Playing for Time (29 page)

Standing at attention Sonia enquired what Herr Doktor would like to hear. As though she were capable of producing anything at all for his delectation. Nothing, he hadn’t the time, he was just paying a call; the phrase enchanted me. Elegant, distinguished, he took a few steps, then stopped by the wall where we had hung up Alma’s arm band and baton. Respectfully, heels together, he stood quietly for a moment, then, turning towards Sonia, said to her in a penetrating tone, appropriately funereal:
“In memoriam.”
Uncomprehending, our new
kapo
smiled back at him idiotically.

No sooner was he out of the room than she asked me whether it was a compliment or whether we should take the trophies down.

In Birkenau, an
In memoriam
pronounced by Dr. Mengele made a certain impression.

The Mack Triangles’ Party

When I went into the toilet block Hilde, the
kapo,
a thickset shrew of about sixty, called to me in bad German, a sort of low Bavarian I had difficulty in understanding: “You back here this evening, after roll call.” Was she joking? I couldn’t wait until the end of the day to answer the call of nature. As I had difficulty in understanding her and as she made no effort to understand me, I decided to go and get help. I went out without paying any attention to her guttural grunts.

Screwing up her pink little mouse’s face and half-choking with fury, Jenny said simply: “Shit. That’s all we need.”

They gathered round me. The news, which after all I was not actually so sure about any longer, was important, because our freedom to use the lavatories when we wanted was one of our few prerogatives: instead of being driven twice a day to the monstrous camp lavatories, we had the right to use the lavatories opposite, which were reserved for the black triangles.

The toilets for the “grande dames” were a rather unusual place, thirteen by sixteen feet, six wooden containers with holes in them and a lighted stove, summer and winter, on which stood a simmering vegetable stew which one of the attendants stirred while the other peeled potatoes. This domain was ruled over by two horrible hags, Hilde, the
kapo,
perpetually sucking on a Bavarian pipe with a lid, and Inge, her lover, quite slender-looking beside her stubby friend, crafty, damp-eyed, and perpetually alarmed. This ravishing couple—for these lavatory ladies made no secret of their tender feelings—were both equally unpleasant, and of course ardent racists, convinced anti-Semites. It had required an order from Kramer in person to convince them to allow dirty Jews to pollute their Eden. These two asocial Germans didn’t conceal their affectionate feelings from us any more than did their favoured and coddled clients, the black triangles. They were drunk most of the time, because in exchange for allowing the Canada and kitchen girls to use their pierced “containers,” they got whatever they wanted in the way of drink, food, tobacco, and soap.

Sleeping on the spot in a two-tiered
coja,
with a view of the seats day and night, the two hags always received us with insults and reproached us for sullying their shrine. They were forced to put up with us, but they made our lives as difficult as possible. When we came in and the six seats were occupied—which was generally the case—the visiting gossips, seated on their holes with bloomers lowered and skirts raised, smoking and arguing, cackled as they observed us, hoping that dysentery was racking our bowels. Seated beside their stove, leaning on their tables, the two vestals bandied worldly comments with these women, their visitors and clients:

“What’s the weather like in Berlin?”

“How is hair being worn this year?”

“A rumour is going round that the Führer is going to shave off his moustache.”

“Mein Gott!
He mustn’t do that, it suits him perfectly, he’s so attractive.”

And so on.

When one of them at last had had enough, she would get up, and the others would abandon their adjacent seats to the accompaniment of the same old comments:

“I can’t bear to stay near that filthy Jew!”

“The commandant really is too kind to let them come here; they’ll give us their diseases. They’re absolutely stinking, you know.”

Generally, except in winter, we preferred to wait our turn outside, because the mixture of doubtful stews, of scents—which they adored—and of excreta made us sick. The squalid sight offered by this assembly was so repugnant that we shortened our stay as best we could. However, we’d learnt to put up with the stinking hut, with the two creatures who pawed and yelled at each other, stuffed themselves and drank, belched and smoked, and with the vile laughter and vulgar stupidity of whatever six “clients” were passing through, because this place was an integral part of the advantages which enabled us to stay alive and which, in our grotesque world, we knew to be an aristocratic privilege.

Thus my news scandalized the girls:

“She can’t get away with that. I’ll come with you,” decided Florette. So off we went again.

When we entered, the six luxury holes were occupied. Drunk, garments agape, tenderly intertwined, Hilde and Inge fixed a sneering gaze on us, but at our entry conversations and giggles ceased. Florette, tact and patience never her strong points, demanded: “Why do we have to wait until after roll call to come here?”

The
kapo
and her mate shook their heads in incomprehension, then grasped the question, and abandoning their mutual show of affection, burst out laughing, slapping each other on the back and thighs, imitated slavishly by their clients. I advised Florette to keep cool. The tempest abated and the dialogue proceeded.

“You’ve got it all wrong,” I heard from Florette at last. “She was giving you a rendezvous with the
kapo
of the prostitutes.”

The news was amazing: a chasm yawned between those women and ourselves. The two of them acted mysterious and I had to wait until the evening to find out what they wanted. It was somewhat unexpected: the black triangles were giving a party next week, and they wanted music. We would be paid in sauerkraut.

We expressed a wide range of emotions around the recently relit stove; it was raining and there was a chill October wind.

“I’m not going to play for those whores who act so high and mighty,” Florette declared.

Jenny exploded, then pulled herself together, and commented that a party in their place was liable to be “quite a scene.” Clara, lips pursed, said that sauerkraut was like money, it smelled good when you needed it.

“I think it’s all right,” Anny put in calmly. “Prostitutes are more honourable than the SS.”

Marta, with no further ado, decided that she would go, and Helga, who knew she was indispensable, accepted. Moving the drums wouldn’t be easy, but we couldn’t do without them. Sylvia said yes timidly. As we needed a violin and Big Irene, who was only seventeen, expressed terror at the mere idea of the black triangles, Halina, a first violin, agreed to go with us. I was quite without scruples; they wanted me to sing and I would sing.

“What exactly do they want?”

“Music to dance to and to eat to.”

“They must have
Eine kleine Nachtmusik.”

“I think you’ll find they need something a bit more smutty.”

“How about the ”Laughing Polka‘?“ suggested Florette.

This “Laughing Polka,” which had recently entered our repertoire, was one of Sonia’s discoveries; all she had us rehearse were dreadful hit tunes. For the rest, as Big Irene and Anny said, the orchestra played automatically; it still hadn’t totally forgotten Alma.

The “Laughing Polka” was completely absurd: a few bars of polka, interspersed with a series of “ha, ha, ha’s,” not sung but laughed. When Sonia rehearsed it for the first time, I was horrified.

Were we going to be so brazen as to play this atrocity in front of the deportees, the moslems? Or was it just for the delectation of the officers, the SS?

“Ha, ha, ha,” went the grinding of the violins, the pounding of the big drum, and the jangling of the cymbals; at a sign from Sonia—the only lead-in she knew—the laughter burst out, led by Florette, whose job it was to bring in the others. All the players had to join in: the whole orchestra, singers included, laughed and laughed, fit to die of disgust while Sonia’s baton wiggled with joy. It was agonizing. I dreaded the concert where we were to produce this monstrosity instead of, say, Schubert, and I hoped for the future and the life of the orchestra that Mengele wouldn’t be there. Kramer was stupid enough to enjoy it. As for Mandel, a bit of
Butterfly
would erase the memory of this horror, though actually she might quite like it.

The next day, Sonia ordered me in Russian: “Tell them they’ll play the polka at the Sunday concert.”

As
it
was raining, the concert took place in the Sauna; this concert was to open the winter season. Our usual audience of wretched deportees was standing waiting for us, hemmed in their corner. Black triangles were seated on the tiers of seats and in front of them a few members of the administrative and medical staffs. There were a few seated SS. Immediately I noted with relief that Mengele wasn’t there. Sonia moved her baton at random; it seemed inevitable that Kramer, Mandel, or someone else would notice. The lack of comment, whether inspired by indulgence or indifference, worried me. No concert had ever been grimmer, longer, or less tuneful.

A glimmer of content appeared in Sonia’s deadpan gaze when we launched into “her” piece, the linchpin of her concert, the “Laughing Polka.” Looking abstracted, Florette played mechanically; she was so visibly elsewhere that, without waiting for the signal, coming in before the chorus, she burst into such bizarre guffaws that she set off nervous unmanageable laughter, which spread to the SS. This immense, absurd laugh echoed strangely within those vast, dingy walls. The compact group of the deportees disassociated itself from us. They had become a block of hostility where our giggles sank and disappeared like a stone into a well. The reproachful silence, the current of indignation that flowed from them were infinitely hurtful; our idiotic, alien tittering put us once again firmly on the side of the executioners.

It was that same evening that the jollity at the black triangles’ was to take place. We had to wait for Sonia and her friend Maria, our new blockowa, to leave; then we’d go. “We must get a container for the sauerkraut.” This phrase worked like Pavlov’s bell; it caused us to dribble with longing. Never can wages have been so ardently desired. Amidst all manner of comment, Jenny cleaned the pails we used to wash the floor.

“Do you think they’ll fill them up?”

“I should say so—no sauerkraut, no music; we get paid in advance.”

Clara was worried: “That won’t be enough, we’d better take the soup cans.”

“And if Maria notices, all hell will break loose.”

We took every precaution. In case of an impromptu visit from the SS a little runner would come and warn us. The “ladies’ ” building was made of concrete, not of planks like ours.

The interior was lit only by the camp lights, the searchlights, and the glow of cigarettes. It was a large, fairly clean room and they’d pushed the
cojas
back against the wall and put all their tables together, draped with sheets. Covered with food, with neatly aligned glasses, their buffet table looked good in the semi-darkness. A large space was cleared to be the dance floor. Georgette greeted us at the doorway. She was the leader, a real little pimp; in the camp, as in life, Georgette played the role of the male. She had managed to work it so that in addition to her “missus,” several other girls also brought in money for her. They were real, well-paid prostitutes. Georgette had made us laugh a lot because, unlike the other “fellows” of the block, who forced their voices down so as to sound more virile, she had the piping tones of a castrato, which made for a certain comic effect.

Ceremoniously she showed us to our corner. Adducing the possibility of being taken by surprise—it was always conceivable—I asked for our wages.

“No, you’ll get them afterwards!”

The empty buckets, placed behind us, were demoralizing. “Let’s hope they leave some,” grumbled Florette and Jenny, gazing at the mountains of sauerkraut covered with fat sausages from the SS kitchens; it made a lordly spread on the tables.

I rapidly got used to the dimness and was able to observe the spectacle at leisure. Most of the women were German prostitutes—Aryan, naturally—of all kinds: young, old, toothless, fat, thin, redheads with green eyes, blue-eyed blondes, black-eyed brunettes, something for everyone. With their carefully dressed hair and makeup, they had the duskily ringed eyes of the femme fatale, lips bloody with lipstick, pink dolls’ cheeks.

Jenny stared at them coldly: “From a distance, by walking fast, they could look like something, but in comparison with ours, on the rue Blondel or St. Denis, they just wouldn’t get the business!”

A charmingly novel sort of chauvinism.

The roles were clearly differentiated in this curious assembly of women. Evening dress was de rigueur: the “boys” were in silk pyjamas—presents from their girl friends—and the “ladies,” in their turn, wore ravishing transparent blouses, misty muslins, black lace negligees bordered with feathery clouds of pastel swansdown. I couldn’t imagine what El Dorado the women who’d brought this lingerie with them thought they were heading for. We gazed wide-eyed, nudging each other and stifling our giggles like schoolgirls after lights-out.

The brilliant assembly had waited for the orchestra before beginning festivities. At first there were just little squeaks from the “girls” and condescending laughter from the fake “fellows” as they stood around the table stuffing themselves, preposterously ladylike withal, fingers crooked, gobbling genteelly. Glasses clinked, toasts were heartfelt. Never had I so regretted not really understanding German. Florette, who was acting prim, and Marta, who was above the fray, would never deign to relay the gems to me. At the first bars, some “gentlemen” decided to invite the “ladies” to a waltz, and in a few minutes the buffet was deserted and the whole block, old and young, was dancing.