As I lay there, trying to free my tongue from the roof of my mouth, these questions came to me…
If what we’re doing is good, why does it smell so lancingly bad? On the ramp at night, why do we feel the ungainsayable need to get so brutishly drunk? Why did we make the meadow churn and spit? The flies as fat as blackberries, the vermin, the diseases, ach, scheusslich, schmierig — why? Why do rats fetch 5 bread rations per cob? Why did the lunatics, and only the lunatics, seem to like it here? Why, here, do conception and gestation promise not new life but certain death for both woman and child? Ach, why all der Dreck, der Sumpf, der Schleim? Why do we turn the snow brown? Why do we do that? Make the snow look like the shit of angels. Why do we do that?
The Reich Day of Mourning — back in November, last year, before Zhukov, before Alisz, before the new Hannah.
… There is a placard on the office wall that says, My loyalty is my honour and my honour is my loyalty. Strive. Obey. JUST BELIEVE! And I find it highly suggestive that our word for ideal obedience — Kadavergehorsam — has a corpse in it (which is doubly curious, because cadavers are the most refractory things on earth). The duteousness of the corpse. The conformity of the corpse. Here at the KL, in the cremas, in the pits: they’re dead. But then so are we, we who obey…
The questions I asked myself on the Reich Day of Mourning: they must never recur.
I must shut down a certain zone in my mind.
I must accept that we have mobilised the weapons, the wonder weapons, of darkness.
And I must take to my heart the potencies of death.
In any case, as we’ve always made clear, the Christian system of right and wrong, of good and bad, is 1 we categorically reject. Such values — relics of medieval barbarism — no longer apply. There are only positive outcomes and negative outcomes.
‘Now listen carefully. This is a matter of the gravest moment. I hope you understand that. Fraternising with a Haftling’s serious enough. But Rassenschande… Insult to the blood! A corporal might get away with a reprimand and a fine. But I’m the Kommandant. You realise, don’t you, that it’d be the end of my career?’
‘Oh, Paul…’
The cot, the footstool, the washbasin, the chemical toilet.
‘God have mercy on you if you tell anyone. Besides, it’ll just be my word against yours. And you’re a subhuman. Technically I mean.’
‘Then how come you did me without 1 of them Parisians on!’
‘… Because I ran out,’ I said broodingly. ‘Now watch it, my girl. Oy. Behave. Remember. Just your word against mine.’
‘But who else could it be?’
This stopped me short. Alisz had been in here for just over 3 months; and the custodial staff consisted of 2 buxom Aufseherinnen and 1 incredibly old Rottenfuhrer.
‘The end of your career,’ she snivelled. ‘What about the end of my life? You get storked up here and they go and bloody well—’
‘Not neccessarily, Alisz.’ I gave a brief lift of the chin. ‘Well. Crying won’t help you. Wha wha wha. Listen to her. Wha wha wha wha wha wha. Come on now, girl. I’m the Kommandant. I’ll think of something or other.’
‘Oh, Paul…’
I said, ‘Stop it. Stop it. You’re pregnant… Get off.’
Lately I have been applying my new mental attitude to a reconsideration of our war aims.
Objective number 1. To acquire Lebensraum, or living space, or land empire.
Even if unquestioned supremacy eludes us, a compromise can doubtlessly be hammered out (and let’s ignore all that guff about ‘unconditional surrender’). We’ll probably have to give back France, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine, Belarus, Yugoslavia, and Greece, but with any luck they won’t mind if we hang on to Lithuania, say, the Sudetenland and the rest of the Czech entity, plus our half of Poland (I don’t think the matter of Austria will even come up).
So, objective number 1: mission accomplished!
‘Now Wolfram. That shemozzle in Block 33. Please explain.’
‘Well, Paul, there’d been a massive selection. And they crammed them all in Block 33. 2,500 of them.’
‘2,500 in 1 block? How long for?’
‘5 nights.’
‘Good God. Why the delay?’
‘No reason. They just didn’t get round to it.’
‘They let them out for roll call I assume?’
‘Naturally. There’s got to be Zahlappell, Paul. No, the trouble was they gave them some food. They don’t usually bother. And it was a great mistake.’
‘The food was?’
‘Yes. The Kapos intercepted it. All very predictable. They went off and swapped it for alcohol. Blah blah blah. But then they came back, Paul… And they messed with them. The Kapos messed with the prisoners.’
‘Mm. You see, that’s what comes of feather-bedding. Food, indeed. Whose bright idea was that?’
‘Probably Eikel.’
‘Na. How many Stucke did you say?’
‘19. Regrettable. And not to be tolerated. But it doesn’t really make much odds. They’d been selected anyway.’
‘… Menschenskind, Hauptsturmfuhrer! The Zahlappell! The Zahlappell!’
There was a silence. Prufer was frowning at me with what seemed to be intense solicitude. He gave a discreet cough and said quietly,
‘Paul. Paul. With a Haftling headcount, Paul… As long as the total number tallies, there isn’t any difficulty. Remember? They don’t have to be alive.’
After a moment or 2 I said, ‘No. No. Of course they don’t. You’re quite right, Wolfram. How foolish of me. Yes. They can be dead if they want. They don’t have to be alive.’
My rumpy girl Friday, little Minna, knocked and put her head round the door. She asked after the whereabouts of a certain file and I told her where I thought it might conceivably be.
‘How’re you finding the ramp work, Wolfram?’
‘Well, I can see why you got cheesed off with it, Paul.’
‘It’s very good of you to stand in. I’ll be my old self again soon.’ I tapped my desktop. ‘Well. What’ll we do with the Kapos? Got to be firm. Phenol? Small calibre?’
Again the look of solicitude. ‘Waste of materiel, surely, Kommandant. You know — simpler just to revise their status. Then, Paul, the Jews can sort it out for themselves.’
‘Mm. So much better for esprit de corps… That’s French, Wolfram. It means team spirit. You know, morale.’
Sybil grows lovelier with each passing day. Her abiding passion — rather reprehensibly — is still cosmetics. She filches items from her mother’s dressing table. Lipstick, nicht? And it’s rather comical. There she is, alternately smiling and pouting at me with crimson smears on her teeth.
And you should see the tangles she gets into when she tries on Hannah’s brassieres!
Goal number 2. To consolidate the 1,000 Year Reich.
You know, so it lasts as long as the 1 we had before — the 1 started by Charlemagne and ended by Napoleon.
As I’ve already conceded, there’s a bumpy patch up ahead, most probably. Once we’ve weathered that, however…
Here’s a fact that’s not often enough stressed. In the election of July ’32 the NSDAP polled 37.5 %: the highest vote for a single party in the history of Weimar. Solid evidence, then, of the profound affinity between the simple yearnings of the Volk and the golden dream of National Socialism. It was always there, do you see. By November ’33, plebiscitary acclamation reached 88 %, and by April ’38 it settled at just over 99! What clearer token could there be of the rude sociopolitical health of Nazi Germany?