Playing for Time (20 page)

“Tell me what you don’t like about her, it’ll be quicker.”

Touched, she moved at my side. “You’re right, but you see, Fania, I’m worried, something’s happening that I don’t understand.”

Now, as if in sympathy with Marta’s tale, the wind had dropped and the rain was falling gently and regularly on the roof
of
our hut; there was a moment of calm.

“I love my sister Renate very deeply, but when I think of her I don’t feel any of those contradictory feelings I have when I think of Irene. The other evening, when she made me drop my bread, her hand brushed mine and I wanted to seize
it, to
kiss it. I’d never want
to
do that to
my
sister—or anyone else. When she talks to Florette, when she listens to her nonsense or reasons with her, I really suffer, I almost hate her. How can anyone of her calibre waste her time with such a crude, limited person? Irene is so marvellous. Since I’ve discovered her, I’m less unhappy. All I think about is her. Knowing that she’s asleep not far from me, that tomorrow she’ll be there, makes me extraordinarily happy. Do you know what I dream of? Irene puts her hand on mine, and we never leave one another again. Yesterday evening, for a moment, she took my fingers in hers, and it was so tender and violent that I hoped I’d faint. I kept the feeling of the warmth of her skin all day. This evening, I put my cheek on my hand where she’d touched it, and…”

It
was perfectly clear: Marta was in love with Little Irene. It didn’t surprise me: a thousand little signs had told me that there was a sort of complicity or understanding between them; but I hadn’t thought of love. If it had been boy and girl I’d probably have sensed it immediately. I wasn’t shocked, particularly because Marta was only seventeen, and her need for love was utterly natural. At her age, you didn’t make love, you craved it. You dreamt of tenderness and endless kisses. But love needed a setting, a decor. What was offered to Marta here, what face did love have? The discreditable couplings of whores with
kapos
and block superintendents whose physiques were often closer to those of beasts than men.

In Birkenau, one couldn’t long remain ignorant of homosexuality—it was rife; it offered the women satisfaction for their fantasies, allayed their solitude, their sexual needs. If, for many, it was just a way of cheating reality, for some it was a revelation, and Marta was possibly one of those. In the music block, the only homosexuals I knew of were a strange and repugnant trio, Wisha, Marila, and Zocha; I’d learned about their intimacy in circumstances so colourful that they continued to make me laugh for some time.

One evening, at about seven o’clock, mad yowls burst from the Polish corner. We rushed over: Marila, her face swollen with fury, hefty legs apart, clinging limpetlike to Wisha’s arm, was shaking her fist at Zocha.

“Now we’ll see some fur flying,” Jenny said jubilantly. “Domestic row brewing. Not to be missed. They all sleep with one another, but not together. Wisha’s the boss, the fellow!”

For the moment she certainly didn’t look it; her red hair gave her the look of a pale, wizened little boy. Wisha tried to disengage her arm and to put a distance between herself and Zocha, who was clinging to her neck. Jenny completed the picture: “Marila, that fat shapeless cow, is the legal wife, and Zocha, who’s not exactly a dish either, is the mistress! And it’s the real thing, I can tell you. Do you get the picture?”

“Just about, but why is Marila shrieking fit to burst?”

“Because she didn’t know that her darling was unfaithful to her. Everyone else knew, but not her, that’s the way it goes. A pity they talk doubledutch; otherwise we could really get our money’s worth.”

Marila continued to shriek; she was foaming at the mouth and showing the whites of her eyes.

“What shall we do?” babbled Founia, her little piggy eyes expressing a glimmer of concern.

“Lie her out flat on a table,” I nipped in smartly.

Her body arched, head thrown back, Marila, scarlet, continued squealing like a stuck pig, a thread of saliva running pleasingly onto her chin from the opening that did duty as her mouth. Then suddenly her body went limp, her eyes closed. I took her big black-nailed hand and patted it. I’d gladly have slapped her to help her regain contact with her life and its misfortunes, but the gesture might have been misinterpreted. Then inspiration struck:

“Anyone got a piece of sugar?”

A pause. I insisted on its curative virtues for someone in her condition. As I was well thought of by Mandel and Alma, Tchaikowska and Founia respected me. I was well on the way to being omniscient. Dreadfully panicked, Wisha handed me a chunk of the precious substance; firmly, I ordered the sufferer to open her mouth and stuffed in the first piece. The result was instant: she began howling again. I promptly stuffed in another, a third, a fourth—their devotion seemed unbridled—while tenderly, lovingly, Wisha caressed her fat legs. It was shameful wastage, but what joy to thrust this Polish treasure into that dribbling aperture. We positively sobbed with laughter; uncomprehending, her comrades were now laughing confidently. Marila was choking and we were splitting our sides.

What did the doings of this sordid, hysterical group have in common with the love that Marta was hesitantly confiding to me?

Marta gave a sort of dignified chortle: “I couldn’t sleep, I was thinking about her so hard. Fania, I adore her.”

“No, little one, you love her.”

I could feel her body trembling beside me; she was worried. What she was experiencing was upsetting her ideas above love, her upbringing, her whole conventional outlook. Did she even know that such a thing existed? Perhaps I’d been too precise, too brutal. Already that love that she didn’t yet know was bringing her its tithe of worry, and becoming reality.

“Oh, Fania, it’s not possible!”

“Of course it is, and it’s no disaster…” And I explained to her that to the pure all is pure; she so needed reassurance.

“So, Fania, it’s not wrong to love as I do?”

“In the camp one might really call it a blessing.”

“Thank you. You’ve done me so much good.”

Was it wrong to love here? If I believed in God, I would say that to feel a pure, clean feeling in this place, where Evil reigned supreme, was a sign of His blessing. Loving wasn’t wrong, it just seemed amazing to be able to isolate oneself sufficiently for it. The camp had entirely sterilized the need in me, and I wondered desperately whether it would ever return.

The next day, while my copyists were lazily working, made languid by the late spring which gave the air a certain unaccustomed mildness, I observed Little Irene: pencil in hand, head raised, she was wrapped in some distant dream. That in itself was surprising, because this small positive person usually worked away at her current task as though it were part of a specific programme carefully drawn up by herself. She must have had a considerable reputation for efficiency in the Party. Not far off, Marta was thoughtfully rosining her bow. In my mind I heard her worried questioning—“Do you think she loves me?” I tried to imagine this self-centred rationalist Irene, organized almost to the point of fussiness, plunging into this love—and what love: a quicksand uncodified by Marx! She made no secret of her future plans. She was so sure of herself, of her judgement, that they couldn’t but be excellent: she would marry Paul. They would graduate from the Communist Youth to the branch, then to headquarters; they’d militate just as they always had. She’d have a child—it was necessary for a woman—but only one; she had no vocation as a mother of a large family. These were not new decisions. She and Paul had always been in agreement on this point. The Party needed them, they must devote themselves to it entirely. She would draw, write, perhaps she’d
get
a couple of diplomas—she was so gifted—German, a bit of politics and economics. To build the new society, they were going to need educated people, competent and capable. The future didn’t worry her, it posed no problems. Her path was clear, she would start off on it by a triumphal return. Not for one moment did she doubt that she would find Paul waiting for her and that they would be received like heroes. Listening to her speaking with such assurance, so serenely, I wondered about the nature of her love for Paul. Indeed, did she really love him? For her, above all, he symbolized the militant, a worthy companion, and that seemed to be enough.

For me who had always been fed on love, this conception of marriage seemed very bourgeois, something like the system of tactical marriages which strengthened the great families of France. For Little Irene, he would strengthen the future of Communism. There was not the slightest trace of doubt: “When I came to Birkenau I understood that, even more than in ordinary life, one could count only on oneself, one’s own intelligence, one’s own authority, and that the most important thing was to know how to assert oneself, so that as soon as I learnt that there was an orchestra here, I went to find Kramer; I told him that I played the violin and I was taken on as a musician.”

How she had managed to go and see Kramer I didn’t know. She had a way of telling one the essentials that made it impossible to ask questions. I knew very little about her: her father was a tailor and had been deported. She had told me quite calmly that “he probably disappeared up the chimneys,” no trace of emotion in her voice. A hard light in her black eyes told me that Irene was not the kind of person who forgot, but the kind who noted down debits and credits and demanded their due from people and from life. She was going to extract the price of this death from the Nazis, from those SS whom she impressed, despite her small size: “You see, Fania, they despise sycophants and cowards. I’ll never let myself be insulted by anyone at all, no one in Birkenau has ever bullied me. Perhaps they feel that I’m certain to get out of here alive. Perhaps it’s because the moment I arrived, I decided not to let myself go, not to let myself be ”had‘ by the horror, the misery, and all the rest. For me, the Nazis will lose and we shall know a Socialist world that will be free of them forever.“

I too was convinced that when the world knew what “they” had dared to do, it would crush them and reject them down to the last man. It was impossible to know whether there was a place for love in this highly organized being; the only experience she’d ever had had been carefully thought out, the “intoxication of the senses” had had no part in it. “I was imprisoned in the fort of Romainville when I learnt that I wasn’t going to be shot— that’s probably an honour denied to Jews—but deported. I’d never slept with Paul; we didn’t want to take any risks—a child would have hindered our work in the Resistance, our struggle against Nazism. But I didn’t want to go off to a work camp or a deportation camp without some degree of experience to arm me against the possibility of rape. From Romainville I was taken to Drancy, and there it was easy to put my plan into action. You know me, you know how methodical I am. Accidents can happen; I couldn’t bring a child with any moral or physical blemish into the world, so I chose my partner carefully, and we made love. I felt nothing—no pleasure, rather the reverse. Was that love? I don’t think so, so I’ll wait.”

In the evening, Little Irene and I were sitting chatting by the stove. For once she had left the fertile topic of rebuilding society and was talking to me about her family, as if she felt a sudden rush of nostalgia. I learnt that her mother, whom she’d never mentioned before, had died a long time ago, that her sister was married and had a string of kids, nice but riotous. Then, out of the blue:

“Here there’s no one I can talk to about it, you’re the only one who could listen to me and give me advice. Something has happened to me that I was totally unprepared for.”

This was a new tone! She hesitated a moment, then suddenly sidestepped towards Florette.

“You must have noticed the rather childish admiration Florette feels for me. She’s in a permanent state of rebellion and I’m the only one who can calm her down, the only one she’ll listen to. In fact, you could say she adores me. There’s nothing odd about that, I understand it quite well—I represent everything she’d like to have been. But that’s not the case with Marta. She has nothing to envy me for—she’s intelligent, highly educated, a wonderful musician, beautiful. Have you noticed how beautiful? Politically we appear to be at opposite ends of the spectrum: her class loyalties should make her fear Communism and therefore fight it; at the very least, she ought to distrust me. But since she’s been back, her eyes are on me all the time. She always manages to be next to me, she blushes when I go anywhere near her. The other evening, I did a little experiment: I put my hand on hers for a moment, and she was so obviously agitated that I was embarrassed. So I tried to analyse the feelings I arouse in her, and I arrived at the conclusion that it couldn’t be compared with what Florette feels for me. It’s something else, and it goes beyond sympathy and friendship…”

Usually so sure of herself, Irene was hesitant now. I was thoroughly enjoying myself: to receive the confidences of two young girls within twenty-four hours was not without piquancy and humour; it took me wonderfully far from the camp. At least I was hearing about things other than death, eating, and sexual intercourse. Absorbed, her small solid hands with their square nails crossed on her knees, Irene was looking for words.

“I think she’s very pure, very innocent, unaware of what she’s feeling, which could well upset her, frighten her. I don’t think I’m a Lesbian. I knew there were such people, but I had no reason to concern myself with them. Here, conditions are different. I admit that I’m as involved as she is, but she’s the prisoner of her education, of her bourgeois morality, so perhaps she’ll refuse to admit it!”

I could have told her that Marta loved her, that she was prepared to face this love, but I was silent. There was something in Irene’s rationalism which annoyed me, she was so complacent and clear-sighted. A bit of uncertainty might humanize her.

“To tell the truth, I’ve noticed how interested she seems in you, but you never know. At her age, it’s natural to be exaggerated and romantic in the way you show your feelings; after all it could just be friendship.”