The Zone of Interest (32 page)

‘. . .
Menschenskind
, Hauptsturmfuhrer! The Zahlappell! The
Zahlappell
!’

There was a silence. Prufer was frowning at me with what seemed to be intense solicitude. He gave a discreet cough and said quietly,

‘Paul.
Paul
. With a Haftling headcount, Paul . . . As long as the total number tallies, there isn’t any difficulty. Remember? They don’t have to be alive.’

After a moment or 2 I said, ‘No. No. Of course they don’t. You’re quite right, Wolfram. How foolish of me. Yes. They can be dead if they want. They don’t have to be alive.’

My rumpy girl Friday, little Minna, knocked and put her head round the door. She asked after the whereabouts of a certain file and I told her where I thought it might conceivably be.

‘How’re you finding the ramp work, Wolfram?’

‘Well, I can see why you got cheesed off with it, Paul.’

‘It’s very good of you to stand in. I’ll be my old self again soon.’ I tapped my desktop. ‘Well. What’ll we do with the Kapos? Got to be firm. Phenol? Small calibre?’

Again the look of solicitude. ‘Waste of materiel, surely, Kommandant. You know – simpler just to revise their status. Then, Paul, the Jews can sort it out for themselves.’

‘Mm. So much better for
esprit de corps
. . . That’s French, Wolfram. It means team spirit. You know, morale.’

Sybil grows lovelier with each passing day. Her abiding passion – rather reprehensibly – is still cosmetics. She filches items from her mother’s dressing table. Lipstick, nicht? And it’s rather comical. There she is, alternately smiling and pouting at me with crimson smears on her teeth.

And you should see the tangles she gets into when she tries on Hannah’s brassieres!

Goal number 2.
To consolidate the 1,000 Year Reich.

You know, so it lasts as long as the 1 we had before – the 1 started by Charlemagne and ended by Napoleon.

As I’ve already conceded, there’s a bumpy patch up ahead, most probably. Once we’ve weathered that, however . . .

Here’s a fact that’s not often enough stressed. In the election of July ’32 the NSDAP polled 37.5%:
the highest vote for a single party in the history of Weimar
. Solid evidence, then, of the profound affinity between the simple yearnings of the Volk and the golden dream of National Socialism. It was always there, do you see. By November ’33, plebiscitary acclamation reached 88%, and by April ’38 it settled at just over 99! What clearer token could there be of the rude sociopolitical health of Nazi Germany?

Ach, once we’re over this somewhat rocky stretch of road, and once we’ve made a few modifications (including, in the fullness of time, the appointment of a rather more centrist head of state), there’ll be no earthly reason why we shouldn’t cruise on for the duration of the next millennium.

So. Goal number 2: mission accomplished!

*

My visit took place at the usual hour. Alisz was crouched on the stool with her hands slowly writhing on her lap.

‘All right, woman, you can stop your moaning. You can switch off the waterworks. I’ve talked to the physician. A simple procedure. Routine. She does it all the time.’

‘. . . But Paul. There are no women doctors here.’

‘There are
100s
of women doctors here. They’re Haftlinge.’

‘The prisoner doctors haven’t got any instruments. They’ve got toolkits!’

‘Not all of them.’ I had Alisz sit beside me on the bed, and I strove to reassure her for a considerable period of time. ‘Better now?’

‘Yes, Paul. Thank you, Paul. You always find an answer.’

And to my great surprise I felt the retreat of those higher scruples which, in the presence of a fertilised female, generally inhibit me. I said,

‘Go on. Go on. Here. Just hoik it up a bit.’

And yes I went ahead and gave her 1 then and there. Thinking (and it was a form of words that I often applied to the larger situation), Well. In for a fucking penny. In for a fucking pound.

They are deeply necessary, my engagements with Alisz Seisser – for how else can I maintain my dignity and self-respect? I of course allude to the appalling conditions that obtain in the Doll villa. Alisz’s unfailing gratitude and esteem (not to mention her trills of amatory bliss) form a crucial counterweight to the, to the . . .

I am afraid of Hannah. There. It takes a certain kind of courage to commit such a sentence to paper – but it’s the case. How to describe this fear? Whenever we happen to be alone together, I feel a vacuum in my solar plexus, like a globe of hard air.

Starting on the night of the Dezember Konzert, Hannah has reinvented her appearance, her outward form. Whilst she was never a great 1 for the clogs and the dirndls, her raiment was always commendably demure. Now she dresses like a man-pleaser – she dresses like an experienced pleaser of men.

She puts me in mind of Marguerite, of Pucci, of Xondra, of Booboo. It isn’t so much the sheeny make-up and the sections of extra Fleisch on view (and the shaven Achselhohlen!). It’s the look in the Augen – the look of artful calculation. The thing about such females, do you see, is that they’re continuously aware of Bett, of Sex. And whilst this is an appealing trait in a sophisticated companion, it is utterly excruciating in a wife.

I can only liken the sensation, when we’re alone . . . not to the
aftermath
of sexual failure but to its
prospect
. And that defies all intuition: for the last 8 months, with Hannah, there have been no failures (and no successes).

And she continues, downstairs, to look preoccupied and smug. Is she dreaming about the effeminate charms of Angelus Thomsen? I don’t believe she is. She’s just sneering at the thwarted virility of Paul Doll.

. . . Last night I was in my ‘lair’, quietly imbibing (in moderation, however, as I’ve reduced substantially of late). I heard the knob give its creak, and there she was, filling the doorway in her green ballgown, gloved to the elbows, her naked Schultern taking the coiled weight of her Haar. At once I felt my blood go loath and cold. Hannah stared at me, unblinking, until I turned away.

She advanced. Very heavily, and very noisily, she sat herself down on my lap. The armchair was fairly swamped by the crackling pleats of her dress. How I wanted this weight off me – how I wanted it off, off . . .

‘Do you know who you are?’ she whispered (and I could feel her lips against the down of my ears). ‘Do you?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Who am I?’

‘You’re a young single man, and a fucking fool of a Brownshirt, a violent fucking buffoon who marches with the Brownshirts. Who sings songs with the Brownshirts, Pilli.’

‘Go on. If you must.’

‘You’re a fucking chump of a Brownshirt who, tired of thinking dirty thoughts and playing with his Viper, falls asleep in his bunk and has the worst of all possible dreams. In this dream nobody does things to you. You do things to them. Terrible things. Unspeakably terrible things. Then you wake up.’

‘Then I wake up.’

‘Then you wake up and you find it’s all true. But you don’t mind. You go back to playing with your Viper. You go back to thinking dirty thoughts. Goodnight, Pilli. Kiss.’

Aspiration number 3.
To shatter Judaeo-Bolshevism once and for all.

Now let’s think. We haven’t had much luck, so far, with Bolshevism. As for the Judaeo side of it . . .

Not long ago there was a widely discussed murder, in Linz, where a man stabbed his wife 137 times. People seemed to think this was somehow excessive. But I immediately saw the logic of it. The night logic of it.

We can’t stop now. Or what were we doing, what did we think we were about, over the last 2 years?

The war against the Anglo-Saxons does not resemble the war against the Jews. In the latter conflict, we enjoy, in military terms, a distinct advantage, as the other side has no army. And no navy and no air force.

(Reminder: have that word with Szmul
soon
.)

So let’s see. Living space. 1,000 Year Reich. Judaeo-Bolshevism.

Result? 2½ out of 3. Yech, I’ll drink to that.

Emergency summit in the Political Department! Myself, Fritz Mobius, Suitbert Seedig, and Rupprecht Strunck. Crisis at the Buna-Werke . . .

‘This cocksucker was mixing sand with the engine grease,’ said Rupprecht Strunck (a very slightly gross old party, if we’re perfectly honest about it). ‘To screw the gears.’

‘Wirtschaftssabotage!’ I lithely interjected.

‘And they’d weakened the rivets,’ said Suitbert. ‘So they’d pop. They also skewed the pressure gauges. False readings.’

‘Christ knows the extent of it,’ said Strunck. ‘There must be dozens of the shitpigs, with a coordinator on the floor. And there must be a mole. Inside Farben.’

‘How do we know that?’ asked Fritz.

Suitbert explained. The evildoers only tampered with equipment that was a long way away from ‘first use’. So by the time you deployed this or that piece of machinery, and the thing jammed, stalled, collapsed, or exploded, nobody had any idea who’d put it together. Strunck said,

‘They’ve got a fucking calendar of 1st use. Someone’s given them a fucking calendar.’

I smartly said, ‘Burckl!’

‘
No
, Paul,’ said Fritz. ‘Burckl was just a sap. Never a traitor.’

‘And has the apprehended culprit been interrogated?’ I inquired.

‘Oh yes. He spent all last night with Horder. Nothing yet.’

‘A Jew I suppose.’

‘No. An Englishman. An NCO called Jenkins. We’ve got him in the crouchbox for now. Then Off will have a go. Then Entress with the scalpel. See how he likes that.’ Fritz stood, stacking his papers. ‘Not a whisper of this to anyone. Not a whisper to Farben, Doktor Seedig, Standartenfuhrer Strunck. Sit on your hands, mein Kommandant. Understood, Paul? And for the love of God,
don’t
go blabbing to
Prufer
.’

Of course the girls are dying to trot around on that little wreck Meinrad, but he’s got
curb
now and can hardly walk. Nor, for some time, have we been able to depend on the weekly ministrations of Tierpfleger Seisser! Ach. Now we just get the odd visit from Bent Suchanek, the schludrig muleskinner loosely attached to the Equestrian Academy.

She was a rare bird, a Judin Prominent in the SS-Hygienic Institute (the SS-HI), 1 of several prisoner doctors who, under close supervision of course, did lab work on bacteriology and experimental sera. Unlike the Ka Be (an indigent hospice or holding pound) and unlike Block 10 (a free-for-all of castrations and hysterectomies), the SS-HI bore quite persuasive resemblances to an establishment devoted to medicine. I went there for the introductory chat, but for our 2nd meeting I had her over to a quiet stockroom in the MAB.

‘Please sit.’

A Polish–German, her name was Miriam Luxemburg (and her mother was said to be a niece of Rosa Luxemburg, the famous Marxist ‘intellectual’), and she’d been with us for 2 years. Now women do not on the whole age gracefully in the KL – but it’s chiefly complete lack of food that does that (and even hunger, chronic hunger, can wipe away all the feminine essences in 6 or 7 months). Dr Luxemburg looked about 50, and was probably about 30; but it wasn’t malnutrition that had reduced her hair to a kind of mould and turned her lips outside in. She had some flesh on her and, moreover, seemed tolerably clean.

‘For security reasons it’ll have to be done around midnight,’ I said. ‘You’ll bring your own gear of course. What else’ll you need?’

‘Clean towels and plenty of boiling water, sir.’

‘You’re just going to give her a preparation, aren’t you? You know, 1 of those tube pills they talk about.’

‘There are no tube pills, sir. The procedure will be dilation and curettage.’

‘Well, whatever you have to do. Oh by the way,’ I said. ‘It’s possible that the directive may be subject to change.’ I spoke, as it were, conjecturally. ‘Yes, the orders from Berlin may quite possibly undergo modification.’

My initial offer of 6 bread rations having been dismissed with some hauteur, I now passed along a paper bag containing 2 sleeves of Davidoffs, and there would be 2 more to follow: 800 cigarettes. She intended, I knew, to expend this capital on her brother, who was struggling, somewhat, in a penal Kommando in the uranium mines beyond Furstengrube.

‘Modified in what way, sir?’

‘The Chancellery may yet opt’, I explained, ‘for a slightly different outcome. Wherein the procedure does not go well. From the patient’s point of view.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning, sir.’

‘Meaning, sir?’

‘There would be a further 800 Davidoffs. Of course.’

‘Meaning, sir?’

‘Sodium evipan. Or phenol. A simple cardiac injection . . . Oh, stare not so, “Doktor”. You’ve selected, haven’t you. You’ve done selections. You’ve separated out.’

‘That has sometimes been asked of me, yes, sir.’

‘And you’ve disposed of live births,’ I said. ‘There’s no point in denying it. We all know it happens.’

‘That has sometimes been asked of me, yes, sir.’

‘Quite heroic in a way. Secret deliveries. You risk death.’

She didn’t reply. For she risked death every day, every hour, just by being what she was. Yes, I thought: that’ll put a few bags under your eyes and a few notches on your mouth. I gave her an interrogative stare, and she gulped and said,

‘As a student, as an intern, I had such very different things in mind. Sir.’

‘No doubt you did. Well, you’re not a student now. Come on. What’s 1 jab?’

‘But I don’t know how to do that, sir. The cardiac injection. The phenol.’

I came close to suggesting that she walk down the corridor, at the SS-HI, and put in some practice – it was called ‘Room 2’ and they did about 60 per day.

‘It’s easy, isn’t it? Perfectly straightforward, I’m told. 5th rib space. All you need’s a long syringe. It’s easy.’

‘It’s easy. All right, sir. You do it.’

For a moment I turned away in thought . . . My earlier dialectic, as regards Alisz Seisser, had, in the end (after much to and fro), gone as follows: why take a chance? But the alternative wasn’t free of hazard either; and there’d be the usual sullen intractability of the corpse. I said,