The Zone of Interest (28 page)

‘Have they got any bullets?’

Prufer’s earnest young face sustained a rise in emotion, and his voice thickened.

‘A German warrior knows how to die, I trust. I think a German warrior understands what is meant by Sein oder Nichtsein. Oh, I think so. A German warrior knows what
that
involves, I believe.’

‘So how will it go, Wolfram?’

‘Well. The Generalfeldmarschall will have to commit suicide of course. Eventually. And the 6th will go down in a storm of glory. It’ll cost the enemy dear – of that we may be certain. And who’ll be the victor in the end, Paul? German prestige. And German honour, mein Kommandant!’

‘Indubitably,’ I concurred. I sat up straight, I drew in breath. ‘You’re right about the prestige, Hauptsturmfuhrer. When a ¼ of a 1,000,000 men joyfully give up their lives – in the service of an idea . . .’

‘Yes, Paul?’

‘
That
issues a communiqué, Wolfram, that will make the world tremble.
Guerre à mort
. No surrender!’

‘Bravo, mein Kommandant,’ said Prufer. ‘No surrender. Hear him! Hear him!’

And it was going so well, it was going so well for once, and they were are all calmly undressing, and it was quite warm in the Little Brown Bower, and Szmul was there, and his Sonders were darning their way through the throng, and it was all going so beautifully, and the birds outside were singing so prettily, and I found I even ‘believed’ for a moist and misty interlude that we really were looking after these deeply inconvenienced folk, that we really were going to cleanse them and reclothe them and feed them and give them warm beds for the night, and I knew someone would spoil it, I knew someone would ruin it and madden my nightmares, and she did, coming at me not with violence or anathema, no, not at all, a very young woman, naked, and tensely beautiful, every inch, coming at me with a shrug, then a gesture with her slowly raised hands, then almost a smile, then another shrug, then a single word before she moved on.

‘18,’ she said.

It’s a bit early to say, I admit, but 1943 has thus far held more than its fair share of disappointments.

I’ll unburden myself of this without further ado. Alisz Seisser, as we delicately say, is ‘in different circumstances’. And so am I.

She’s pregnant.

Having slept on this news, I arose at 06.30, and went downstairs for a solitary breakfast. I heard the matter-of-fact rapping on the front door, then the maid’s swishy shuffle.

‘Courier from Berlin, sir.’

‘Put it there, Humilia. Lean it on the toast rack. And more Darjeeling.’

Coolly I progressed with my yogurt, my cheese, my salami . . .

A void surrounded the incarcerationary career of Dieter Kruger. You look at the sun for an instant too long – and your point of focus, for a while, is a pulsing blur. Hannah’s lover had been hiding behind that glutinous throb. Until now.

I reached for the sharp white envelope: my name in Indian ink; the gilt crest of the Chancellery. With steady hands I lit a cheroot and reached for a knife; I cut the letter’s throat and readied myself to contemplate the status and whereabouts of friend Kruger. This is what it said:

Lieber SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Doll:

Dieter Kruger. Leipzig, 12 Januar 1934. Auf der Flucht erschossen.

Mit freundlichen Empfehlungen,

M.B.

. . . Shot whilst trying to escape!

Shot whilst trying to escape: a form of words, covering a large variety of destinies. Shot whilst trying to escape. Alternatively, to put it another way, shot. Alternatively, to put it yet another way, kicked or lashed or clubbed or strangled or starved or frozen or tortured to death. But dead.

There are only 2 possible explanations. Either Angelus Thomsen was himself misinformed, or else, for reasons of his own, he misinformed Hannah. And yet – why ever would he do that?

The last heroic fighters in Stalingrad
, intoned my faithful Volksempfanger,
raised their hands for perhaps the last time in their lives to sing the national anthems. What an example German warriors have set in this great age! The heroic sacrifice of our men in Stalingrad was not in vain. And the future will show us why . . .

Time: 07.43. Place: my somewhat cluttered study. I was listening to a recording of the Minister of Enlightenment’s seminal address, delivered at the Sportpalast on February 18. It was a long speech anyway, and considerably protracted by bursts of the stormiest applause. During one of the more extended ovations I had time to read and reread a fine editorial in a recent copy of the
Volkischer Beobachter
. Its conclusion?
They died so that Germany might live
. As for the minister, he ended his peroration with a call for total war:
People, rise up! And storm, break loose!

When the whistling and stomping eventually died down I hurried to the Officers’ Clubroom, feeling the need for solidarity and comradeship in this testing hour. There I found a like-minded Mobius, who was enjoying a morning drink.

I filled my glass and searched for something to say – something that would answer to the seemly gravity of our mood.

‘Ah, Untersturmfuhrer,’ I said gently. ‘Greater love hath no man than him who . . .’

‘Than him who what?’

‘Who lays down his life for—’

‘Blutige
Holle
, Paul, where do you get your information? From the Volksempfanger? They didn’t
lay down their lives
. They
surrendered
.’

‘Kapitulation? Unmoglich!’

‘That’s 150,000 dead and 100,000 captive. Have you
any idea
what the enemy’s going to do with this?’

‘. . . Propaganda?’

‘Yes.
Propaganda
. For God’s sake, Paul, get a grip.’ He weightily exhaled. ‘In London they’re already smelting the so-called Sword of Stalingrad – “by order of the king”. Churchill will personally present it to “Stalin the Mighty” at their next summit. And that’s just for openers.’

‘Mm, might look a bit . . . Ah, but the Generalfeldmarschall, Untersturmfuhrer. Friedrich Paulus. Like the true warrior he was, like the Roman, he took the—’

‘Oh verpiss dich, like hell he did. He’s hobnobbing in Moscow.’

That night I returned to the villa with a heavy heart. It was becoming clearer and clearer to me that I had been deceived – betrayed, at least in thought, by she whom I believed would always remain at my side . . . It was Thomsen. It was Thomsen who made her Busen swell. It was Thomsen who made her Saften stir. But I’m not supposed to
know
about that, am I.

I gave the door a push. Hannah was lying athwart the bed, and on the enemy radio, in impeccable high German, a voice was saying,
Now the civilised nations of the world are fully arrayed against the fascist beast. Its maniacal infamies can no longer skulk behind the fog and mist, the foul breath, of a murderous war. Soon the—

‘Who is this speaking?’

‘Paulus,’ said Hannah gaily.

I felt fiery whispers in my armpits. I said, ‘Kruger. He’s dead.’

‘Mm. So I was told.’

‘Then why, may I ask, are you so radiant?’

‘Because the war is lost.’

‘. . . Hannah, you have just committed a
crime
. A crime for which’, I said, examining my fingernails (and noticing they were in need of a scrub), ‘a crime for which we are entitled to exact the supreme penalty.’

‘Doubting victory. Tell me, Pilli. Do you doubt victory?’

I drew myself up to my full height, saying, ‘Whilst clear hegemony may elude us, there’s no possibility of defeat. It’s called an armistice, Hannah. A truce. We shall simply apply for terms.’

‘Oh no we won’t. You should listen to the enemy radio, Pilli. The Alliance will only accept unconditional surrender.’

‘Unerhort!’

She lay back, on her side, in the significant Unterrock. Her brown and glowing Uberschenkeln – like those of a giantess. ‘What’ll they do with you,’ she asked, turning over and presenting me with the cleft hillock of her Hinterteil, ‘when they see what you’ve done?’

‘Hah. War crimes?’

‘No. Crimes. Just crimes. I haven’t noticed any war.’ She turned and smiled over her shoulder. ‘I suppose they’ll just string you up. Nicht? Nicht? Nicht?’

I said, ‘And you’ll be free.’

‘Yes. You’ll be dead and I’ll be free.’

Of course, I didn’t deign to tender a riposte. My thoughts had turned to something more interesting – the kreative Vernichtung of Sonderkommandofuhrer Szmul.

3. SZMUL: THE TIME OF THE SILENT BOYS

I’ll be thirty-five in September. That declarative sentence attempts very little, I know – but it contains two errors of fact. In September I’ll still be thirty-four. And I’ll be dead.

At every sunrise I tell myself, ‘Well. Not tonight.’ At every sunset I tell myself, ‘Well. Not today.’

It transpires that there’s something childish about the contingent life. To exist hour by hour is childish, somehow.

How amazing it is to say it: I cannot defend myself against the charge of
frivolity
. It is frivolous, it is silly, to persist in a fool’s paradise, let alone a fool’s inferno.

A bewildered lull settles on the Lager after the German defeat in the east. It is like an attack – and again I admit to bathos – of mortal embarrassment. They see the size of their gamble on victory: the fantastic crimes legalised by the state, they finally understand, are still illegal elsewhere. This mood lasts for five or six days, and is now no more than a relatively pleasant memory.

There are selections everywhere – on the ramp, of course, and in the Ka Be, of course, but also in the blocks, also at roll call, and also at the gate. At the gate: the work Kommandos face selections sometimes twice a day, on the way out and on the way back in. Men the shape of gnawed wishbones – the shape of wishbones gnawed and sucked – swell out their chests and move at a jog.

The Germans cannot win the war against the Anglo-Saxons and the Slavs. But there will probably be time for them to win the war against the Jews.

Doll is different, now, on the ramp. An effort has been made. He looks less slovenly, and he’s not nearly so obviously drunk or hungover (or both). His diction – this is strange – has become more confident and also more flowery. He is still very mad, in my view, and necessarily so. What can they do but turn up the dial of insanity? Doll is reconvinced; he has communed with his deepest self and discovered that, yes, murdering all the Jews is the right thing to do.

The Sonders have suffered Seelenmord – death of the soul. But the Germans have suffered it too; I know this; it could not possibly be otherwise.

I am no longer afraid of death, though I am still afraid of dying. I am afraid of dying because it is going to hurt. That’s all there is attaching me to life: the fact that leaving it is going to hurt. It’ll hurt.

Experience tells me that dying never lasts less than about sixty seconds. Even when it’s the shot to the back of the neck, and you go down like a marionette whose strings have been snipped – the actual dying never lasts less than about sixty seconds.

And I am still afraid of that minute of murder.

When Doll next comes to see me I am in the morgue, supervising the barber Kommando and the oral Kommando. The men in the barber Kommando work with shears; the men in the oral Kommando work with a chisel or a small but heavy hammer in one hand and, to control the jaws, a blunt hook in the other. On a bench in the corner the SS dentist licks his lips in his sleep.

‘Sonderkommandofuhrer. Come here.’

‘Sir.’

With his Luger drawn but not raised (as if the weight of it keeps his right hand at his side), Doll has me precede him into the stockroom containing the hoses and the brooms, the brushes and the bleach.

‘I want you to put a date in your diary.’

*

There is a length of wurst in front of you, and you eat it, and then it’s behind you. There is a fifth of schnapps in front of you, and you drink it, and then it’s behind you. There is warm bedding in front of you, and you sleep in it, and then it’s behind you. There is a day or a night ahead of you, and then it’s behind you.

I used to have the greatest respect for nightmares – for their intelligence and artistry. Now I think nightmares are pathetic. They are quite incapable of coming up with anything even remotely as terrible as what I do all day – and they’ve stopped trying. Now I just dream about cleanliness and food.

‘. . . April the thirtieth. Make a mental note of it, Sonderkommandofuhrer. Walpurgisnacht.’

It is now March 10. I feel as though I have been granted eternal life.

‘Where?’ he goes on. ‘The Little Brown Bower? The Wall of Tears? And what time? Ten hundred hours? Fourteen hundred? And by what means? . . . You look oppressed, Sonder, by all these choices.’

‘Sir.’

‘Why don’t you simply repose your trust in me?’

These men, the Death’s Head SS, were probably once very ordinary, ninety per cent of them. Ordinary, mundane, banal, commonplace – normal. They were once very ordinary. But they are ordinary no longer.

‘You’re not getting off that lightly, Sonder. You’ll have to do me a service before you say goodbye. Don’t worry. Leave everything to the Kommandant.’

That day in Chełmno it was deafeningly cold. And perhaps that’s all it is, that’s all it means – the time of the silent boys.

But no. The wind was rushing through the trees, and you could hear that. From five in the morning to five in the evening the German power used whips, and you could hear that. The three gassing vans kept coming down from the Schlosslager and unloading at the Waldlager, and then firing up again, and you could hear that.

On January 21, 1942, the numbers were so great that the SS and the Orpo selected another hundred Jews to help the Sonders drag the bodies to the mass grave. This supplementary Kommando consisted of teenage boys. They were given no food or water, and they worked for twelve hours under the lash, naked in the snow and the petrified mud.