggest—’

‘Give who?’

‘Judaeo-Bolshevism. On the Volga. We’re going to give Judaeo-Bolshevism the biggest bloody nose of all time. You heard the speech? The city’s virtually ours. Stalingrad. On the Volga, woman. On the Volga.’

‘So soon,’ she said. ‘Once again you’re drunk.’

‘Na, perhaps I am. So might . . .’ I reached into the jar for a pickled onion. Chewing vigorously, I said, ‘You know, my dear, I was thinking. I was thinking we ought to do what little we can for poor Alisz Seisser. She’s back. As an inmate.’

‘Alisz Seisser? What for?’

‘Bit of an, bit of an, an enigma. Pardon. They’ve got her down as an Asozial.’

‘Which means?’

‘Could mean anything. Vagrancy. Begging. Prostitution, heaven forbid. Or a uh, relatively minor offence. Grumbling. Painting her toenails.’

‘Painting her toenails? Mm, I suppose that makes perfect sense. In wartime. A savage blow to morale.’ She wiped her Mund with a napkin, and her Gesicht readjusted. ‘Which is already in retreat, I hear.’

‘Quatsch! Who says?’

‘Norberte Uhl. Who got it from Drogo. And from Suzi Erkel. Who got it from Olbricht . . . Well then. What’s the little we can do for Alisz Seisser?’

To begin with there was a series of intensely lyrical, almost Edenic dalliances, in the sylvan surrounds of our Bavarian farmstead (leased from my in-laws), with various young shepherdesses, milkmaids, and stable girls (this all started during Hannah’s 2nd trimester). How often would I, in my leather shorts and embroidered tunic, vault the sheep dip and scamper through the barn doors in hot pursuit of my vernal lovely who, with an amorous yelp and a playful shimmy of her flaxen rump, would disappear on all 4s into our secret nest beneath the haystack! And how many hours would we beguile, in the idyllic paddock behind the shearing shed, Hansel with a blade of grass between his laughing lips, and his head buried in the dirndled lap of his buxom and rubicund Gretel!

Then, in ’32, Hannah and myself were inexorably drawn to Munich – city of my dreams and my yearning.

Gone were the flocks, the rills, the milking stools, the cowslips, the wild thyme, and the piping maids. Whilst commuting each day to the suburb of Dachau (where I would begin
quite
a career), and whilst heading a family of 4, I still found time for a committed but eminently sensible relationship with a lady of great sophistication called Xondra, who maintained a service apartment on Schillerstrasse near the Hauptbahnhof. Quite suddenly she married a prosperous pawnbroker from Ingolstadt, but I went on to make other friends in the same flatblock – notably Pucci, Booboo, and the golden-haired Marguerite. But all that was a very long time ago.

Here in the KZ, and in wartime, too, I’ve never entertained the thought of any kind of ‘misbehaviour’. I feel it would be utterly unGerman to compromise myself with a colleague (such as Ilse Grese), or with a colleague’s wife (Berlin would
not
be amused). And otherwise you’re seldom tempted, because so few of the women menstruate or have any hair. If you get desperate – well. The place in Katowitz is far too squalid, but the best 1 in Cracow is a German concern and it’s as clean as an operating theatre. None of that since my wife’s arrival, though. Ach, I’ve been the model, the ideal, the dream . . .

But now the situation has changed. And 2 can play at that game. Not so?

We do in fact have a piggery at the KL (a modest appendage to the Home Farm Station). And Alisz Seisser is a Tierpfleger – a veterinary nurse. Her uniform’s the same as that of the helpers in the Haftlinge Krankenbau: white linen jacket with a red stripe daubed on the back, and a similar paintstroke down the trousers. After having a good look, I tapped on the window of her surgery, and out she popped.

‘Oh thank you, thank you. Thank you for coming. It’s ever so good to see you, Herr Kommandant.’

‘Herr Kommandant? Paul, please,’ I said with a friendly chuckle. ‘Paul. No – you’ve been constantly in my thoughts. Poor Alisz. It must have been very difficult for you up in Hamburg. Were you in dire straits? Did the pension not come through?’

‘No no. Nothing of that kind. They nabbed me at the station, Paul. When I got off the train.’

‘That’s odd.’ On her chest she wore the black triangle of the Asozial. It had a letter sewn into it (this usually denoted country of provenance). ‘What’s that stand for when it’s at home?’ I asked with a grin. ‘Zambia?’

‘Zigeuner.’

I took a step back.

‘Well I can’t say I wasn’t expecting it,’ she blithely continued. ‘Orbart always used to say,
If anything happens to yours truly, old girl, or if you up and leave me
– you know, joking –
then you’re in the soup, love
. Sinti grandmother, see. And we knew it was in the file.’

This was a most unwelcome surprise. The Zigeuner had been workhouse fodder since the mid 1920s, and the Reichsfuhrer-SS’s Central Office for Fighting the Gypsy Menace, of course, had been active for quite a while (and I noticed that just the other day these people were dispossessed and stripped of all their rights). Obviously we’d need to tackle said menace at
some
point or other . . . Although there was a Gypsy family camp in KL2 (circus people, dance-hall proprietors and the like), they were classed as internees, tattooed but unshaven and not on the labour lists. So far as I was aware, Alisz was the only Zigeuner Haftling in the entire Zone.

‘Yes, so. I’ll still be doing all I can for you, Alisz.’

‘Oh I know you will, Paul. When they moved me from the Women’s Block I could feel your hand at work. The Women’s Block – it’s really the end. I can’t find words to describe it.’

‘. . . You
seem
well enough, my dear. The crewcut’s most becoming. And is that your phone number? Just joking. Nicht? Come on, Alisz, let’s have a look at you then. Mm. That suit’s not much help in these temperatures. You’ve the 2 blankets, I hope? And you’re getting the Tierpfleger ration? Turn around a moment. You haven’t lost any weight at least.’

She’s short in the Unterschenkel, Alisz, but she has a glorious Hinterteil. As for the other stuff, the Busen and such, it’s hard to say – but there’s certainly no argument about the Sitzflache.

‘You’re better off here, you know, than in the Ka Be. I wouldn’t want you in the Typhus Block. Or in Dysentery for that matter, dear.’

‘No, it’s not too bad at all. I’m a country girl, me. And the pigs are very sweet!’

‘And I hope, Alisz, I hope you’re being sustained by the sacred memory of the Sturmscharfuhrer. Your Orbart. He laid down his life, Alisz, for his convictions. And what more can we ask of a man?’

She smiled bravely. And again, for a moment, she took on that sacred glow – the holy aura of German martyrdom. Whilst she hugged herself and, with chattering teeth, hymned her sainted husband, I thought how very difficult it was to gauge a woman’s figure until her clothes came off. I mean, there’s an awful lot to go wrong.

‘Listen, Alisz. I have a message from my lady wife. She wants you to come to the villa on Sunday.’

‘The villa?’

‘Oh, it’ll raise an eyebrow or 2, perhaps. But I’m the Kommandant and we’ve a ready-made excuse. The girls’ pony. It’s got mange! Come and spend the afternoon.’

‘Well, if you say it’s all right, Paul.’

‘Hannah’s got some women’s things she wants to give you.’ I adjusted my greatcoat against the wind. ‘I’ll pick you up by car. And it’ll be steak, spuds, and greens.’

‘Oh, that would be handsome!’

‘A square meal. Oh yes. And a long hot bath.’

‘Ooh, Paul, I can hardly wait.’

‘Till noon on Sunday. Run along now, my girl. Run along.’

I don’t go out to the Meadow that often any more. Neither does Szmul. Well, he sometimes looks in around midnight, to make sure everything is processing as it should, and then goes back to his duties as a greeter. To have an exchange with Szmul, nowadays, you have to catch him on the ramp.

The first train had been dealt with, and the Sonder was seated on a suitcase, in the immediate glare of an untended arc light, eating a wedge of cheese. I came up on him from behind, aslant, and said,

‘Why were you on the very 1st transport out of Litzmannstadt?’

His jaw muscles stopped working. ‘The 1st transport was for undesirables, sir. I was an undesirable, sir.’

‘Undesirable? A little schnook of a schoolmaster like you? Or perhaps you teach a bit of PT.’

‘I stole some firewood, sir. To buy turnips.’

‘. . . To buy turnips,
sir
.’ I stood over him now, my jodhpurs planted well apart. ‘Where did you think you were being sent? Germany? To work in Germany? Why’d you believe that?’

‘They changed my ghetto scrip into Reichsmarks, sir.’

‘. . . Ooh. Clever them. Your wife wasn’t with you, was she, Sonder.’

‘No, sir. Exempted because of pregnancy, sir.’

‘Not many live births in the ghetto, I hear. Any other children?’

‘No, sir.’

‘So she missed that rather inelegant Aktion at Kulmhof.
On your feet
.’

He stood, wiping his greasy hands on his greasy trousers.

‘You were at Kulmhof. “Chełmno”, as you lot call it. You were there . . . Remarkable. No Jew gets out of Kulmhof. And I suppose they kept you on board because of your German. Tell me. Were you there at the time of the silent boys?’

‘No, sir,’ I lied.

‘Pity . . . Now, Sonder. You know who I mean by Chaim Rumkowski.’

‘Yes, sir. The Director, sir.’

‘The Director. The ghetto king. I gather he’s quite a “character”. Here.’

And I produced from my pocket the letter I’d received that morning from ‘Łódź’.

‘The stamp. That’s his portrait. He goes around in a wheeled carriage. Drawn by a spindly dray.’

Szmul nodded.

‘I wonder if you’ll live long enough, Sonderkommandofuhrer, to receive him here.’

He turned away.

‘Your lips. They’re always tensed and notched. Always. Even when you eat . . . You intend to
kill
someone, don’t you, Sonder. You intend to kill someone “e’er you go”. D’you want to kill me?’ I unholstered my Luger and pressed its barrel up against his resistant brow. ‘Oh, don’t kill me, Sonder. Please don’t kill me.’ The searchlight died with a crackle. ‘When your time comes, I’ll be telling you exactly what to do.’