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final glass or 2 of Martell, I wend my way to the bedroom, she should be suitably prompt in the performance of her spousal duty. If I do encounter any nonsense, I will simply invoke that magic name: Dieter Kruger !
    For I am a normal man with normal needs.
     
    . . . I was halfway to the door when I was struck by an unpleasant thought. It so happens that I’ve not yet seen the balance sheet for Special Train 105. And I left the Little Brown Bower, that evening, without specifically telling Wolfram Prufer to bury the pieces in the Spring Meadow. Was he stupid enough to fire up a Topf & Sons 3-retorter to deal with a smattering of brats and dodderers? Surely not. No. No. Wiser heads would have prevailed. Prufer would have listened to 1 of the old hands. For example, Szmul.
    Oh, Christ, what am I going on about? If Horst Blobel meant what he said, then the whole bloody lot of them’ll all have to come up anyway.
    I see I’d better have a brood about this. I’ll sleep in the dressing room, as usual , and tackle Hannah in the morning. 1 of those 1s where you slip in beside them whilst they’re all warm and somnolent, and ease up against them and into them. I won’t stand for any hogwash. And then we’ll both be in excellent spirits for our little gathering here at the villa!
    For I am a normal man with normal needs. I am completely normal . This is what nobody seems to understand.
    Paul Doll is completely normal.

 
     
    3. SZMUL: SONDER
     
    Ihr seit achzen johr , we whisper, und ihr hott a fach .
     
    Once upon a time there was a king, and the king commissioned his favourite wizard to create a magic mirror. This mirror didn’t show you your reflection. It showed you your soul – it showed you who you really were.
    The wizard couldn’t look at it without turning away. The king couldn’t look at it. The courtiers couldn’t look at it. A chestful of treasure was offered to any citizen in this peaceful land who could look at it for sixty seconds without turning away. And no one could.
    I find that the KZ is that mirror. The KZ is that mirror, but with one difference. You can’t turn away.
     
    We are of the Sonderkommando, the SK, the Special Squad, and we are the saddest men in the Lager. We are in fact the saddest men in the history of the world. And of all these very sad men I am the saddest. Which is demonstrably, even measurably true. I am by some distance the earliest number, the lowest number – the oldest number.
    As well as being the saddest men who ever lived, we are also the most disgusting. And yet our situation is paradoxical.
    It is difficult to see how we can be as disgusting as we unquestionably are when we do no harm.
    The case could be made that on balance we do a little good. Still, we are infinitely disgusting, and also infinitely sad.
     
    Nearly all our work is done among the dead, with the heavy scissors, the pliers and mallets, the buckets of petrol refuse, the ladles, the grinders.
    Yet we also move among the living. So we say, ‘ Viens donc, petit marin. Accroches ton costume. Rappelles-toi le numéro. Tu as quatre-vingt-trois! ’ And we say, ‘ Faites un nœud avec les lacets, Monsieur. Je vais essayer de trouver un cintre pour votre manteau. Astrakhan! C’est toison d’agneau, n’est-ce pas? ’
    After a major Aktion we typically receive a fifth of vodka or schnapps, five cigarettes, and a hundred grams of sausage made from bacon, veal, and pork suet. While we are not always sober, we are never hungry and we are never cold, at least not at night. We sleep in the room above the disused crematory (hard by the Monopoly Building), where the sacks of hair are cured.
    When he was still with us, my philosophical friend Adam used to say, We don’t even have the comfort of innocence . I didn’t and I don’t agree. I would still plead not guilty.
    A hero , of course, would escape and tell the world . But it is my feeling that the world has known for quite some time. How could it not, given