The Zone of Interest (35 page)

‘That’s what I keep telling myself, sir. Still.’

‘Events will put a brake on your Herr Strunck, believe me. Very soon they’ll
only
be killing the women and the children. Because they’ll need the men for labour. So cheer up, eh? Look on the bright side. Shall I tell you the question that’s hanging in the air?’

‘If you would.’

‘Who are they killing the Jews
for
?
Cui bono
? Who will wallow in the fruits of a judenfrei Europe? Who will bask in its sun? Not the Reich. There won’t
be
a Reich . . .’

Just for a moment I thought of Hannah – and the unities, and what war does to them. Peters smiled and said,

‘You know the people Grofaz hates most – now? Because they failed him? Germans. You watch. After he’s chased out of Russia, all his efforts will be in the west. He wants the Russians to get here first. So hunker down.’

I shook his hand and I said I was grateful for his time and trouble.

He shrugged. ‘Kruger? Well, now we’re almost there.’

‘I’m pretty sure I’ll learn more. My uncle, he can’t resist a good story. In which case I’ll certainly . . .’

‘Yes, do. I keep thinking – Leipzig, January ’34. That’s where and when the Dutch pyromaniac parted company with his head.’ He gave a snort. ‘Our Viennese visionary had his heart set on the rope. More demeaning that way. He was appalled to learn that there hasn’t been a judicial hanging in Germany since the eighteenth century.’ Peters gestured: in the distance, the creamy dome of the gutted and abandoned Reichstag. ‘Leipzig, January ’34. Do you think Dieter Kruger might’ve had something to do with the Fire?’

Wibke Mundt was a compulsive smoker – in an hour she could brim a whole ashtray with butts of brown. She was also a compulsive cougher and retcher. A full month had passed, and I now sat in her office at the Chancellery (on a bomb-damaged but efficiently repaired Wilhelmstrasse) . . . I was numbly watching the movements of another, more junior secretary, a soft-faced blonde called Heidi Richter. With abstract admiration I noted the way she leaned sideways, bent forward, crouched down, straightened up . . . During these months in town I had played the part of the privileged ascetic, strolling the working-class suburbs of Friedrichshain and Wedding in the afternoons, dining early and sparely at the hotel (fowl, pasta, and other unrationed items, occasionally including oysters and lobster) before going back up to my room (where, at some personal risk, I read the likes of Thomas Mann). There were three or four Berlin girls with whom I had what we called ‘understandings’; yet I let them be. Boris would have ridiculed my earnestness, but I felt that I had gained some emotional or even moral capital, and that I didn’t want to deplete it, I didn’t want to start living off it. And I was the man who, not so long ago, had known coition with the murderess Ilse Grese . . .

‘Liebling, it’s no use you pacing about,’ said Wibke. ‘He’ll be a while yet. Here, have a cup of this filthy coffee.’

A wait within a wait: I had arrived at noon, and it was now twenty to three. So I looked again at the two letters I picked up when I settled my vast bill at the Eden.

As a supplement to his despairing weekly report, Suitbert Seedig enclosed a confidential addendum about the latest doings of Rupprecht Strunck. Strunck had abolished unverzuglich – working at the double. Now the Haftlinge were working at the treble: working at a sprint. The Main Yard, as Seedig put it, was
like an antheap in the middle of a forest fire
.

The other letter, dated April 19, was from Boris Eltz (a decidedly lax correspondent, it has to be said). Much of this was in a kind of code. What the censors wanted to hear was nearly always the exact opposite of the truth, so, for example, when Boris wrote,
I’ve heard that the young teetotaller is soon to be promoted for his superb efficiency and the truly exemplary burnish of his ethics
, I knew that the Old Boozer was soon to be demoted for gross incompetence and hyperactive venality.

Of Hannah he said,
I saw her at the Uhls’ on Jan 30 and at the Dolls’ on Mar 23.

These must have been gangrenous occasions. January 30 was the tenth anniversary of the seizure of power; and on March 23 of the same winter the Enabling Act was passed, dissolving the constitutional state – the Law, as they called it, for the Alleviation of the People’s and the Reich’s Misery . . .

Boris ended his letter as follows.

At both of these receptions your friend caused our political officer to rebuke her for not falling in with the prevailing mood. She was decidedly gloomy, while everyone else, of course, scenting victory, was euphoric with nationalist fire!

To be serious, brother. I’ve been let out six weeks early: my time among the Austrians is at an end. Tonight and with a full heart I begin my journey to the east. Don’t worry. I will fight to the death to ensure that Angelus Thomsen goes on being attractive to Aryan women. And you, my love, will do
everything in your power
to protect the blue-eyed, golden-haired ‘Theres’, our contrarian from the High Tatras.

As always, B.

‘Heidi,’ said Wibke, ‘would you kindly direct Obersturmfuhrer Thomsen to the small dining room?’

Though not to be seriously compared with the big dining room (that atrium of a banqueting hall), the small dining room was a big dining room, its thirty-foot airspace struggling to contain many tons of crystal chandelier. I took a seat at the rectangular table and was served a cup of real coffee and a glass of Benedictine. The air was full of tobacco smoke and existential unhappiness, and a tall, fat, hot man in a tight morning suit and wing collar was reading at enormous inner cost from a sheet of paper, sweating freely as he said in fluent, formal German,

‘We give you our warmest thanks for your typically Teutonic hospitality, Herr Reichsleiter. Our memories will especially cosset the magnificent views at the famous Eagle’s Nest, the splendid performance of Richard Wagner’s
Tristan und Isolde
in Salzburg, the guided tour of Munich with its poignant ceremony at the Temple of Martyrs, and, last but by no means least, the lavish repast at your own demesne in Pullach, with your beautiful children and your gracious and graceful wife. For all this, together with our stay in the glorious imperium of your capital, Herr Reichsleiter, from the bottom of our hearts we tender our—’

‘Gern geschehen, gern geschehen. Now to reality,’ said the Sekretar.

Looking especially eager and amused, Uncle Martin cleared his throat and straightened up in his chair. Then with dutiful if slightly inconvenienced smiles at the translator he went on,

‘Berlin is eager to strengthen its stout bond with Budapest . . . Now that you’re behaving like an ally again and not like a neutral . . . That’s settled. On to the other matter . . . You know very well that we deplored the removal of Prime Minister Bárdossy, and we are frankly consternated . . . by the policies of Prime Minister Kállay . . . As things stand, Hungary is a veritable paradise’ – ein Paradies auf Erden – ‘for the Jews . . . Every hooknose’ – jeder Hakennase – ‘in Europe positively thirsts to penetrate your borders . . . We blush, gentlemen, we
blush
’ – wir
erroten
– ‘when we ponder your conception of national security! . . .’

Uncle Martin looked pityingly from face to face. A darkly bearded man of perhaps ministerial rank took a green handkerchief from his top pocket and with adolescent richness blew his nose.

‘As an immediate gesture of good faith, you are asked to introduce certain measures
in accord
with the jurisprudence of the Reich . . . First, confiscation of all wealth . . . Second, exclusion from any form of cultural and economic activity . . . And third, the imposition of the Star . . . They are then to be concentrated and quarantined. Dispatch’ – Absendung – ‘must in due course follow . . . I come, sirs, from the Wolfsschanze itself! . . . Solemnly I am charged to deliver a personal salute to Regent Horthy.’ He raised an index card and said with a smile, ‘To uh, His Serene Highness the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary . . . Who, when he blessed us with a visit just a couple of weeks ago . . . seemed strangely impervious to our recommendations . . . A salute, then, and also a promise . . . Even if you compel us to utilise the Wehrmacht, we will be having your Jews . . . We will be having your Jews. Klar? Das ist klar?’

‘Yes, Herr Reichsleiter.’

‘Now you stay there, Neffe, while I see our dignitaries to their motorcade.’

He returned in less than a minute. Dismissing the servants, and retaining the liqueur, Uncle Martin drank a glass standing up and said,

‘There’s nothing like it, you know, Golo. Telling whole nations what to do.’ He took the chair beside me and asked simply, ‘Well?’

I told him I’d compiled a long report, and added, ‘But let me just say that it’s open-and-shut.’

‘Summarise, please.’

The cosmic-ice theory, Onkel (I began), also known as the World Ice Principle, holds that the earth was created when a frozen comet the size of Jupiter collided with the sun. During the trillennia of winter that followed, the first Aryans were cautiously moulded and formed. Thus, Onkel, only the inferior races are descended from the great apes. The Nordic peoples were cryogenically preserved from the dawn of terrestrial time – on the lost continent of Atlantis.

‘. . . Lost how?’

‘Submerged, Onkel.’

‘And that’s it?’

‘Pretty much. It’s a curious place, the Ahnenerbe. The cosmic-ice theory isn’t the only thing they’re trying to prove. They’re trying to prove that the Missing Link wasn’t an early human but some kind of bear. And that the ancient Greeks were Scandinavians. And that Christ wasn’t Jewish.’

‘What was he then? Is it
all
like that?’

‘An Amorite. No, they do some excellent work, and they’re well worth their million a year.’

Yes, I thought – worth every penny. The fact that the Ahnenerbe’s employees were considered ‘war essential’, exempting them from military service, was militarily neither here nor there: not one of them would have passed a medical; not one of them, I sometimes thought, would have
survived
a medical. These certified Aryans had misbegotten faces that seemed to have been dreamt up by misbegotten minds – pop-eyed, buck-toothed, slobber-mouthed, slope-chinned, their noses red and runny. Most were hack researchers or semi-professional hobbyists. I once got a glimpse of the ‘anatomy pavilion’: a severed head boiling in a glass bowl above the Bunsen burners, a jarful of pickled testicles. The Studiengesellschaft fur Geistesurgeschichte – a waxworks, a dream disarray of charts and body parts, of calipers, abacuses, dandruff, and drool . . .

‘But it’s mostly propaganda. That’s where its value lies, Onkel. Stoking up nationalism. And justifying conquests. Poland’s just part of aboriginal Germania – that kind of thing. But the other stuff? All right, tell me this. The cosmic-ice theory – what does Speer think of it?’

‘Speer? He doesn’t even stoop to give an opinion. He’s a technician. He thinks it’s all shit.’

‘And he’s
right
. Distance yourself, Onkel. The Reichsfuhrer and the Reichsmarschall can gain nothing but ridicule by supporting it. Forget the cosmic-ice theory. And move against Speer. What’s he got?’

Uncle Martin refilled the glasses. ‘Well, Neffe, in February he claimed that he’d doubled war production in just under a year. And it’s true. That’s what he’s got.’

‘Which is precisely the danger. You see what he’s building, him and Saukel, Onkel? Speer wants what is obviously yours. The succession.’

‘. . . The succession.’

‘If, God forbid . . .’

‘Mm. God forbid . . . It’s all in hand, Neffe. The Gauleiter are with me. Of course they are. They’re Party. So, you know – Speer orders a trainload of machine parts and my boys take half of it along the way. And I’ve planted Otto Saur and Ferdi Dorsch in his ministry. He’ll be stymied at every turn, and all he can do is try and get close enough to the Chief to bore him about it. Speer’s just another functionary now. He’s not an artist. Not any more.’