Mandel exits.
FANIA, to Tchaikowska: To Canada?!
Cut to a long shot of the smoking chimney.
Cut to a counter set in open air beside another barracks. Behind it are the black-market girls—sleek, fed, laughing, busy trading with a few desperate-looking women who hand over a slice of bread for a comb or piece of soap. On the counter are perfumes, lotions, soap and a pile of used toothbrushes. These “Canadians” all have hair—Czechs, Poles, Dutch . . .
FIRST BLACK MARKETEER: Welcome to Canada. So you’re the Frenchy singer—what would you like? Fania picks up a toothbrush. Charlotte accompanies her. That just came off the last transport—it’s practically new and very clean—they were mostly Norwegians. That’ll be a good slice of bread.
The black marketeer holds out her hand. Fania takes out a chunk of bread. Charlotte intercepts, returning it to Fania.
CHARLOTTE: I said this is on the Chief!
BLACK MARKETEER, cheerfully: What’s wrong with trying? To Fania: Here’s your junk, stupid.
Set aside at one end of the counter are forty tiny packets in soiled and much-used paper. Charlotte and Fania load their arms.
Cut to the high excitement in the dayroom as the girls open their gift packages, which contain, in one case, a bit of butter and a pat of jam which a girl ever so carefully smears on a cracker-sized piece of bread, or an inch of sausage and a chip of chocolate to be savored for a full five minutes, and so forth.
Marianne, suffering, gobbles up her bread and jam in one gulp.
Fania nearby is swallowing. She takes out her toothbrush.
MARIANNE: You got a toothbrush!—can I see? She takes it, examines it, reads words on the handle. From Norway. Looks almost new. Offering it back: Nothing like having important friends, right?
Fania’s hand stops in air. But then she takes the toothbrush, and forces herself to look directly into Marianne’s eyes.
MARIANNE: Whoever that belonged to is probably up the chimney now. Fania is silent. So why are you superior?
FANIA: If I ever thought I was, I sure don’t any more.
Etalina enters the shot . . . addressing all.
ETALINA: I’ll say one thing, Fania—I feel a lot safer now that the Chief is so hot for you.
Some of the women laugh, titillated . . . the Poles loudest of all.
ETALINA: Although I wouldn’t want to wake up in the morning next to that Nazi bitch’s mug.
FANIA: I don’t expect to. But it’s not her face that disgusts me.
Esther speaks—a shaven Polish Jewess, angular, tight-faced.
ESTHER: Her face doesn’t disgust you?
FANIA: No—I’m afraid she’s a very beautiful woman, Esther.
ESTHER: That murderer you dare call beautiful?
Others react against Fania—“Shame!” “You toady!” “Just because she favors you!”
FANIA, overriding: What disgusts me is that a woman so beautiful can do what she is doing. Don’t try to make her ugly, Esther . . . she’s beautiful and human. We are the same species. And that is what’s so hopeless about this whole thing.
MICHOU: What’s the difference that she’s human? There’s still hope—because when this war is over Europe will be communist—and for that I want to live.
ESTHER: No. To see Palestine—that’s why you have to live. You’re Jewish women—that’s your hope: to bring forth Jewish children in Palestine. You have no identity, Fania—and that’s why you can call such a monster human and beautiful.
FANIA: I envy you both—you don’t feel you have to solve the problem.
ESTHER, anxiously, aggressively: What problem! I don’t see a problem!
FANIA: She is human, Esther. Slight pause; she is looking directly into Esther’s eyes. Like you. Like me. You don’t think that’s a problem?
Fania’s eye is caught by Marianne slipping out the dayroom door.
Cut to outside the barracks. While two kapos expectantly watch, Marianne opens a bar of chocolate they have given her and bites into it. They lead her around the corner of the barracks and out of sight. One of them has a bottle half-filled with wine.
Cut to Fania, asleep in her bunk. Marianne appears, starts to climb in—she is tipsy—slips and lands on her behind on the floor with a scream. Women awaken.
ETALINA: At least let us get some rest, Busy-Ass.
MARIANNE, to Etalina: What’s it to you? To Fania: Say!—your hair’s coming back white!
FANIA: Come to bed, Marianne. . . .
MARIANNE: Oh, screw these idiots. . . .
VOICES: Shut up! Whore! I’m exhausted! She’s disgusting! Somebody throw her out! Shut up!
MARIANNE, to the whole lot: Well, it so happens, one of them was a doctor from Vienna. . . .
ETALINA: She just went for a checkup!
MARIANNE: And he thinks we are never going to menstruate again! Silence now. Because of this . . . this fear every day and night . . . and the food . . . can sterilize . . .
She looks around at their stricken faces. She climbs up, helped into her bunk by Fania.
Cut to a series of close-ups:
Esther, praying quietly: Shma Israel, adonai elohaynu . . .
Elzvieta crosses herself and prays quietly.
Other women are praying.
Fania is silent, staring, while beside her Marianne lies on her back asleep and snoring.
Cut to two kapos, carrying Paulette on a stretcher across the dayroom to the exit door. Paulette, the young cellist, is in high fever. Alma attempts to explain to the kapos in pidgin . . .
ALMA: Do you understand me? —she is musician, cellist, not to be gassed. To hospital, you understand? Typhus, you see? We need her. Well, do you understand or not! At the door: Wait!
Cut to Alma rushing over to Tauber, an SS officer, and Mala. Mala is the tall, striking Jewess, wearing the Star, but who appears to show no obsequiousness toward Tauber, the SS officer beside her. Kapos approach carrying Paulette on a stretcher.
ALMA: Excuse me, Herr Commandant Tauber—with your permission, would Mala instruct these men to be sure this girl is not . . . harmed? She is our cellist and must go to the hospital—she has high fever, typhus perhaps. I don’t know what language they speak. . . .
Without waiting for Tauber’s permission, Mala stops the kapos.
MALA: Parl’ Italiano? They shake their heads negatively. Espagnol? They shake their heads again. Russky? Again.
KAPO: Romany.
MALA: Ah! In Rumanian: Be sure to take her to hospital, not death—she is a musician, they need her.
KAPO, in Rumanian: We understand.
They walk off with Paulette. Tauber and staff move off with Mala.
Cut to the dayroom. The orchestra members are clustered at the windows watching this.
MICHOU: Isn’t she fantastic?—
FANIA, amazed: But she’s wearing the Star!
MICHOU: Sure—that’s Mala, she’s their chief interpreter. She’s Jewish but she’s got them bulldozed.
FANIA: How’s it possible?
Alma re-enters the dayroom, goes to her podium, leafs through score.
MICHOU: She’s been here for years—since the camp was built—she escaped once; she and five others were supposed to be gassed, so they’d been stripped, and she got out through an air vent. Ended up stark naked going down a road past the Commandant’s house. She’s afraid of absolutely nothing, so when he stopped her she demanded some clothes; they got to talking, and he found out she speaks practically every language and made her an interpreter.
LIESLE, proudly: She’s Belgian, you know—like me.
CHARLOTTE: She was in the Resistance. She even has a lover.
ETALINA: And handsome!
FANIA: Now you’re kidding me.
ETALINA: It’s true—Edek’s his nam
e—a Polish Resistance guy. He’s got a job in the Administration.
MICHOU, starry-eyed: They’re both unbelievable—they’ve saved people—a few anyway, and helped some. They’re afraid of nothing!
ALMA: Fania! From Alma’s viewpoint we see the group turning to her. Come here now and let us go through your Schubert song. Fania comes to the piano, sits. You must try the ch sound again—Dr. Mengele has a sensitive ear for the language, and it’s his request, you know. Begin . . .
Fania sings a Schubert song with “lachen” in the verse, pronouncing “lacken.”
ALMA: No, no, not “lacken,”—“lachen . . . ”
FANIA, trying, but . . . : Lacken.
ALMA: Lachen! Lachen! Lachen! Say it!
Alma’s face is close to Fania’s; Fania looks into Alma’s eyes and with a sigh of angry defeat . . .
FANIA: Lachen.
ALMA: That’s much better. I hope you won’t ever be stupid enough to hate a language! Now the song once more . . . I want you perfect by Sunday. . . .
Fania, her jaw clamped, forces herself into the song.
Cut to the train platform. It is barely light. Freight-car doors roll open, and the deportees are hustled out. From within the dormitory we hear women yelling and screaming.
Cut to the dormitory. Tchaikowska, burly chief of the barracks, and other Blockawas are pulling Etalina out of her bunk by the ankles, and she lands with a bang on the floor. The other inmates are yelling. . . .
VOICES: Why can’t you wake up like everybody else! Why are you always making trouble! and so on . . .
Alma appears on the scene with Fania nearby. Tchaikowska bangs a fist on Etalina’s back.
ETALINA: I said I didn’t hear you call me!
ALMA—now she smashes Etalina across the face: You’re a spoiled brat! You will obey, d’you hear?
Alma’s face, infuriated.
Cut to Alma’s face. She is conducting. Great anxiety about the sounds coming forth. Suddenly she strides from the podium to Etalina. She is near hysteria as she bends over Etalina, who looks up at her in terror.
ALMA: Are you trying to destroy us? That is a B flat; do you know a B flat or don’t you? Etalina is cowering in terror. I asked if you know B flat or if you do not!
With a blow she knocks Etalina off her chair.
ETALINA, screaming—she is a teenager, a child: I want my mother! Mama! Mama!
She collapses in tears. Fania goes to her, holds her.
MICHOU: You’d better get some discipline, Etalina. You’re not going to make it on wisecracks.
Alma looks at Fania, a bit guiltily now that her anger has exploded, then goes out into her own room. Fania waits a second, then obediently follows her in and shuts the door.
Cut to Alma’s room. Fania is massaging Alma’s shoulders and neck as she sits in a chair by the window. Alma moves Fania’s fingers to her temples, which she lightly massages. After a moment she has Fania massage her hands, and Fania sits before her doing this.
ALMA: Talk to me, Fania. Fania keeps silent; wary of expressing herself. There must be strict discipline. As it is, Dr. Mengele can just bear to listen to us. If we fall below a certain level anything is possible. . . . He’s a violently changeable man. Fania does not respond, only massages. The truth is if it weren’t for my name they’d have burned them up long ago; my father was first violin with the Berlin Opera, his string quartet played all over the world. . . .
FANIA: I know, Madame.
ALMA: That I, a Rosé, am conducting here is a . . .
FANIA: I realize that, Madame.
ALMA: Why do you resent me? You are a professional, you know what discipline is required; a conductor must be respected.
FANIA: But I think she can be loved, too.
ALMA: You cannot love what you do not respect. In Germany it is a perfectly traditional thing, when a musician is repeatedly wrong . . .
FANIA: To slap?
ALMA: Yes, of course! Furtwängler did so frequently, and his orchestra idolized him. Fania keeping her silence, simply nods very slightly. I need your support, Fania. I see that they look up to you. You must back up my demands on them. We will have to constantly raise the level of our playing or I . . . I really don’t know how long they will tolerate us. Will you? Will you help me?
FANIA: I . . . I will tell you the truth, Madame—I really don’t know how long I can bear this. She sees resentment in Alma’s eyes. . . . I am trying my best, Madame, and I’ll go on trying. But I feel sometimes that pieces of myself are falling away. And believe me, I recognize that your strength is probably what our lives depend on. . . .
ALMA: Then why do you resent me?
FANIA: I don’t know! I suppose . . . maybe it’s simply that . . . one wants to keep something in reserve; we can’t . . . we can’t really and truly wish to please them. I realize how silly it is to say that, but . . .
ALMA: But you must wish to please them, and with all your heart. You are an artist, Fania—you can’t purposely do less than your best.
FANIA: But when one looks out the window . . .
ALMA: That is why I have told you not to! You have me wrong, Fania—you seem to think that I fail to see. But I refuse to see. Yes. And you must refuse!
FANIA—nearly an outcry: But what . . . She fears it will sound accusatory. . . . what will be left of me, Madame!
ALMA: Why . . . yourself, the artist will be left. And this is not new, is it? —what did it ever matter, the opinions of your audience? —or whether you approved their characters? You sang because it was in you to do! And more so now, when your life depends on it! Have you ever married?
FANIA: No, Madame.
ALMA: I was sure you hadn’t—you married your art. I did marry . . . Alma breaks off. She moves, finds herself glancing out the window, but quickly turns away. . . . Twice. The first time to that . . . She gestures ironically toward her violin case lying on her cot. The second time to a man, a violinist, who only wanted my father’s name to open the doors for him. But it was my fault—I married him because I pitied myself; I had never had a lover, not even a close friend. There is more than a violin locked in that case, there is a life.
FANIA: I couldn’t do that, Madame, I need the friendship of a man.
ALMA—slight pause: I understand that, Fania. She is moved by an impulse to open up. Once I very nearly loved a man. We met in Amsterdam. The three good months of my life. He warmed me . . . like a coat. I think . . . I could have loved him.
FANIA: Why didn’t you?
ALMA: They arrested me . . . as a Jew. It still astonishes me.
FANIA: Because you are so German?
ALMA: Yes. I am. Slight pause. In this place, Fania, you will have to be an artist and only an artist. You will have to concentrate on one thing only—to create all the beauty you are capable of. . . .
FANIA, unable to listen further: Excuse me, Madame . . .
She quickly pulls open the door and escapes into the dayroom; Alma is left in her conflict and her anger. She goes to her violin case on the bed, takes out the instrument. Some emotion has lifted her out of the moment; she walks out of the room.
Cut to the dayroom. Alma enters; the women come quickly out of their torpor, reach for their instruments. Alma halts before them and looks out over them. And with an expression of intense pride which also reprimands and attempts to lead them higher, she plays—and extraordinarily beautifully—the “Meditation” from Thaïs, perhaps.
Jew, Gentile, Pole, kapo—Etalina herself and Fania—everyone is captivated, subdued, filled with awe.
As the final crescendo begins, Frau Schmidt and two kapos armed with clubs enter. Everyone leaps up to attention.
FRAU SCHMIDT: Jews to the left, Aryans to the right!
KAPOS: Quick! Hop, hop! Move; quick; five by five!
In the milling around to f
orm two groups, Marianne pushes through and just as the groups make an empty space between them, she pulls an uncomprehending Fania into that space, where they stand alone facing Frau Schmidt.
MARIANNE: She and I are only half.
FRAU SCHMIDT: Half! Half what?
MARIANNE: Half Jewish. Both our mothers were Aryan.
Frau Schmidt’s face shows her perplexity as to the regulations in such cases. Alma steps out of the Jewish group and goes to her.
ALMA, sotto voce, in order not to embarrass her: Mixed race—are not to be gassed, I’m quite sure, Frau Schmidt. But Fania overhears and is moved by gratitude and surprise. But what is this selection for . . . if I may ask?
FRAU SCHMIDT—her hostility to Alma is quite open: You belong with the Jews, Madame. Alma steps back into her group, humiliated but stoic. Jews! Your hair is getting too long! Haircuts immediately! To Fania and Marianne: You two, follow me!
She makes a military about-face and goes out. The two women follow.
Cut to a tiny office in the administration building. The overstuffed noncom is poring over a book of regulations open on a table as Fania and Marianne stand looking on. He lip-reads, his finger moving along the lines.
Now he finds something, nods his head appreciatively as his comprehension gains, then he looks at the women.
SERGEANT: In this case you are allowed to cut off the upper half of the Star of David.
Marianne reacts instantly, ripping a triangle off her coat. (The Star is actually two separate triangles superimposed.) Fania is uncertain, does nothing.
Cut to the dayroom. Much agitation: an impromptu sort of trial is taking place. Sides are taken with Marianne and Fania alone in the middle.
Fania and Marianne both have half-stars on their dresses. As they are attacked, Marianne reacts with far more anguish than Fania, who, although disturbed, is strong enough to remain apart from any group.
ESTHER: You’ve behaved like dirty goyim, you’ve dishonored the Jews in your families.
MARIANNE: But if it’s the truth why should I hide it? I am only half. . . .
ETALINA: Maybe they’ll only be half-gassed.
Laughter. Varya, who is standing with other Poles, steps out of the group.
The Penguin Arthur Miller Page 107