The Zone of Interest

by Martin Amis

  It was mid morning. Uncle Martin stood bent over the hall table, sorting and stacking the vast accumulations of his mail.

  ‘You’ve a good memory for the skirted staff on the third floor of the Sicherheitsdienst, haven’t you, Neffe? Knowing you. You dog. I need some help.’

  ‘How may I oblige?’

  ‘There’s a girl there I . . . Here, carry some of this, Golo. Put your arms out. I’ll load you up.’

  With the world war now turning on its hinges, with the geohistorical future of Germany in question, and with the very existence of National Socialism itself under threat, the Reichsleiter had much to attend to.

  ‘Priorities, Neffe. First things first. See,’ he said forgivingly, ‘the Chief loves his vegetable soups. You could almost say he’s become dependent on his vegetable soups. And so might you, Golo, if you’d sworn off all meat, fish, and fowl. Well then. It transpires that his dietary cook at the Berghof is tricked out with a Jewish grandmother. And you can’t have someone of that sort cooking for the Chief.’

  ‘Obviously not.’

  ‘I fired her. And what happens? He rescinds it – and she’s back!’

  ‘It’s the vegetable soups, Onkel. Does his uh, does his companion ever cook?’

  ‘Fraulein Braun? No. All she ever does is pick the movies. And take photographs.’

  ‘Those two, Onkel, does he, do they actually . . .?’

  ‘Good question.’ He quickly held an envelope up to the light. ‘They certainly disappear together . . . You know, Golo, the Chief won’t take his clothes off even for his personal physician? Plus he’s fanatical about cleanliness. And so’s she. And when it comes to the bedroom, you have to . . . you can’t . . . you have to roll up your . . .’

  ‘Of course you do, Onkel.’

  ‘Steady it. Use your chin . . . Consider the matter from this angle, Neffe. The Chief went on from a Viennese dosshouse to become the king of Europe. It’s fatuous, it’s frivolous to expect him to be as other men are. I’d love some actual details – but who can I ask? . . . Gerda.’

  ‘Yes, Papi,’ she said, moving nearer as she passed by.

  ‘I want an explanation.’

  ‘Yes, Papi?’ she said, backing away.

  In physical outline, the Bormanns resembled the Dolls. Gerda, my age, and a grand-looking woman, with many shades of painterly beauty in her face, was just over six foot in her clogs. And Uncle Martin was an even more compressed and therefore widened version of the Commandant – but darkly and sleekly attractive in his way, with a playful air and stimulating eyes. There was something juicy about his mouth; it was always ripening for a smile. Indicatively, too, Martin never seemed at all daunted by Gerda’s height; he strode along as if she made him taller, and this despite his proud paunch and his desk-job backside. He said,

  ‘The Christmas tree.’

  ‘They ganged up on me, Papi. They went behind my back to Hans.’

  ‘Gerda, I thought we saw eye to eye on religion at least. One drop of that gets into them and they’re poisoned for life.’

  ‘Exactly. I blame Charlemagne. For bringing it to Germany.’

  ‘Don’t blame Charlemagne. Blame Hans. Never again. Clear?’

  ‘Yes, Papi,’ we heard her whisper as we moved on.

  Uncle Martin’s workroom, in Pullach: the ranks of gunmetal filing cabinets, the index-card consoles, the acres of sectioned table space, the stocky strongbox. I again thought of Doll, and Doll’s office and study – those two shameful poems of irresolution and neglect.

  ‘Onkel. What are you doing about Speer? The man’s a menace.’ For once I spoke feelingly: the youthful Minister of Armaments and War Production, with his startling simplifications (rationalising, standardising), was capable, as I then saw it, of postponing defeat by at least a year. ‘Why haven’t you acted?’

  ‘It’s too soon,’ said Uncle Martin, lighting a cigarette. ‘The Cripple’ – Goebbels (der Kruppel) – ‘is up Speer’s rump for now. And he has the ear of the Transvestite’ – Goring (der Transvestit). ‘But Speer will soon find out how weak he is against the Party. Which is code for me.’

  Also smoking, I lay sprawled on a leather sofa to his right. I said,

  ‘Do you know why the Chief’s so sweet on him, Onkel? I’ll tell you. It’s not because he – I don’t know – streamlined the production of prismatic glass. No, he looks at Speer and he thinks, I would’ve been like that, I would have been him – an architect, a free creator – if I hadn’t been summoned by providence.’

  Martin’s swivel chair had slowly turned towards me. ‘Well?’

  ‘Just make him seem like any other grasping satrap, Onkel. You know, creating difficulties, whining about resources. The bloom’ll soon go off him.’

  ‘Give it time . . . All right, Golo. Buna.’

  As we entered the drawing room for midday drinks Uncle Martin was saying, ‘I sympathise, son. It’s enough to drive you wild. I get the same endless hand-wringing about the POWs and the foreign labour.’

  Rudi/Helmut, Ilse/Eike, Adolf/Kronzi, Heinie, and Eva were sitting round the tree (hung with lit candles, cookies, and apples), quietly gloating over their presents. Irmgard was at the piano; she sounded the highest key, using the mute.

  ‘Stop that, Irma! Ach, Golo, they’re saying, No corporal punishment! How can you get any work out of them otherwise?’

  ‘How? How? But it’s all right, Onkel, now Burckl’s gone. No more wet-nursing. We’re back to the tried and trusted.’

  ‘There are too many of them as it is. If we’re not careful, you know, we’ll win the war militarily and lose it racially. Dutch gin?’ Uncle Martin gave a snort and said, ‘The Chief made me laugh the other day. He’d just heard that someone was trying to ban contraception in the eastern territories. It must have been the Masturbator’ – Rosenberg (der Masturbator). ‘And the Chief said, Anyone tries that and I’ll personally shoot them dead! He was in a right taking. So to cheer him up I told him something I’d heard about the ghetto in Litzmannstadt. There, for their own use, they’re making condoms out of babies’ pacifiers. And he goes, That’s the way round it’s supposed to be! Salut!’

  ‘Salut. Or as the English say, Cheers.’

  ‘. . . Feast your eyes, lad. Ach. A good quiverful of kids. A crackling log fire. Outside, the snow. Over the soil. Over the Erde. And the helpmeet in the kitchen, never happier than when going about her appointed tasks. And those two guards by the gate. With cigarettes up their sleeves. Listen to this, Golo,’ he said. ‘It’s a good one.’

  Uncle Martin was losing his hair along the usual male lines, but his peaked forelock had something artistic in its shape, and still glistened. He ran his knuckles over it.

  ‘Late October,’ he said, without lowering his voice. ‘I’d looked in at the SD to pick up some paperwork from Schneidhuber. I needed mimeographs, and I collared one of the girls from the pool. She’s standing there looking over my shoulder as I mark up the pages. And on impulse, Golo, I slipped my left hand between her calves. She didn’t even blink . . . Up and up I went, past the knees. Up and up. Up and up. And when I reached my destination, Neffe, she just – she just smiled . . . So I got my thumb and jammed it—’

  ‘That is a good one, Onkel,’ I said with a laugh.

  ‘Ah, but that very minute, Neffe, that very minute I was called to the Wolfsschanze! Gone for a month. I come back and of course she’s disappeared. No trace of her in the pool. Concentrate, Neffe. Jouncy little minx with russety hair. An absolute squiggle of curves. Begins with a k. Klara?’

  ‘. . . Oh. She’s famous. And she’s not in the pool, Onkel. She goes around with the tea urn. Krista. Krista Groos.’

  The Reichsleiter hooked his little fingers into the corners of his mouth and whistled so shrilly that Irmgard and Eva both burst into tears. Then you could hear the quickening gait of stout shoes and Gerda came through the doorway with a naked Hartmut on her hip.

  ‘Neffe can reunite me’, said Uncle Martin, wet-eyed, ‘with my s
miling redhead.’

  Gerda lifted Hartmut to her shoulder. ‘How well timed, Papi. Because I won’t be usable by March. You see, after the third month, Golo,’ she confided, ‘he never comes near me. Children! The goose is served! Oh, stop snivelling, Eva.’

  Over the next three days Uncle Martin was seen only at mealtimes. He had a series of visitors – a Max Amman (Party Publications), a Bruno Schultz (Race and Resettlement), and a Kurt Mayer (Reich Ancestry Bureau). Each of these officials, in their turn, joined the grown-ups for dinner, and they all wore the same expression, that of men who steer their ships by guidance of the highest stars.

  *

  I went on long walks with Gerda. Entertaining Gerda, absorbing Gerda, unlading Gerda: this had always been part of my function, and part of my value to the Reichsleiter. After one of your visits, Golo, he once said, for weeks on end she sings while she scrubs the floor.

  That Christmas we shuffled arm in arm along the lawns and lanes, all swaddled up, Gerda in tweed hat and tweed scarf and tweed shawl. When I embraced her, as I quite often did (a nepotic reflex going back thirteen years), I imagined she was Hannah – the same height, the same mass. I held her shoulders steadyingly and tried to take pleasure in her face, the strong nose, the essentially tender brown eyes. But then her shapely lips would open, and she would speak . . . I embraced her again.

  ‘You have that look, Golito. You’re thinking of someone, aren’t you. I can tell.’

  ‘I can’t hide anything from you, Tante. Yes. And she’s your height. When I hug you I can feel your chin against my neck. It’s the same with her.’

  ‘Well. Perhaps you can settle down after the war.’

  ‘But who knows? Wars are messy, Tante. You can’t tell what’ll be there at the end.’

  ‘. . . True, Golito. True. Now how’s that Boris?’

  We edged on. The odourless air was magnificent. The silence was magnificent – just the steady crumplings of our tread. The whiteness of the folds and bolsters of snow was magnificent. White snow.

  And what was Uncle Martin up to – with Max Amman, with Bruno Schultz, with Kurt Mayer, in the last days of 1942? He told me all about it.

  With Party publisher Amman, Uncle Martin was taking steps to abolish the German alphabet. Why? Because the Chancellery had surmised that the old Gothic script (whose brambly curlicues were the toast of every chauvinist) might be Jewish in origin. So the idea now was to replace it (at incalculable expense) with Roman Antiqua – throughout the Reich, in school textbooks, newspapers, documents, street signs, and all the rest.

  With Schultz, of Race and Resettlement, Uncle Martin was trying to find a workable definition of the Mischlinge, or the ethnic hybrids. Having defined them, they would decide what to do about them. That December he and Schultz were ‘costing’ sterilisation for an estimated seventy thousand men and women, all of whom, prohibitively, would need ten days in hospital.

  It was different with Racial Researcher Mayer. With Amman and Schultz, the Reichsleiter was applying himself, was enthusiastically putting himself about; with Mayer, though, he could not disguise a faint impatience with his destiny.

  Uncle Martin might have been occasionally piqued by his offspring; but he was chronically tormented by his forebears. An official of his rank needed to be provably Aryan to a depth of four generations; and they kept running up against the void of his great-grandfather.

  The inquisition about the Bormann genealogy had begun in January 1932.

  ‘And it won’t end,’ he said (presciently). ‘Even if the Russians cross the Oder and the Americans cross the Rhine – it won’t end.’

  Uncle Martin’s great-grandfather, Joachim, was illegitimate. And Uncle Martin’s great-great-grandmother, as he put it, was the town pump – so Joachim’s paternal origin was anybody’s guess.

  ‘Wear full fig tonight, Neffe. To intimidate Mayer. I’m wearing mine.’

  He had never raised a hand in anger, except at home, and he was not an Old Fighter, originally, but just a paymaster of Old Fighters. All the same, Uncle Martin had just received another promotion, and came to dinner dressed as an SS-Obergruppenfuhrer – a lieutenant general.

  ‘I’m paying for my bit. Out of my own pocket, too. But I’ve offered Mayer’s people “proportional support” from state funds. That might do it. As long as I keep plugging away.’

  ‘You work too hard, Onkel.’

  ‘That’s what I’m forever telling him, Neffe. I’m forever telling him, “Papi, you work too hard!”’

  ‘See? That’s all she ever says. You work too hard. Now run along, Gerda. I’ve certain matters to discuss with Golo.’

  ‘Of course, Papi. Can I get you gentlemen anything?’

  ‘Just bend over and sling in another log on your way out. Enjoy the view, Neffe. Ah. Now isn’t that a good little girl?’

  ‘What am I up to? Off my own bat you mean? Oh, not a lot. Wasted a few days covering myself with dust at the Gestapa. Red tabs, blue tabs. I’m trying to trace someone. It’s nothing to me personally. I’m just obliging a lady friend.’

  ‘That’s what you’re good at. You brute.’

  ‘I’m fairly anxious to get back to Buna. Meanwhile, though, I’m entirely at your service. As always, Onkel.’

  ‘. . . What do you know about the Ahnenerbe?’

  ‘Not much. Cultural research, isn’t it? Sort of a brains’ trust. Pretty third-tier, I gather.’

  ‘Here. Take it. Don’t read the thing now. Just note the title.’

  ‘“The Theory of the Cosmic Ice.” What’s that?’

  ‘Mm. Well, here we’re dealing with the Quack’ – Himmler (der Kurpfuscher). ‘Between you and me and the gatepost, I’ve never set much store by all that anthropology of his. Can’t see the point in it. And the herbalism. Laxatives and yogurts. Don’t hold with it. Can’t see the point in it.’

  ‘The oat-straw baths and so on.’

  ‘Don’t believe in it. Still, this is different, Golo. Now hear this. At the Ahnenerbe there’s a meteorology department. Where they’re supposedly working on long-term forecasts. But that’s just a blind. What they’re really working on is the cosmic-ice theory.’

  ‘You’d better explain, Onkel.’

  ‘It’s a bit hot in here, isn’t it? Give us your glass. There. Get that down you.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Cheers. Well. The theory is that the Aryans, the theory is that the Aryans aren’t . . . Wait. Yes, and there’s this business with the lost continent. It’s pretty technical, and I don’t want to elaborate now. Here. It’s all in here. I want you to mug up on it, Neffe. And tell me the state of play at the Ahnenerbe.’

  ‘The state of play on the cosmic-ice theory.’

  ‘Now look, I’m not defending the idea on its merits. Obviously. How could I?’

  ‘Of course you couldn’t. You’re no scientist.’

  ‘I’m not scientifically qualified. On the other hand, I do know my politics, Neffe. And it isn’t the theory that counts. It’s who believes in it. The Quack’s very sympathetic, and so by the way is the Transvestite – not that we listen to him any more. Thanks to me. But the Chief, Golo, the Chief. The Chief insists that if the cosmic-ice theory holds up—’

  ‘Hang on, Onkel. Excuse me, but I thought the Chief had no time for any of that.’

  ‘Oh, he’s getting keener on it all the time. Runes, and so forth. And he lets the Cripple do his horoscope . . . See, the Chief maintains that if the cosmic-ice theory’s sound, if we can substantiate it and make it stick – well. According to him, our enemies will simply down arms and apologise. And the Thousand Year Reich will have its mandate – its mandate from heaven is what the Chief said. So you see, Golo. I can’t afford to be on the wrong side of this one. It would look very bad. So find out about the cosmic ice. Klar?’

  ‘Oh, perfectly clear, Onkel.’

  ‘Just a gulp. Go on, boy. Help you sleep.’

  ‘. . . I was thinking. Now I’m down here I may as well look in at
the Brown House.’

  ‘What for? It’s one big cobweb.’

  ‘Mm. But they’ve got the SA stuff for ’33 and ’34. You never know.’

  ‘Who are you after exactly?’

  ‘Oh. Some Communist.’

  ‘Name? . . . Wait. Don’t tell me. Dieter Kruger.’

  I was sharply surprised, but I went on languidly, ‘Yes. Kruger. How odd. And why’s it so funny, Onkel?’

  ‘Dear oh dear. Oh, dear oh dear oh dear. I’m sorry.’ He coughed, and hawked into the fire. ‘Well. In the first place the whole Kruger business is an absolute hoot. It always sets me off. And now, Neffe, to add to the gaiety of nations, you my boy, unless I’m very much mistaken, you my boy are stuffing Frau Doll.’

  ‘Not so, Onkel. In the Kat Zet? It’s hardly the place.’

  ‘Mm. A bit on the grim side, I imagine.’

  ‘Yes. A bit on the grim side. Now hang on, sir. You’re too far ahead of me. I’m lost.’

  ‘All right. All right,’ he said and wiped his eyes. ‘In early November I got a teletype from the Commandant. About Kruger. Haven’t answered yet, but I’ll have to. See, the thing is, Neffe, he and I have a sacred bond.’

  ‘What a one you are for surprises tonight, Onkel.’

  ‘The most sacred bond there is. More hallowed than the marriage vow. Complicity in murder.’

  ‘Oh. Do tell.’

  ‘Finish this, Golo,’ he said, handing me the cognac. ‘There. Early ’23, Neffe. Doll’s paramilitary unit identified a “traitor” in its midst. In Parchim. I was innocent, your honour! All I did was pass on permission for a beating. But Doll and his boys stayed too long in the pub, and then overdid it in the woods. I served a year. Don’t you remember – no camping that summer? Doll got ten. You could say he took the fall for me, a bit. Served five. Anyway, why’s he bothered about Kruger? At this stage in the game? Because Kruger fucked her first?’