The Zone of Interest (27 page)

As I went to bed that night I prayed I wouldn’t dream about the naked twins, grinning in the Little Brown Bower.

. . . If you’re wearing a straitjacket, you know, and you fall over, you land on your face.

If you’re wearing a straitjacket, do you see, and you fall over and land on your face, you can’t get up again – not by yourself you can’t.

‘Did you manage to take a look at them?’

‘Yes. A bit. Not really my kind of thing, Paul.’

A week ago I lent Alisz 2 monographs on ethnobiology, with a view to enriching our nightly chats. But unfortunately she has little taste for the printed word. Her days in the MAB, I fear, are not much diversified by event (for I am naturally her only visitor). Ne, not markedly alleviated by anything actually happening – just the crank of metal, at 11.30, when the food tray is shoved through the slot.

Last night we reminisced about the early days of our respective marriages – she, swept away by the virile noncom Orbart in Neustrelitz, myself, mentoring the scapegrace Hannah in Rosenheim and later in Hebertshausen, near Munich. She shed a tear or 2 as she talked of her sainted husband, and I found I spoke elegiacally, as if my spouse had also passed away (in childbed, perhaps).

It was an edifying hour, and as I took my leave I permitted myself to kiss her with the utmost formality on the brow – on her ‘widow’s peak’.

‘Ah, my darling Sybil. Why the tears, my pretty?’

‘Meinrad. His throat’s all bulged up. Come and see.’

After his glanders, what’s Meinrad’s new 1? Strangles, that’s what.

As for developments on the eastern front? Loyally but anxiously I attend to my Volksempfanger; and all I hear is that somewhat puzzling silence from Berlin. Initially I thought, Well, no news is good news, nicht? Then I began to wonder.

But I’ll tell you who’s quite good at filling you in on the military situation. Not Mobius, not Uhl (both are dauntingly taciturn). And not Boris Eltz. Eltz is naturally high-spirited, and of course reliably gung-ho, but he’s a sly, sarcastic sort of customer. Too clever by half, if you ask me (like a lot of people I could name).

No, the chap to go to, surprisingly enough, is young Prufer. Wolfram Prufer has many faults, God knows, but he’s an unimpeachable Nazi. Moreover, his brother Irmfried is on Paulus’s staff, no? And the mail, it seems (at least for now, as Christmas nears), is the only thing that’s getting in or out of Stalingrad.

‘Oh, we’ll carry the day, mein Kommandant,’ he said over lunch in the Officers’ Mess. ‘The German soldier scoffs at the objective conditions.’

‘Yes, but what
are
the objective conditions?’

‘Well we’re outnumbered. On paper. Ach, any German soldier is worth 5 Russians. We have the fanaticism and the will. They can’t match us for merciless brutality.’

‘. . . Are you sure about that, Prufer?’ I asked. ‘Very stubborn resistance.’

‘It’s not like France or the Low Countries, Sturmbannfuhrer. Civilised nations. They had the gumption and the decency to bow to superior might. But the Russians are Tartars and Mongols. They just fight till they’re dead.’ Prufer scratched his hair. ‘They rise up from the sewers at night with daggers between their teeth.’

‘Asiatics. Animals. Whilst we’re still lumbered with the Christian mentality. What does this mean for the 6th Army, Hauptsturmfuhrer, and for “Operation Blue”?’

‘With our zeal? Victory’s not in doubt. It’ll just take a bit longer, that’s all.’

‘I hear we’re undersupplied. There are shortages.’

‘True. There’s hardly any fuel. Or food. They’re eating the horses.’

‘And the cats, I heard.’

‘They finished the cats. It’s temporary. All they’ve got to do is retake the airfield at Gumrak. Besides, privation presents no obstacle to the men of the Wehrmacht.’

‘There’s disease, they say. And not much medicine, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘It’s 30 below but they’ve got plenty of warm clothing. It’s just a shame about the lice. And you have to be vigilant. Irmfried woke up the other night and a huge mouse had gnawed through his bedsocks and was eating his toes. He couldn’t feel it because of the frostbite. Oh, and ammo. They’re running out of ammo.’

‘The good God, how’re we going to win without ammo?’

‘For a German soldier these difficulties are as nothing.’

‘Isn’t there a danger of encirclement?’

‘The German ranks are impregnable.’ Prufer paused uneasily and said, ‘If I were Zhukov, though, I’d go straight for the Romanians.’

‘Ach, Zhukov’s a
muzhik
. He’s much too stupid to think of that. He can’t hold a candle to a German commander. Tell me, how is Paulus’s health?’

‘The dysentery? Still bedridden, Sturmbannfuhrer. But hear me, sir. Even if we should be technically surrounded, Zhukov can’t stop Manstein. Generalfeldmarschall Manstein will smash his way through. And his 6 divisions will turn the tide.’

‘As you said yourself, uh, Wolfram, defeat’s a biological impossibility. How can we go down to a rabble of Jews and peasants?
Don’t
make me laugh.’

2 simultaneous but of course completely independent visitors from Berlin, the hulking Horst Sklarz of the Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt, and the epicene Tristan Benzler of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt. And it’s the same old song.

Sklarz only has thoughts for the war economy, whilst Benzler’s sole concern is national security. In other words, Sklarz wants more slaves, and Benzler wants more corpses.

I had ½ a mind to lock Sklarz and Benzler in the same room and have
them
argue the toss; but no, they came and went singly, and I was obliged to sit there getting hollered at for hour after hour.

On only 1 theme did their opinions coincide. Sklarz and Benzler both talked in extraordinarily disrespectful terms about the quality of my bookkeeping and my general paperwork.

In addition, 1st Benzler and then Sklarz dropped identical hints about my possible transfer to a subsidiary of the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps in Cologne. Both of them referred to this as a ‘promotion’, despite the drop in rank and the loss of all real power (not to mention the brutal cut in salary). And, what’s more, Cologne is the region’s Militarbereichshauptkommandoquartier, and it’s forever being
bombed
.

. . . Well they’re gone now. It’s probably true: I should take a more orderly approach to the clerical side of things. My desktop in the MAB, as Sklarz and Benzler alike remarked, is a disgrace. A haystack upon a haystack. And where
did
I put that needle?

A cut in salary, eh? How fortunate that I’ve managed to put something aside – a little ‘nest egg’, if you will – during my custodianship of the Konzentrationslager!

‘Hurry up, Paul.’

The Dezember Konzert has already come upon us!

I was behindhand, that evening, and somewhat annoyed and flustered, because Hannah, if you please, was wearing her highest high heels, and she also had her hair stacked up on her head, giving me the impression, when the 2 of us met up in the hall (the Dienstwagen awaited), that I was only ½ her height. As I’ve so often told her, the German girl is a natural girl: she’s not
supposed
to wear high heels.

‘Coming!’

Thus I dashed to my study and looked for my ‘stilts’. Nicht? The leather wedges I sometimes slip into my boots for the extra few centimetres? And I couldn’t
find
them, so I dismembered an old copy of
Das Schwarze Korps
and folded 4 pages into 1/16ths and used them instead. German girls aren’t
supposed
to wear high heels. High heels are for the mincing sluts of Paris and New York, with their silk stockings and their satin garter belts and their—

‘Paul!’

‘Yes
yes
.’

When we arrived at the theatre in Furstengrube and hurried, just before the lights went down, to our seats in the middle of the front row, a murmur of envious admiration swept the house; and I confess to feeling a lovely warm glow of pride, albeit 1 tinged with poignancy. Everybody there, I’m sure, chalked up the Kommandant’s tardiness to an impulsive ‘bout’ in the master bedroom. Alas. How could they know of Frau Doll’s miserable deficiencies in this sphere? I looked sadly at Hannah’s beautiful face – the width of the Mund, the strength of the Kiefer, the savage Zahnen – and then the darkness came.

. . . I was soon wondering if I would ever again be able to attend a mass assemblage without my mind starting to play tricks on me. It wasn’t like the last occasion, when I became gradually immersed in the logistical challenge of gassing the audience. No. This time I at once imagined that the people behind me were already dead – already dead, and recently exhumed for immolation on the pyre. And how sweet the Aryans smelled! If I rendered them into smoke and flame, the burning bones (I felt confident) would not forsake that fresh aroma!

And then, do you know, in the fever of my ‘trance’ (this was during the final bit, the ballet und so) it seemed to me that the Deliverer urgently needed to be apprised of my discovery.
Even as they pass through nature to eternity, the children of the Teutons do not rot and reek
. We would go together, he and I, and present these findings to the bar of history, so that Clio herself might smile and hymn the courage and justice of our cause . . . Then, dismayingly, it was all over, and the darkness fled in a cataract of acclaim.

I turned, beaming, to my wife. Who was now completely hideous – with stretched and quivering Kinn, with blood-red Augen, and a bubble of mucus in her left Nasenloch, which abruptly popped.

‘Ach,’ I said.

. . . There were long queues for the toilets, and when I regained the foyer my wife was standing in a group that included the Seedigs and the Zulzes, plus Fritz Mobius, Angelus Thomsen, and Drogo Uhl. Pawed at by the beaming Ilse Grese, Boris Eltz, who, clearly, was disgustingly drunk, sat to the side with his face in his hands.

‘Choreographed by Saint-Leon,’ Mobius was saying to Seedig. ‘Music by Delibes.’ He turned and gazed down at me from his great height. ‘Ah here’s the Kommandant. I take it you’ve heard, Paul. Because you don’t look too clever.’

This was doubtlessly true. In the lavatory I found that the two wedges of newsprint in my boots were sopping with perspiration. As a result, perhaps, I felt intolerably parched, and I took from the rusting faucet 2 cupped handfuls of warm and yellowy water. After an uneasy couple of minutes there followed several jolts of projectile vomitus, which I skilfully directed into the tin trough of the urinal. 5 or 6 SS came and went whilst I did this. Now Mobius raised his voice, saying,

‘Manstein’s been turned and is in retreat. Zhukov gave him a mauling 50 kilometres to the west.’

There was silence. I swivelled and paced with my hands folded behind my back. I heard a squelching sound.

‘Stepped in a puddle earlier on!’ I cried with a resurgence of my customary verve. ‘Both feet too. Just my luck.’ At this point I felt I had to say something – all eyes were on me – in my capacity as Kommandant. ‘. . . So!’ I began. ‘The 6th Army fights on alone, nicht? It so happens that I’m quite “up” on Stalingrad. Young Prufer, no? He has a . . . I am confident,’ I said, ‘I am more than confident that Paulus will take all the necessary measures’, I went on, ‘to ensure that he doesn’t get encircled.’

‘Herrgott noch mal, Paul, he’s already encircled,’ said Mobius. ‘Zhukov smashed through the Romanians weeks ago. We’re noosed.’

Thomsen said, ‘Farewell to the oil of the Donetz basin. Forward to the oil of the Buna-Werke. Now tell me, Frau Doll, tell me, Frau Uhl – how are your lovely girls?’

. . . The next day my Volksempfanger, which quite properly confines itself to the Nationalsozialistische station, was going on about our ‘heroic stand’ in the Caucasus. The 6th Army was likened to the Spartans at Thermopylae. But didn’t the Spartans all get killed?

Hannah’s started doing something very queer in the bathroom. I can only see her lower extremities – because she’s on the chair by the towel rack, nicht? Her long-toed feet flex and stretch, as if she . . . Some sort of erotic reverie, I suppose. She’s thinking of her nights (her afternoons, her mornings) doing God knows what with friend Kruger. It’s thoughts of Kruger (and a post-war liaison?) that whisk her Fotze to the boil.

Well, it’s nothing to do with Thomsen. They never went near each other except at functions. Now he’s gone, Steinke is of course off the payroll (and to forestall any chance of future embarrassment I’ve had him dealt with, utilising the concordant modality).

Kruger lives. Hourly I await corroboration from the Chancellery.

Then 1 more piece of the jigsaw will slot into place.

Young Prufer, unlike his hapless sibling, went home for Christmas. And I lost little time in bearding him on his return, saying,

‘Did you
know
they were encircled?’

‘Yes. They’ve been encircled for well over a month.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me? I looked a real . . .’

‘I couldn’t risk it, Sturmbannfuhrer. It’s now a very serious offence – putting something like that in a letter. Irmfried said it in baby code.’

‘Baby code?’

‘Our private language. So only I’d understand. I’m sorry, sir, but I didn’t want to put him in a spot. I reckon he’s got enough to be going on with. He says they all look like icicles. 2 weeks ago he watched some men decapitate the rotten carcass of a mule. They ate the brains with their bare hands.’

‘Mm. But for a German soldier . . . How’s morale?’

‘Could be higher, quite honestly. On Christmas Eve the men were weeping like children. They’ve convinced themselves that they’re being punished by God for all those things they did in Ukraine. Last year.’

‘Na. Last year.’ I grew pensive, and after a while Prufer said,

‘But let me put your mind at rest, mein Kommandant. There’ll be no thought of surrender. Those boys aren’t just crack soldiers – they’re National Socialists. None more so than Friedrich Paulus, who seems to be made out of tempered steel. They’ll fight to the last bullet.’