Playing for Time (7 page)

Eins, zwei,
went Alma’s baton;
eins, zwei, drei, fier…
ordered the
kapos,
and the march past began. From every roadway, every street, they passed before us. Now I dared to look at them. I forced myself to, I had to remember, because later I would bear witness. This resolution was to harden and give me strength until the end.

Haggard, tattered, paddling through mud and snow, struggling not to stumble, sometimes supporting one another—one of the few rights left to them—the cohort of prisoners proceeded towards the exit. And I suffered them all, en masse and separately: a look of hatred or scorn was like a knife wound; an insult was like being spat on. “Quitters, bitches, traitors!” one of them shouted. Others shrugged the bony shoulders which protruded from their rags. Just as painful to me were those women who didn’t even raise their heads, who passed by indifferently, detached from hatred and love, at the threshold of death. But perhaps those who smiled at me hurt most of all; their understanding was as painful as a complicity I had not earned.

It was only now that I began to grasp the insanity of the place I was in. In the quarantine block, shattered by the shower, the tattooing and the shaving, starving, dazed, beaten, I hadn’t been aware of what was happening to me, to
me.
Here, in the icy air of this winter morning, in this geometrical landscape of squat, stumpy sheds with barbed wire above them, the watchtowers, without a single tree on the horizon, I became aware of the extermination camp of Birkenau, and of the farcical nature of this orchestra conducted by this elegant woman, these comfortably dressed girls sitting on chairs playing to these virtual skeletons, shadows showing us faces which were faces no longer.

In the early morning light so peculiarly sinister, the
Arbeits-kommandos
set off towards their regenerating work, work through joy! I couldn’t begin to imagine that work. They were simply going to hasten their deaths. They, who had so much difficulty even in moving, were required to give their steps a military gait. And, painfully, I realized that we were there to hasten their martyrdom. One, two… one, two… Alma’s baton set the pace for the endless march past. With the tip of his boot an SS beat time while the last woman, followed by the last soldier and last dog, went through the camp gate.

Our Bread, Our Hope, Our Certainty

IT must have been about five in the morning. I couldn’t sleep; something approaching anguish had lodged in the centre of my chest. I wanted to escape, I wanted all this never to have been. As quietly as possible I climbed out of my upper bunk. The windows were set high in the wall, and like a child I had access only to the lowest pane. The searchlights cut through the night with their gleam and it all looked rather like a marshalling yard.

What had I come to look at through this window? To look outside is to look at life, but here it was to look at death. It was snowing, large lazy flakes which hovered idly before touching down. Suddenly, at the end of our roadway, a group of marching men appeared—soldiers of the Red Army. Twenty men. Their tunics thrown over their shoulders, they advanced in a solid block, shoulder to shoulder, perfectly in step, barefoot in the snow, eyes fixed on the middle distance, faces impassive. They seemed very big. They passed an SS man and, with a single movement, without changing pace, raised their shapkas to bare their shaven skulls. One of them at the head of the group was singing; his voice was beautiful, broad and deep, and the words reached me clearly:

“A train is taking me far from Moscow

Day and night, the sound of wheels…

From the pocket of my tunic I take out your photo.

Smoke will darken it…

That will make it all the dearer to my eyes…

I think of you, my dearest,

I know that we shall meet again.“

In their tatters the Russians came forward along the roadway and I feasted my eyes on them. I already saw my liberators superimposed upon them. For me, they were the Red Army on the march!

Silent as a cat, Bronia, an Aryan Russian, joined me at the window. A ray of light fell on her high cheekbone, her blond plaits (non-Jews weren’t shaved). She smiled at me, and her teeth were solid and white; one could imagine her on the plains of the Ukraine, sprawled on top of a haycart fork in hand or loading bales with her strong arms, a positive advertisement for the
kolkhoz.

“Bronia, where do they come from, who are they?”

“I heard about those men when I arrived in the camp in April ”43. In ‘41 the German army invaded my country and took soldiers prisoner. They were brought here, to Auschwitz. At that time it was just endless marsh with an occasional birch tree on the horizon. The SS decided that the Russian soldiers would build their own camp. But the Russians said: “No, we are soldiers and we will not build our own cage.” The Germans replied that if they wanted to eat and sleep, they would have to work. The Russians refused.
’Arbeiten, arbeiten,“
insisted the Germans. More blank refusals from the Soviet soldiers. They wrapped themselves in their greatcoats and lay down then and there, in the mud of those swamps. The SS continued with their side of the exchange but the Russians stopped answering. They died of cold and hunger, one after the other. We don’t know what the Germans did with the corpses. Perhaps they sank into the mud, this living Auschwitz mud—perhaps they are here, right under our feet… Twenty of them survived, still refusing to work. The SS knew when they were beaten: they offered them clothes and shoes, but the soldiers wouldn’t take them because they belonged to the deportees. The only job they agreed to do was to distribute the bread, very early in the morning.”

Bronia was silent. It was impossible to disentangle truth from legend in this tale.

“Look at those men, they are our bread passing by.”

Our bread, our hope, our certainty…

Seven thirty. The players were back now. I hadn’t gone with them.

“Oof! It’s better in here than outdoors!”

It was Flora, the Dutch girl, expressing her satisfaction. It sounded so selfish, so cynical, that I felt quite dismayed. Jenny’s voice diverted me: “They’re bringing the coffee. Get cracking, we’ve got to be on the job in twenty minutes.”

“We’re coming.” The girls were rummaging in their boxes. Clara was crouched over ours, keeping a sharp eye on the others. Her expression was savage and distrustful; she might almost have been defending the royal larder! As we had only just arrived, our reserves were pathetic, a bit of bread and my margarine ration. With the crafty air of a greedy peasant, Clara asked me: “Since you’re not eating it, will you give me your margarine?”

Poor girl, her need to eat was so violently animal it frightened me.

“Of course, take it!”

That earned me the warm, grateful look of a spoiled cocker spaniel.

Gripping her steaming mug in both hands, Florette growled: “It gets more disgusting every day—and what do they make this bread with? Baked bones, to look at it! It’s just incredible.”

What seemed incredible to me was to hear that phrase here of all places, but no one reacted. Flora smiled vaguely; perhaps she didn’t even grasp the allusion. There was something utterly bovine about her that irritated me. Freckled Jenny tapped her piece of bread on the wooden table and joked: “Anyhow, no need for a hammer to resole your shoes. They mixed up the tradesmen: it’s not Fritz the baker who delivered the bread, but the ironmonger, Fritz the do-it-yourself man.”

I capped it. “You’re right, it’s even hard enough to smash Hitler’s head in.”

Enormous laughter, out of all proportion to the sally. Only Germans and Poles looked disapproving; as they didn’t understand, they always thought they were the butt of our jokes.

“That’s some idea!” Anny roared. “To kill Hitler with his own bread! It would be poetic justice, all right!”

There was a final chortle, then, one by one, we left the room.

Arbeit, Arbeit!
The players tuned their instruments. Seated at the copyists’ table, I took stock of my assistants. It wasn’t a brilliant array—they were the rejects: Zocha, the enormous creature who had come to fetch me in the first place, a hefty country girl who was such an appalling violinist that Tchaikowska, her protector, had speedily relegated her to the copyists’ table when Alma arrived. Danka, something of an athlete and probably the most dangerous because her hard expression showed intelligence; when she wasn’t copying, she played the cymbals literally fit to deafen you, feeling no doubt that the violence of her clashing alone would stir the work detachments into action, that by her zeal she was satisfying the SS. Between these two assertive monsters was Marisha, aged twenty, so pale and self-effacing as to be virtually invisible; even her stupidity was of the washed-out variety. At the other end—here, too, Aryan oil and Jewish water weren’t mixed—Hilde bent her obstinate, freshly shaven head over her paper. Intelligent, tyrannical, she immediately struck me as the führer of the German Jews of our block.

Pointing out my copyists to me, Alma had reminded me that she was the one in charge of them. What power could I wield over those Aryan Poles or over Hilde, who felt superior because she was German? I was a tamer without a whip, naked among vicious beasts. A charming prospect!

Alma appeared at the door of her room. Everyone stood up. I watched her come forward: she was not pretty, but she bore herself like someone making a stage entrance. I imagined the moment when she had put her beautiful hand on the door handle, prepared to open it, mustered up her public presence, consolidated it, breathed deeply, and pushed open the door to make her entry—the entry of a leader.

She passed impassively among the women, then stopped in front of me. “Can you orchestrate
Lustspiel?
The officers are very fond of Suppe’s overtures. Some time ago they gave me the piano part. See what you can do. It would make a good start for you.”

“Certainly, madame.”

Enchanted, Alma smiled at me. At the table, the copyists observed me cautiously: if I was all I’d made myself out to be, I represented a guarantee of life for the orchestra. So it was not just my writing crew who had their eyes on me, but all the girls; even the thickest Pole had grasped my importance. It was up to me to show them what I could do. I asked Alma if I could have some paper.

“There’s some on the table.”

“I mean lined paper, manuscript paper.”

Alma shook her head. “We haven’t got any. They draw the staff with a ruler.”

“Pen, ink?”

“Here, we have only pencils,” Alma said curtly. “We must make do with what we have. There’s a war on.”

The phrase astounded me. It seemed that Alma was a German before all else. She was very tall: it was all too easy for her to look down on me, and she did.

“Is that all?”

Undaunted, I answered, “No, madame!”

All trace of a smile had disappeared; she was straight and thin as her baton. I knew that I had to assert myself immediately if I was to be respected.

“What do you need now?”

“I don’t have enough copyists.”

“Gut.
You shall have more. There’s no shortage of poor players.”

That was true enough; indeed I was still wondering how we could possibly make music with such a range of instruments and attainment.

From her small platform, Alma gave her stand the traditional tap, then raised her arm. This gesture was the start to my day, which was to be as neatly divided as the manuscript paper I didn’t have.

I found this Suppe, so highly thought of by the SS, not just mediocre, but unbearable. Detestable. However, I analysed the piano version with all the care and interest I would have devoted to a work by Prokofiev, and above all with the same anxiety: I had never done any orchestral scoring before.

As in all marches, the trumpets, trombones, and clarinets dominated, and I had at my disposal ten violins, a flute, reed pipes, two accordions, three guitars, five mandolins, drums, and some cymbals. No composer had ever envisaged such a combination!

I read the top part carefully, and everything fell into place: I would replace the high instruments—sax, clarinet, and so on— with my first violin and my flute. The guitar and mandolins would be the accompaniment. The accordions would bring the whole together and support it with their basic chords; the percussion would steady the beat.

I was delighted; I felt that I could do more than simply acquit myself honourably. Within me, with an ease in which I hardly dared believe, everything orchestrated itself. The instruments each led off in turn, became alive. It was intoxicating. In a way I was recomposing this march. I heard it—stirring, martial. I was conducting it, I was carried away… Then I saw the reality of the endless, wretched multitude before whom it would be played. I sat, pencil poised, unable to proceed, staring into space. To survive, I was not simply going to have to walk over my heart, as the Hungarians say, I was going to have to trample on it, annihilate it.

My three Poles stared at me, their thoughts written on their faces: I was hesitating, I was worried, perhaps I’d bluffed. Already they were crowing: this evening, the tigresses would be able to make mincemeat of the tamer. I smiled at their distrustful faces. I stretched my hand out towards the sheets that had been ruled, took them, counted them, and observed severely: “That’s not enough, I need twenty-five sheets as soon as possible. Our conductor wants to start rehearsing this march right now.”

There was a sullen silence. I lowered my head and began to work almost cheerfully. This new work absorbed me utterly, it was another way of making music, a wonderful form of escape! The notes formed rapidly under my pencil. I hadn’t lost my touch, nor, unfortunately for me, my ear. Wrong notes burst forth at every moment, and I jumped at every one. Alma had trouble imposing the composer’s tempo. There was good and bad in this orchestra: the good consisted of Big Irene, an excellent violinist who, by comparison, became our Menuhin. Halina and Ibi of the peachlike skin played quite adequately. At the lower end of the scale in a class of her own was Jenny, who had played professionally in motion picture theatres before the war. She maltreated her strings with great sawing strokes: scraping and grinding triumphantly, she played with a strength and conviction that drowned the other instruments. Apart from the violins, there were three valuable players, three professionals: Lili, an accordionist; Helga, the percussionist, and Frau Kroner, the flautist. My ear couldn’t discern anything very distinctive among the mandolins and guitars, except for Anny, the Belgian, who played prettily. The disaster area was second and third violins, and the worst of a bad bunch was undoubtedly Florette.