Free Playing for Time by Fania Fénelon Page A

that drowned the other instruments. Apart from the violins, there were three valuable players, three professionals: Lili, an accordionist; Helga, the percussionist, and Frau Kroner, the flautist. My ear couldn’t discern anything very distinctive among the mandolins and guitars, except for Anny, the Belgian, who played prettily. The disaster area was second and third violins, and the worst of a bad bunch was undoubtedly Florette.
    Gloomily I contemplated the dusty cello and double bass cases standing up against the wall. I had resigned myself: Marta the cellist had gone into the infirmary just before my arrival. At a pinch I could do without her cello, but a double bass player really seemed indispensable. I had to have one; I would speak to Alma about it.
    Alma, that impassioned musician, was suffering: her powerlessness to master her musicians technically exasperated her. She was conducting, as it were, a war of nerves in which she was the loser. Very soon I understood what was happening: Alma, a virtuoso violinist, couldn’t conduct; she read her score as a player, not as a conductor. She got angry, burst out, bellowed insults, hit guilty fingers with her baton. She made the girls work over the same phrase tirelessly, came up against the same mistakes and produced new ones. The good players became exhausted, the poor ones sank into a near stupor, and I, amid this bedlam, had to write out a piece bearing no relation to what I was hearing. It was trying, but I managed it.
    We did seventeen hours of music a day, without counting what Florette called nightwork. By this she meant the concerts which the SS came to, at times chosen by themselves, to relax after their “hard” work. It was these sessions that earned the orchestra its reprieve.
    Soup break. Alma put down her baton, briefly summed up the quality of the rehearsal as
zum kotzen—
nauseating— and said sharply to me: “Wait here a minute.”
    Was she completely unthinking to make this request? Did she imagine someone would keep my portion of soup for me? Through the open door I surveyed the table with the cooking implements where the soup was given out and reassured myself: Marila hadn’t yet come back from the kitchen with Pani Founia.
    “Can you really do this orchestration?” asked Alma nervously.
    My gaze elsewhere, I gave her a polite affirmative.
    “Show me.”
    I showed her my scoring. She was reassured; now at last she was certain that I hadn’t cheated her. Despite this easy beginning I was less at ease than she; it was important that too much shouldn’t be asked of me. Yet that was just what Alma proceeded to do, somewhat dreamily. “Thanks to you, we’ll be able to give real concerts.”
    I took advantage of her euphoria to ask for my double bass player.
    “Yes, that would be good. I’ll ask Mandel for a player from the men’s orchestra to come and give lessons to—” She hesitated a moment, peered into the next room, and concluded, “Yvette. I think she’ll learn fast.”
    Alma didn’t share our mess and presumably she was rather less badly fed. She went back into her room, where Regina took her her tray, and I joined the others just in time to get splashed with the two ladlesful slopped into my mug.
    “It doesn’t stain,” said Anny with feeling. “There’s no fat.”
    What really was
zum kotzen
was the food, which was identical to that of the other blocks; no hope on that score. Clara, seated beside me, fixed the unlovely concoction with an air of disbelief, great tears trembling in her eyes.
    “I’m so hungry, and it’s always the same thing,” she murmured.
    Florette picked up that one. “What manner of luxury food did you expect?”
    “I’m not that silly, but after all, we are the orchestra.”
    “Ah,” sniggered Jenny. “One can see that you hung out in the better parts of Paris. You’ve still got a well-developed sense of privilege. Well, here you’ll have to make do, it’s shit for everyone. That’s