Playing for Time (8 page)

Gloomily I contemplated the dusty cello and double bass cases standing up against the wall. I had resigned myself: Marta the cellist had gone into the infirmary just before my arrival. At a pinch I could do without her cello, but a double bass player really seemed indispensable. I had to have one; I would speak to Alma about it.

Alma, that impassioned musician, was suffering: her powerlessness to master her musicians technically exasperated her. She was conducting, as it were, a war of nerves in which she was the loser. Very soon I understood what was happening: Alma, a virtuoso violinist, couldn’t conduct; she read her score as a player, not as a conductor. She got angry, burst out, bellowed insults, hit guilty fingers with her baton. She made the girls work over the same phrase tirelessly, came up against the same mistakes and produced new ones. The good players became exhausted, the poor ones sank into a near stupor, and I, amid this bedlam, had to write out a piece bearing no relation to what I was hearing. It was trying, but I managed it.

We did seventeen hours of music a day, without counting what Florette called nightwork. By this she meant the concerts which the SS came to, at times chosen by themselves, to relax after their “hard” work. It was these sessions that earned the orchestra its reprieve.

Soup break. Alma put down her baton, briefly summed up the quality of the rehearsal as
zum kotzen—
nauseating— and said sharply to me: “Wait here a minute.”

Was she completely unthinking to make this request? Did she imagine someone would keep my portion of soup for me? Through the open door I surveyed the table with the cooking implements where the soup was given out and reassured myself: Marila hadn’t yet come back from the kitchen with Pani Founia.

“Can you really do this orchestration?” asked Alma nervously.

My gaze elsewhere, I gave her a polite affirmative.

“Show me.”

I showed her my scoring. She was reassured; now at last she was certain that I hadn’t cheated her. Despite this easy beginning I was less at ease than she; it was important that too much shouldn’t be asked of me. Yet that was just what Alma proceeded to do, somewhat dreamily. “Thanks to you, we’ll be able to give real concerts.”

I took advantage of her euphoria to ask for my double bass player.

“Yes, that would be good. I’ll ask Mandel for a player from the men’s orchestra to come and give lessons to—” She hesitated a moment, peered into the next room, and concluded, “Yvette. I think she’ll learn fast.”

Alma didn’t share our mess and presumably she was rather less badly fed. She went back into her room, where Regina took her her tray, and I joined the others just in time to get splashed with the two ladlesful slopped into my mug.

“It doesn’t stain,” said Anny with feeling. “There’s no fat.”

What really was
zum kotzen
was the food, which was identical to that of the other blocks; no hope on that score. Clara, seated beside me, fixed the unlovely concoction with an air of disbelief, great tears trembling in her eyes.

“I’m so hungry, and it’s always the same thing,” she murmured.

Florette picked up that one. “What manner of luxury food did you expect?”

“I’m not that silly, but after all, we are the orchestra.”

“Ah,” sniggered Jenny. “One can see that you hung out in the better parts of Paris. You’ve still got a well-developed sense of privilege. Well, here you’ll have to make do, it’s shit for everyone. That’s equality!”

Little Irene flared up, “I bet those wretched kitchen workers have stolen all the potatoes again!”

“Have you ever seen any?” exploded Florette. “I’ll give you those bitches’ recipes: anything, all the perishable remains from the suitcases and stolen parcels, everything that can’t be put on the SS table or get sent to Berlin is for us—rotten bacon, musty raisins, mouldy jam, cake crumbs, treacle, sausage skin. In it all goes, and you stir it all about! It’s nourishing and vomitatory!”

Suddenly my teeth came upon something slightly more solid, a couple of inches long; since I wasn’t in high society, I proceeded to extract this unidentifiable something, which I contemplated with interest.

“Well, well,” commented Jenny, “a bit of potato peeling. That proves that potatoes were on the menu. Eat it!”

“You’re lucky, it’s something to bite on.”

No one smiled. Food wasn’t a subject to be joked about. You could laugh about death, but not about what kept you alive.

We went back into the music room and, as on one of those clocks from which figures march out, Alma came out of her room the moment we were seated. She made her entry with such precision that it was almost as though she spied on our movements from behind her door. Indeed, why not?

The hours passed. The rehearsal was over. The orchestra prepared to leave; having “helped” the work detachments on their way, it would now “help” them to return. That was the end of the musicians’ labour. All we had to do then was to undergo the second roll call, when again we were counted like cattle. Then came supper: a bit of bread and, this evening, a minuscule piece of cheese—a real feast; by some oversight it wasn’t even mouldy.

This day etched itself into my mind as the typical day, the model of those to come, the first link in the chain. How many would there have to be before my account with fate was settled?

We were exhausted and famished, and escaped into oblivion.

The Girls in Canada

A c H A I N of whistle blasts encircled the barracks with their web of sound. Around me no one woke, but the noise must have disturbed their sleep because some turned over and groaned. I looked at them and suddenly felt a rush of protective tenderness.

Outside, soldiers ran heavily; arms clicked, whistles blew, ordering incomprehensible movements. My heart beat furiously. Wasn’t this colossal upheaval just the kind of thing that would precede the liberation of the camp? They would be running madly, beside themselves with panic, losing their heads and, pretty soon afterwards, their lives… I was impatient to know what was going on. Who could tell me?

Big Irene was sleeping like a baby, an impression reinforced by her protruding lower lip. Ewa, flat on her back, looked like a noble figure stretched out on a Polish tomb; Florette groaned in a voice woolly with sleep: “Shit! They make me sick!” Even in sleep her language was foul.

Little Irene sat up and looked questioningly at me. I didn’t dare share my hopes, so I asked her what was happening.

“
Blocksperre
,” she said unilluminatingly.

“What does that mean?”

I caught a fleeting look of pity in her dark eyes, still dimmed by sleep.

“Of course, you don’t know: Confined to quarters, no going out.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re going to make a selection.”

There are some words that need no explanation. No sooner had I heard that one than I understood its meaning: the selection of those who were to die.

“Does it last long?”

“It depends on the size of the convoy—from two to six hours.”

“Does it always happen at night?”

“No, but they prefer it that way. Things go better in the dark, it’s all more efficient. People are half asleep, there’s less shouting, less fuss…”

“So a
Blocksperre
also means the arrival of a convoy?”

“Usually, but it’s not the only sort of selection during which we’re confined to quarters.”

I must have looked particularly uncomprehending, because Little Irene explained to me: “The camp of Birkenau mustn’t have more than about a hundred thousand internees;
to
maintain this figure, they make selections, though of course this doesn’t prevent the daily murder of individuals, which doesn’t alter out lives at all. Five minutes don’t go by without a sick person, a Jew, or a Moslem being put in Block Twenty-five.”

“Why Moslems in particular?”

“ ”Moslem‘ is the name given to those who are just walking corpses.“

“Why?”

“No one knows. The person who first used it must have had his reasons, but it must have been a long time ago, and we’ll never know.”

I’d survived the selection of my arrival, but I didn’t know what the criteria were, or how other selections took place. I wanted to ask, but kept a feeble silence. However, Irene talked on, perhaps wanting to unburden herself of the horror that was stifling her. One had to be new here to agree to listen to her.

“I think that the selections carried out on those who aren’t new arrivals are the worst. You see, when you’ve just arrived you don’t know anything. When you’ve spent some time here, you know, it’s always the same saga: whistles blowing. They whistle at the slightest pretext: for supper, for coffee, to disperse the girls who go from block to block looking for something to trade or eat. In two minutes the camp is empty, a desert. The trucks arrive, stop in front of the blocks. Inside, a safe distance from the foul smell, the SS point out those selected: the thinnest, the shivering, the sick who try and hide, the girls who are disliked by the blockowa, the
kapo,
the kitchen girl… why not? And they’re brought out with blows from rifle butts, clubbed, kicked, punched, butted. The blockowas, egged on by the SS, are the worst; they lash out most of all. Some women shriek and fight. I saw one throw herself at an SS man, nails clawing his face; he clubbed her down, and everyone was forced to walk over her body, still living, just one mass of red…”

I wished she’d stop, I didn’t want to hear any more. But Irene continued, and I could only hope it was therapeutic:

“The scenes I saw in the quarantine block before coming here, Fania… Some climb in completely spinelessly, others sing, laugh. They climb into the trucks knowing quite well where they’re going. I’ve seen the whole range of reactions imaginable before the most extravagant horror ever known. And the SS wander around amidst this, cool and casual as you please. When they’ve closed up the trucks they laugh and pat one another on the back as if they’ve just enjoyed a good lark. The ones who shut the doors of the extermination blocks where the Zyklon-B gas is react the same way. Afterwards they go back into their mess to have a quiet drink, play the piano, have a girl—never a Jew, that’s not allowed—or they come here to listen to music: Viennese waltzes, Peter Kreuder. When it’s over, after what they’ve done, they all want to do something else. And that’s what I can’t understand. Can you?”

“Perhaps they want to forget, not be alone with themselves? Or perhaps they get drunk to complete the pleasure of killing, to celebrate it. What do we know about them?”

“In the music block we’re more isolated so we can stand up to it better, but once you’ve seen it, you can’t forget it.”

A voice admitting of no nonsense called to us to be quiet, to go to sleep. I’d have dearly liked to. Already the crematoria chimneys were beginning to smoke; tomorrow, a sickening smell of charred flesh would impregnate our clothes, our skin… and I had to remain indifferent—indeed, to take no notice. To what kind of heaven should one turn to pray for this kind of insensitivity?

I must have fallen asleep again, because the entry of a runner startled me. She was out of breath.

“Achtung! Schneller, schneller!
Mandel’s on her way.”

Tchaikowska came out of her room like a jack-in-the-box; Regina, Alma’s orderly, ran to knock at her door. Vigorously Irene shook Florette, whose aggressiveness was increased by this brutal awakening. Shouts and groans on all sides. The blockowa’s bellowing rose above the hubbub; most of her random blows luckily fell on empty air. The pandemonium had a boarding-school feel to it. The headlong gallop had lasted only a couple of minutes. It was three o’clock when Mandel, cap on head, wrapped in her regulation cape, came into the music room, where we were awaiting her in an impeccable position of attention-even me—gazes fixed on the middle distance. A blink could land you in Block 25. What could she want at this hour?

I didn’t know much about the camp, the activity of the SS, but I knew enough to wonder where she’d come from and what her part was in a selection. Did she pick out the condemned, thrust children towards the crematoria? Did she stroll insouciantly, supremely contemptuous, among the shaven, tattooed women who were being prepared for their role as cattle?

In a manner bordering on the servile, Alma asked nervously what the camp chief would like to hear, trembling inwardly lest Mandel name a piece so old that the players would have forgotten it.

Maria Mandel was the perfect representative of the young German woman depicted in propaganda. She had a lovely Dietrich voice, guttural in the lower register. She pointed to me: “I’d like
meine kleine Sangerin
to sing me
Madame Butterfly
in German.”

Alma translated the order. Catastrophe! That should put me in good voice. I didn’t know it in German. Alma’s expression became dangerously dark, she apologized lengthily; Mandel, irritated, cut her short with a gesture, and almost snappily Alma addressed me: “Sing it in French. I’ve said you’ll learn it in German.”

And in Russian, and in Moldavian, should the whim take her…

I felt my throat and lungs unresponsive with sleep. The incongruous thought of those singers who swallowed a raw egg to clear their throats nearly made me choke! I didn’t even dare to cough. The orchestra moved off and I launched into Madame la Lagerführerin’s favorite aria.

Mandel had removed her cape and sat down, looking dreamy. Could it be that she regarded herself as a sentimental geisha? I hated myself at the thought of giving her pleasure.

But was I? Her face wasn’t smiling, or even relaxed. Later, I was to learn that it was the done thing for the SS to listen to us as if we were slot machines. Yet she must have been satisfied, because I had to sing it again. Apparently she nurtured a special love for that opera, and I was never to know why. It seemed an odd taste, but it was vital not to forget that it was because of Mandel’s desire to hear her beloved
Butterfly
that Alma had sent for me in the first place.

The session was short, and the Lagerführerin left us, apparently satisfied. Little Irene commented as she went out, “It’s a small convoy, the selection didn’t last long.”