The Zone of Interest

by Martin Amis

  Around half past eight I got up from my desk, intending to fetch a bottle of Sancerre from the roped fridge.

  Max – Maksik – sat erect and still on the bare white slats. In his custody, restrained by a negligent paw, was a small and dusty grey mouse. Still trembling with life, it was looking up at him, and seemed to be smiling – seemed to be smiling an apologetic smile; then the life fluttered out of it while Max gazed elsewhere. Was it the pressure of the claws? Was it mortal fright? Whichever it was Max at once settled down to his meal.

  I went outside and descended the slope to the Stare Miasto. Empty, as if under curfew.

  What was the mouse saying? It was saying, All I can offer, in mitigation, in appeasement, is the totality, the perfection, of my defencelessness.

  What was the cat saying? It wasn’t saying anything, naturally. Glassy, starry, imperial, of another order, of another world.

  When I got back to my rooms Max was stretched out on the carpet in the study. The mouse was gone, devoured without trace, tail and all.

  That night, over the black endlessness of the Eurasian plain, the sky held on to its indigo and violet till very late – the colour of a bruise beneath a fingernail.

  It was the August of 1942.

  *

  2. DOLL: THE SELEKTION

  ‘If Berlin has a change of heart,’ said my caller, ‘I’ll let you know. Sleep well, Major.’ And he was gone.

  As you might expect, that ghastly incident on the ramp has left me with a splitting headache. I have just taken 2 aspirin (650 mg; 20.43) and shall doubtlessly rely on a Phanodorm at bedtime. Not a word of solicitude from Hannah, of course. Whilst she could clearly see that I was shaken to the core, she simply turned away with a little lift of the chin – as if, for all the world, her hardships were greater than my own . . .

  Ah, what’s the matter, dearest sweetling? Have those naughty little girls been ‘playing you up’? Has Bronislawa again fallen short? Are your precious poppies refusing to flower? Dear oh dear – why, that’s almost too tragic to bear. I’ve some suggestions, my petkins. Try doing something for your country, Madam! Try dealing with vicious spoilers like Eikel and Prufer! Try extending Protective Custody to 30, 40, 50,000 people!

  Try your hand, fine lady, at receiving Sonderzug 105 . . .

  Well, I can’t claim I wasn’t warned. Or can I? I was alerted, true, but to quite another eventuality. Acute tension, then extreme relief – then, once again, drastic pressure. I ought now to be enjoying a moment of respite. But what confronts me, on my return home? More difficulties.

  Konzentrationslager 3, indeed. No wonder my head is splitting!

  There were 2 telegrams. The official communication, from Berlin, read as follows:

  JUNE 25

  BOURGET – DRANCY DEP 01.00 ARR COMPIEGNE 03.40 DEP 04.40 ARR LAON 06.45 DEP 07.05 ARR REIMS 08.07 DEP 08.38 ARR FRONTIER 14.11 DEP 15.05

  JUNE 26

  ARRIVE KZA(I) 19.03 END

  Perusing this, one had every reason to expect a ‘soft’ transport, as the evacuees would be spending a mere 2 days in transit. Yes, but the 1st missive was followed by a 2nd, from Paris:

  DEAR COMRADE DOLL STOP AS OLD FRIEND ADVISE EXTREME CAUTION VIZ SPECIAL TRAIN 105 STOP YOUR ABILITIES TESTED TO LIMITS STOP COURAGE STOP WALTHER PABST SALUTES YOU FROM SACRE COEUR END

  Now over the years I have developed a dictum: Fail to prepare? Prepare to fail! So I made my arrangements accordingly.

  It was now 18.57; and we were primed.

  Nobody can say that I don’t cut a pretty imposing figure on the ramp: chest out, with sturdy fists planted on jodhpured hips, and the soles of my jackboots at least a metre apart. And look of what I wielded: I had with me my number 2, Wolfram Prufer, 3 labour managers, 6 physicians and as many disinfectors, my trusty Sonderkommandofuhrer, Szmul, with his 12-man team (3 of whom spoke French), 8 Kapos plus the hosing crew, and a full Storm of 96 troops under Captain Boris Eltz, reinforced by the 8-strong unit deploying the belt-fed, tripod-based heavy machine gun and the 2 flamethrowers. I had also called upon a) Senior Supervisor Grese and her platoon (Grese is admirably firm with recalcitrant females), and b) the current ‘orchestra’ – not the usual dog’s breakfast of banjoes and accordions and didgeridoos, but a ‘septet’ of 1st-rate violinists from Innsbruck.

  (I like numbers. They speak of logic, exactitude, and thrift. I’m a little uncertain, sometimes, about ‘one’ – about whether it denotes quantity, or is being used as a . . . ‘pronoun’? But consistency’s the thing. And I like numbers. Numbers, numerals, integers. Digits!)

  19.01 very slowly became 19.02. We felt the hums and tremors in the rails, and I too felt a rush of energy and strength. There we stood, quite still for a moment, the waiting figures on the spur, at the far end of a rising plain, steppelike in its vastness. The track stretched halfway to the horizon, where, at last, ST 105 silently materialised.

  On it came. Coolly I raised my powerful binoculars: the high-shouldered torso of the locomotive, with its single eye, its squat spout. Now the train leaned sideways as it climbed.

  ‘Passenger cars,’ I said. This was not so unusual with transports from the west. ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘3 classes’ . . . The carriages streamed sideways, carriages of yellow and terracotta, Première, Deuxième, Troisième – JEP, NORD, La Flèche d’Or. Professor Zulz, our head doctor, said drily,

  ‘Three classes? Well, you know the French. They do everything in style.’

  ‘Too true, Professor,’ I rejoined. ‘Even the way they hoist the white flag has a certain – a certain je ne sais quoi. Not so?’

  The good doctor chuckled heartily and said, ‘Damn you, Paul. Touché, my Kommandant.’

  Oh yes, we bantered and smiled in the collegial fashion, but make no mistake: we were ready. I motioned with my right hand to Captain Eltz, as the troops – under orders to stand back – took up their positions along the length of the siding. The Golden Arrow pulled in, slowed, and halted with a fierce pneumatic sigh.

  Now they’re quite right when they say that 1,000 per train is the soundest ‘rule of thumb’ (and that up to 90% of them will be selected Left). I was already surmising, however, that the customary guidelines would be of scant help to me here.

  First to disembark were not the usual trotting shapes of uniformed servicemen or gendarmes but a scattered contingent of baffled-looking middle-aged ‘stewards’ (they wore white bands on the sleeves of their civilian suits). There came another exhausted gasp from the engine, and the scene settled into silence.

  Another carriage door swung open. And who alighted? A little boy of about 8 or 9, in a sailor suit, with extravagant bell-bottomed trousers; then an elderly gentleman in an astrakhan overcoat; and then a cronelike figure bent over the pearl handle of an ebony cane – so bent, indeed, that the stick was too high for her, and she had to reach upwards to keep her palm on its glossy knob. Now the other carriage doors opened, and the other passengers detrained.

  Well, by this time I was grinning widely and shaking my head, and quietly cursing that old lunatic Walli Pabst – as his telegram of ‘warning’ was clearly nothing more than a practical joke!

  A shipment of 1,000? Why, it comprised barely 100. As for the Selektion: all but a few were under 10 or over 60; and even the young adults among them were, so to speak, selected already.

  Look. That 30-year-old male has a broad chest, true, but he also has a club foot. That brawny maiden is in the pink of health, assuredly, and yet she is with child. Elsewhere – spinal braces, white sticks.

  ‘Well, Professor, go about your work,’ I quipped. ‘A stern call on your prognostical skills.’

  Zulz of course was looking at me with dancing eyes.

  ‘Fear not,’ he said. ‘Asclepius and Panacea wing their way to my aid. I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art. Paracelsus be my guide.’

  ‘Tell you what. Go back to the Ka Be,’ I suggested, ‘and do some selecting there. Or have an early supper. It’s poached duck.’


  ‘Oh, well,’ he said, producing his flask. ‘Now we’re about it. Care for a drop? It’s a lovely evening. I’ll keep you company, if I may.’

  He dismissed the junior physicians. I too gave orders to Captain Eltz, and pared my forces, retaining only a 12-strong platoon, 6 Sonders, 3 Kapos, 2 disinfectors (a wise precaution, as it transpired!), the 7 violinists, and Senior Supervisor Grese.

  Just then the little bent old lady detached herself from the hesitantly milling arrivals and limped towards us at disconcerting speed, like a scuttling crab. All atremble with ill-mastered anger she said (in quite decent German),

  ‘Are you in charge here?’

  ‘Madam, I am.’

  ‘Do you realise,’ she said, with her jaw juddering, ‘do you realise that there was no restaurant wagon on this train?’

  I dared not meet Zulz’s eye. ‘No restaurant wagon? Barbaric.’

  ‘No service at all. Even in 1st class!’

  ‘Even in 1st class? An outrage.’

  ‘All we had were the cold cuts we’d brought with us. And we almost ran out of mineral water!’

  ‘Monstrous.’

  ‘. . . Why are you laughing? You laugh. Why are you laughing?’

  ‘Step back, Madam, if you would,’ I spluttered. ‘Senior Supervisor Grese!’

  And so, whilst the luggage was stacked near the handcarts, and whilst the travellers were formed into an orderly column (my Sonders moving among them murmuring ‘Bienvenu, les enfants’, ‘Etes-vous fatigué, Monsieur, après votre voyage?’), I wryly reminisced about old Walther Pabst. He and I campaigned together in the Rossbach Freikorps. What sweating, snorting chastisements we visited on the Red queers in Munich and Mecklenburg, in the Ruhr and Upper Silesia, and in the Baltic lands of Latvia and Lithuania! And how often, during the long years in prison (after we settled accounts with the traitor Kadow in the Schlageter affair in ’23), would we sit up late in our cell and, between endless games of 2-card brag, discuss, by flickering candlelight, the finer points of philosophy!

  I reached for the loudhailer and said,

  ‘Greetings, 1 and all. Now I’m not going to lead you up the garden path. You’re here to recuperate and then it’s off to the farms with you, where there’ll be honest work for honest board. We won’t be asking too much of that little young ’un, you there in the sailor suit, or of you, sir, in your fine astrakhan coat. Each to his or her talents and abilities. Fair enough? Very well! 1st, we shall escort you to the sauna for a warm shower before you settle in your rooms. It’s just a short drive through the birch wood. Leave your suitcases here, please. You can pick them up at the guest house. Tea and cheese sandwiches will be served immediately, and later there’ll be a piping hot stew. Onwards!’

  As an added courtesy I handed the horn to Captain Eltz, who repeated the gist of my words in French. Then, quite naturally, it seemed, we fell into step, the fractious old lady, of course, remaining on the ramp, to be dealt with by Senior Supervisor Grese in the appropriate manner.

  And I was thinking, Why isn’t it always like this? And it would be, if I had my way. A comfortable journey followed by a friendly and dignified reception. What needed we, really, of the crashing doors of those boxcars, the blazing arc lights, the terrible yelling (‘Out! Get out! Quick! Faster! FASTER!’), the dogs, the truncheons, and the whips? And how civilised the KL looked in the thickening glow of dusk, and how richly the birches glistened. There was, it has to be said, the characteristic odour (and some of our newcomers were sniffing it with little upward jerks of their heads), but after a day of breezy high-pressure weather, even that was nothing out of the . . .

  Here it came, that wretched, that accursed lorry, the size of a furniture van yet decidedly uncouth – positively thuggish – in aspect, its springs creaking and its exhaust pipe rowdily backfiring, barnacled in rust, the green tarpaulin palpitating, the profiled driver with the stub of a cigarette in his mouth and his tattooed arm dangling from the window of his cab. Violently it braked and skidded, jolting to a halt as it crossed the rails, its wheels whining for purchase. Now it slumped sickeningly to the left, the near sideflap billowed skyward, and there – for 2 or 3 stark seconds – its cargo stood revealed.

  It was a sight no less familiar to me than spring rain or autumn leaves: nothing more than the day’s natural wastage from KL1, on its way to KL2. But of course our Parisians let out a great whimpering howl – Zulz reflexively raised his forearms as though to fend it off, and even Captain Eltz jerked his head round at me. The utter breakdown of the transport was but a breath away . . .

  Now you don’t go far in the Protective Custody business if you can’t think on your feet and show a bit of presence of mind. Many another Kommandant, I dare say, would have let the situation at once degenerate into something decidedly unpleasant. Paul Doll, however, happens to be of a rather different stamp. With 1 wordless motion I gave the order. Not to my men-at-arms, no: to my musicians!

  The brief transitional interlude was very hard indeed, I admit, as the first strains of the violins could do no more than duplicate and reinforce that helpless, quavering cry. But then the melody took hold; the filthy truck with its flapping tarps lurched free of the crossing and bowled off down the crescent road (and was soon lost to sight); and on we strolled.

  It was just as I had instinctively sensed: our guests were utterly incapable of absorbing what they had seen. I later learned that they were the inmates of 2 luxurious institutions, a retirement home and an orphanage (both of which were underwritten by the most outrageous swindlers of them all, the Rothschilds). Our Parisians – what knew they of ghetto, of pogrom, of razzia? What knew they of the noble fury of the folk?

  We all of us walked as if on tiptoe – yes, we tiptoed through the birch wood, past trunks of hoary grey . . .

  The peeling birchbark, the Little Brown Bower with its picket fence and potted geraniums and marigolds, the undressing room, the chamber. I turned on my heel with a flourish the instant Prufer gave his signal and I knew the doors were all screwed shut.

  Now that’s better. The 2nd aspirin (650 mg; 22.43), is going about its work, its labour of solace, of ablution. It really is the proverbial ‘wonder drug’ – and I’m told that no patented preparation has ever been cheaper. God bless IG Farben! (Reminder: order in some rather good champagne for Sunday the 6th, to tickle Frauen Burckl and Seedig – and Frauen Uhl and Zulz, not to mention poor little Alisz Seisser. And I suppose we’ll have to ask Angelus Thomsen, considering who he is.) I also find that Martell brandy, when taken in liberal but not injudicious quantities, has a salutary effect. Moreover, the stringent liquor helps soothe my insanely itching gums.

  Whilst I can take a joke as well as the next man, it’s clear that I’ll have to have a few very serious words with Walther Pabst. In financial terms, ST 105 was something of a disaster. How do I justify the mobilisation of a full Storm (with flamethrowers)? How do I vindicate my costly use of the Little Brown Bower – when normally, in handling so light a load, you would look to the method employed by Senior Supervisor Grese on the little lady with the ebony cane? Old Walli, doubtlessly, will claim ‘an eye for an eye’: he’s still brooding about that prank at the barracks in Erfurt with the meat pie and the chamber pot.

  Of course it’s an almighty pain, having to watch the pennies as closely as we do. Take the trains. If money were no object, all the transportees, so far as I’m concerned, could come here in couchettes. It would facilitate our subterfuge, or our ruse de guerre, if you prefer (as it is a war, and no error). Fascinating that our friends from France saw something that they were quite unable to assimilate: this is a reminder of – and a tribute to – the blinding radicalism of the KL. Alas, however, one can’t ‘go mad’ and throw money around as if the stuff ‘grew on trees’.

  (NB. No gasoline was used, and this must count as an economy, albeit minor. Usually those selected Right go by foot to KL1, do you see, whilst those selected Left proceed to KL2 by means of the Red Cross trucks and the ambulances.
But how could I induce those Pariserinnen to board a vehicle, after seeing that damned lorry? A very slight saving, agreed, but every little helps. No?)

  ‘Enter!’ I called out.

  It was the Bible Bee. On the tasselled tray: a glass of burgundy, and a ham sandwich, if you please.

  I said, ‘But I wanted something hot.’

  ‘Sorry, sir, it’s all there is for now.’

  ‘I do work quite hard, you know . . .’

  Fussily Humilia began to clear a space on the low table in front of the chimney piece. I must confess it’s a mystery to me how a woman so tragically ugly can love her Maker. It goes without saying that what you really want with a ham sandwich is a foaming tankard of beer. We’re all awash in this French muck when what you desire is a decent flagon of Kronenbourg or Grolsch.

  ‘Did you prepare that or did Frau Doll?’

  ‘Sir, Frau Doll went to bed an hour ago.’

  ‘Did she now. Another bottle of Martell. And that’ll be all.’

  On top of everything else I foresee no end of complication and expense in the proposed construction of KL3. Where are the materials? Will Dobler release matching funds? No one is interested in difficulties, no one is interested in ‘the objective conditions’. The schedules of the transports I’m being asked to accept next month are outlandish. And, as if I didn’t have ‘enough on my plate’, who should telephone, at midnight, but Horst Blobel in Berlin. The instruction he adumbrated made my flesh go hot and cold. Did I hear him aright? I cannot possibly carry out such an order whilst Hannah remains in the KL. The dear God! This is going to be an absolute nightmare.

  *

  ‘You’re a good girl,’ I said to Sybil. ‘You cleaned your teeth today.’