Bohdan, with his back to me and a shovel over his shoulder, was on the path, stupidly staring at the tortoise as it gnawed on a cob of lettuce. And when I stepped from grass to gravel, he turned with a kind of spastic suddenness; the shovel’s thick blade described a swift half-circle in the air and struck me full on the bridge of my nose.
Hannah, when she eventually came downstairs, herself bathed the site of the contusion in cold water, and gently held the slab of raw meat to my brow with her warm Fingerspitzen…
And now, a whole week having passed, my eyes are the colour of a sick frog — a lurid yellowy green.
‘Impossible,’ said Prufer (very typically).
I sighed and said, ‘The order comes from Gruppenfuhrer Blobel, which means it comes from the Reichsfuhrer-SS. Understand, Haupsturmfuhrer?’
‘It’s impossible, Sturmbannfuhrer. It can’t be done.’
Prufer, preposterously, is my Lagerfuhrer, and thus my number 2. Wolfram Prufer, young (barely 30), vapidly handsome (with a round, toneless face), quite bereft of initiative, and, in general, a desperate sluggard. Some people claim that the Zone of Interest is a dumping ground for 2nd-rate blunderers. And I would agree (if it didn’t tend to reflect badly on myself). I said,
‘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?