Playing for Time (9 page)

“How do you know? We haven’t heard any whistles.”

“We will soon. The SS often come here just before the end of the
Blocksperres.
Work is over for them and they come here to relax with us.”

How could Irene say that so calmly, with only a touch of irony? I was probably wrong to rebel, and soon, very soon, I would understand that that was how it had to be.

Florette said vituperatively, “To get woken up just to see her filthy Nazi mug…”

“Figuratively I agree, but in fact she’s rather beautiful.”

“Are you mad? Beautiful, that bitch?”

I stood my ground. “As an SS she’s a bitch, but as a woman she’s exceedingly beautiful.”

The girls stared at me almost hatefully, noisily backing up Florette, and to my amazement I heard Clara’s sedate voice: “Fania’s flattered to have been chosen by her as a singer, so she makes allowances.”

“Allowances? I call it arse-licking.”

Their absurdity annoyed me; there would have been no point in answering that the SS didn’t necessarily look like what they were, that one might find them good-looking without selling one’s soul to them. I turned my back and climbed up to the top of my
coja.
I would close my eyes and forget about them and sleep.

This was the worst moment, the time when it was difficult not to give up. Despite all the wise lectures I gave myself, having entertained that SS woman after a selection filled me with the utmost disgust.

In the morning my mouth tasted bitter. Making my bed with the required absurd neatness, I remarked: “I don’t know what I’d give for a toothbrush and some toothpaste.”

“There are some girls who share one between five, they might take you on as a sixth!”

“The best thing for her would be to ”organize‘ one,“ Florette piped up.

“How does one go about it?”

“In our camp, there are two ”Canadas‘,“ the small one near us and the big one, a bit farther away. In the small one you’ll find toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, scent, things like that; in the big one, nightdresses, slips, shoes, clothes, tins of jam… In fact, everything winds up there!”

What was she saying? Shops, here?

“What is this ”Canada,“ and why is it called that?”

“No one knows. Perhaps because Canada is a rich country, a promised land. In fact, it’s a general store.” Florette continued, “To come here, we brought all our best things, the warmest and newest. The rich arrive with luggage containing fortunes: furs, jewels, diamonds, gold; groaning wallets, cases crammed with banknotes. Don’t think I’m exaggerating. These thousands of cases arriving every week for years represent a fabulous fortune. Everything that isn’t perishable is sorted, labelled, counted, packed up, and sent regularly back to Berlin. But what I find even more disgusting is that they filch our parcels.”

I was stupefied. “Parcels—you get parcels? So our families know where we are? Do you mean to say that we can write?”

Florette laughed. Jenny positively hooted. “She’s going to send her family coloured postcards wishing they were here!”

Ewa interrupted the flow of sarcasm: “It does sometimes happen that our families are informed of our presence in a work camp and that the sending of parcels is authorized. Of course, they never reach us; it’s probably just another way of getting more for themselves.”

“Yes, parcels arrive every day from every corner of Europe,” Florette took over angrily. “Some Germans and Polacks get some of theirs, but we Jews never do. First, of course, you have to have a family left to send you any—they can’t post them from the great beyond. And supposing parcels did arrive, the foodstuffs would be distributed at the SS canteen to privileged internees, black triangles, whores, thieves, criminals, the cream, in short! And the vilest thing of all is that the families are never informed of our disappearance, they go on depriving themselves so that the dead won’t go short—a little butter bought on the black market, a small pot of jam made by grandmother with her sugar ration, a sausage, a rabbit pate (how pleased she’ll be!), and some rusks so that little so and so can carry on her diet. The parents send and send… and the Germans are half sick with delight.”

She shook with angry sobs. Little Irene put her hand on her shoulder. “Calm down or you’ll be in trouble again.”

Anny sought a diversion by telling us that on the evening we arrived she’d just received a parcel, the first since July “43. Even then it was an amazing stroke of luck that they’d left her anything, because they naturally helped themselves first.

“The whole thing doesn’t proceed with the speed of light, though,” Jenny snickered. “Don’t imagine the postman gallops breathlessly across Europe to deliver you your parcel. So all the grub that isn’t tinned has legs of its own by the time it reaches you.”

“And when can one go to Canada?”

My question was a real wow, particularly with Jenny.

“You’re a joker to the end! Do you think that Canada is some kind of luxury big store? It’s not a question of ”being able‘ to go there, you idiot! It’s
verboten.
If Frau Schmidt saw you ambling about in her palace of wonders, she’d send you up in smoke. It’s for the bigwigs, the big shots of the camp. Don’t worry, we’ve got friends there, particularly Renate, Marta’s sister—the cool type, but effective; no French girls, as far as I know. That cushy job is reserved for the Krauts, Czechs, Polacks, Slovaks, and so on. Someone’ll be along shortly; they know you’re here.“

Still, I was worried. I could accept all privations except that of a toothbrush. At least, that was how I saw it at that moment.

“And if they didn’t know, they wouldn’t come? Anyhow, who told them?”

Ewa smiled. “Don’t worry. In this camp everyone knows everything. The Canadas are also the main information centres. Every day the SS women visit Canada to choose what they want. The blockowas and
kapos
have access as well. People chat and news gets round. Also, we have the right to go out; even if we’re just going to the lavatory, we meet people. The runners don’t mind doing errands if they’re not compromising. One way or another, you can be quite sure that someone will come; indeed it’s actually odd that no one’s been yet.”

“And they bring what you ask them?”

“Goods delivered to any address, very high class!” chortled Jenny.

“And if they were caught?” I insisted.

Florette flapped a fatalistic hand. “When they catch one, if it’s nothing very much, they shave her; for something slightly more serious, it’s the work detachment; very serious—jewelry for instance—Block Twenty-five.”

“What a risk!”

Jenny shrugged her shoulders. “Well? You’re running the same risk, but they’re guzzling sardines in real oil like royalty!”

“Can one get food?” asked Clara.

“It’s not the easiest thing.”

“How do you pay them?”

“With bread. That’s the universal currency.”

“But I haven’t got any,” moaned Clara, chagrined, her imagined goodies fading.

“You’ll have to economize on your ration.”

“That’s impossible!” Clara’s tone rose to the tragic. “I haven’t got enough as it is.”

“Well, do you think we’ve got all that much?” Florette had lost patience. “That’s how it is, and even princesses like you have to go without.”

“All you need to do is to find yourself a man; here sausage replaces flowers,” Jenny advised her.

Clara’s approach often bore the hallmark of childish simplicity: “How do you get taken on in Canada?”

“You need to appeal to Frau Schmidt, to have strings pulled for you, or to be a prisoner with special status, to be well built, to have survived the quarantine block. Or of course,” Florette concluded pointedly, “you could always go and see whether there wasn’t a ”wanted‘ notice on the door.“

Clara was unaffected by this mockery and I could see the workings of her mind like a clock without a case. She worried me. It was clear that her obesity made her morbidly hungry, just the kind of complaint least suited to these parts.

We were getting ready for work when, like the messenger of classical times, a runner pushed open the door and trumpeted from the threshold: “A parcel for everyone to be collected in Canada from Frau Lagerfuhrerin Mandel!”

Tumultuous joy; our shouts reached Alma, who was about to set us to work; when she was informed, her rather flat chest swelled with pleasure. “Frau Mandel must have liked our little entertainment last night.”

Entertainment was a pretty word for it! Alma beamed her satisfaction towards me with a smile. I interpreted it as: “You sang well, Mandel was pleased, she’ll come back. I shall be well thought of.” Magnanimous, our
kapo
gave us permission to collect our generous presents from the nearby Canada. We rushed out.

“Not more than four of you!” thundered Tchaikowska.

To me that didn’t seem many to carry so many parcels. Anny, Big Irene, and Jenny gestured to me to go with them, when Tchaikowska corrected herself: “Only three. Marila will go with you.”

“Fania, you go instead of me,” suggested Anny.

I followed them. This Canada was nothing like the larger one, which was a sort of general store reigned over by Frau Schmidt. Here it was rather informal, a sort of corner shop as opposed to a big store. If we, the orchestra girls, were some of the camp’s aristocrats, the girls in Canada were its millionaires, with all the outward signs of wealth. They bustled about, sorting and shelving an amazing array of merchandise spread out over tables or in piles on the ground: used cakes of soap which I imagined having been patiently, jealously dried out on top of some cupboard, eau de Cologne, toilet water, and luxury perfumes stood side by side amid a pile of brassieres. A heap of handkerchiefs lay alongside a stack of slippers, which were half tumbling over brushes and combs and an assortment of toothbrushes. Oh to steal one, any one, even that little one with the sparse, splayed, yellowing bristles… couldn’t the person who’d brought it have afforded a new one?

The person who’d brought it… To think of her was already to move towards that woman’s anguish, towards the fear that had seized her, that morning or that night, at the moment of entering the gas chamber with its shower fittings symmetrically aligned along the ceiling; she was holding her towel and her soap in her hand, perhaps one of these pieces here… To let oneself slide towards such thoughts meant becoming vulnerable to everything, to others and oneself; it meant squandering the strength you needed to enable you to hang on, until the end— theirs, not yours!

The girls from Canada were splendid, confident creatures with long, shiny, well-brushed hair and makeup; they laughed and smoked. In Birkenau bread was currency, but cigarettes were bullion; with cigarettes, almost everything was possible.

Little Irene addressed the blockowa, a Slovak who was staring at us with little superfluous affability: “Pani Marie, we’ve come to get the parcels for the music block.”

In a tone implying that we would do well to get our rubbish out of here, she ordered: “Take all this.”

“All this” was forty-seven packages the size of two large matchboxes wrapped in pieces of crumpled paper. Typically, I’d imagined us laden with armfuls, needing a wheelbarrow to cart the treasure away!

The treasure. That indeed was the effect our parcels produced when we put them down on the table; the girls ran up and surrounded us, pushing and shoving. Excitement was at its height.

“Put it all in your boxes,
schnell, schnell!”
Tchaikowska bellowed.

Regina, Alma’s mild orderly, butted in: “Quick, quick! Frau Alma is just coming into the music room.”

To let her enter an empty music room would be a crime that would be promptly punished. In a few seconds, hearts beating, our minds all on the contents of the parcels, we were in our places.

In the evening there was a mad stampede towards the priceless packages; some sniffed them before opening them.

“What a stench! More remains from the dustbin!” Florette commented.

“Would you believe it, there’s some sugar!” exclaimed Anny gleefully.

“Hey, girls, some sausage, real sausage from France! All we need is some Camembert and a litre of red wine!” cooed Jenny, tears in her eyes.

Clara dipped a gourmet’s finger into the minuscule portion of rancid butter which greased the “parcel’s” paper. “It really is butter! On bread, it’ll be…”

She couldn’t find the right word, and her voice trailed off as she savoured her rapture in advance. Everyone made an inventory, aloud or silently, of her stock, cast a nervous eye over her neighbour’s. Next to me, our Greek accordionist, cautious as a cat, licked delicately at the soupspoonful of jam which lay beside four lumps of sugar, the round of sweating sausage, the bit of rancid butter, the six biscuits, and the bit of bread. This bread was a positive fortune for me: it represented the toothbrush I previously hadn’t been able to afford. Marvellous, wonderful parcels! We laughed rapturously. Life was magnificent, we were eating. In the middle of this riotous dissipation Renate came in, very beautiful, cold and distant. Some girls had already started buttering their bread and spreading the jam on top. To eat three things at the same time was a luxury, madness.

“I see you’re not in need of anything from me,” Renate commented.

“On the contrary, it so happens that the two new girls need you.”

Her sombre, distant expression showed so little interest that I wondered if she even saw me. I mentioned a toothbrush; she suggested toothpaste and soap.

“How much would all that come to?” I wasn’t sure I could take on such onerous commitments.

Renate took her time, calculating carefully. I certainly wouldn’t have enough to pay for the lot. I was tempted to cut out the toothpaste—one could always brush one’s teeth with soap.

“Look, as you’re new I’ll make you a special offer.”

This dealer’s language didn’t surprise me; on the contrary, it made our transaction seem more normal. At last she produced her figure: “One ration of bread and two of margarine. What with the cold, I’m being asked for more fats.”

Nothing could have pleased me more. Clara gave me a black look as she saw me delve into our box and extract my two pats of margarine. Renate proceeded to explain the fluctuations of the rates: