FANIA, sotto voce: Not the “Laughing Song”!
OLGA: But they want another number!
PAULETTE: But they’re all going to the gas, you can’t play that!
OLGA: But I don’t know any other! What’s the difference?
Olga steps from them and begins to play and sing the “Laughing Song,” which requires all to join in.
And as it proceeds, some of the insane join in, out of tempo to be sure, and . . .
Kramer is laughing, along with other SS.
Patients in beds are laughing. . . .
Cut to Fania, in her eyes the ultimate agony.
Cut to Mengele, signaling Kramer, who is beside him, and the latter speaks to an aide at his side. The aide gets up and moves out of the shot. . . .
Cut to the orchestra. The “Laughing Song” is continuing.
Cut to a door to the outside, which is opening. Kapos are leading half a dozen patients through it.
Cut to the orchestra. The “Laughing Song” continues; now Paulette sees the kapos leading people out. Her cello slides out of her grasp as she faints. “Laughing Song” is climaxing. Michou is propping up Paulette while attempting to play and laugh.
Cut to the hospital warehouse. Patients, orchestra, and SS are rocking along in the finale, as more patients are being led out through the door.
Cut to the dayroom. Later that night. The players are sitting in darkness while some are at the windows watching a not very distant artillery bombardment—the sky flashes explosions.
Fania, seated at her table, is staring out the window. She is spiritless now.
Players’ faces, in the flashes of light from outside, are somber, expectant.
Cut to a fire in the dayroom stove, visible through its cracks. Michou is grating a potato into a pan. Charlotte is hungrily looking on. This is very intense business.
Cut to Olga, the new conductor, emerges from Alma’s room: She is very officious lately.
OLGA: All right—players? We will begin rehearsal. Heads turn to her but no one moves. I order you to rehearse!
ETALINA, indicating outside: That’s the Russian artillery, Olga.
OLGA: I’m in charge here and I gave no permission to suspend rehearsals!
ETALINA: Stupid, it’s all over, don’t you understand? The Russians are out there and we will probably be gassed before they can reach us.
GISELLE: Relax, Olga—we can’t rehearse in the dark.
ETALINA: She can—she can’t read music anyway.
OLGA—defeated, she notices Michou: Where’d you get those potatoes?
MICHOU: I stole them, where else?
OLGA, pulling her to her feet: You’re coming to Mandel! —I’m reporting you!
From behind her, suddenly, Fania has her by her hair.
FANIA, quietly: Stop this, Olga, or we’ll stuff a rag in your mouth and strangle you tonight. Let her go.
Olga releases Michou.
CHARLOTTE: She was only making me a pancake, that’s all.
FANIA: Sit down, Olga—we may all go tonight.
OLGA: I don’t see why.
ETALINA: We’ve seen it all, dummy, we’re the evidence. Olga unhappily stares out a window. I feel for her—she finally gets an orchestra to conduct and the war has to end.
Cut to a series of close shots: the players’ faces—the exhaustion now, the anxiety, the waiting.
Cut to Etalina, just sitting close to Fania.
ETALINA: I think I saw my mother yesterday. And my two sisters and my father.
FANIA, coming alert to her from her own preoccupations: What? Where? What are you talking about?
ETALINA: Yesterday afternoon; that convoy from France; when we were playing outside the freight car; I looked up and . . . I wasn’t . . . I wasn’t sure, but . . .
Their eyes meet; Fania realizes that she is quite sure, and she reaches around and embraces Etalina, who buries her face in Fania’s breast and shakes with weeping.
FANIA: Oh, but what could you have done?
Cut to Lagerführerin Mandel, entering the dayroom. All rise to stand at attention, faces flaring with anxiety. Mandel is wide-eyed, totally distracted, undone. Etalina is weeping as she stands at attention.
MANDEL: Has anyone come across that little hat? Silence. No one responds. Amazement in faces now. The little sailor hat. I seem to have dropped it. No?
Heads shake negatively, rather stunned. Mandel, expressionless, exits.
The players sit again.
Etalina has an explosion of weeping.
FANIA, comforting her: Sssh . . .
Marianne now comes over to Fania, who is stroking Etalina’s face.
MARIANNE: I just want you to know, Fania, that . . . you turned your back on me when I needed you, and . . . I don’t want you to think I’m too stupid to know it.
FANIA: What are you talking about? Marianne bitterly turns away, as . . . Are you a little child that I should have locked in the closet?
Marianne walks away to a window, adamantly bitter.
Cut to Michou, feeding Charlotte pieces of pancake from a pan, as she would a child.
Cut to Fania, looking with a certain calculation at . . .
Elzvieta, who blanches and turns from an explosion in the sky, and crosses herself.
Fania comes up to her.
FANIA: Elzvieta? She takes out a small but thick notebook. I would like you to keep this. It’s my diary—everything is in there from the first day.
ELZVIETA: No, no. You keep it. You will be all right, Fania. . . .
FANIA: Take it. Take it, maybe you can publish it in Poland. . . .
ELZVIETA—starts to take it, then doesn’t: It’s impossible, Fania—I feel like I’m condemning you! You keep it, you will live, I know you will!
FANIA: I am not sure . . . that I wish to, Elzvieta.
ELZVIETA, realizing, she looks deeply into Fania’s dying eyes: Oh no . . . no, Fania! No!
She suddenly sweeps Fania into her arms, as . . .
Two troopers enter. These are not SS men; they carry rifles and combat gear.
FIRST TROOPER: Jews left! Aryans right! Hurry up!
The players scurry to form up. . . .
Fania and Elzvieta slowly disengage—it’s good-bye.
Cut to an open freight car. Dawn is breaking; rain drenches some twenty-five players in this freight car ordinarily used for coal. Fania now is lying on her back with her eyes shut, the players extending their coats to shield her. The train slows.
Nearby two Wehrmacht troopers are huddled over a woodstove; women also cluster around for warmth.
These men are themselves worn out with war, dead-eyed.
Marianne makes her way over to one of the troopers and gives him a flirty look.
MARIANNE: How’s it going, soldier?
The trooper’s interest is not very great.
MARIANNE: Could a girl ask where you’re taking us?
She comes closer—and with mud-streaked face, she smiles. . . . Now he seems to show some interest in her.
MARIANNE: ’Cause wherever it is, I know how to make a fellow forget his troubles. Where are we heading?
TROOPER, shrugging: Who knows? I guess it’s to keep you away from the Russians, maybe . . . so you won’t be telling them what went on there. Or the Allies either.
MARIANNE: Going to finish us off?
TROOPER: Don’t ask me.
The train stops.
Cut to a flat, barren, endless landscape covered with mud.
Cut to an SS officer mounting onto the car; below him on the ground are several other SS plus dogs and handlers.
The officer looks the players over, then points at Marianne. She steps forward. He hands her a club.
SS OFFICER: You are the kapo. Get them out an
d form up.
Officer hops down and moves off to next car.
Cut to Marianne, who hefts the club in her hand and turns to the players, who all seem to receive the message her spirit emits—they fear her.
MARIANNE: Out, and form up five by five.
She prods Charlotte in the back as she is starting to climb down.
CHARLOTTE: Stop pushing me!
Marianne viciously prods Paulette, who falls to the ground as Michou and Giselle seek to intercede; and Marianne swings and hits Giselle, then goes after Michou, and both escape only by jumping down and falling to their hands and knees. Now Marianne turns to the pièce de résistance—
Fania is practically hanging from the supporting hands of Charlotte and Etalina, who are moving her past Marianne.
MARIANNE: She can walk like anybody else.
ETALINA: She’s got typhus, Marianne!
She beats their hands away from Fania, who faces her, swaying with a fever. Marianne swings and cracks Fania to the floor of the car.
Cut to a vast barn or warehouse, its floor covered with hundreds of deportees in the final stages of their physical resistance. They are practically on top of one another; and over all a deep, undecipherable groaning of sound, the many languages of every European nation.
Now a shaft of daylight flashes across the mass as a door to the outside is opened and through it a straggling column of deportees moves out of this building.
The door closes behind them, followed by . . .
The sound of machine guns.
Cut to the little group of players around Fania, who are wide-eyed, powerless. She is propped up in Paulette’s lap now, panting for breath.
Fania opens her eyes . . .
ETALINA, slapping Fania’s hands: That’s better . . . keep your eyes open . . . you’ve got to live, Fania. . . .
Now Fania, half-unconscious, sees past Etalina . . . to . . .
A woman and man making love against a wall.
A man barely able to crawl, peering into women’s faces.
MAN: Rose? Rose Gershowitz?
Cut to a Polish woman, surrounded by the ill and dying, giving birth, with help from another woman.
Machine guns fire in near distance. Along with the baby’s first cries.
Cut to Fania, receiving these insanely absurd sounds with a struggle to apprehend. And now she sees . . .
The Polish woman who just gave birth, standing up, swaying a little, wrapping her rags about her as she takes her baby from a woman and holds it naked against herself.
Cut to Fania, ripping the lining out of her coat—which was lying on top of her as a blanket—and gestures for Paulette to hand it on to the Polish woman, which is done. And the baby is wrapped in it.
Light again pours in from the opening door, and another column of deportees is moving to exit and death. And as this column stumbles toward the door, urged on by SS men and kapos . . .
Shmuel appears in the barn door. The light behind him contrasts with the murk within the building and he seems to blaze in an unearthly luminescence.
He is staring in a sublime silence, as now he lifts his arms in a wordless gesture of deliverance, his eyes filled with miracle, and turning he starts to gesture behind him. . . .
A British soldier appears beside him and looks into the barn.
Cut to the British soldier. His incredulous, alarmed, half-disgusted, half-furious face fills the screen.
Cut to a panoramic shot: a shouting mass of just-liberated deportees throwing stones. Some of these people are barely able to stand, some fall to their knees and still throw stones at . . .
A truck filled with SS men and women, their arms raised in surrender, trying to dodge the stones. Several trucks are pulling away, filled with SS.
Fania is being half-carried by Michou and Etalina, the others near them.
ETALINA: Please, Fania, you’ve got to live, you’ve got to live . . . !
Michou suddenly sees something offscreen, picks up stones and starts throwing. . . .
MICHOU: There she is! Hey rat! Rat!
Paulette and Esther turn to look at . . .
Marianne.
In the midst of the mob, Marianne is being hit by stones thrown by Michou. Other deportees are trying to hold on to Marianne to keep her from escaping. . . .
FANIA’S VOICE: Michou!
Michou turns to . . .
Fania, steadied on her feet by the others, staring at . . . Marianne, frightened, but still full of defiant hatred.
Cut to a British communications soldier with a radio unit, coming up to Fania.
SOLDIER: Would it be at all possible to say something for the troops?
Fania registers the absurdity of the request.
SOLDIER: It would mean so much, I think . . . unless you feel . . .
She stops him by touching his arm; all her remaining strength is needed as she weakly sings the “Marseillaise.”
FANIA:
Allons enfants de la Patrie
Le jour de gloire est arrivé
Contre nous de la tyrannie . . .
Fania’s eyes lift to . . .
The sky. The clouds are in motion.
Cut to a busy, prosperous avenue in Brussels—1978 autos, latest fashions on women, etc. . . .
Cut to a restaurant dining room. The camera discovers Fania at a table, alone. It is a fashionable restaurant, good silver, formal waiters, sophisticated lunch crowd. Fania is smoking, sipping an aperitif, her eye on the entrance door.
Of course she is now thirty years older, but still vital and attractively done up and dressed. And she sees . . .
First, Liesle, the miserable mandolin player, who enters and is looking around for her. Fania half-stands, raising her hand. As Liesle starts across the restaurant toward her, Charlotte enters behind her. And she recognizes Liesle.
Keeping Fania’s viewpoint—Charlotte quickly catches up with Liesle, touches her arm; turns; a pause; they shake hands, then Liesle gestures toward Fania’s direction and they start off together.
Cut to Liesle and Charlotte arriving at the table; Fania is standing; a pause. It is impossible to speak. Finally, Fania extends both her hands, and the other two grasp them.
FANIA: Liesle! —Charlotte!
They sit, their hands clasped. After a moment . . .
LIESLE: We could hardly believe you were still singing—and here in Brussels!
CHARLOTTE: I’m only here on a visit, imagine? And I saw your interview in the paper!
Words die in them for a moment as they look at one another trying to absorb the fact of their survival, of the absurdity of their lives. Finally . . .
FANIA: What about the others? Did you ever hear anything about Marianne?
LIESLE: Marianne died.
FANIA—it is still a shock: Ah!
LIESLE: A few years after the war—I can’t recall who told me. She was starting to produce concerts. She had cancer.
CHARLOTTE: I have two children, Fania . . .
FANIA: Charlotte with children!—Imagine!
A waiter appears. He knows Fania.
WAITER: Is Madame ready to order or shall we . . . ?
FANIA: In a few minutes, Paul. With a glance at the other two. We haven’t seen each other in thirty years, so . . . you must ask the chef to give us something extraordinary; something . . . absolutely marvelous!
And she reaches across the table to them and they clasp hands.
Cut to their hands on the white tablecloth, and their numbers tattooed on their wrists.
The camera draws away, and following the waiter as he crosses the restaurant, we resume the normality of life and the irony of it; and now we are outside on the avenue, the bustle of contemporary traffic; and quick close shots of passersby, the life that continues and continue
s. . . .
FINAL FADE-OUT
THE RIDE DOWN MT. MORGAN
1991
Characters
LYMAN FELT
THEO FELT
LEAH FELT
BESSIE
NURSE LOGAN
TOM WILSON
ACT ONE
SCENE I
Lyman Felt asleep in a hospital bed.
Nurse Logan is reading a magazine in a chair a few feet away. She is black. He is deeply asleep, snoring now and then.
LYMAN, his eyes still shut: Thank you, thank you all very much. Please be seated. Nurse turns, looks toward him. We have a lot of . . . not material . . . yes, material . . . to cover this afternoon, so please take your seats and cross your . . . No-no . . . Laughs weakly. . . . Not cross your legs, just take your seats. . . .
NURSE: That was a lot of surgery, Mr. Felt. You’re supposed to be resting . . . Or you out?
LYMAN, for a moment he sleeps, snores, then . . . : Today I would like you to consider life insurance from a different perspective. I want you to look at the whole economic system as one enormous tit. Nurse chuckles quietly. So the job of the individual is to get a good place in line for a suck. She laughs louder. Which gives us the word “suckcess.” Or . . . or not.
NURSE: You know, you better settle down after all that surgery.
LYMAN, opens his eyes: You black?
NURSE: That’s what they keep telling me.
LYMAN: Good for you. I’ve got the biggest training program of any company for you guys. And the first one that ever put them in sales. There’s no election now, is there? —Eisenhower or something?
NURSE: It’s December. And he’s been dead since I don’t know when.
LYMAN: Eisenhower dead? Peers in confusion. Oh, right, right! . . . Why can’t I move, do you mind?
NURSE, returns to her chair: You’re all in a cast, you broke a lot of bones.
LYMAN: Who?
NURSE: You. You smashed your car. They say you went skiing down that Mount Morgan in a Porsche.
She chuckles. He squints, trying to orient himself.
LYMAN: Where . . . where . . . I’m where?
The Penguin Arthur Miller Page 111