by Martin Amis
Left to myself, I engaged in an hour of soul-searching, sprawled on the easy chair by the fire with the bottle on my lap. There was I (I mused), offing old ladies and little boys, whilst other men gave a luminescent display of valour. I was of course thinking with envious admiration of the Untersturmfuhrer. Facing down those massive Polacks like that, saying, with ice in his heart, ‘Ihr weisst wie wir sind.’
You know what we’re like.
That’s National Socialism!
And mind you, disposing of the young and the elderly requires other strengths and virtues – fanaticism, radicalism, severity, implacability, hardness, iciness, mercilessness, und so weiter. After all (as I often say to myself), somebody’s got to do it – the Jews’d give us the same treatment if they had ½ a chance, as everybody knows. They had a pretty fair crack at it in November 1918, when the war profiteers, buying cheap and selling . . .
. . . I levered myself upright and wandered out into the kitchen. Hannah was standing at the table, eating a green salad from the bowl with the wooden fork and the wooden spoon.
‘Na ja,’ I said, with a huge intake of breath. ‘Front-line service. That’s the thing. I’ve ½ a mind to request a transfer. To the east. Where, even as we speak, Hannah, world history is being forged. And I want to be in the thick of it, nicht? We’re about to give Judaeo-Bolshevism the biggest—’
‘Give who?’
‘Judaeo-Bolshevism. On the Volga. We’re going to give Judaeo-Bolshevism the biggest bloody nose of all time. You heard the speech? The city’s virtually ours. Stalingrad. On the Volga, woman. On the Volga.’
‘So soon,’ she said. ‘Once again you’re drunk.’
‘Na, perhaps I am. So might . . .’ I reached into the jar for a pickled onion. Chewing vigorously, I said, ‘You know, my dear, I was thinking. I was thinking we ought to do what little we can for poor Alisz Seisser. She’s back. As an inmate.’
‘Alisz Seisser? What for?’
‘Bit of an, bit of an, an enigma. Pardon. They’ve got her down as an Asozial.’
‘Which means?’
‘Could mean anything. Vagrancy. Begging. Prostitution, heaven forbid. Or a uh, relatively minor offence. Grumbling. Painting her toenails.’
‘Painting her toenails? Mm, I suppose that makes perfect sense. In wartime. A savage blow to morale.’ She wiped her Mund with a napkin, and her Gesicht readjusted. ‘Which is already in retreat, I hear.’
‘Quatsch! Who says?’
‘Norberte Uhl. Who got it from Drogo. And from Suzi Erkel. Who got it from Olbricht . . . Well then. What’s the little we can do for Alisz Seisser?’
To begin with there was a series of intensely lyrical, almost Edenic dalliances, in the sylvan surrounds of our Bavarian farmstead (leased from my in-laws), with various young shepherdesses, milkmaids, and stable girls (this all started during Hannah’s 2nd trimester). How often would I, in my leather shorts and embroidered tunic, vault the sheep dip and scamper through the barn doors in hot pursuit of my vernal lovely who, with an amorous yelp and a playful shimmy of her flaxen rump, would disappear on all 4s into our secret nest beneath the haystack! And how many hours would we beguile, in the idyllic paddock behind the shearing shed, Hansel with a blade of grass between his laughing lips, and his head buried in the dirndled lap of his buxom and rubicund Gretel!
Then, in ’32, Hannah and myself were inexorably drawn to Munich – city of my dreams and my yearning.
Gone were the flocks, the rills, the milking stools, the cowslips, the wild thyme, and the piping maids. Whilst commuting each day to the suburb of Dachau (where I would begin quite a career), and whilst heading a family of 4, I still found time for a committed but eminently sensible relationship with a lady of great sophistication called Xondra, who maintained a service apartment on Schillerstrasse near the Hauptbahnhof. Quite suddenly she married a prosperous pawnbroker from Ingolstadt, but I went on to make other friends in the same flatblock – notably Pucci, Booboo, and the golden-haired Marguerite. But all that was a very long time ago.
Here in the KZ, and in wartime, too, I’ve never entertained the thought of any kind of ‘misbehaviour’. I feel it would be utterly unGerman to compromise myself with a colleague (such as Ilse Grese), or with a colleague’s wife (Berlin would not be amused). And otherwise you’re seldom tempted, because so few of the women menstruate or have any hair. If you get desperate – well. The place in Katowitz is far too squalid, but the best 1 in Cracow is a German concern and it’s as clean as an operating theatre. None of that since my wife’s arrival, though. Ach, I’ve been the model, the ideal, the dream . . .
But now the situation has changed. And 2 can play at that game. Not so?
We do in fact have a piggery at the KL (a modest appendage to the Home Farm Station). And Alisz Seisser is a Tierpfleger – a veterinary nurse. Her uniform’s the same as that of the helpers in the Haftlinge Krankenbau: white linen jacket with a red stripe daubed on the back, and a similar paintstroke down the trousers. After having a good look, I tapped on the window of her surgery, and out she popped.
‘Oh thank you, thank you. Thank you for coming. It’s ever so good to see you, Herr Kommandant.’
‘Herr Kommandant? Paul, please,’ I said with a friendly chuckle. ‘Paul. No – you’ve been constantly in my thoughts. Poor Alisz. It must have been very difficult for you up in Hamburg. Were you in dire straits? Did the pension not come through?’
‘No no. Nothing of that kind. They nabbed me at the station, Paul. When I got off the train.’
‘That’s odd.’ On her chest she wore the black triangle of the Asozial. It had a letter sewn into it (this usually denoted country of provenance). ‘What’s that stand for when it’s at home?’ I asked with a grin. ‘Zambia?’
‘Zigeuner.’
I took a step back.
‘Well I can’t say I wasn’t expecting it,’ she blithely continued. ‘Orbart always used to say, If anything happens to yours truly, old girl, or if you up and leave me – you know, joking – then you’re in the soup, love. Sinti grandmother, see. And we knew it was in the file.’
This was a most unwelcome surprise. The Zigeuner had been workhouse fodder since the mid 1920s, and the Reichsfuhrer-SS’s Central Office for Fighting the Gypsy Menace, of course, had been active for quite a while (and I noticed that just the other day these people were dispossessed and stripped of all their rights). Obviously we’d need to tackle said menace at some point or other . . . Although there was a Gypsy family camp in KL2 (circus people, dance-hall proprietors and the like), they were classed as internees, tattooed but unshaven and not on the labour lists. So far as I was aware, Alisz was the only Zigeuner Haftling in the entire Zone.
‘Yes, so. I’ll still be doing all I can for you, Alisz.’
‘Oh I know you will, Paul. When they moved me from the Women’s Block I could feel your hand at work. The Women’s Block – it’s really the end. I can’t find words to describe it.’
‘. . . You seem well enough, my dear. The crewcut’s most becoming. And is that your phone number? Just joking. Nicht? Come on, Alisz, let’s have a look at you then. Mm. That suit’s not much help in these temperatures. You’ve the 2 blankets, I hope? And you’re getting the Tierpfleger ration? Turn around a moment. You haven’t lost any weight at least.’
She’s short in the Unterschenkel, Alisz, but she has a glorious Hinterteil. As for the other stuff, the Busen and such, it’s hard to say – but there’s certainly no argument about the Sitzflache.
‘You’re better off here, you know, than in the Ka Be. I wouldn’t want you in the Typhus Block. Or in Dysentery for that matter, dear.’
‘No, it’s not too bad at all. I’m a country girl, me. And the pigs are very sweet!’
‘And I hope, Alisz, I hope you’re being sustained by the sacred memory of the Sturmscharfuhrer. Your Orbart. He laid down his life, Alisz, for his convictions. And what more can we ask of a man?’
She smiled bravely. And again, for a moment,
she took on that sacred glow – the holy aura of German martyrdom. Whilst she hugged herself and, with chattering teeth, hymned her sainted husband, I thought how very difficult it was to gauge a woman’s figure until her clothes came off. I mean, there’s an awful lot to go wrong.
‘Listen, Alisz. I have a message from my lady wife. She wants you to come to the villa on Sunday.’
‘The villa?’
‘Oh, it’ll raise an eyebrow or 2, perhaps. But I’m the Kommandant and we’ve a ready-made excuse. The girls’ pony. It’s got mange! Come and spend the afternoon.’
‘Well, if you say it’s all right, Paul.’
‘Hannah’s got some women’s things she wants to give you.’ I adjusted my greatcoat against the wind. ‘I’ll pick you up by car. And it’ll be steak, spuds, and greens.’
‘Oh, that would be handsome!’
‘A square meal. Oh yes. And a long hot bath.’
‘Ooh, Paul, I can hardly wait.’
‘Till noon on Sunday. Run along now, my girl. Run along.’
I don’t go out to the Meadow that often any more. Neither does Szmul. Well, he sometimes looks in around midnight, to make sure everything is processing as it should, and then goes back to his duties as a greeter. To have an exchange with Szmul, nowadays, you have to catch him on the ramp.
The first train had been dealt with, and the Sonder was seated on a suitcase, in the immediate glare of an untended arc light, eating a wedge of cheese. I came up on him from behind, aslant, and said,
‘Why were you on the very 1st transport out of Litzmannstadt?’
His jaw muscles stopped working. ‘The 1st transport was for undesirables, sir. I was an undesirable, sir.’
‘Undesirable? A little schnook of a schoolmaster like you? Or perhaps you teach a bit of PT.’
‘I stole some firewood, sir. To buy turnips.’
‘. . . To buy turnips, sir.’ I stood over him now, my jodhpurs planted well apart. ‘Where did you think you were being sent? Germany? To work in Germany? Why’d you believe that?’
‘They changed my ghetto scrip into Reichsmarks, sir.’
‘. . . Ooh. Clever them. Your wife wasn’t with you, was she, Sonder.’
‘No, sir. Exempted because of pregnancy, sir.’
‘Not many live births in the ghetto, I hear. Any other children?’
‘No, sir.’
‘So she missed that rather inelegant Aktion at Kulmhof. On your feet.’
He stood, wiping his greasy hands on his greasy trousers.
‘You were at Kulmhof. “Chełmno”, as you lot call it. You were there . . . Remarkable. No Jew gets out of Kulmhof. And I suppose they kept you on board because of your German. Tell me. Were you there at the time of the silent boys?’
‘No, sir,’ I lied.
‘Pity . . . Now, Sonder. You know who I mean by Chaim Rumkowski.’
‘Yes, sir. The Director, sir.’
‘The Director. The ghetto king. I gather he’s quite a “character”. Here.’
And I produced from my pocket the letter I’d received that morning from ‘Łódź’.
‘The stamp. That’s his portrait. He goes around in a wheeled carriage. Drawn by a spindly dray.’
Szmul nodded.
‘I wonder if you’ll live long enough, Sonderkommandofuhrer, to receive him here.’
He turned away.
‘Your lips. They’re always tensed and notched. Always. Even when you eat . . . You intend to kill someone, don’t you, Sonder. You intend to kill someone “e’er you go”. D’you want to kill me?’ I unholstered my Luger and pressed its barrel up against his resistant brow. ‘Oh, don’t kill me, Sonder. Please don’t kill me.’ The searchlight died with a crackle. ‘When your time comes, I’ll be telling you exactly what to do.’
Out in the night we saw the yellow eye of the 2nd train.
‘You know,’ I mused, ‘you know, I think we ought to make a special effort for November the 9th.’
Wolfram Prufer’s round face attentively blinked and pouted.
‘A proper ceremony,’ I mulled on, ‘and a rousing speech.’
‘Good idea, Sturmbannfuhrer. Where? The church?’
‘No.’ I folded my arms. He meant St Andrew’s in the Old Town. ‘No. In the open air,’ I conjured. ‘After all, they did what they did in the open air, the Old Fighters . . .’
‘But that was in Munich, and Munich’s practically in Italy. This is East Poland, Sturmbannfuhrer. St Andrew’s is like a fridge as it is.’
‘Come on, there’s actually not much in it, in terms of latitude. Anyway, let it snow. We’ll sling up some tarps. By the orchestra stand. More bracing. It’ll stiffen morale.’ I smiled. ‘Your brother on the Volga, Hauptsturmfuhrer. Irmfried. I trust he foresees no undue difficulties?’
‘None, mein Kommandant. Losing in Russia is a biological impossibility.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘You know, Prufer, that’s rather well put . . . Now what’ll we do for urns?’
On Sunday evening I attended a function in the Old Town at the Rathof Bierkeller (considerably refurbished, in recent months, thanks to heavy IG custom). Yech, it was another Farben ‘do’, basically – we were bidding farewell to Wolfgang Bolz, who was about to return to Frankfurt after his tour. The atmosphere was pretty grim, quite frankly, and I had some trouble containing my good cheer (Alisz Seisser’s visit having been an unqualified success).
Anyway, I was talking, or listening, to 3 mid-stratum engineers, Richter, Rudiger, and Wolz. The conversation centred as usual on the low levels of endeavour (and the sorry underachievement) of the Buna workforce, and how quickly they became part of the curse of my entire existence – pieces, Stucke: spitefully massive, uncompromisingly ponderous and unwieldy, mephitic sacs or stinkbombs just raring to explode.
‘The Haftlinge are done in as it is, sir. Why’d they have to lug the bloody things all the way back to the Stammlager?’ said Wolz.
‘Why can’t the Leichekommando come and pick them up, sir? Either at night or 1st thing in the morning?’ said Rudiger.
‘They say it’s for the roll call, sir. But can’t they get the numbers from the Leichekommando and just do their damned sums?’ said Richter.
‘Regrettable,’ I absent-mindedly allowed.
‘They’re having to give them piggybacks, for pity’s sake.’
‘Because they keep running out of stretchers.’
‘And there are never enough bloody wheelbarrows.’
‘Additional wheelbarrows,’ I put in (it was time to leave). ‘Good point.’
Thomsen was present, in front of the exit – he was superciliously holding forth to Mobius and Seedig. Our eyes met, and he showed me his feminine teeth in a smile or a sneer. He drew back in dismay, and I saw the glint of fear in his white eyes, as I roughly shouldered my way out into the air.
19.51. Prufer, doubtlessly, would have been happy to run me back on his motorbike; as the frost was holding off and it was still quite light, however, I elected to walk.
During the period 1936–9, in Munich, there was an annual procession, sponsored and smiled on by the State – ‘Night of the Amazons’ they called it (this memory came to me as I strode through the site of the synagogue we blew up 2 years ago): columns of German damsels paraded on horseback, stripped to the waist. Tastefully choreographed, these virgins re-enacted historical scenes – celebrations of the Teuton heritage. It’s said, too, that the Deliverer himself once tolerantly attended a famous nude ballet in that same city. This is the German way, do you see. The German male is in complete control of his desires. He can go at a woman like a purple genius; when the occasion demands it, on the other hand, he is happy to cast a cultured glance – yet feels no impulsion to touch . . .
I paused as I entered the Zone, steadying myself with a few stiffeners from my flask. Whatever the temperature I do like a good tramp. That’s my upbringing, I suppose. I’m like Alisz. A country boy at heart.
Biggish Titten, such as those belongi
ng to my wife, can be described as ‘beautiful’, smallish Titten, like Waltraut’s and Xondra’s, can be characterised as ‘pretty’, and Titten of the middlish persuasion can be designated as – what? ‘Prettiful’ Titten? Such are Alisz’s Titten. ‘Prettiful’. And her Brustwarten are excitingly dark. And see what a playful mood she’s put me in!
I shall look. I shall not touch. The penalties for Rassenschande, albeit erratically imposed, can be fairly severe (up to and including decapitation) – but in any case Alisz has never stirred in me anything but the tenderest and most exalted emotions. I think of her as I would a ‘grown-up’ daughter – to be protected, cherished, and humbly revered.
As I passed the old crema and approached the garden gate, I contemplated my imminent rendezvous with Frau Doll; and I felt that lovely glow of surety that heats and tickles you when you’re playing 2-card brag (a game far more complicated than it at 1st appears): you look round the table, and count the pips, and you’re satisfied for a mathematical fact that victory is yours. She doesn’t know I know about the letter she passed to Thomsen. She doesn’t know I know about the missive he handed to her. I’m going ‘to tie her up in knots’. I just want to see the look on her face.
Meinrad, the pony, neighed feebly whilst I ascended the steps.
Hannah was on the couch before the fire, reading Vom Winde Verweht to the twins. No one looked up as I settled on the revolvable stool.
‘Hear me, Sybil, hear me, Paulette.’ I said, ‘Your mother’s a very wicked woman. Very wicked indeed.’
‘Don’t say that!’
‘An evil woman.’
‘Oh what d’you mean, Vati?’
I slowly let my frown darken. ‘Go to bed, girls.’
Hannah clapped her hands. ‘Off with you. I’ll be up in 5 minutes.’
‘3 minutes!’
‘Promise.’
As they were getting up and moving off I said, ‘Ho ho. Ho ho ho. I think it’ll take a bit longer than that.’
In the firelight Hannah’s eyes seemed to have the colour and texture of the skin of crème brûlée.
