FANIA: And Mandel saved that child. Maybe they figure they’re losing the war, so . . .
ALMA, at the height of her hopes for herself: Why must everything have a worm in it? Why can’t you accept the little hope there is in life?
She is now putting on her coat.
FANIA: I’m all mixed up. Schmidt wanting to get out is really unbelievable, Alma—she’s gotten rich running the black market; she’s robbed every woman who’s landed here . . . every deal in the place has her hand in it. . . .
ALMA, extending her hand: I am leaving in the morning, Fania—if we don’t see each other . . . Thank you for your help.
FANIA, taking her hand: You are totally wrong about practically everything, Alma—but I must say you probably saved us all. And I thank you from my heart.
ALMA: You can thank my refusal to despair, Fania.
FANIA: Yes, I suppose that’s true.
Cut to an honor guard, and SS at attention.
The whole orchestra is filling into this room through a doorway. They are in their finest; atmosphere is hushed, eyes widened with curiosity, incredulity at this whole affair.
For at center stands a coffin, flowers on it, the top open. But the orchestra is ranged some yards from it.
When they have all assembled, enter Commandant Kramer, Dr. Mengele, other brass—
And finally Mandel, her finger in the hand of little Ladislaus, who is now dressed in a lovely blue suit, and linen shirt, and tie, and good shined shoes, and holding a teddy bear.
First Kramer, Mengele, Mandel, and the other brass step up and look mournfully into the coffin. Now the orchestra is ordered to pay its respects by a glance from Mandel to Fania.
Cut to Mandel, her eyes filling with tears.
Cut to the orchestra. A feeling of communion; they are starting to weep, without quite knowing why.
Cut to Alma—in the coffin. Fania looks down at Alma dead—she is bewildered, horrified. Then she moves off, her place taken by Paulette, then others. . . . The sound of keening is beginning as they realize it is Alma who has died.
Cut to the black market. Fania is pretending to trade a thick slice of bread for some soap with the chief black marketeer, a brazen girl who is smelling the bread offered.
FANIA: What happened?
BLACK MARKETEER: Schmidt poisoned her at dinner.
FANIA: How do you know!
BLACK MARKETEER: They shot her this morning.
FANIA: Schmidt!?
BLACK MARKETEER—nods: Nobody was getting out if she couldn’t. ’Specially a Jew.
FANIA: Then she really wanted out!
BLACK MARKETEER: Well, she’d made her pile, why not?
Both their heads suddenly turn to the same direction at a booming sound in the distance.
BLACK MARKETEER, looking questioningly at Fania: That thunder or artillery?
They both turn again, listening in the midst of the market.
Cut to Olga, the Ukranian accordionist, who has apparently inherited the conductorship; she is robot-like in her arm-waving as she leads them in the Fifth Symphony—but it all falls to pieces, and Fania hurries up to the podium.
OLGA, before Fania can get a word out: No! I have been appointed and I am going to conduct!
FANIA: Now listen to me!
OLGA: No! I am kapo now and I order you to stop interfering!
FANIA: Olga, dear—you can barely read the notes, you have no idea how to bring in the instruments!
OLGA: Go back to your seat!
FANIA: You’ll send us to the gas! Mengele will be there on Sunday—he won’t stand for this racket—it’s nonsensical! Now let me rehearse, and on Sunday you can stand up in front and wave your arms, but at least we’ll be rehearsed!
ETALINA: Hey!—sssh!
All turn to listen . . . once again there is the sound of a distant booming.
ETALINA: God . . . you suppose Mala and Edek found the Russians and are leading them here?
GISELLE: I bet! That was artillery. The Russians are famous for their artillery . . . !
OLGA: All right, listen! She is desperately trying to fill out an image of authority. I know a number. It’s very famous with us in the Ukraine. We are going to play it. First I.
Olga takes up her accordion and launches into a “Laughing Song,” a foot-stomper polka, full of “Ha-ha-ha, hee-hee-hee,” etc.
Orchestra looks at her, appalled, some of them starting to giggle.
Blockawas led by Tchaikowska appear and, loving it, begin doing polka with one another, hands clapping. . . .
There is sharp whistling outside.
Tchaikowska hurries out into the street as players go to the windows. . . .
Cut to a gallows. The hanging of Mala and Edek. They have both been horribly beaten, can barely stand. Mala stumbles to her knees but flings away the hand of the executioner and stands by herself under the noose.
The camera now turns out . . . picking up the immense crowd of prisoners forced to watch the executions.
Cut to prisoners, en masse—in fact, the whole camp, tens of thousands, a veritable city of the starved and humiliated, ordered to watch the execution. This is a moment of such immense human import—for one after another, in defiance, they dare to bare their heads before the two doomed lovers and create a sea of shaven heads across a great space, while SS men and kapos club at them to cover themselves.
Cut to the gallows—and the drop. Both Mala and Edek are hanging.
Cut to the sky.
Dissolve from sky to rain.
Cut to the dayroom at night. Rain is falling on the windows. Girls are practicing in a desultory way, breaking off in mid-note to talk quietly together. Fania is at her table; she is playing with a pencil, staring at nothing, her face deeply depressed, deadened.
Now Michou, who is at another window a few yards away, calls in a loud whisper . . .
MICHOU, pointing outside: Fania!
Fania looks out her window.
Cut to Marianne, on the “street,” just parting from the executioner, a monstrous large man, who grimly pats her ass as she rushes into the barracks.
Cut to Marianne, entering the dayroom from outside, shaking out her coat, and as she passes Michou . . .
MICHOU: With the executioner?
Marianne halts. All around the room the expressions are angrily contemptuous, disgusted.
MICHOU: He killed Mala and Edek, did you know?
MARIANNE: Well, if he didn’t, somebody else would’ve, you can be sure of that.
She starts toward the door to the dormitory, then halts, turns to them all.
MARIANNE: I mean to say, dearies, whose side do you think you’re on? Because if anybody’s not sure you’re on the side of the executioners, you ought to go out and ask any prisoner in this camp, and they’ll be happy to tell you! To Michou: So you can stick your comments you know exactly where, Michou. Any further questions?
She looks about defiantly, smiling, exits into the dormitory, removing her coat.
The truth of her remarks is in the players’ eyes. They avoid one another as the women resume practicing. Esther comes to Fania.
ESTHER: You shouldn’t let her get away with that. —I’d answer but nobody listens to what I say. . . .
FANIA: But she’s right, Esther, what answer is there?
ESTHER: I am not on their side—I am only keeping myself for Jerusalem.
FANIA: Good.
ESTHER—Fania’s uninflected, sterilized comment has left her unsatisfied: What do you mean by that, Fania?
FANIA: That it’s good, if you can keep yourself so apart from all this. So clean.
ESTHER, asking, in a sense: But we’re not responsible for this.
FANIA: Of course not, nothing here is our fault. Finally agreeing, as it were, to go into i
t. All I mean is that we may be innocent, but we have changed. I mean we know a little something about the human race that we didn’t know before. And it’s not good news.
ESTHER, anxiously, even angry: How can you still call them human?
FANIA: Then what are they, Esther?
ESTHER: I don’t like the way you . . . you seem to connect such monsters with . . .
Suddenly, Giselle calls out sotto voce—she is sitting with Charlotte.
GISELLE: Mengele!
Dr. Mengele’s importance is evident in the way they leap to their feet as he enters. His handsome face is somber, his uniform dapper under the raincoat which he now opens to take out a baton and Alma’s armband, which has some musical insignia on it.
OLGA, at rigid attention: Would the Herr Doktor Mengele like to hear some particular music?
Mengele walks past her to the door of Alma’s room.
Cut to Mengele, entering Alma’s room. He looks about at the empty bed and chair, as though in a sacred place. Then he takes the baton and hangs it up from a nail in the wall above a shelf, and on the shelf he carefully places her armband. Now he steps back and, facing these relics, stands at military attention for a long moment.
The camera turns past him to discover, through the doorway to the dayroom, Fania looking in, and others jammed in beside her, watching in tense astonishment.
MENGELE: Kapo!
OLGA, rushing into room: Herr Doktor Mengele!
She goes to attention.
MENGELE: That is Madame Rosé’s baton and armband. They are never to be disturbed. He faces the relics again. In Memoriam.
Fania greets this emotional display with incredulity, as do others nearby.
Now the dread doctor turns and walks into the dayroom, the players quickly and obsequiously making way for him, and standing with attentive respect as he goes by.
As he passes into the center of the dayroom, his heels clacking on the wooden floor in a slow, pensive measure, the tension rises—no one is sure why. And he halts instead of leaving them, his back to them. Why has he halted, what is the monster thinking?
Cut to the players. They have risen to a dread tension, their faces rigid.
Cut to Mengele. He turns to them; he has an out-of-this-world look now, an inspired air, as though he had forgotten where he was and only now takes these faces into consciousness. He seems less angry than alarmed, surprised.
Fania, unable to wait for what may come out of him, takes a tenuous step forward and bows a little, propelled by her terror of death, now, at this moment.
FANIA: If the Herr Doktor will permit me—the orchestra is resolved to perform at our absolute best, in memory of our beloved Madame Rosé.
Only now does Mengele turn that gaze on her, as though he heard her from afar. Fania’s voice is near trembling.
FANIA: I can assure the Herr Doktor that we are ready to spend every waking moment perfecting our playing. . . . We believe our fallen leader would wish us to continue . . . Beginning to falter: to . . . to carry on as she . . . inspired us. . . .
The sound of bombers overhead. Mengele reacts, but in the most outwardly discreet way, with an aborted lift of the head. But the girls understand that he knows the end is near, and this heightens their fear.
He changes under this sound from the sky, and rather strolls out as though to show unconcern. As soon as he is out of sight several girls break into weeping. Fania feels humiliated, and goes alone to her table. . . .
ETALINA, weeping: It’s the end! You felt it, didn’t you, Fania! He’s going to send us to the gas!
PAULETTE, asking Fania’s reaction: The way he stared at us!
CHARLOTTE: The thing to do is rehearse and rehearse and rehearse! To Liesle: To this day you’ve never gotten the Beethoven right! Now here, damn you! She thrusts an accordion at her. Work on that arpeggio! She notices Fania looking upward. What’s the matter?
The whole group turns to Fania questioningly—they are scared, panicked. She is listening to the sky.
FANIA: I can’t understand why they don’t bomb here. They could stop the convoys in one attack on the rails.
ELZVIETA: They’re probably afraid they’ll hit us.
MICHOU: It’s political—it always is—but I can’t figure out the angles.
ESTHER: They don’t want it to seem like it’s a war to save the Jews. They turn to Esther. They won’t risk planes for our sake, and pilots—their people wouldn’t like it. To Fania: Fania . . . if they do come for us and it’s the end . . . I ask you not to do that again and beg for your life. . . .
FANIA, guiltily: I was only . . .
ESTHER, crying out—a kind of love for Fania is in it: You shouldn’t ever beg, Fania!
Cut to Lagerführerin Mandel entering from the rain. She wears a great black cape. She looks ravaged, desolate. She goes to a chair and sits, unhooks her cape. In one hand now is seen . . .
The child’s sailor hat. It is held tenderly on her lap.
Cut to Mandel, in a state of near shock; yet an air of self-willed determination too, despite her staring eyes.
Olga, now the kapo, looks to Fania for what to do. Others likewise glance at her. Fania now comes forward and stands before Mandel.
Mandel comes out of her remoteness, looks at Fania.
MANDEL: The duet from Madame Butterfly. You and the other one.
Fania turns to the girls—Giselle hurries into the dormitory, calling . . .
GISELLE, running off: Marianne? Come out here . . . !
Mandel now stands and walks to a window looking out at the rain. Meanwhile Charlotte and Etalina have taken up their violins to accompany.
Marianne, half asleep, enters from the dormitory and comes to Fania. And now they wait for Mandel to turn from the window and order them to begin. But she doesn’t. So Fania walks across the room to her.
Cut to Fania, arriving beside Mandel, who is staring out at the rain-washed window. Fania’s eyes travel down to the hat in the other woman’s hand.
FANIA: We are ready to begin, Frau Mandel.
Mandel seems hardly to have heard, keeps on staring. After a moment . . .
FANIA: Is something the matter with the little boy?
Mandel now glances at Fania—there is an air of dissociation coming over the Nazi’s face.
MANDEL: It has always been the same—the greatness of a people depends on the sacrifices they are willing to make.
Fania’s expression of curiosity collapses—she knows now.
MANDEL: I gave him . . . back.
Now Mandel is straightening with an invoked pride before Fania, stiffening. But she is still struggling with an ancient instinct within her.
MANDEL: Come now, sing for me.
She goes to her seat. Fania, nearly insensible, joins Marianne—who greets her with a raised eyebrow to keep their hostility intact. Charlotte’s violin starts it off, the duet from Act II.
MARIANNE (as Suzuki): It’s daylight! Cio-Cio-San.
FANIA (as Butterfly)—mimes picking up an infant, cradling it in her arms: He’ll come, he’ll come, I know he’ll come.
MARIANNE (as Suzuki): I pray you go and rest, for you are weary. And I will call you when he arrives.
FANIA (as Butterfly) to her “baby”: Sweet thou art sleeping, cradled on my heart . . .
Cut to Mandel, stunned by the lyric and music; but through her sentimental tears her fanatic stupidity is emerging.
FANIA (as Butterfly) (voice-over): Safe in God’s keeping, while I must weep apart. Around thy head the moonbeams dart. . . .
Cut to the group.
FANIA (as Butterfly), rocking the “baby”: Sleep my beloved.
MARIANNE (as Suzuki): Poor Madame Butterfly!
Cut to Mandel, fighting for control, staring up at Fania. And Fania now takes on a challenging, protesti
ng tone.
FANIA (as Butterfly): Sweet, thou art sleeping, cradled on my heart. Safe in God’s keeping, while I must weep apart.
The sound of bombers . . . coming in fast, tremendous.
Sirens.
Mandel comes out of her fog, stands . . . girls are rushing to windows to look up. The lights go out.
The sound of bombers overhead and nearby explosions.
There is screaming; in the darkness, total confusion; but Mandel can be seen rushing out into the night, a determined look on her face.
Cut to the railroad platform. Bombs explode.
Despite everything, deportees are being rushed onto waiting trucks, which roar away.
MENGELE: Hurry!—faster!
Cut to the warehouse hospital. “The Blue Danube” is in full swing as the shot opens. At one end of the vast shadowy space is the orchestra “conducted” by Olga.
The few good violinists like Elzvieta and Charlotte saw away as loudly as possible.
The Bechstein piano has been brought in and Fania is playing.
The sick, what appear to be hundreds of them, are ranged in beds; the insane, some of them clinging to walls or to each other like monkeys; about a hundred so-called well prisoners in their uniforms ranged at one end; dozens of SS officers, male and female, in one unified audience sit directly before the players.
Cut to a dancing woman emerging from among the insane; heads turn as she does a long, sweeping waltz by herself; shaven head, cadaverous, a far-out expression.
SS glance at her, amused.
Cut to the prisoners. A humming has started among them to “The Blue Danube.”
Cut to Mengele, Kramer, and SS officers. These high brass notice the humming—they take it with uncertainty—is it some kind of demonstration of their humanity?
Cut to the prisoners. They have dared to hum louder—and the fact that it is done in unison and without command or authorization enlivens them more and more.
Cut to Commandant Kramer, starting to get to his feet, when Mengele touches his arm and gestures for him to permit the humming as harmless. Kramer half-willingly concedes, and sits.
Cut to the orchestra. “Blue Danube” ends. With no announcement, in the bleak silence, Olga picks up her accordion. Fania and Paulette immediately come to her and have a quick whispered conversation while trying to appear calm.
The Penguin Arthur Miller Page 110
