Free The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis Page B

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