The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis Read Free Book Online

the battle SS. The Waffen-SS was supposed to be less straitened by hierarchy – more quixotic and spontaneous – than the Wehrmacht, with lively disagreements running up and down the chain of command. One of Boris’s disagreements with his superior, over tactics (this was in Voronezh), turned into a fistfight, from which the young major general emerged without a tooth in his head. That was why Boris was here – among the Austrians , as he often put it (and demoted to captain). He had nine more months to go.
    ‘What about the selection?’ I asked.
    ‘There was no selection. They were all certainties for the gas.’
    ‘. . . I’m thinking, What don’t we do to them? I suppose we don’t rape them.’
    ‘Much. Instead we do something much nastier than that. You ought to learn some respect for your new colleagues, Golo. Much, much nastier. We get the pretty ones and we do medical experiments on them. On their reproductive organs. We turn them into little old ladies. Then hunger turns them into little old men.’
    I said, ‘Would you agree that we couldn’t treat them any worse?’
    ‘Oh, come on. We don’t eat them.’
    For a moment I thought about this. ‘Yes, but they wouldn’t mind being eaten. Unless we ate them alive.’
    ‘No, what we do is make them eat each other. They mind that . . . Golo, who in Germany didn’t think the Jews needed taking down a peg? But this is fucking ridiculous, this is. And you know the worst thing about it? You know what really rots in my craw?’
    ‘I suspect I do, Boris.’
    ‘Yeah. How many divisions are we tying up? There are thousands of camps. Thousands. Man hours, train hours, police hours, fuel hours. And we’re killing our labour! What about the war?’
    ‘Exactly. What about the war.’
    ‘How does all this connect to that? . . . Oh, look at her, Golo. Her with the dark crewcut in the corner. That’s Esther. Have you ever seen anything a tenth as sweet in all your life?’
    *
     
    We were in Boris’s little ground-floor office, which commanded a wide and level view of Kalifornia. This Esther belonged to the Aufraumungskommando, the Clearance Detail, one of a rotating pool of two or three hundred girls who busied themselves in a shed-cluttered yard – a yard the size of a soccer field.
    Boris rose to his feet and stretched. ‘I came to her rescue. She was clawing up rubble in Monowitz. Then a cousin of hers sneaked her in here. She got found out, of course – because she didn’t have any hair. They marked her down for the Scheissekommando. But I stepped in. It’s not that difficult. Here, you just rob Peter to bribe Paul.’
    ‘And for this she hates you.’
    ‘She hates me.’ Bitterly he shook his head. ‘Well I’ll give her something to hate me for.’
     
    He tapped with his fountain pen on the glass, and went on tapping till Esther looked up. She gave a great roll of the eyes and returned to her task (she was curiously engaged – squeezing out tubes of toothpaste into a cracked pitcher). Boris got up and opened the door and beckoned.
    ‘Miss Kubis. Take a postcard, if you would.’
    Fifteen years old, and Sephardic, I thought (the Levantine colouring), and finely and tautly made, and athletic, she somehow managed to trudge, to clump into the room; it was almost satirical, her leadenness of gait. Boris said,
    ‘Please be seated. I need your Czech and your girlish hand.’ He smiled and said, ‘Esther, why do you loathe me so?’
    She plucked at the sleeve of her shirt.
    ‘My uniform?’ He handed her the fine-pointed pencil. ‘Ready? Dear Mama colon. My friend Esther’s writing this for me . . . because I hurt my hand. So, Golo, a report if you please. While out gathering roses full stop . How’s the Valkyrie?’
    ‘I’ll be seeing her tonight. Or I certainly hope and trust I will. The Old Boozer is having a dinner for the Farben people.’
    ‘You know, she tends to cry off, I’ve heard. And it’ll be deadly if she isn’t there.