Playing for Time by Fania Fénelon Page A

way.”
    Tchaikowska came out of her room like a jack-in-the-box; Regina, Alma’s orderly, ran to knock at her door. Vigorously Irene shook Florette, whose aggressiveness was increased by this brutal awakening. Shouts and groans on all sides. The blockowa’s bellowing rose above the hubbub; most of her random blows luckily fell on empty air. The pandemonium had a boarding-school feel to it. The headlong gallop had lasted only a couple of minutes. It was three o’clock when Mandel, cap on head, wrapped in her regulation cape, came into the music room, where we were awaiting her in an impeccable position of attention-even me—gazes fixed on the middle distance. A blink could land you in Block 25. What could she want at this hour?
    I didn’t know much about the camp, the activity of the SS, but I knew enough to wonder where she’d come from and what her part was in a selection. Did she pick out the condemned, thrust children towards the crematoria? Did she stroll insouciantly, supremely contemptuous, among the shaven, tattooed women who were being prepared for their role as cattle?
    In a manner bordering on the servile, Alma asked nervously what the camp chief would like to hear, trembling inwardly lest Mandel name a piece so old that the players would have forgotten it.
    Maria Mandel was the perfect representative of the young German woman depicted in propaganda. She had a lovely Dietrich voice, guttural in the lower register. She pointed to me: “I’d like
meine kleine Sangerin
to sing me
Madame Butterfly
in German.”
    Alma translated the order. Catastrophe! That should put me in good voice. I didn’t know it in German. Alma’s expression became dangerously dark, she apologized lengthily; Mandel, irritated, cut her short with a gesture, and almost snappily Alma addressed me: “Sing it in French. I’ve said you’ll learn it in German.”
    And in Russian, and in Moldavian, should the whim take her…
    I felt my throat and lungs unresponsive with sleep. The incongruous thought of those singers who swallowed a raw egg to clear their throats nearly made me choke! I didn’t even dare to cough. The orchestra moved off and I launched into Madame la Lagerführerin’s favorite aria.
    Mandel had removed her cape and sat down, looking dreamy. Could it be that she regarded herself as a sentimental geisha? I hated myself at the thought of giving her pleasure.
    But was I? Her face wasn’t smiling, or even relaxed. Later, I was to learn that it was the done thing for the SS to listen to us as if we were slot machines. Yet she must have been satisfied, because I had to sing it again. Apparently she nurtured a special love for that opera, and I was never to know why. It seemed an odd taste, but it was vital not to forget that it was because of Mandel’s desire to hear her beloved
Butterfly
that Alma had sent for me in the first place.
    The session was short, and the Lagerführerin left us, apparently satisfied. Little Irene commented as she went out, “It’s a small convoy, the selection didn’t last long.”
    “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