This gives way to . . .
A close-up of Mengele. He seems actually attracted to Fania’s voice and music.
Cut to Fania, finishing her number—her face is tortured, but she is singing, fully, beautifully, to the finish.
Cut to the audience. Now there is more heartfelt applause. Fania takes bows, her eyes trying to evade the monsters applauding her.
Cut to Fania, dousing her face with water as though trying to wash herself clean.
Cut to the dormitory. Marianne is drawing out a box from under her bed—she opens it, takes out a package of margarine, starts to dig some out with a finger—and looks up guiltily, her finger nearly in her mouth.
Fania is standing nearby, having discovered her. Fania is still drying herself from the shower.
FANIA: Why do you steal when you know I can’t stand margarine?
Marianne starts to put the margarine back in the box. Fania comes and forces it back into her hand. Fania’s voice is losing its control.
Other women look up from their beds, still others are entering the dormitory—and gradually all are drawn to this.
FANIA: Anything you want of mine I wish you would simply take, Marianne! Turning to the other women: And that goes for everyone—I don’t want to keep anything from anyone who wants it. . . . And I hope you’ll do the same for me if I’m desperate.
ETALINA: But Fania, we can’t very well share everything.
FANIA: I refuse to turn into an animal for a gram of margarine or a potato peel!
PAULETTE: You don’t mean share with the Poles too, though.
Fania hesitates . . . glances down the dormitory where half a dozen Polish women stand about—heavy, tough, their contempt evident despite their curiosity of the moment. (Katrina: Beefy, appalling guitarist. Varya: Athlete, shrewd, cymbals.)
ETALINA: Count me out, dear—those are monsters; even here in the same hell as we are, they’re just praying every one of us goes to the gas. You share with those bitches, not me.
ELZVIETA—a delicate, gentle Pole, beautiful head of hair: We’re not all like that.
Slight pause.
PAULETTE: You just have a pet Jew—you like Fania, but you’re an anti-Semite, Elzvieta.
ELZVIETA, timidly: But I really am not. My father was an actor; we had a lot of Jewish friends in the theater.—I’m really not, Fania. Glancing at the satiric Etalina. In my opinion, Etalina—with a glance toward the Poles—they think that you people are probably going to be . . . you know . . .
ETALINA: Gassed. —You can say it, dear.
ELZVIETA: Well the point is that they want to feel superior because they’ll probably live to go home, when the war ends . . . being Gentiles. To Fania: They’re more stupid than evil.
FANIA: Then we should try to teach them.
After the first shock, Etalina laughs. Then another and another until, with glances toward the stolid, suspicious, and bovine Poles, the whole gang are laughing their heads off; and finally the Poles too join in.
GISELLE—a freckled-faced, red-haired Parisian tomboy: To hell with this—tell us about Paris—when were you there last? What are they wearing?
Women gather around.
FANIA: I was in Dancy prison almost a year.
PAULETTE: Well, it can’t have changed much—where are the skirts now?
FANIA, indicating: Oh, to here (the knee) but very full—the girls look like flowers.
MARIANNE: The heels are very high—the legs look terrific. You can’t buy stockings so they paint their legs. My mother wouldn’t let me, though.
PAULETTE: And the hair?—there were some women in a convoy the other day—I think from Holland—curls on top of their heads. . . .
FANIA: In Paris too—piled up top-curls. —Where are those women?
ETALINA: They’re burned up by now, I guess. What about songs? —You know any new ones?
FANIA, to Etalina: The way you say that, Etalina . . .
ETALINA: That they’re burned up?—why not say it? We’ll be better prepared for it when our time comes.
GISELLE, insistently: Talk about Paris, Fania. . . .
LIESLE: Are they still playing swing?
FANIA: Are you Parisian?
LIESLE: No. But we went there for a vacation just before the war—play us some of the new songs, will you?
OTHERS: That’s a great idea. . . . Come on, Fania. . . . Do you know “Stormy Weather”? . . . What was the name of your nightclub? . . . Did you make many records? . . . She’s really famous, you know. . . .
The group moves out into the dayroom.
MICHOU: Can you play by ear? . . . Come, sit down . . .
Fania sits at the piano, Marianne beside her . . . when . . .
Cut to Shmuel, in prisoner’s stripes. He is an electrician, now taping a wire along a wall of the dayroom. He is forty-five, perhaps deranged, perhaps extraordinarily wise, it’s hard to say. He’s like a little toy animal, large eyes, curly hair, desperately shy. He makes little peeking glances at the assembling women, but there’s some air of persistence about him, too.
Cut to Fania, who senses some indecipherable communication from him and lets her gaze linger on him for an instant. Then she breaks away and begins to play the intro for “Stormy Weather.”
After the first couple of lines, Marianne interrupts, unable to restrain herself even though she is breaking up Fania’s number.
MARIANNE: Could I, Fania? Please?
Fania is quite astonished, looks at her with an embarrassed smile to cover her own resentment.
MARIANNE: I just have such a yen for it suddenly! Do you mind?
Fania, embarrassed, shrugs and obliges, accompanying Marianne, who sings the number—but “appealingly,” sentimentally, where Fania sang intelligently, suavely.
Cut to the Polish women. They are identifiable, in part, by the fact they all have hair. They have come out of the dormitory and gather a little apart, and are pleasurably listening.
And before the music has a chance to die on Marianne’s number, Fania picks up another, singing herself.
Camera pans the women’s faces . . . maybe two dozen clustered around the piano . . . shorn, gaunt captives, yet this music brings up their lust to live and a certain joy. . . .
A chorus of players pick up a lyric and join Fania, singing all together.
Cut to Alma Rosé. Her door opens onto the dayroom, and she is about to protest the noise . . . but her gesture aborts and she stiffly concedes the moment, turns and goes back into her room, shutting the door.
Cut to the next morning, outside in the camp “street.” About twenty players form up outside the musicians’ barracks. Each wears a bandanna, a uniform-like element, and of course the Jewesses have the yellow Star on their clothing. The Gentiles are indiscriminately mixed in, perhaps four or five of them, identifiable mainly by their hair.
It is gray, just before day, very cold. Fania is in place at one corner of the formation; Alma Rosé appears from the barracks, sees her, and halts.
ALMA: You don’t have to do this, you’re not in the band.
FANIA: I would like to see it . . . if it’s not forbidden.
Alma is surprised, then shrugs, goes around to the head of the formation, raises her baton, and this crazy band, with no horns but with fiddles, flutes, accordian, guitars, and cymbals, goes marching off behind Alma, who marches like a Prussian.
Cut to the camp “square.” The band is playing “stirring” march music on a low bandstand. Before them in blocks of five square stand the women prisoners about to go off to work.
Some of them are ill, supported by a neighbor’s hand; some are fiercely erect, some old, some teenagers—their shoes don’t match, some feet are wrapped in rags, and their clothes are ripped rags.
Cut to a close shot of Fania. Her gaze has moved to a point . .
. which is . . .
An angry prisoner.
This woman has caught Fania’s eye and mimes spitting at her in contempt.
Cut to Fania, quickly lowering her eyes.
Cut to SS men, some handling attack dogs, ordering the prisoners to march. The whole mass moves across the mud.
SS OFFICER, a whip against his boot beating time: Eins, zwei, drei . . . hup, hup, hup . . . !
Cut to Fania lifting her eyes, forcing herself to watch. Suddenly up to her ear comes Shmuel. Frightened, surprised, she turns to him swiftly.
SHMUEL, wild-eyed: Live!
He quickly limps away, his tool box on his shoulder.
Cut to the dayroom. Women, lining paper with pencils and straightedges, are spread out around Fania near a window. Outside the gray light of winter afternoon.
Charlotte, a good violinist, is practicing some distance away—a Bach chaconne.
Marianne is staring out a window nearby, thinking of food.
Fania is seated, studying a piano score, pencil poised over a lined sheet on which a few notes have been set down. She is intense—worried?
Liesle is repeating the same three bars on her accordion, with the same mistakes.
GISELLE, musing to no one in particular: Imagine!—painting their legs! I’d love that. . . .
Etalina passes behind Fania and, glancing down at the few notes she has written, halts, surprised.
ETALINA: Is that all you’ve done? Fania glances up defensively. Christ, at this rate we’ll need another Hundred Years’ War to get a score out of you.
Charlotte enters the shot, carrying her violin.
CHARLOTTE: Will you stop bothering her? Orchestrating is tough work even for experts.
Alma comes out of her room, comes over to Fania, and looks down at the sheet. Then she looks at Fania with real surprise.
ALMA: I have to speak to you.
Alma goes out into her room. Fania stands, as she follows her out, sees . . .
The Polish women, triumphantly laughing (softly, though) and pointing at her and miming her decapitation.
Cut to Alma’s room.
ALMA: Then you lied?—you can’t orchestrate at all, can you?
FANIA: I’m quite able to do it; I’m sure I can.
ALMA: What is it, then?
FANIA: One of the women this morning—spat at me.
ALMA, not understanding: Yes?
FANIA: I hadn’t realized . . . how they must hate us.
ALMA: Oh. Yes, of course; what did you expect?
FANIA: Well I . . . I just hadn’t thought about it.
ALMA, now sensing some remote criticism of her own character, is angry: Perhaps you are too conscientious a person for the orchestra . . .
FANIA: No, no, I didn’t mean . . .
ALMA: If you’d be happier back in “B” Barracks . . .
FANIA: Madame, please—I wasn’t criticizing you. Unstrung. I’m just not used to being hated like that.
ALMA, decisively: Fania—there is life or death in this place, there is no room for anything else whatever.—I intend to rehearse that piece tomorrow; I want the parts by morning. If you are able, that is. Are you?
FANIA, defeated, yet determined: Yes, Madame.
She walks angrily past Alma out the door.
Cut to the dayroom. Through the window nearby we see darkness of night. Reflection of a big searchlight, which revolves somewhere beyond our line of sight, a rhythm of this flashing light.
Fania at the piano is alone, working out the orchestration. She tries a chord. There is the jarring sound of three rifle shots. She looks up, waits; then silence. Someone probably got killed. She plays the chord again; writes notes.
From outside we hear the hair-raising screeching of someone being destroyed—and the shouts of men killing. Then silence. Fania is in sharp conflict with herself; she knows she is walling herself up against all this. Steels herself again. Plays the chord. Can’t continue. Gets up, walks past dormitory doorway. She looks in.
Cut to the dormitory, at night. The whole orchestra, some forty, asleep in beds.
Cut to Fania, in the dayroom, passing the dormitory door, goes into a dark narrow corridor at the end of which is a door. She opens this door. . . .
Cut to the toilet. On the toilet bowl Marianne is straddling a man, a kapo still wearing his striped prisoner’s hat. In his hand are gripped two sausages. Marianne turns and sees Fania, but turns back and continues with the man, who is looking straight up at Fania.
Cut to the dayroom. Through the window the first light of dawn. Backing, we find Fania with several pages of completed score under her hand . . . exhausted, but finishing it. She is fighting self-disgust; at the same time is glad at her accomplishment. A hand enters the shot, with a piece of sausage held between forefinger and thumb. Fania looks at it.
Pull back to Marianne, standing beside Fania, offering the piece of sausage. Fania stares at it, then up at Marianne.
MARIANNE: Take it—for saving my life. You must be starved, working all night.
Fania is not looking at her judgmentally but with sorrow and fear. Marianne sets the piece of sausage on the keyboard.
MARIANNE: I’m not going to live to get out of here anyway.
FANIA: But if you do? Marianne? What if you live?
Marianne is silent, then with a certain stubborn air, walks away. Fania looks at the sausage. Tries not to eat it. A desperate struggle to refuse this seeming compromise with her own disgust. Finally she does eat it—and gives way to a look of almost sensual enjoyment as she carefully lengthens out the chewing. Then she swallows, stands in intense conflict, her hands clasped to her mouth as she walks about with no escape.
The sudden sound of ear-piercing whistles.
Fania looks out a window, frightened, bewildered.
Three Blockawas, led by their chief Tchaikowska, come running into the dayroom buttoning up their coats as they rush past Fania into the dormitory.
Cut to the dormitory. The Blockawas, yelling, “’Raus, ’raus, schnell . . .” rip off blankets, push and slap the women out of bed. The women are first in shock, but quickly obey, start dressing.
Cut to the train platform. Dawn. The band is rushed into a formation before a line of freight cars whose doors are shut. SS men stand waiting, along with kapos preparing to pounce on the luggage.
Commandant Kramer is standing in open area, beside him Frau Lagerführerin Mandel, in a cape and cap. Kramer signals Alma, who starts the orchestra in a bright march.
Car doors are rolled open; inside a mass of people who are pulled and driven out onto the platform by kapos, their luggage taken.
Cut to a mother, being torn from her child, who is tossed onto a waiting truck. Mother rushes to Frau Mandel to plead with her; Mandel strikes her across the face with a riding crop.
Cut to Fania, by the dayroom window. She sees this, starts to turn away in horror, then forces herself to turn back to the window.
Shmuel suddenly appears outside the window and sees her, glances around, then hurries out of sight.
He enters the dayroom. With a glance of caution behind him he hurriedly limps over to Fania.
SHMUEL: Don’t do that.
FANIA: What?
SHMUEL: Turn away. You have to look and see everything, so you can tell him when it is over.
FANIA: Who?
His eyes roll upward, and he dares point upward just a bit with one finger.
FANIA: I don’t believe.
A grin breaks onto his face—as though she has decided to play a game with him.
FANIA: Why do you pick me?
SHMUEL: Oh, I always know who to pick!
A crazy kind of joy suffuses his face as he backs out the door.
SHMUEL: Live!
Cut to the smokestack. Dawn. F
or an instant the stack is in the clear—then it belches a column of smoke.
Cut to the dayroom. Evening. Mengele, Kramer, and Mandel listen to the orchestra, along with their retinues. Fania, accompanying herself, is singing “Un bel di” in an agonized and therefore extraordinarily moving way. She is just finishing. When she does, Mandel stands, applauding—she is excited as a patron, a discoverer of talent, and turns to Kramer, who is also clapping his hands.
MANDEL: Did you ever hear anything more touching, Herr Commandant?
KRAMER: Fantastic. To Mengele: But Dr. Mengele’s musical opinions are more expert, of course.
Cut to Fania, staring at the ultimate horror—their love for her music.
Cut to the entire dayroom.
MENGELE: I have rarely felt so totally—moved.
And he appears, in fact, to have been deeply stirred.
ALMA: You might thank the Commandant, Fania.
Fania tries to speak, can’t, and nods instead—gratefully.
FANIA—finally a whisper: Danke schön, Herr Commandant.
KRAMER: I must tell you, Mademoiselle Fénelon . . .
FANIA: Excuse me, but my name is really not Fénelon. Fénelon was my mother’s name.
MANDEL: What is your name, then?
FANIA: My father’s name was Goldstein. I am Fania Goldstein. Excuse me, I didn’t mean to interrupt, Herr Commandant.
KRAMER: You must learn to sing German songs.
ALMA: I will see that she learns immediately, Herr Commandant.
KRAMER, continuing to Fania: Originally, Mademoiselle, I opposed this idea of an orchestra, but I must say now that with singing of your quality, it is a consolation that feeds the spirit. It strengthens us for this difficult work of ours. Very good.
He turns and goes out, followed by his retinue and Mengele. The orchestra is aware Fania has helped them remain in favor and thus alive.
Mandel turns back at the door and beckons to Fania, who comes to her.
MANDEL: Is there anything you especially need?
FANIA, out of her conflict, after a struggle: A . . . toothbrush?
MANDEL, gestures to Tchaikowska, who approaches: You will send to Canada for some parcels. To Fania: With my compliments.
The Penguin Arthur Miller Page 106
