The Zone of Interest Read online

  ‘The work is pretty strenuous comma. You can’t have her to your place – not with that nosey bitch downstairs. But I love the countryside and the open air full stop.’

  ‘Anyway. She’s magnificent.’

  ‘Yes, she is, but there’s too much of her. The conditions are really very decent colon. I like them smaller. They try harder. Our bedrooms are plain but comfy open brackets. And you can fling them about the place. And in October they’ll be giving out . . . You’re mad, you know.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Him. And in October they’ll be giving out these gorgeous eiderdowns. For the colder nights close brackets semicolon. Him. The Old Boozer.’

  ‘He’s nothing.’ And I used a Yiddish expression – pronouncing it accurately enough to give Miss Kubis’s pencil a momentary pause. ‘He’s a grubbe tuchus. A fat-arse. He’s weak.’

  ‘The food is simple comma true comma but wholesome and plentiful semicolon. Old fat-arse is vicious, Golo. And everything is immaculately clean full stop. And he has cunning. The cunning of the weak. Huge, underline that, please, huge farmstead bathrooms . . . with great big free-standing tubs full stop. Cleanliness comma cleanliness dash. You know those Germans exclamation mark.’ Boris sighed and said with adolescent or even childish petulance, ‘Miss Kubis. Please look up now and then so at least I can see your face!’

  *

  Smoking cigarillos, and drinking kir from conical glasses, we looked out at Kalifornia, which resembled, simultaneously and on a massive compass, an emptied block-long department store, a wide-spectrum jumble sale, an auction room, customs house, trade fair, agora, mart, soukh, chowk – a planetary, a terminal Lost and Found.

  Beetling heaps of rucksacks, kitbags, holdalls, cases and trunks (these last adorned with enticing labels of travel – redolent of frontier posts, misty cities), like a vast bonfire awaiting the torch. A stack of blankets as high as a three-storey building: no princess, be she never so delicate, would feel a pea beneath twenty, thirty thousand thicknesses. And all around fat hillocks of pots and pans, of hairbrushes, shirts, coats, dresses, handkerchiefs – also watches, spectacles, and all kinds of prostheses, wigs, dentures, deaf-aids, surgical boots, spinal supports. The eye came last to the mound of children’s shoes, and the sprawling mountain of prams, some of them just wooden troughs on wheels, some of them all curve and contour, carriages for little dukes, little duchesses. I said,

  ‘What’s she doing over there, your Esther? It’s a bit unGerman, isn’t it? What use is a bucket of toothpaste?’

  ‘She’s looking for precious stones . . . You know how she won my heart, Golo? They made her dance for me. She was like liquid. I almost burst into tears. It was my birthday and she danced for me.’

  ‘Oh yes. Happy birthday, Boris.’

  ‘Thanks. Better late than never.’

  ‘How does it feel to be thirty-two?’

  ‘All right, I suppose. So far. You’ll find out yourself in a minute.’ He ran his tongue over his lips. ‘You know they pay for their own tickets? They pay their own way here, Golo. I don’t know how it went with those Parisians, but the norm is . . .’ He bent to wipe a wisp of smoke from his eye. ‘The norm is a flat third-class fare. One-way. Half price for children under twelve. One-way.’ He straightened up. ‘It’s good, isn’t it.’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘. . . The Jews had to come down from their high horse. Which was accomplished by 1934. But this – this is fucking ridiculous.’

  Yes, and Suitbert and Romhilde Seedig were there, and Frithuric and Amalasand Burckl were there, and the Uhls, Drogo and Norberte, were there, and Baldemar and Trudel Zulz were there . . . I – I of course was partnerless; but they balanced me out with the young widow, Alisz Seisser (Regimental Sergeant Major Orbart Seisser having very recently passed away, in stupendous violence and ignominy, here at the Kat Zet).

  Yes, and Paul and Hannah Doll were there.

  It was the major who opened the front door. He reared back and said,

  ‘Ahah, he’s in full fig! And he has a commission, no less.’

  ‘It’s nominal, sir.’ I was wiping my feet on the mat. ‘And it could hardly be more basic, could it?’

  ‘Rank is not a sure gauge of importance, Obersturmfuhrer. Scope of jurisdiction’s the thing. Look at Fritz Mobius. He’s even lower down the scale than yourself – and he’s a fizzer. Scope of jurisdiction’s the key. Come on through, young man. And don’t worry about this. Gardening accident. I took a nasty clout to the bridge of my nose.’

  And, as a result, Paul Doll had two fulminant black eyes.

  ‘It’s nothing. I know what a real wound is, I think. You should’ve seen the state of me on the Iraqi front in 1918. I was in bits. And don’t worry about them, either.’

  He meant his daughters. Paulette and Sybil were sitting at the top of the stairs in their nightdresses, holding hands and patiently weeping. Doll said,

  ‘Dear oh dear. They’ve got their knickers in a twist about something or other. Now where’s my lady wife?’

  I had resolved not to stare. So Hannah – huge and goddessy and freshly sunburnt in an evening dress of amber silk – was almost at once consigned to the wastes of my peripheral vision . . . I knew that a long and tortuous evening was stretching out before me; and yet I still hoped to make some modest headway. My plan was to introduce and emphasise a certain theme, and thus exploit a certain rule of attraction. It was a regrettable rule of attraction, perhaps; but it nearly always worked.

  Tall, slender Seedig and portly little Burckl were in business suits; all the other men loomed in dress uniform. Doll, bemedalled (Iron Cross, Silver Wand Badge, SS Honour Ring), stood with his rear to the log fire and with his legs absurdly far apart, rocking on his heels and, yes, occasionally raising a hand and letting it tremble over the gruesome whelks beneath his brows. Alisz Seisser was in mourning clothes, but Norberte Uhl, Romhilde Seedig, Amalasand Burckl, and Trudel Zulz were ablaze in velvet and taffeta, like playing cards – queens of diamonds, queens of clubs. Doll said,

  ‘Thomsen, help yourself. Go on, get stuck in.’

  On the sideboard there were many platters of canapés (smoked salmon, salami, pickled herring), plus a full bar and four or five half-empty bottles of champagne. I shuffled along with the Uhls – Drogo, a middle-aged captain, who was built like a docker, and had a split chin grey-blue with stubble, and Norberte, a frizzy, fussy presence wearing skittle-sized earrings and a gilt diadem. Not many words were exchanged, yet I made two mildly surprising discoveries: Norberte and Drogo strongly disliked each other, and they were both already drunk.

  I got hold of Frithuric Burckl and talked shop for twenty minutes; then Humilia came through the double doors, gave a shy curtsey, and announced that dinner would presently be served.

  Hannah said, ‘How are the girls? Any better?’

  ‘Still very bad, ma’am. I can’t do a thing with them. They won’t be consoled.’

  Humilia stepped aside as Hannah walked quickly past, and with a grin of vexation the Commandant watched her go.

  ‘Now you’re here. Now you’re there.’

  Boris had solemnly warned me that the women would be seated en bloc, or else they would eat separately in the kitchen (perhaps with the children at an earlier sitting). But no – we dined in the standard coeducational style. There were twelve of us at the circular table; and if I was at six o’clock, then Doll was at eleven, and Hannah was at two (the intertwining of our calves was technically possible – but if I attempted it only the back of my head would remain on my chair). I had Norberte Uhl on one side and Alisz Seisser on the other. With white handkerchiefs noosed round their heads, the maid Bronislawa and another auxiliary, Albinka, lit the candelabrum using the long yuletide matches. I said,

  ‘Good evening, ladies. Good evening, Mrs Uhl. Good evening, Mrs Seisser.’

  ‘Thank you, sir, I’m sure, sir,’ said Alisz.

  The convention hereabouts was that you talked to the women during t
he soup course; after that, once general conversation started up, their voices were not really expected to be heard (and they became like padding; they became shock absorbers). Norberte Uhl had her ruddy, disappointed face slumped low over the tablecloth, and was chuckling hoarsely to herself. So without glancing at two o’clock I turned from seven o’clock to five o’clock and settled down to apply myself to the widow.

  ‘I was very saddened, Mrs Seisser,’ I began, ‘to hear of your bereavement.’

  ‘Yes, sir, thank you, sir.’

  She was in her late twenties, interestingly sallow with many beauty spots (giving you a sense of continuity when, as she sat, she raised her knotty black veil). Boris was a vocal admirer of her rounded low-slung figure (and tonight it looked fluid and buoyant, despite her sepulchral tread). He also told me, in scornful detail, about the last hours of the sergeant major.

  ‘Such a waste,’ said Alisz.

  ‘But it’s a time of great sacrifices and . . .’

  ‘That’s true, sir. Thank you, sir.’

  Alisz Seisser wasn’t here as a friend or a colleague but as the honoured relict of a humble NCO; and she was obviously and painfully ill at ease. I wished in general to give her comfort. And for a while I searched for a redeeming feature, a saving grace – yes, a silver lining in the black thunderhead of Orbart’s ruin. It occurred to me to begin by saying that the Sturmscharfuhrer, at the time of his misadventure, was at least under the influence of a potent analgesic – a large, if entirely recreational, dose of morphine.

  ‘He wasn’t feeling well on the day,’ she said, revealing her feline teeth (paper-white, paper-thin). ‘Not feeling well at all.’

  ‘Mm. It is very demanding work.’

  ‘He told me, you know, I’m not at my best, old girl. I’m not the thing.’

  Before going to the Krankenbau to get his medication, Sergeant Seisser went to Kalifornia to steal enough money to pay for it. With all this accomplished, he returned to his post on the southern edge of the Women’s Camp. As he neared the Potato Store (perhaps hoping for some refreshment from its still), two prisoners broke ranks and made a run for the perimeter (a form of suicide, and astonishingly rare); Seisser raised his machine gun and boldly opened fire.

  ‘A melancholy combination of circumstances,’ I said.

  Because Orbart, surprised by the repercussive force of the weapon (and no doubt also surprised by the force of the drug), staggered backwards six or seven feet and, still spraying bullets, collapsed against the electrified fence.

  ‘A tragedy,’ said Alisz.

  ‘One can only hope, Mrs Seisser, that the work of time . . .’

  ‘Well. Time heals all wounds, sir. Or so it’s said.’

  At last the soup bowls were cleared away and we took delivery of the main course – a thick and vinous beef stew.

  Hannah had just come back to the table, and Doll was in mid anecdote, telling of the visit, seven weeks earlier (in mid July), of the Reichsfuhrer-SS, Heinrich Himmler.

  ‘I took our distinguished guest to the Rabbit Breeding Station in Dwory. I urge you to look in there, Frau Seedig. Gorgeous angora rabbits, as white and fluffy as they come. We farm them, you know, by the hundred. For their fur, nicht? To keep our aircrews warm on their missions! And there was one particular customer called Snowball,’ said Doll, his face gradually breaking into a leer. ‘An absolute beauty. And the prisoner doctor, what am I saying, the prisoner vet, he’d taught it all kinds of “tricks”.’ Doll frowned (and winced, and smiled with pain). ‘Well, there was just this one trick. The main trick. Snowball would sit up on his hind legs, with his forepaws, you know, like this – and beg, they’d taught Snowball to beg!’

  ‘And was our distinguished guest duly charmed?’ asked Professor Zulz (Zulz, an honorary SS colonel, had the sinister agelessness peculiar to certain medical men). ‘Was he tickled?’

  ‘Oh, the Reichsfuhrer was tickled pink. Why, he fairly beamed – he clapped his hands! And his entire entourage, you know, they, they clapped their hands. All for this Snowball. Who looked rather alarmed but just sat there begging!’

  Of course with the ladies present the gentlemen were trying not to talk about the war effort (and also trying not to talk about its local component – the progress of the Buna-Werke). During this time I never met Hannah’s eye exactly, but our roundabout glances occasionally swished past one another in the candlelight . . . Elaborating on the arts of natural husbandry, the talk moved on – herbal remedies, the crossbreeding of vegetables, Mendelism, the controversial teachings of the Soviet agronomist Trofim Lysenko.

  ‘It should be more widely known’, said Professor Zulz, ‘that the Reichsfuhrer is highly distinguished in the field of ethnology. I’m referring to his work at the Ahnenerbe.’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Doll. ‘He’s assembled whole teams of anthropologists and archaeologists.’

  ‘Runologists, heraldists, and what have you.’

  ‘Expeditions to Mesopotamia, the Andes, Tibet.’

  ‘Expertise,’ said Zulz. ‘Brainpower. Which is why we’re the masters of Europe. Applied logic – that’s all it is. There’s no great mystery to it. Do you know, I wonder if there’s ever been a leadership, a chain of command, as intellectually evolved as our own.’

  ‘IQ,’ said Doll. ‘Mental capacity. There’s no great mystery to it.’

  ‘Yesterday morning I was clearing my desk,’ Zulz went on, ‘and I came across two memoranda clipped together. Hear this. Of the twenty-five leaders of the Einsatzgruppen in Poland and the USSR, who did some warm work I can tell you – fifteen doctorates. Now look at the Conference of State Secretaries in January. Of the fifteen attendees? Eight doctorates.’

  ‘What was this conference?’ asked Suitbert Seedig.

  ‘In Berlin,’ said Captain Uhl. ‘At Wannsee. To finalise—’

  ‘To finalise the proposed evacuations’, said Doll, raising his chin and tubing his lips, ‘to the liberated territories in the east.’

  ‘Mm. “Over the Bug”,’ said Drogo Uhl with a snort.

  ‘Eight doctorates,’ said Professor Zulz. ‘All right, Heydrich, rest in peace, convened and chaired. But him apart these were secondary or even tertiary functionaries. And yet. Eight doctorates. Strength in depth. That’s how you get the optimal decisions.’

  ‘Who was there?’ said Doll with a glance at his fingernails. ‘Heydrich. But who else? Lange. Gestapo Muller. Eichmann – the distinguished stationmaster. With his clipboard and his whistle.’

  ‘That’s exactly my point, Paul. Intellectual strength in depth. First-rate decisions all the way down.’

  ‘My dear Baldemar, nothing was “decided” at Wannsee. They merely rubber-stamped a decision taken months earlier. And taken at the most exalted level.’

  It was time to introduce and emphasise my theme. Under the political system that here obtained, everyone had soon got used to the idea that where secrecy began, power began. Now, power corrupts: this was not a metaphor. But power attracts, luckily (for me), was not a metaphor either; and I had derived much sexual advantage from my proximity to power. In wartime, women especially felt the gravitational pull of it; they would be needing all their friends and admirers, all their protectors. I said, slightly teasingly,

  ‘Major. May I tell you one or two things that are not widely known?’

  Doll gave a little upward bob on his buttocks and said, ‘Oh yes please.’

  ‘Thank you. The conference was a kind of experiment or pilot run. And the chairman foresaw very serious difficulties. But it was a great and unexpected success. When it was over, Heydrich, Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich, had a cigar and a glass of brandy. In the middle of the day. Heydrich, who only ever drank alone. A brandy in front of the fire. With the little ticket-puncher Eichmann curled up at his feet.’

  ‘. . . Were you there?’

  I shrugged limply. I also leaned forward and, in an experimental spirit, placed my hand between Alisz Seisser’s knees; and her knees clenched and her hand
found mine, and I made a further discovery. In addition to her other troubles, Alisz was mortally terrified. Her whole body quaked with it. Doll said,

  ‘Were you there? Or was it too low-level for you?’ He chewed and swallowed. ‘Doubtlessly you get all this from your Uncle Martin.’ The two black eyes toured the table. ‘Bormann,’ he said in a deeper voice. ‘The Reichsleiter . . . I knew your Uncle Martin, Thomsen. We were muckers in the time of struggle.’

  This was a surprise to me, but I said, ‘Yes, sir. He often mentions you and the friendship you both enjoyed.’

  ‘Give him my best. And uh, do please go on.’

  ‘Where were we? Heydrich wanted to test the waters. To see—’

  ‘If you mean the Lake it’s bloody freezing.’

  ‘Suitbert, please,’ said Doll. ‘Herr Thomsen.’

  ‘To test the waters for administrative resistance. Resistance to what might seem to be a rather ambitious endeavour. To apply our conclusive racial strategy through the whole of Europe.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘As I said, unexpectedly smooth. There was no resistance. None.’

  Zulz said, ‘What’s unexpected about that?’

  ‘Well, think of the scope, Professor. Spain, England, Portugal, Ireland. And the numbers involved. Ten million. Perhaps twelve.’

  Now the lolling shape on my left, Norberte Uhl, dropped her fork on her plate and said with a splutter, ‘They’re only Jews.’

  You could hear the gustation and ingestion of the civilians (Burckl methodically slurping gravy from his spoon, Seedig rinsing his mouth with Nuits-St-Georges). Everyone else had stopped chewing; and I felt I was not alone in becoming intensely conscious of Drogo Uhl, whose head now slowly described a figure eight as his mouth widened. He turned with bared upper teeth to Zulz and said,

  ‘No, let’s not fly off the handle, eh? Let’s be indulgent. The woman understands nothing. Only Jews?’

  ‘“Only” Jews,’ Doll sadly concurred (he was folding his napkin with a sagacious air). ‘A somewhat puzzling remark, don’t you think, Professor, given that their encirclement of the Reich is now complete?’