by Martin Amis
‘Excuse me, but I fail to recognise the word impossible, Prufer. It’s not in the SS lexicon. We rise above the objective conditions.’
‘But what’s the point, mein Kommandant?’
‘What’s the point? It’s politics, Prufer. We’re covering our tracks. We’ve even got to grind the ashes. In bone mills, nicht?’
‘Sorry, sir, but I ask again. What’s the point? It’ll only matter if we lose, which we won’t. When we win, which we will, it won’t matter at all.’
I must admit that the same thought had occurred to myself. ‘It’ll still matter a bit when we win,’ I reasoned. ‘You have to take the long view, Prufer. Awkward customers asking questions and poking about.’
‘The point still escapes me, Kommandant. I mean, when we win, we’re supposed to be doing a lot more of this kind of thing, aren’t we? The Gypsies and the Slavs and so on.’
‘Mm. That’s what I thought.’
‘Then why’re we getting all namby-pamby about it now?’ Prufer scratched his head. ‘How many pieces are there, Kommandant? Do we even have a vague idea?’
‘No. But there’s lots.’ I stood up and started pacing the floor. ‘You know, Blobel’s responsible for cleaning up the whole territory. Ach, he keeps nagging me for Sonders. And the rate he gets through them. I said, Why d’you have to dispose of all your Sonders after every Aktion? Spin them out a bit, can’t you? They’re not going anywhere. And does he listen?’ I regained my chair. ‘All right, Hauptsturmfuhrer. Taste this.’
‘What is it?’
‘What’s it look like? Water. Do you drink the water here?’
‘No fear, Sturmbannfuhrer. I drink the bottled stuff.’
‘So do I. Taste it. I had to. Go on, taste it . . . That’s a direct order, Hauptsturmfuhrer. Go on. No need to swallow.’
Prufer took a sip and let it dribble out through his lower teeth. I said,
‘Like carrion, ne? Take a deep breath.’ I offered him my flask. ‘Have a jolt of that. There . . . Yesterday, Prufer, I was cordially invited to the civic centre in the Old Town. To face a delegation of local worthies. They said it’s undrinkable no matter how many times you boil it. The pieces have started to ferment, Hauptsturmfuhrer. The water table’s breached. There’s no alternative. The smell is going to be unbelievable.’
‘The smell is going to be unbelievable, my Kommandant? You don’t think it’s unbelievable already?’
‘Stop complaining, Prufer. Complaining won’t get us anywhere. All you ever do is complain. You just keep complaining. Complain, complain, complain, complain.’
My words, I realised, duplicated those of Blobel – when I too initially balked. And Blobel’s cavils were no doubt similarly scolded by Himmler. And Prufer will unquestionably give the equivalent reprimand when he hears the demurrals of Erkel and Stroop. And so on. What we have in the Schutzstaffel is a chain of complaint. An echo chamber of complaint . . . Prufer and myself were in my office in the MAB. The room was low-ceilinged, and somewhat gloomy (and slightly cluttered), but I sat behind a desk of redoubtable size.
‘So it’s urgent,’ I went on. ‘It’s objectively urgent, Prufer. You do see that, I hope.’
My secretary, little Minna, knocked and entered. In a sincerely puzzled voice she said,
‘A person calling himself “Szmul” is outside, Kommandant. He’s here to see you or so he claims.’
‘Tell him to stay where he is, Minna, and wait.’
‘Yes, Kommandant.’
‘Is there any coffee? Real coffee?’
‘No, Kommandant.’
‘Szmul?’ Prufer gulped, heaved, and gulped again. ‘Szmul? The Sonderkommandofuhrer? What’s he doing here, Sturmbannfuhrer?’
‘That’ll be all, Hauptsturmfuhrer,’ I said. ‘Recce the pits, accumulate the petrol refuse and the methanol if there is any, and talk to Sapper Jensen about the physics of the pyres.’
‘I obey, my Kommandant.’
Whilst I sat thinking Minna bustled in with a double armful of teletypes and telegrams, of memos and communiqués. She is a personable and knowing young female, albeit far too flachbrustig (though her Arsch is perfectly all right, and if you hoiked up that tight skirt you’d . . . Don’t quite see why I write like this. It isn’t my style at all). And in any case my thoughts were with my wife. Hannah (I conjectured), here, during the current Aktion? No. The girls too, for that matter. I rather think that a little trip to Rosenheim is indicated. Sybil and Paulette can hobnob with those 2 reasonably harmless eccentrics, their maternal grandparents, at Abbey Timbers – the ebony beams, the hens, Karl’s funny ‘pull-out’ drawings, Gudrun’s anarchical cooking. Yes, the environs of Rosenheim. Some rural air will do them all good. And besides, with Hannah in her current ‘frame of mind’ . . .
Ach, would that my wife were as tractable as the languid Waltraut! Waltraut – where are you now?
‘So this is a human being,’ I said in the yard. ‘You’re an atrocious sight, Sonderkommandofuhrer.’
My eyes? My eyes are like the eyes of Goldilocks compared to the eyes of the Sonderkommandofuhrer, Szmul. His eyes are gone, dead, defunct, extinct. He has Sonder eyes.
‘Look at your eyes, man.’
Szmul shrugged and glanced sideways at the hunk of bread he had thrown to the ground on my approach.
‘After myself,’ I said, and for a moment my mind wandered. ‘You know, in the coming days, Sonder, your Gruppe will be expanded by a factor of 10. You’re going to be the most important man in the entire KL. After myself, naturally. Come.’
In the truck, whilst we proceeded north-east, I thought with distaste of Obersturmfuhrer Thomsen. Despite his epicene deportment, he is, by all accounts, a tremendous scragger of the womenfolk. Famous for it, apparently. And he’s no respecter of persons either, not by any manner of means. Apparently he knocked up 1 of von Fritsch’s daughters (this was after the scandal with the catamite); and I heard from 2 separate sources that he even porked Oda Muller! Cristina Lange represents another notch on his beltstrap. They say he actually pimps for his Uncle Martin – facilitating the Reichsleiter’s liaison with the actress, M. It’s even rumoured that he did the deed of darkness with his own Aunt Gerda (or with what was left of her after how many kids is it, 8, 9?). Here at the KL, as is well known, Thomsen has splashed his way through a veritable platoon of Helferinnen, including Ilse Grese (whose morals are in any case distinctly questionable). His friend, the scapegrace Boris Eltz, is apparently no better. Yes, but Eltz is a prodigious warrior, and such men – this has become more or less official policy – such men must love as freely as they fight. What’s Thomsen’s excuse?
In Palestine the wandlike Waltraut set me an example that I have followed all my life: without true feeling, mere congress is – let’s face it – a pretty squalid business all round. In this regard I am not a typical soldier, I realise; I would never speak disrespectfully of a female; and I detest vulgar language. Thus I have been spared the world of the brothel, with its unimaginable slime and filth, likewise the ‘sophisticated’ lewdnesses – the court shoe squeezed between the leather boots beneath the table, the hand up the skirt in the kitchen, the rumpy waddle of the city hussy, the daubed orbits, the shaved armpits, the gossamer panties, the black stockings and the black garter belt framing the creaminess of the upper thighs . . . Such things, thank you very much, are of precious little interest to your humble servant, Paul Doll.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Thomsen tries to home in on Alisz Seisser. Quite a striking thought – the cream-haired beanpole feasting on that shapely currant bun. She looked most fetching at dinner the other night. Well he’d better be quick – she’ll be off back to Hamburg in a week or 2. This is her grace period, whilst she recovers from the loss of the sergeant major – the loss of Orbart, who laid down his life to foil an escape from the Women’s Camp. This fact lent nobility to the mien of his survivor. Besides, black is a very becoming colour. And, as we caroused at my villa, Alisz’s weeds (with that tight top) seeme
d to be softly ensilvered by the rays of German sacrifice. There you are, you see. Romance: there must be romance.
How long does Hannah suppose she can keep this up?
Take my word for it: there won’t be sufficient petrol refuse, and I’ll have to go to Katowitz all over again.
‘Pull up here, Unterscharfuhrer. Here.’
‘Yes, my Kommandant.’
Now I had not been to Sector 4IIIb(i) since July, when I accompanied the Reichsfuhrer-SS on his day-long ‘look-see’. As I climbed from the truck (and as Szmul jumped down from the flatbed) I uneasily realised that I could actually hear the Spring Meadow. Said meadow began perhaps 10 metres beyond the mound where Prufer, Stroop, and Erkel stood with their hands pressed to their faces – but you could hear it. You could smell it, of course; and you could hear it. Popping, splatting, hissing. I joined my colleagues and gazed out at the great field.
I gazed out at the great field without the slightest trace of false sentimentality. It bears repeating that I am a normal man with normal feelings. When I’m tempted by human weakness, however, I simply think of Germany, and of the trust reposed in me by her Deliverer – whose vision, whose ideals and aspirations, I unshakably share. To be kind to the Jew is to be cruel to the German. ‘Right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘good’ and ‘bad’: these concepts have had their time; they are gone. Under the new order, some deeds have positive outcomes and some deeds have negative outcomes. And that is all.
‘Kommandant, in Culenhof’, said Prufer, with 1 of his responsible frowns, ‘Blobel tried blowing them up.’
I turned and looked at him, and said through my handkerchief (we all had handkerchiefs), ‘Tried blowing them up to achieve what?’
‘You know, get rid of them that way. It didn’t work, Kommandant.’
‘Well I could’ve told him that before he started. Since when does blowing things up make them disappear?’
‘That’s what I thought once they’d tried. It went everywhere. There were bits hanging from the trees.’
‘What did you do?’ asked Erkel.
‘We got the bits we could reach. On the lower branches.’
‘What about the upper bits?’ asked Stroop.
‘We just left them there,’ said Prufer.
I looked out on a vast surface that undulated like a lagoon at the turn of the tide, a surface dotted with geysers that burped and squirted; every now and then divots of turf jumped and somersaulted in the air. I yelled for Szmul.
That evening Paulette surprised me in my study. I was on an easy chair, relaxing with a glass of brandy and a cigar. She said,
‘Where’s Bohdan?’
‘Not you too. And that’s a hideous dress.’
She gulped and said, ‘Where’s Torquil?’
Torquil was the tortoise (and I do mean ‘was’). The girls loved the tortoise: unlike the weasel, the lizard, and the rabbit, the tortoise couldn’t run away.
. . . A little later I tiptoed up behind Sybil as she was doing her homework on the kitchen table – and gave her a good fright! As I then laughingly hugged her and kissed her she seemed to pull back.
‘You pull back, Sybil.’
‘No I don’t,’ she said. ‘It’s just that I’ll be 13 quite soon, Daddy. And that’s a big milestone for me. And you don’t . . .’
‘I don’t what? No. Go on.’
‘You don’t smell good,’ she said, and made a face.
At this my blood really started to boil.
‘Do you know the meaning of the word patriotism, Sybil?’
She twisted her head away and said, ‘I like hugging and kissing you, Daddy, but I’ve got other things on my mind.’
I waited before I said, ‘In that case you’re a very cruel little girl.’
*
And what of Szmul, what of the Sonders? Ach, I can hardly bring myself to set it down. You know, I never cease to marvel at the abyss of moral destitution to which certain human beings are willing to descend . . .
The Sonders, they go about their ghastly tasks with the dumbest indifference. Using thick leather belts they drag the pieces from the shower room to the Leichenkeller; they extract the gold-stopped teeth with pliers and chisels, and remove the women’s hair with the snapping shears; they tear off the earrings and the wedding bands; then they stack the pulley (6 or 7 per consignment), which is hoisted up to the gaping retorts; finally, they grind the ashes, and the powdery dust is taken by the truckload and dispersed in the River Vistula. All of this, as already stated, they perform with dumb callousness. It doesn’t seem to matter at all to them that the people they process are their comrades in race, their siblings in blood.
And do the vultures of the crematory ever show the slightest animation? Ach yech: when they greet the evacuees on the ramp and guide them through the disrobing room. In other words, they come alive only in treachery and deceit. Tell me your trade, they’ll say. An engineer, eh? Excellent. We always need engineers. Or something like, Ernst Kahn – from Utrecht? Yes, he and his . . . Oh yes, Kahn and his wife and the kids were here for a month or 2 and then decided to go on to the agricultural station. The 1 at Stanislavov. When there is a difficulty, the Sonders are quite prepared to use violence; they frogmarch any troublemaker to a nearby NCO, who deals with the situation in the suitable fashion.
You see, with Szmul and the rest of them, it’s in their interests that things should go smoothly and briskly, because they’re impatient to rifle through the discarded clothes and sniff out something to drink or smoke. Or something to eat. They are always eating – always eating, the Sonders, eating the scraps filched from the disrobing room (despite the relatively generous rations they moreover enjoy). They’ll sit spooning up their soup on a stack of Stucke; they’ll wade knee deep through the mephitic meadow whilst munching on a hunk of ham . . .
It staggers me that they decide to persist, to last, in this way. And they do so decide: some (albeit not many), categorically refuse, despite the obvious consequence – for they too, now, have become Geheimnistrager, bearers of secrets. Not that any of them can hope to prolong their cowardly existence for more than 2 or 3 months. On this point we are quite clear and forthright: the Sonders’ initiatory task, after all, is the cremation of their predecessors; and so it will go on. Szmul has the dubious distinction of being the longest-serving undertaker in the KL – indeed, in the whole concentrationary system, I shouldn’t wonder. He is virtually a Prominent (even the guards accord him a modicum of respect). Szmul continues. But he knows very well what happens to them – what happens to bearers of secrets.
For myself, honour is not a matter of life or death: it’s far more important than that. The Sonders, very obviously, hold otherwise. Honour gone; the animal or even mineral desire to persist. Being is a habit, a habit they can’t break. Ach, if they were real men – in their place I’d . . . But wait. You never are in anybody’s place. And it’s true what they say, here in the KL: No one knows themselves. Who are you? You don’t know. Then you come to the Zone of Interest, and it tells you who you are.
I waited till the girls were tucked up and then strode out into the garden. Hannah in a white shawl stood with her arms folded by the picnic table. She was drinking a glass of red wine – and smoking a Davidoff. Beyond her, a salmony sunset and a tumbling rack of clouds. I said matter-of-factly,
‘Hannah, I think the 3 of you should go to your mother’s for a week or 2.’
‘Where’s Bohdan?’
‘Good God. For the 10th time, they transferred him.’ And it was nothing to do with me, though I wasn’t displeased to see the back of him. ‘Packed him off to Stutthof. Him and about 200 others.’
‘Where’s Torquil?’
‘For the 10th time, Torquil’s dead. Bohdan did it. With his shovel, Hannah, remember?’
‘Bohdan killed Torquil. You say.’
‘Yes! Out of spite, I suppose. And funk. At the other camp he’ll have to start again. It could be hard for him.’
‘Hard in what way?’
‘Well he won’t be a gardener in Stutthof. It’s a different kind of regime.’ I decided not to tell Hannah that at Stutthof you got 25 lashes the minute you arrived. ‘It was me who had to clear it all up. Torquil. Not a pretty sight, I can tell you.’
‘Why should we go to my mother’s?’
I hummed and hawed for a bit, claiming it was a good idea anyway. Hannah said,
‘Come on, what’s the real reason?’
‘Oh all right. Berlin has mandated an emergency Projekt. Things’ll be unpleasant here for a while. Just for a couple of weeks.’
Hannah said sarcastically, ‘Unpleasant? Oh really? That’ll make a change. Unpleasant in what way?’
‘I’m not at liberty to disclose. War work. It may have a deleterious effect on the air quality. Here, let me top that up for you.’
A minute later I returned, with Hannah’s wine and a huge glass of gin.
‘Have a ponder about it. I’m sure you’ll see it’s for the best. Mm, nice sky. It’s getting colder. Which’ll help.’
‘Help how?’
I coughed and said, ‘Now you know we’ve got the Playhouse tomorrow night.’
Her flicked cigarette end looked like a firefly in the dusk – an upward swoop.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘gala performance of And the Woods Sing For Ever.’ I smiled. ‘You frown, my pet. Come on, we must keep up appearances! Dear oh dear. Who’s a sulky girl then? I’d invoke the name of Dieter Kruger. But you’ve shown, haven’t you, that you’re no longer much bothered about his fate.’
‘Oh, I’m bothered. Didn’t you tell me that Dieter passed through Stutthof? You told me they give you 25 lashes on arrival.’
‘Did I? Well only with very suspicious prisoners. They won’t do that to Bohdan . . . And the Woods Sing For Ever’s a tale of rural life, Hannah.’ I took a big gulp of the stringent liquor and thoroughly rinsed my mouth with it. ‘About the longing for the redemptive community. The organic community, Hannah. It’ll make you pine for Abbey Timbers.’
