The Zone of Interest

by Martin Amis

  ‘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 h
ow?’

  ‘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.’

  ‘Good, Onkel. Good. I knew you wouldn’t just sit there, sir, and be cheated out of what is rightfully yours.’

  A little later, when I mentioned the time of my train, the Sekretar buzzed the car pool and announced that he would accompany me to the Ostbahnhof. In the courtyard I said,

  ‘This door. Incredibly heavy.’

  ‘Armour-plated, Golo. Chief’s orders.’

  ‘Better safe than sorry, eh Onkel?’

  ‘Get in . . . See? A limousine that feels almost cramped. That’s the price of power. So how was your New Year’s Eve?’

  ‘It was very nice. Tantchen and I sat in front of the fire till ten past twelve. Then we drank a toast to your health and sought our beds. How was yours?’

  The crouched outriders sped forward to liberate the road ahead; we sailed through the crossings against the light; and then the bikes surged past us once again. Uncle Martin shook his head, as if in disbelief, saying,

  ‘Ten past twelve? Can you believe, Golo, I sat up till five in the morning. With the Chief. Three and three-quarter hours we had together. Have you ever seen him up close?’

  ‘Of course, Onkel, but just the once. At your wedding.’ That was in 1929 – when Gerda and I were both on the brink of our third decade. And the leader of the NSDAP looked so much like a pale, pouchy, and cruelly overworked head waiter that every civilian there, I felt, was trying very hard not to hand him a tip. ‘Such charisma. I would never dare imagine any kind of uh, tête-à-tête.’

  ‘You know, don’t you, for years people were willing to give their eyesight for five minutes alone with the Chief? And I get nearly four hours. Just him and me. In the Wolf’s Lair.’

  ‘So romantic, Onkel.’

  He laughed and said, ‘It’s a funny thing. When I uh, renewed my acquaintance with Krista Groos, for whom many thanks, I felt the same excitement. Not that I . . . Nothing of that kind. Just the same level of elation. Have you noticed, Golo, that redheads smell stronger?’

  For a quarter of an hour Uncle Martin talked of his doings with Krista Groos. Whenever I looked out through the tinted windows I instinctively expected to see a stream of raised fists and rancorous faces. But no. Women, women, women, of every age, and busy, busy, busy, not with the old Berlin busyness (getting and spending), just busy living, trying to buy an envelope, a pair of shoelaces, a toothbrush, a tube of glue, a button. All their husbands, brothers, sons, and fathers were hundreds or perhaps thousands of miles away; and at least a million of them were already dead.

  ‘I told you she was famous,’ I said as the car pulled up behind the Poland Station.

  ‘Justly celebrated, Golo. Justly celebrated. Mm, I’ve got you here early for a reason. Before you go I’m going to give you a little treat. The strange tale of Dieter Kruger. I shouldn’t, of course. But it can’t matter now.’

  ‘Oh you are a sport, Onkel.’

  ‘. . . On the night before his execution, we went on a little pilgrimage to Kruger’s cell. Me and a few mates. And you’ll never guess what we did.’

  As the Sekretar was telling his story I wound down the window to taste the air. Yes, it was true. Like the Reichskanzler (much feared in this respect by all interlocutors, even Onkel), the city suffered from halitosis. Berlin had bad breath. This was because the food and the drink were being prepared, processed, and quite possibly invented by IG Farben (and Krupp, Siemens, Henkel, Flick, and the rest). Chemical bread, chemical sugar, chemical sausage, chemical beer, chemical wine. And what were the sequelae? Gases, botulism, scrofula, and boils. Where could you turn when even the soap and the toothpaste reeked? Yellow-eyed women were breaking wind openly now, but that was only half of it. They were farting through their mouths.

  ‘On his bare chest!’ concluded Uncle Martin with his juiciest smile. ‘On his bare chest. Don’t you think it’s a scream?’

  ‘That is hilarious, Onkel,’ I said, feeling faint. ‘As you promised – National Socialism at its most mordant.’

  ‘Priceless. Priceless. God how we laughed.’ He looked at his watch and went quiet for a moment. ‘Bloody awful place, the Wolfsschanze. It’s almost like a pocket KZ, except the walls are five metres thick. But the Chief – ach, the Chief’s cooking up a nasty surprise for our friends in the east. Keep an eye on the Kursk salient. When the ground hardens. Operation Citadel, Neffe. You just keep your eye on the salient at Kursk.’

  ‘I shall. Well, Onkel. It goes without saying that I’m eternally in your debt. Give my warmest love to Tantchen.’

  He frowned and said, ‘Your Hannah. I have no objection to the scale of her. On the contrary. Why d’you think I married Fraulein Gerda Buch? But her lips, Golo – Hannah’s lips. They’re too wide. They go all the way round to her ears.’

  My shoulders hunched. ‘It’s a very pretty mouth.’

  ‘Mm. Well I suppose it looks all right’, he said, ‘if you’ve got your cock in it. A joy as always, dear Golo. Take excellent care.’

  Boris had gone to war with a full heart, and I too was gravid with emotion as I prepared to set out for my own front line in the east.

  Express trains to and from Poland were never crowded – because Poles weren’t allowed on express trains. Or on any other trains, without special warrants, or on any trams
, or on any buses. They were also banned from theatres, concerts, exhibitions, cinemas, museums, and libraries, and forbidden to own or use cameras, radios, musical instruments, gramophones, bicycles, boots, leather briefcases, and school textbooks. On top of that, any ethnic German could kill a Pole whenever he liked. As National Socialism saw it, Poles were of animal status, but they weren’t insects or bacteria, like the Russian POWs, the Jews, and now also the Roma and Sinti – the Alisz Seissers of this world.

  So I had a compartment to myself and two berths to choose from. All such luxuries had long been seasoned with nausea (how humiliating, how curlike it was, active membership of the master race), and I took some comfort from the fact that every visible surface of the train’s interior bore a thick coating of grime. A half-centimetre of grime, in Germany: the war was lost, Germany was lost. I settled down to the eight-hour haul (and then there’d be the three hours to Cracow). But I would be back at the Kat Zet for Walpurgis Night.

  There was a short delay while they attached the dining car. I would be relying, of course, on the hamper prepared for me by the heroic (and uncannily costly) kitchens of the Hotel Eden. A whistle blew.

  And now Berlin started off on its journey, westward – Friedrichshain with its blocked sebaceous glands and pestilential cafeterias, the Ahnenerbe with its skeletons and skulls, its scurf and snot, the Potsdamer Platz with its smashed faces and half-empty uniforms.

  I got back to the Old Town at four o’clock in the afternoon. It was my intention to have a bath, put on some fresh clothes, and go and present myself at the villa of the Commandant. Ah, a postcard from Oberfuhrer Eltz. I’ve already picked up a knock, wrote Boris, a stab wound in the neck, which is a bore; but it won’t stop me joining in tomorrow’s assau . . . The last two lines had been tidily blotted out.