The Zone of Interest (33 page)

‘Now now. Most likely the Chancellery will adhere to its original adjudication. I’m pretty sure there’ll be no change of plan. Boiling water, eh?’

I suppose too that I wanted to bind her to me. For insurance, obviously. But now we are beginning to think about the exploration of darkness, we may say that I wanted her to come with me, out of the light.

‘When can I assess the patient, sir?’

‘What, beforehand? No, I’m afraid that’s impossible.’ This was literally true: there were guards down there, witnesses down there. ‘You’ll have to do her sight unseen.’

‘Age?’

‘29. She says. But you know how women are. Oh yes – I almost forgot. Is it painful?’

‘Without at least a topical anaesthetic? Yes, sir. Very.’

‘Mm. Oh well. We’d better have a topical anaesthetic then. You see, we can’t have her making much noise.’

Miriam said she’d need money for that. 20 US, if you please. I had only 1s; I started counting them out, employing mental arithmetic.

‘1, 2, 3. Your uh, great-aunt,’ I said with ½ a smile. ‘4, 5, 6.’

Back in Rosenheim, during my Leninist period (ever a dreamer!), I used to puzzle with my future wife over the chief Luxemburgian oeuvre,
The Accumulation of Capital
(and Lenin, despite her criticisms of his use of terror, did once call her ‘an eagle’). In early 1919, just after the pathetic failure of the German Revolution, Luxemburg was arrested by a Freikorps unit in Berlin, not my Rossbach boys but a pack of hooligans under the nominal command of old Walli Pabst . . .

‘10, 11, 12. Rosa Luxemburg. They clubbed her to the floor and shot her in the head and threw her body in the Landwehr Canal. 18, 19, 20. And how many languages did she speak?’

‘5.’ Miriam straightened her gaze. ‘This procedure, sir. The sooner the better. That’s axiomatic.’

‘Well. She’s not showing,’ I said (my mind was made up). ‘She seemed fit enough the last time I saw her.’ And it’s good, not using Parisians. I expressively crinkled my nose and said, ‘I think we’ll leave it a bit.’

Szmul was bringing his expertise to bear on 1 of the new installations, namely Crema 4: 5 3-retorters (capacity: 2,000 per 24 hours). This particular facility had proved to be a major pain right from the start. After 2 weeks the rear funnel wall collapsed; and when we got it going again it lasted a mere 8 days before Szmul pronounced it ‘burnt out’. 8 days!

‘The firebricks got loose again, sir. And fell into the duct between the oven and the chimney. There’s nowhere for the flames to go.’

‘Shoddy workmanship,’ I said.

‘Poor materials, sir. The clay’s been qualified. See the discoloured veins?’

‘Wartime economies, Sonder. I take it 2 and 3 are holding the fort?’

‘At ½ volume, sir.’

‘Good God. What do I tell Communications? That I’m refusing transports? Ach, back to the pits, I suppose. And more Crap from Air Defence. Tell me . . .’

The Sonderkommandofuhrer straightened up. He shut the grate with his foot and slid the lateral bolt on the oven door. Some distance apart, we stood in the grey gloom of the vault, with its low ceiling, its caged lights, its echoes.

‘Tell me, Sonder. Does it feel different? Knowing your uh – time of departure?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Of course it does. April 30th. Where are we now? The 6th. No, the 7th. So. 23 days to Walpurgisnacht.’

He took an indescribably filthy rag from his pocket and set about scouring his fingernails.

‘I’m not expecting you to confide in me, Sonder. But is there anything . . . positive about it? About knowing?’

‘Yes, sir. In a way.’

‘Calmer and all that. More resigned. Well I’m sorry to be a killjoy. You may not relish your last duty. You may not exactly warm to the final service you’ll render me. And render the Reich.’

And I gave him his assignment.

‘You lower your head. You look downhearted. Take comfort, Sonder! You’ll be saving your Kommandant no end of trouble. And as for your poor little conscience, well, you won’t have to “live with yourself” for very long. About 10 seconds, I’d say. At the most.’ I rubbed my hands together. ‘Now. What are you going to use? Get your bag . . . What’s this? What’s this fucking
spear
here? Mm. A kind of marlinspike with a handle. Good. It’ll go up your sleeve. Try it . . . All right. Now put it back.’

I made a motion. We climbed up from the basement and walked down a tunnel covered in sheets of creaking, whistling tin.

‘Oh, we know where your wife is, Sonder.’

Actually, and annoyingly, this had ceased to be the case; Pani Szmul was no longer to be found in the attic above the bakery at number 4 Tlomackie Street. And when the kitchen foreman was brought in for questioning he confessed that he’d had a hand in getting her out of the ghetto – her and her brother. They were heading south. No mystery there: Hungary, where the Jews, apart from the odd razzia and massacre, were just 2nd-class citizens (and weren’t even badged). And this despite the personal guarantee of President Chaim Rumkowski. Most scandalously of all (I can’t get over this), most scandalously of all (I
really
can’t get over this), it happened right under the noses,
right under the noses
of the Uberwachungsstelle zur Bekampfung des Schleichhandels und der Preiswucherei im judischen Wohnbezirk! And
how
much money did I disperse? I said,

‘Halt.’

Na, I wasn’t really discouraged. Shulamith’s flit was only a theoretical or platonic reverse: the threat would still hold; the charm was still firm and good. Having taken the trouble to locate the woman, though, I found it an aesthetic irritation, somehow, to think of her strolling scot-free down the boulevards of Budapest.

‘Well, Sonderkommandofuhrer. Until the 30th. Walpurgisnacht, nicht?’

Mobius took a pull on his drink. He wiped his mouth on a serviette. He sighed and said quietly,

‘That cabal of little hens. Norberte Uhl, Suzi Erkel, Hannah Doll. Hannah Doll, Paul.’

‘Ach.’

‘Defeatism. Frivolity. Enemy radio – that’s clear enough from the things they say. Now,
Paul
, I had a word with Drogo Uhl, and Norberte’s kept her trap shut ever since. Likewise with Olbricht and Suzi. I had a word with
you
and . . .’

‘Ach.’

‘Now I didn’t say this before but you can’t not know that your whole . . . position here is dangling by a thread. And there’s Hannah beaming and glowing at every little snippet of bad news. And you’re the Kommandant! If things don’t change and change soon I’ll have to report it to Prinz Albrecht Strasse. I ask again. I mean it’s pretty basic, isn’t it? Can you, or can you not, control your wife?’

‘Ach.’

I’d decided to get to bed at a prudent hour, and I was lying there curled up with the pre-war bestseller,
Die judische Weltpest: Judendammerung auf dem Erdball
.

The door swung open. Hannah. Naked but for her highest high heels. And made up to the 9s. She advanced and stood over me. She reached down and took my hair in both hands. She ground my face roughly and painfully into the brambles of her Busch, with such force that she split both my lips, then released me with a flourish of contempt. I opened my eyes, and saw the vertical beads of her Ruckgrat, the twin curves of her Taille, the great oscillating hemispheres of her Arsch.

He plays with his Viper, he plays and he plays. He plays with his viper, he plays and he plays. Darkness is a master from Germany. Look around: see how it all leaps alive – where death is! Alive!

3. SZMUL: A SIGN

It won’t be this week. It won’t even be next week. It won’t even be the week after. It will be the week after that.

And I was ready for it. But I am not ready for this; and I should have been.

Somebody will one day come to the ghetto or the Lager and account for the near-farcical
assiduity
of the German hatred.

And I would start by asking – why were we conscripted, why were we impressed, in the drive towards our own destruction?

One day in December 1940 my wife came back from the textile plant to the small unheated room we shared with three other families – and she said to me,

‘I have spent the last twelve hours dyeing uniforms white. For use on the eastern front. And who do I do this for?’

Pauperised, frozen, famished, imprisoned, enslaved, and terrorised, she was working on behalf of the forces that had bombed, shelled, strafed, and looted her city, flattened her house, and killed her father, her grandmother, two uncles, three aunts, and seventeen cousins.

There it is, you see. The Jews can only prolong their lives by helping the enemy to victory – a victory that for the Jews means what?

Nor should we forget my silent sons, Schol and Chaim, and their contribution to the war effort – the war against the Jews.

I am choking, I am drowning. This pencil and these scraps of paper aren’t enough. I need colours, sounds – oils and orchestras. I need something more than words.

*

We are in the dank black sepulchre under Crematory IV. Doll stands there with his gun in one hand and a cigar in the other; he smooths his eyebrow with a little finger.

‘All right. Let’s practise your thrust. Let the weapon drop down out of your sleeve and into your hand. And spear that sack there. As fast as you can . . . Very
good
, Sonder. I think you’ve had a bit or practice already, ne? Listen. To repeat. They will come for Shulamith Zachariasz at noon on May the first. Unless I countermand my order that morning by telephone. So it’s very simple. And very elegant.’

He steps forward and leans into me, chin to chin, saying bright-eyed in a spray of spittle,

‘Walpurgisnacht, nicht?
Walpurgisnacht. Nicht? Nicht? Yech? Nicht? Yech? Nicht. Walpurgisnacht . . .
Sonder, the only way you can keep your wife alive’, he said, ‘is by killing mine. Klar?’

The earth obeys the laws of physics, turning on its axis and describing its loop round the sun. So the days pass, the land thaws, the air warms . . .

It is midnight on the spur. The transport has made good time from the camp in unoccupied France. Each boxcar was equipped with a keg of water and, even more unusually, a child’s potty. The selection is beginning, and the queue, winding down the entire length of the platform (traced by the white glow of the reflectors), remains orderly. Some of the floodlights are dimmed or have their faces averted; there is calm, and a soft breeze. A sudden flock of swallows dips and climbs.

They recast you (I am muttering to myself), they recast you in their own image, they recast you as if on a blacksmith’s workslab, and, having battered you into a different shape, they grease you with their fluids, they smear you with themselves . . .

I realise I am staring at a family of four: a woman of about twenty with an infant in her arms, flanked by a man of about thirty and another woman of about forty. It is really too late to intervene; and if there is the slightest commotion I will die tonight and Shulamith will die on May Day. And yet, eerily impelled, I approach, touch the man’s shoulder, draw him aside, and say as meaningly as I’ve ever said anything,

‘
Monsieur, prenez le garçon et donnez–le à sa grand-mère. S’il vous plaît, Monsieur. Croyez moi. Croyez moi. Celui n’est pas jeune?
’ I shook my head. ‘
Les mères ayant des enfants?
’ I shook my head. ‘
Que pouvez-vous y perdre?
’

After several minutes of troubled hesitation he does as I say. And, when their turn comes, Professor Entress selects two, and not one, to the right.

So I delay a death – the death of
la femme
. I have, for now, saved a wife. More than this, for the first time in fifteen months I have suffered a man to look into my eyes. I take this as a
sign
.

It is not today. It is not even tomorrow. It is the day after that.

I am in the empty changing room at the Little Brown Bower. There will again be a very long delay caused by the handlers of the Zyklon B, who are both incapacitated by drugs or alcohol and will have to be replaced.

We are awaiting a transport from Hamburg, the SS and I.

The undressing area looks businesslike with its hooks and benches, its signs in all the languages of Europe; and the hosed-down gas chamber has resumed its imitation of a shower room, with nozzles (but with no drains set into the floor).

Here they come. They are filing in now, and my Sonders move among them.

An Unterscharfuhrer hands me a note from Lagerfuhrer Prufer. It says:

20 Wagons (approx. 90 in each) out of Hamburg. Stop at Warsaw: additional 2 Wagons. Total: 22 Wagons. 1,980 Settlers minus 10% found fit for work = 1,782 approx.

I see a boy, who is clearly alone, walking strangely and painfully. He is club-footed – and his surgical boot will have been left in the stack on the platform, along with all the other trusses and braces and prostheses.

‘Witold?’ I say. ‘Witold.’

He looks up at me, and after a moment of emptiness his face flares with gratitude and relief.

‘Mr Zachariasz! Where’s Chaim? I went looking for him.’

‘Went looking for him where?’

‘At the bakery. It’s shut. It’s boarded up. I asked next door and they said Chaim went ages ago. With you and Schol.’

‘And his mother? His mother? Pani Zachariasz?’

‘They said she went too.’

‘On a transport?’

‘No. Walking. Her brother took her. Mr Zachariasz, I got arrested! At the station. For vagrancy. Pawiak Prison! We thought they were going to shoot us but they changed their minds. Is Chaim here?’

‘Yes, he’s here,’ I say. ‘Witold, come with me. Come on. Come.’

It is spring in the birch wood. The silver bark is peeling; the brisk wind frees droplets of moisture from the papery leaves.

I give the Kapo, Krebbs, a meaning look and say
with the authority the German power has invested in me
, ‘Kannst du mich mal zwei Minuten entbehren?’