Read Online The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Martin Amis
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Leningrad, they’ll be disarmed by the SS at the border. From now on we’ll—’
The telephone rang. The telephone rang at eleven o’clock: a prearranged call from one of the Sekretar’s secretaries in Berlin (an obliging old girlfriend of mine). The room remained obediently still as I talked and listened.
‘Thank you, Miss Delmotte. Tell the Reichsleiter I understand.’ I rang off. ‘I’m sorry, gentlemen. You’ll have to excuse me. A courier is about to alight on my apartment in the Old Town. I must go and receive him.’
‘No rest for the wicked,’ said Doll.
‘None,’ I said with a bow.
In the sitting room Norberte Uhl lay like a toppled scarecrow on the sofa, attended to by Amalasand Burckl. Alisz Seisser sat rigid and staring on a low wooden bench, attended to by Trudel Zulz and Romhilde Seedig. Hannah Doll had just gone upstairs, and wasn’t expected to return. To no one in particular I said that I would see myself out, which I did, pausing for a minute or two in the passage at the foot of the stairs. The distant thunder of bathwater being run; the very slightly adhesive sound of bare feet; the scandalised creaking of the floorboards.
Out in the front garden I turned and looked up. I was hoping to see a naked or near-naked Hannah through the upstairs window, gazing down at me with parted lips (and inhaling huskily on a Davidoff). In this hope I was disappointed. Only the drawn curtains of fur or hide, and the trusting rectangular light from within. So I started out.
The arc lamps moved past in hundred-yard intervals. Huge black flies furred their grillwork. Yes, and a bat skittered past the creamy lens of the moon. From the Officers’ Club, I supposed, borne by the devious acoustics of the Kat Zet, came the sound of a popular ballad, ‘Say So Long Softly When We Part’. But I also detected footsteps behind me, and I turned again.
Almost hourly, here, you felt you were living in the grounds of a vast yet bursting madhouse. This was such a moment. A child of indeterminate sex in a floor-length nightgown was walking fast towards me – yes, fast, much too fast, they all moved much too fast.
The small shape strutted into the light. It was Humilia.
‘There,’ she said and handed me a blue envelope. ‘From Madam.’
Then she too turned, and walked quickly away.
Much have I struggled . . . I can no longer . . . Now I must . . . Sometimes a woman . . . My breasts ache when I . . . Meet me in the . . . I’ll come to you in your . . .
I walked for twenty minutes with such imaginings in my mind – past the outer boundary of the Zone of Interest, then through the empty lanes of the Old Town until I reached the square with its grey statue and the iron bench under the curving lamp post. There I sat and read.
‘Guess what she went and did,’ said Captain Eltz. ‘Esther.’
Boris had let himself in (with his own key) and was pacing the modest length of my sitting room, with a cigarette in one hand but no alcoholic glassful in the other. He was sober and restless and intent.
‘You know the postcard? Is she out of her mind?’
‘Wait. What?’
‘All that stuff about the nice food and the cleanliness and the bathtubs. She didn’t write down any of that.’ With indignation (at the size and directness of Esther’s transgression) Boris went on, ‘She said we were a load of lying murderers! She elaborated on it too. A load of thieving rats and witches and he-goats. Of vampires and graverobbers.’
‘And this went through the Postzensurstelle.’
‘Of course it did. In an envelope with both our names on it. What does she think? That I’d just drop it in a mailbox?’
‘So she’s back shovelling Scheisse with a mortar board.’
‘ No , Golo. This is a political crime . Sabotage.’ Boris leaned forward. ‘When she came to the Kat Zet she said something to herself. She told me this. She said to herself, I don’t like it here, and I’m not going to
The telephone rang. The telephone rang at eleven o’clock: a prearranged call from one of the Sekretar’s secretaries in Berlin (an obliging old girlfriend of mine). The room remained obediently still as I talked and listened.
‘Thank you, Miss Delmotte. Tell the Reichsleiter I understand.’ I rang off. ‘I’m sorry, gentlemen. You’ll have to excuse me. A courier is about to alight on my apartment in the Old Town. I must go and receive him.’
‘No rest for the wicked,’ said Doll.
‘None,’ I said with a bow.
In the sitting room Norberte Uhl lay like a toppled scarecrow on the sofa, attended to by Amalasand Burckl. Alisz Seisser sat rigid and staring on a low wooden bench, attended to by Trudel Zulz and Romhilde Seedig. Hannah Doll had just gone upstairs, and wasn’t expected to return. To no one in particular I said that I would see myself out, which I did, pausing for a minute or two in the passage at the foot of the stairs. The distant thunder of bathwater being run; the very slightly adhesive sound of bare feet; the scandalised creaking of the floorboards.
Out in the front garden I turned and looked up. I was hoping to see a naked or near-naked Hannah through the upstairs window, gazing down at me with parted lips (and inhaling huskily on a Davidoff). In this hope I was disappointed. Only the drawn curtains of fur or hide, and the trusting rectangular light from within. So I started out.
The arc lamps moved past in hundred-yard intervals. Huge black flies furred their grillwork. Yes, and a bat skittered past the creamy lens of the moon. From the Officers’ Club, I supposed, borne by the devious acoustics of the Kat Zet, came the sound of a popular ballad, ‘Say So Long Softly When We Part’. But I also detected footsteps behind me, and I turned again.
Almost hourly, here, you felt you were living in the grounds of a vast yet bursting madhouse. This was such a moment. A child of indeterminate sex in a floor-length nightgown was walking fast towards me – yes, fast, much too fast, they all moved much too fast.
The small shape strutted into the light. It was Humilia.
‘There,’ she said and handed me a blue envelope. ‘From Madam.’
Then she too turned, and walked quickly away.
Much have I struggled . . . I can no longer . . . Now I must . . . Sometimes a woman . . . My breasts ache when I . . . Meet me in the . . . I’ll come to you in your . . .
I walked for twenty minutes with such imaginings in my mind – past the outer boundary of the Zone of Interest, then through the empty lanes of the Old Town until I reached the square with its grey statue and the iron bench under the curving lamp post. There I sat and read.
‘Guess what she went and did,’ said Captain Eltz. ‘Esther.’
Boris had let himself in (with his own key) and was pacing the modest length of my sitting room, with a cigarette in one hand but no alcoholic glassful in the other. He was sober and restless and intent.
‘You know the postcard? Is she out of her mind?’
‘Wait. What?’
‘All that stuff about the nice food and the cleanliness and the bathtubs. She didn’t write down any of that.’ With indignation (at the size and directness of Esther’s transgression) Boris went on, ‘She said we were a load of lying murderers! She elaborated on it too. A load of thieving rats and witches and he-goats. Of vampires and graverobbers.’
‘And this went through the Postzensurstelle.’
‘Of course it did. In an envelope with both our names on it. What does she think? That I’d just drop it in a mailbox?’
‘So she’s back shovelling Scheisse with a mortar board.’
‘ No , Golo. This is a political crime . Sabotage.’ Boris leaned forward. ‘When she came to the Kat Zet she said something to herself. She told me this. She said to herself, I don’t like it here, and I’m not going to
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