Free Playing for Time by Fania Fénelon

paper.”
    Alma shook her head. “We haven’t got any. They draw the staff with a ruler.”
    “Pen, ink?”
    “Here, we have only pencils,” Alma said curtly. “We must make do with what we have. There’s a war on.”
    The phrase astounded me. It seemed that Alma was a German before all else. She was very tall: it was all too easy for her to look down on me, and she did.
    “Is that all?”
    Undaunted, I answered, “No, madame!”
    All trace of a smile had disappeared; she was straight and thin as her baton. I knew that I had to assert myself immediately if I was to be respected.
    “What do you need now?”
    “I don’t have enough copyists.”
    “Gut.
You shall have more. There’s no shortage of poor players.”
    That was true enough; indeed I was still wondering how we could possibly make music with such a range of instruments and attainment.
    From her small platform, Alma gave her stand the traditional tap, then raised her arm. This gesture was the start to my day, which was to be as neatly divided as the manuscript paper I didn’t have.
    I found this Suppe, so highly thought of by the SS, not just mediocre, but unbearable. Detestable. However, I analysed the piano version with all the care and interest I would have devoted to a work by Prokofiev, and above all with the same anxiety: I had never done any orchestral scoring before.
    As in all marches, the trumpets, trombones, and clarinets dominated, and I had at my disposal ten violins, a flute, reed pipes, two accordions, three guitars, five mandolins, drums, and some cymbals. No composer had ever envisaged such a combination!
    I read the top part carefully, and everything fell into place: I would replace the high instruments—sax, clarinet, and so on— with my first violin and my flute. The guitar and mandolins would be the accompaniment. The accordions would bring the whole together and support it with their basic chords; the percussion would steady the beat.
    I was delighted; I felt that I could do more than simply acquit myself honourably. Within me, with an ease in which I hardly dared believe, everything orchestrated itself. The instruments each led off in turn, became alive. It was intoxicating. In a way I was recomposing this march. I heard it—stirring, martial. I was conducting it, I was carried away… Then I saw the reality of the endless, wretched multitude before whom it would be played. I sat, pencil poised, unable to proceed, staring into space. To survive, I was not simply going to have to walk over my heart, as the Hungarians say, I was going to have to trample on it, annihilate it.
    My three Poles stared at me, their thoughts written on their faces: I was hesitating, I was worried, perhaps I’d bluffed. Already they were crowing: this evening, the tigresses would be able to make mincemeat of the tamer. I smiled at their distrustful faces. I stretched my hand out towards the sheets that had been ruled, took them, counted them, and observed severely: “That’s not enough, I need twenty-five sheets as soon as possible. Our conductor wants to start rehearsing this march right now.”
    There was a sullen silence. I lowered my head and began to work almost cheerfully. This new work absorbed me utterly, it was another way of making music, a wonderful form of escape! The notes formed rapidly under my pencil. I hadn’t lost my touch, nor, unfortunately for me, my ear. Wrong notes burst forth at every moment, and I jumped at every one. Alma had trouble imposing the composer’s tempo. There was good and bad in this orchestra: the good consisted of Big Irene, an excellent violinist who, by comparison, became our Menuhin. Halina and Ibi of the peachlike skin played quite adequately. At the lower end of the scale in a class of her own was Jenny, who had played professionally in motion picture theatres before the war. She maltreated her strings with great sawing strokes: scraping and grinding triumphantly, she played with a strength and conviction