Cut to the boy scout who is now sitting with a compass on his knee, studying the needle. Beside him, his mother is asleep.
FANIA: Can you tell our direction?
BOY SCOUT: South.
A nearby worker overhears.
WORKER: It’s probably going to be Munich. They need labor on the farms around there.
SECOND WORKER: I wouldn’t mind. I love the outdoors.
A nearby woman adds her wisdom.
WOMAN: They have those tiny little thatched houses down there. I’ve seen photographs.
FIRST CHESS PLAYER: In my opinion we’ll be machine-gunned right where we sit—and I’m especially sorry for your sake, Madame Fénelon—your music is for me the sound of Paris.
FANIA: Thank you.
MARIANNE, quietly: I’m not sure I could do farm work—could you?
FANIA—shrugs: Have you ever worked?
MARIANNE—a little laugh: Oh no—I never even met a worker till the prison. I was in school or at home all my life. The little laugh again. And now I don’t even know where my parents are. . . . She verges on a shivering fear with startling rapidity. Would you mind if we sort of stuck together?
Fania puts an arm around her and Marianne nestles gratefully into Fania’s body. A moment passes; Fania reaches into her net bag and gives Marianne a bonbon. Marianne avidly eats it and Fania pats her hair as though, in effect, forgiving her another dietary lapse.
Cut to the boy scout, alert to some change in the compass. He takes it off his knee, shakes it, then sets it back on his knee.
FANIA: Has it changed?
BOY SCOUT: We’ve turned to the east.
The first chess player turns to the scout, then leans over to read the compass himself. He then resumes his position, a stare of heightened apprehension growing on his face.
SECOND CHESS PLAYER, reassuringly: But a compass can’t be right with so much metal around it, can it?
Cut to a sudden explosion of indignation from deep in the crowd; people leaping up to escape something under the hay on the floor; yells of disgust and anger. . . . The mother and little boy emerge from within the crowd, he buttoning his pants. . . .
MOTHER: Well what is he supposed to do!
FIRST MAN: He can use the pail over there!
SECOND MAN: That pail is full.
FIRST MAN—he yells up to a grill high in a wall of the car: Hey! Let us empty the pail!
Only the sound of the clanking train returns. Defeated, the deportees rearrange themselves to find dry places on the floor. The train lurches.
Cut to the slop pail, filled with the deportees’ urine, overturning.
Cut to people, with higher disgust, fleeing from the contents and crowding each other even more, some even remaining on their feet.
Cut to Marianne coming out of Fania’s embrace. She whispers in Fania’s ear, while placing a hand on her own stomach. Fania glances down at her with distress.
FANIA: Try to hold out—they’ll have to open the doors soon.
MARIANNE: Could I have another sip of water?
FANIA: But only wet your mouth. You’ve got to try to discipline yourself.
Marianne drinks from the water bottle. Fania, as she is replacing the stopper, happens to catch the thirsty stare of the old asthmatic man. She hesitates, then holds out the bottle, which is taken by the asthmatic’s wife. The old man sips; he is weaker than earlier.
Cut to the nearly full water bottle. Superimposed on it is the crowd in its present postures, which are still rather normal for the circumstances—some are standing to avoid the floor, some are alert and energetic.
The water level in the bottle drops; and the superimposed crowd is losing its energy, with people unconscious, one on top of the other, lips are parched, signs of real distress. . . .
Cut to Fania, asleep sitting up. Marianne awakens, lips parched, tries to get a drop out of the bottle, but it is empty. She looks into Fania’s net bag, but it too is empty. Only half alive, Marianne, expressionless, sees a fight starting near her as a man pushes a woman away—and the woman is lowering her dress. . . .
MAN: Do it over there!—this is my place!
The woman trips over someone, looks down. . . .
Cut to the old asthmatic man. He’s dead. His wife, spiritless and silent, holds his head in her lap.
Cut to the faces of the deportees experiencing the presence of the dead man. Unable to bear it longer, Fania climbs up to the grill.
FANIA: Halloo! Listen! We’ve got a dead man in here! Halloo!
Surprisingly now, there is a squeal of brakes. People are thrown against each other, and the train stops. Expectation, fear, hope . . .
Cut to the freight-car doors rolling open. A powerful searchlight bathes the crowd, blinding them. The people try to get to their feet and gather their belongings.
From outside, half a dozen kapos leap into the car—these are prisoners working for the administration—and, armed with truncheons, they pull people out of the car onto the ground. (“Hurry up, everybody out, get moving” . . . etc.) They are brutal, enjoying their power.
Cut to the debarkation area. Under the spectral arc lights the cars are being emptied. Kapos are loading valises onto trolleys, but with a certain care, like porters.
Cut to the train platform. Late at night. Still wearing her fur coat and hat, Fania half unwillingly gives up her valise to a kapo. This kapo eyes Marianne’s body and gives her a toothless come-on smile.
Cut to a sudden close-up of Dr. Mengele. This monster, the so-called Angel of Death, is a small, dapper man with a not unattractive face. He is the physician in charge of the selections, and in this shot is simply standing at the edge of the milling crowd, observing the people. Now he nods slightly, an order.
Cut to SS guards pushing the people into a rough line, one behind the other. A dozen or more guard dogs and handlers keep the proceedings lively. Snarls electrify, the air is filled with the whining of eager dogs. But the violence is still controlled.
Dr. Mengele faces the head of the line. With a gesture to right or left, with hardly a second’s interval between individuals, he motions people toward several waiting trucks (marked with the Red Cross), or to an area where they stand and wait. The latter are generally stronger, male, and younger.
And so the line moves rapidly toward Mengele’s pointing fingers, and the crowd parts to the left and the right.
Cut to Fania, right behind Marianne on line, speaking into her ear.
FANIA: It’s going to be all right—you see?—the Red Cross is here.
Cut to people being loaded onto the open-backed “Red Cross” trucks. Babies are passed over the crowd to mothers, the aged are carried aboard with the stronger helping. The air still carries the whining and barking of the dogs, the sounds of hurried commands.
Once again, intermittent close shots individualize the crowd, the types, relationships. The crowd, in fact, is relieved to get aboard and moving to some destination.
Cut to the trucks pulling away. Marianne and Fania, alone on the ground, look up at the packed truck that remains. Kapos raise its tailgate and fasten it.
FANIA: Wait—we’re supposed to get on, aren’t we?
KAPO: How old are you?
FANIA: I’m twenty-eight, she’s twenty.
MARIANNE: I wouldn’t mind a walk—may we?
KAPO, with the very faintest glimmer of humor—he too is exhausted, skinny: You can walk.
The kapo hurries up ahead and boards the truck. The truck starts to pull away, leaving the two women behind.
Cut to the people on the truck. The camera memorializes the faces we have come to know on the train—the boy scout, the chess players, the boy scout’s mother, and so on. The truck moves off into darkness.
Cut to Marianne and Fania as they look around at the darkness—shapes of dark buildings surroun
d them. Down the track we hear the activity of the guards and those selected to live.
FANIA: I guess we follow the trucks.
The two move together into the darkness.
Cut to a strange orange glow in the night sky. Is it a massive reflection of bright lights or is it flame? It comes from some half a mile off.
Cut to Fania and Marianne walking, looking up at the glow.
FANIA: There must be some sort of factory.
Out of the darkness a kapo pops up and walks along with them. He puts an arm around Marianne.
KAPO: Listen . . . I’ll give you coffee.
FANIA, pulling his arm away from Marianne: This must be some high-class place—a cup of coffee for a woman?
KAPO: That’s a lot. Points arrantly at Marianne. See you later, Beauty.
Fania protectively grasps the frightened Marianne’s hand and they move on into the dark toward the glow.
Cut to the reception area. Fania and Marianne enter the dimly lit room, perhaps twenty by forty feet. They enter in uncertainly, unsure if they’re supposed to be here. Five Polish women prisoners, employed here, are lounging around a table. One cleans her nails, another reads a scrap of newspaper, another is combing her companion’s long hair. They are hefty, coarse, peasant types.
FANIA, after a moment: Is this where we get our things back?
She asks this question because—as we see now—along one wall of this room and extending out into a corridor which leads deeper into the building are, in neat piles, hundreds and hundreds of valises, stacks of clothes, piles of shoes, bins full of eyeglasses, false teeth, underwear, sweaters, gloves, galoshes, and every other imaginable personal item.
The Polish women turn to Fania and Marianne. One of them beckons silently, and the two approach her.
From the corridor enter two SS women in uniform. One of them is Frau Schmidt, the brutal, stupid German supervisor of the operation. They halt and expressionlessly observe.
The first Polish woman stands up from the table, and simply takes Fania’s handbag out of her hand. The second Polish woman grabs hold of Fania’s fur coat and pulls it off her. Bag and coat go into the hands of the SS women, who admiringly examine them.
FIRST POLISH WOMAN: Your shoes.
Fania and Marianne, both in fear now, remove their shoes, which are carried to Frau Schmidt by the Poles. Frau Schmidt examines the expensive shoes appreciatively.
FIRST POLISH WOMAN: Undress.
Cut to Fania and Marianne, sinking into a stunned astonishment. And now hands working scissors enter the shot. Their hair—Fania has braids which are hard to cut—is almost completely removed, leaving tufts.
Cut to a long number—346,991—being tattoed on an arm. Backing off, we see it is Marianne’s arm. She is now in a ludicrously outsized dress and shoes far too large. The same for Fania, who is staring down at her own tattoo. The tattooer is a male kapo, who works with his tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth.
Cut to a hundred or so women being handed dresses, some worn to mere shreds. Others are having their hair shorn as they wait to be tattooed. SS women move about, in charge.
Cut to Frau Schmidt, who is handed the little chess set from the train; she admires it, as well as the boy scout’s compass. She sets them on the counter. They are then placed by a Polish woman in a receptacle already loaded with toys, stuffed animals, soccer balls, sports things.
Cut to Fania, nearby, as she recognizes these relics; her eyes flare with terror. She turns toward a nearby window.
Cut to the window. We see the eerie glow in the sky.
Cut to one of the Polish women, all but finished pinning Fania’s plaits on her own hair, imitating Fania’s sophisticated walk as her sister workers laugh.
Fania, humiliated and angered, touches her bare scalp.
Cut to the work gang, from Fania’s point of view. An exhausted woman collapses at the feet of Lagerführerin Maria Mandel, who gestures toward a wheelbarrow. As kapos carry the woman, one of her arms brushes Mandel’s coat. Mandel viciously hits the arm away, brushing off her coat sleeve as the woman is dumped into the wheelbarrow.
POLISH WOMAN: How do I look, Jew-Crap?
FANIA: I’m not Jew-Crap, I’m French!
An uproar of laughter, and out of nowhere a smashing slap knocks Fania reeling to the floor. Over her stands SS Frau Schmidt, a powerhouse, looking down with menace.
Dissolve to dark.
Cut to the quarantine block—this is the barracks; dimly lit by a hanging bulb or two; a corridor between shelves, in effect, where women lie with barely room to turn over. The shelves go to the ceiling.
Fania and Marianne enter the corridor, escorted by a Polish woman, the Blockawa or Block Warden. She gestures for them to take bunks above and turns to leave.
The women in the bunks are cadaverous, barely able to summon interest in these new arrivals.
FANIA: Where are the people we came with?—they went off on the trucks . . . ?
The Blockawa grips her arm and leads her to a window and points out.
Cut to the orange sky-glow. But from this closer distance smoke can be seen rising from a tall stack.
Cut to Fania, Marianne, and the Blockawa. The Blockawa points upward through the window.
BLOCKAWA: Your friends. You see? —cooking. You too, pretty soon.
The Blockawa cutely blinks both eyes, grins reassuringly, and walks away.
Cut to Marianne, quietly sobbing as she lies beside Fania on their bunk.
FANIA: Marianne? Listen to me. Come, girl, stop that.
MARIANNE: Why are they doing this? What do they get from it?
Fania glances to her other side where, on the shelf beside her, lies a famished-looking woman who might well be dead.
FANIA, turning back to Marianne: I’ve always had to have an aim in life—something I wanted to do next. That’s what we need now if we’re ever to get out of here alive.
MARIANNE: What sort of an aim?
Fania looks down into the corridor below at the Blockawa, on patrol with a truncheon in her fist.
FANIA: If I ever get out of here alive, I’m going to kill a Polish woman.
Fania lies back, shuts her eyes, hating herself a little.
MARIANNE: I’m so hungry, Fania. Hold me.
Fania, on her back, embraces Marianne; then she turns the other way to look at the woman on her other side; she is skeletal, absolutely still. Cautiously Fania touches her skin and draws her hand away at the cold touch. Then she gives her a little shake. The woman has died.
Now she leans over the edge of the bunk and calls to the Blockawa.
FANIA: There’s a dead woman up here.
The Blockawa, club in hand, allows a moment to pass; she slowly looks up at Fania with the interest of a seal, then strolls away.
Cut to a close shot of Fania and Marianne in their bunk. Marianne stares in fright at the corpse, then hides her face in Fania’s side.
FANIA: We must have an aim. And I think the aim is to try to remember everything. I’ll tell you a story. . . . Once upon a time there was a prince named Jean and he was terribly handsome. And he married a princess named Jeannette and she was terribly beautiful.
Marianne comes out of hiding under Fania’s arm—she is childishly interested. . . .
MARIANNE: And?
FANIA: And one day the prince said, “My dear, we must have an aim in life, we must make children,” and so they. . . .
As Fania talks, slowly fade to a double exposure of Fania and Marianne. Snow falls over the image of the two women in their bunk: a forest; now spring comes; flowers appear and green grass; brook ice melts—always over the image of Fania and Marianne dragging stones, carrying wood, digging drainage ditches. . . . And finally, once again, in their bunk—now without the dead woman, and they are both asleep, side by side. And
both are haggard now, with the half-starved look of the other prisoners.
A voice blares out: “ATTENTION!”
Cut to the barracks. Women start to come obediently out of their bunks into the corridor. The Blockawa yells.
BLOCKAWA: Remain in place! Does anybody know how to sing Madame Butterfly!
Astonished silence. The Blockawa is infuriated.
BLOCKAWA: Does anyone know how to sing Madame Butterfly!
Cut to Fania, unsure whether to volunteer; she glances at Marianne, who urges her silently to do so. Below in the corridor the Blockawa starts to leave. Fania suddenly lunges and, half hanging out the bunk, waves to the monster woman. . . .
FANIA: I can!
Cut to Fania, entering from exterior darkness into a lighted room. She halts, looking around in total astonishment.
Cut to the musicians’ barrack dayroom. Fania, as in a wild dream, sees some twenty-five women, most seated behind music stands, badly but cleanly dressed; some with shaved heads (Jewesses), others still with their hair. Unlike her former barracks, with its faint and few light bulbs, there is brightness here, although it is actually quite bare of furniture.
In the center stands a Bechstein grand, shiny, beautiful. At the sight of the piano, Fania’s mouth falls open.
Compared to these women Fania is indeed woebegone—dirty, in ludicrously enormous shoes, a torn and ill-fitting dress.
Elzvieta, an older Pole with a full head of hair, approaches Fania, and with a wet cloth wipes her face. Fania regards this kindness incredulously. Now Elzvieta runs her pitying fingers down Fania’s cheek.
Etalina, petite, Rumanian, eighteen, brings a lump of bread and puts it in Fania’s hand.
ETALINA: I’m Etalina. I saw you in Paris once, at the “Melody.” Fania bites into the bread. My parents took me there last year for my birthday—I was seventeen.
Michou enters the group; a tiny determined girl of twenty, a militant communist, terribly pale, with a soft poetic voice. Etalina indicates her (not without a slight air of joking superciliousness toward this wraith).
ETALINA: But she’s the one who recognized you. This is Michou.
MICHOU: I saw you yesterday coming out of your barracks and I ran and told our kapo—she promised to audition you—
The Penguin Arthur Miller Page 104