The Kindly Ones

by Jonathan Littell

He noticed the anthill and said: “I’ll destroy that, Herr Offizier.”—“Absolutely not! Don’t touch it.”—“Oh yes, Stani,” Klaus gushed, “leave them alone. They haven’t done anything to you.” Klaus turned to me: “Where are they going?”—“I don’t know. We’ll have to look.” The ants were following the garden wall, then hurrying along the curb, passing behind the cars and motorcycles parked opposite the Kommandantur; then they continued straight ahead, a long wavering line, beyond the camp’s administration building. We followed them step-by-step, admiring their indefatigable determination. When we neared the Politische Abteilung, Klaus looked at me nervously: “I’m sorry, Sturmbannführer, but my father doesn’t want me to come this way.”—“Wait for me, then. I’ll tell you.” Behind the barracks of the political department stood the squat mass of the crematorium, a former ammunition bunker covered with earth and vaguely resembling, apart from the chimney, a flattened kurgan. The ants continued toward its somber mass; they climbed up the sloping side, weaving their way through the grass; then they turned and went down a cement section of wall, where the entrance to the bunker formed a recess between the dirt slopes. I kept following them and saw that they went through the half-open door and into the crematorium. I looked around: aside from a guard who was staring at me curiously and a column of inmates pushing wheelbarrows a little farther away, near the extension of the camp, there wa...