Beach Music

by Pat Conroy

  “For several days, I am buried beneath the skins of cows. We are often stopped by German patrols, but Josef is bringing a wagonload of hides to make shoes for German soldiers, so there is no problem. At night we come to the old part of Warsaw and I have never seen such a big, beautiful city. We cross the Vistula River and Josef tells me it is the largest river in the world. The river seems like it is miles below us. He points out things he likes in the city. He is very proud of the capital city of his country. He is very proud to be Polish, so when we pass Germans Josef tips his hat to them as he passes then mutters that he would shovel coal on the fires of hell to burn their souls for eternity. He is a funny man and very sweet to me.

  “Finally we come to the street. Josef goes to the door, and raps on the brass knocker. He winks at me.

  “An old nun answers the door and she and Josef talk. He points to the wagon and the nun shakes her head no. The talk grows louder and the nun disappears. Then another sister comes to the door and she argues with Josef. No good. He is a stubborn man and he has come to talk to one sister and only she will do. Finally, a sister comes to the door and listens to Josef. Already, I know this will be different because she steps out of the shadows and walks toward me as she listens to Josef explain why we are there. ‘It is Hannah’s girl, no?’ she says to me and I nod to her and I know it is Paulina. When I kiss Josef on both cheeks in farewell, I slip a coin of my mother’s into his pocket. I do it secretly so he will find it later because I don’t think he would accept a gift.

  “Paulina takes me to the Mother Superior, who says I may stay, but this was not a popular decision with one of the nuns. One named Magdalena says that if the Jewess is allowed to remain in the convent, the sisters would all be tortured and murdered and raped and the Holy Eucharist would be defiled by the Nazis. This sister says a Jew has no place in a convent dedicated to prayer and hard work. But the other nuns do not listen to this Magdalena.

  “Then Paulina says to my surprise that I told her I wished to study to be a Catholic. The Mother Superior asks me if that is true and I say yes. Then Paulina says that if I become Catholic I think I might even want to become a nun. Again I say yes because I see that Magdalena hates Jews as much as any Nazi. I nod my head and smile at the Mother Superior and tell her I very much would like to become a nun.

  “I tell Paulina that night about my family, about my mother. She weeps hard because she loved my mother. Immediately, Paulina cuts my hair very short and puts me into the uniform of a novice. I live in her room for a month and each day and night she drills me in prayers and catechism. All day I study and Paulina tells me I am studying to save my life. She teaches me to sign myself with the cross, to genuflect before the altar, to use the holy water when I enter the chapel. She tells me, ‘Ruth, this can save your life if the Germans ever catch you.’ Every morning I go with her to the Mass and I watch her every move carefully. I rise when she rises. I kneel when she kneels. I say the Latin prayers, learn to say the rosary and all the prayers I can, and I pray all the time.

  “I stay in this convent for two years. Every day I go to Communion, I sing hymns, I go to confession. But I keep a secret from everybody. When I first came to this convent, I still had my dress with the gold coins hidden beneath the buttons, which Magdalena tells me must be given to the poor. I cannot just give this dress away, because I may need it if something happens. So one night when everyone is asleep I take it to the church that adjoins the convent and I find a side altar in the back of the church where there is a statue of the Virgin Mary. There is a hollow space beneath the statue, and it is there I hide the dress with the coins.

  “I come to pray and say my rosary in front of this statue of Mary every day. Paulina and the Mother Superior notice this and think I have a special relationship to the Blessed Virgin, which they like and encourage. I cannot always touch my dress, but sometimes I do when no one else is around, and because I know this cloth was once held by my mother, that each stitch was sewn by this woman I love and will never see again. I am comforted most of the time when I pray to this Mary. I pray to her as Jewish girl to Jewish girl. I say, ‘Mary, you are Jewish as I am Jewish and you raised your son to live according to the Jewish law, the same as I am raised. As a Jew, I ask for your help, Mary. I beg of you to help me survive all of this. If any of my family is still alive, please help them and watch over them. I am still a pious Jew and will remain a Jew because it is what I am. Just as it is what you once were. I ask you and your son to protect me. Tell him that I am just a poor Jewish child as you once were. As he was in Nazareth when he grew up the son of a poor carpenter. Please watch over me and Sister Paulina and the other good sisters. If you do anything to Sister Magdalena, I will not care at all, for she is a fearful anti-Semite and I am told she was named after a fallen woman.’

  “One night after the last prayers in the church, I was praying to Mary when I felt something cold come over me, something bad. Quickly, I bless myself, I rise to return to my tiny room when there is a noise in the corridor leading to the convent.

  “Then I see Sister Regina and Sister Paulina with their arms folded just so, where you could not see their hands, coming into the church. Behind them is an SS officer. He is a trim, short man. His uniform strikes a terror in me that I can feel to this day. His face is bloodless and arrogant. I stop and bow my head in obeisance to the Mother Superior.

  “ ‘Jude?’ the German asked me.

  “ ‘No.’ I shook my head.

  “ ‘You are a liar like all Jews,’ he said.

  “ ‘She is one of us,’ Sister Paulina said. ‘I grew up with her mother. We were baptized in the same church. Her mother and I were in the same confirmation class.’

  “ ‘Poles lie as frequently as Jews.’

  “ ‘You asked to see the girl,’ Sister Regina said. ‘Now you have seen her and now you know she is a legitimate member of our order.’

  “ ‘We have received a report that you are hiding Jews,’ the man said. ‘This girl was specifically denounced.’

  “ ‘She is a Catholic,’ Paulina said.

  “ ‘Would you swear that she was born a Catholic?’ the SS man asked.

  “ ‘I would swear it,’ Sister Paulina said.

  “ ‘You would burn in hell for all eternity to save one Jew,’ the man said.

  “ ‘To save any life,’ the nun answered, ‘I would gladly burn in hell.’

  “ ‘I no longer believe in God or fairy tales,’ the German said.

  “ ‘Yet you believe in Hitler,’ Paulina observed.

  “ ‘I believe in greater Germany,’ he said, his voice and temper rising.

  “Sister Regina said, ‘There are no Jews here. Your business is elsewhere.’

  “ ‘How long have you been coaching this Jewess?’ he asked and he is walking around me now, observing me, sniffing the air as though I will give off some scent that will betray me. I do not think I have ever been so afraid in my life. I could hear my own blood rushing through my ears.

  “Then he said to me, ‘I once was a seminarian in Berlin. Who was the angel who appeared to Mary telling her she would be the mother of God?’

  “The SS man smiles at the two sisters and turns his eyes to me.

  “ ‘It is the angel Gabriel who appears to the Virgin,’ I say and I see Paulina smile behind the German.

  “ ‘This event is known as what in the Catholic world?’

  “ ‘The Annunciation, Herr,’ I say.

  “He asks me to recite all the prayers of the rosary and I recite them word for word. The German asks me to name the twelve Apostles of Christ and I could only name eleven of them. I sing the Latin hymn ‘O Salutaris Hostia’ praising the Eucharist for him. I say the Act of Contrition and tell the words I say to the priest when I am in the confessional.

  “I am doing so well that I begin to enjoy this testing of my faith. He lulls me into a sense of security … of confidence. He becomes a friendly man almost and his eyes soften and I forget he is German or SS. I am c
oncentrating on the questions, which are hard even for a Catholic girl.

  “Then he surprises me by asking, ‘What does your father do?’

  “I do not notice that he asks his question in Yiddish. Before I could think I hear myself saying, ‘He is a rabbi.’

  “Behind the man, I saw Sister Regina crossing herself, but Paulina held her hands together with the folds of her habit covering her hands and fingers. The only flesh one could see is her sweet face, which had gone pale. The German is smiling in a very satisfied way. I have been tricked and I know I have not only killed myself but all the nuns and novices in the convent.

  “ ‘We did not know this child was a Jew,’ Sister Regina said.

  “ ‘You knew it perfectly well, Sister,’ the SS man said. ‘I knew it when I saw her. The Jew has a certain look that even a nun’s veil cannot hide.’

  “ ‘A Catholic man brought her here,’ Regina said. ‘Her parents had been killed.’

  “ ‘A nun denounced you at SS headquarters this afternoon. She also told me you had a short-wave radio hidden in the bell tower of this church that is used by the Polish resistance. Is that correct? Do not lie to me again.’

  “ ‘It is correct. We are nuns, but we are also Polish,’ Regina said.

  “The German took my chin in his hand and forced me to stare in his eyes. ‘I have seen enough Jews die, so it no longer bothers me. Then why should it bother me if a Jew lives?’

  “ ‘I want the radio removed by tomorrow morning, Sisters,’ the man said. ‘The nun who betrayed you is called Magdalena. She told me about the Jew and the radio.’

  “ ‘The radio will be gone,’ Regina said. ‘May we keep Ruth? She has converted and we think she will make a good nun.’

  “As he turned to leave, he said, ‘I am a good soldier but a better German. Pray for me, Sisters.’

  “ ‘We will pray for you,’ Sister Regina promised.

  “ ‘Pray for me, Jewess,’ he said, smiling.

  “ ‘I will also pray for you,’ I answered.

  “We listened to the click of his heels along the corridor and for a long time we said nothing to each other. The fear had silenced us.

  “ ‘What will we do about Sister Magdelena?’ Sister Paulina asked.

  “ ‘She needs to spend some time at the Mother House. Isolation will do her good.’

  “ ‘What if she finds another German officer to tell her story …’ Paulina started to ask, but was silenced when Regina raised a hand in warning.

  “ ‘There will be no radio by morning. The right people must be alerted.’

  “ ‘You must forget that you ever knew Yiddish,’ Sister Paulina said.

  “ ‘I am sorry I could not name all twelve Apostles, Sister Paulina,’ I said.

  “ ‘You forgot Judas,’ Paulina said. ‘But I hope Magdalena will always remember him.’

  “But already, the Polish underground had been searching for a young Jewish girl by my very name whose mother had once come from the Ukrainian town of Kironittska but had drifted across the border into Poland. Two months later a man came to the convent at night to ask me many questions about my past. He told me that an American Jew by the name of Rusoff had paid a great sum of money to smuggle me to safety. I tell him that I have no relatives in America. But Paulina tells me to be quiet, this Rusoff knows many American politicians and must be a very famous and influential man to reach this far into war-torn Poland. Paulina takes a letter the man is holding and says, very surprised, ‘Thank God, it is your own uncle Max. He was the brother of your father.’ On the back of the letter’s envelope is written the address: Max Rusoff, General Delivery, Waterford, South Carolina. I have never heard of this South Carolina until this moment of my life.

  “Some more months go by. It is time to leave, and there is a last Mass to celebrate my departure, a High Mass. It is after this Mass at night that I retrieve the dress my mother made for me. The tall Pole comes for me one night. I am ready and all the nuns and the novices are there at my departure. I am carrying a small piece of luggage. Already I have hidden a gold coin under the pillow of Sister Paulina. I hug Regina and the other nuns. I say good-bye to the other novices. They are sweet girls but I do not know them well. After the war, I learn the reason. Almost eighty percent of them are Jewish girls like me and the nuns think it is safer if none of us knows about the others.

  “The last thing Paulina says to me is ‘Siostra.’ It means ‘Sister’ in Polish.

  “I tell her I love her very much and I say ‘Siostra’ to her as I walk out into the wartime city following the tall Pole.

  “For many days I travel hidden and underground and then one night I am taken to a fishing boat where I am hidden below the deck. Before he leaves me to my fate, the Pole turns to me and kisses me on both cheeks and wishes me well in America. I never learn his name because in times like this knowledge itself can be dangerous. But he salutes me and he says to me—and I never forget these words as long as I am alive—he says, ‘Long live free Poland.’

  “Max Rusoff and his good family have ransomed me from the hands of my enemies. Some time later, I get off a ship in this South Carolina and hundreds of strangers are here to greet me. One steps forward. It is Max Rusoff, who is called the Great Jew. Behind him is his wife, Esther. They, who do not know me, embrace me. They, who are not kin to me, raise me up as their daughter. They, who owe me nothing, give me back my life. For me there is no tattoo, no concentration camp. I come out of this not bitter like my husband. I come out thinking there are many good people in the world and that this poor Jewish girl was lucky enough to find them in the middle of a terrible war. That is all. I am done. Telling you this story has been very hard. But it is what happened to me. Every word as I remember it.”

  I asked in the silence that followed, “Were you wearing the dress your mother made for you when you arrived in America?”

  “No,” Ruth said. “I had grown too big for it. But I had brought it with me. It had brought me luck during my journey.”

  “Where is the dress now?”

  “By my bedside table. In a drawer,” Ruth said to me.

  “How many coins were left when you arrived in America? You seemed to have left them with a lot of people.”

  “Three. There were only three left. The dress was very heavy when I first put it on. It was light when I arrived here in America,” she said.

  “Shyla’s necklace …” I asked.

  Ruth reached for a gold chain on her throat and pulled out a necklace that shone in the light. She had made it from one of the remaining five-ruble coins.

  “I never take it off. Ever,” Ruth said.

  “Neither did Shyla,” I said. “Until the end.”

  “My daughter Martha wears the other one. She, too, never takes it off.”

  “The lady of the coins?” I asked.

  “The statue of Mary in the church,” Ruth said. “I made the mistake of telling my Shyla that I think it is this lady who saved me. This is what I think to myself. It is here I pray to this lady who hides the coins. I say to Shyla that I think this Mother of Jesus took pity on me. She saw one Jewish girl and I think I reminded Mary of herself as a young girl.”

  “You think that was the lady that appeared to Shyla?” I asked. “The one she saw in her hallucinations.”

  “That is what I think, Jack,” Ruth said. “If I had not told Shyla this story, maybe my daughter would be with us now. For so long, I feel like I helped kill my Shyla by telling her this.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “It’s kind of nice in a way.”

  “How? I do not understand.”

  “Wouldn’t it be nice if Mary appeared to Shyla after all the horror of the war? It’d be sweet, Ruth. The Jewish mother of the Christian God apologizing for what happened to a Jewish girl’s parents during the terrible ordeal of the Polish Jews. What a nice thing for the Mother of God to do.”

  “Such a thing does not happen,” Ruth said.

  “Too bad,” I said.
“It should.”

  “My husband wishes to speak to you soon, Jack,” she said.

  “About this?”

  “He does not tell me.”

  That night, after Leah and George returned from the Spoleto Festival, we ate dinner with the Foxes. Since Leah was tired, I agreed that she could spend the night with her grandparents and I would pick her up the following morning. She fell asleep while I was reading her a story in Shyla’s old bed surrounded by the stuffed animals and teddy bears her mother had once loved. I kissed my daughter softly on the cheek and considered the despair and fury I would feel if this house were filling up below with soldiers who did not mind murdering children. The Jupiter Symphony of Mozart was playing softly downstairs and it was the sound of this music that made me seek out the company of George Fox.

  In his first-floor music room, I found George Fox listening to the music, drinking cognac, and lost in reverie. Even in his own house, sitting on his own furniture, George had the haunted, broken look of a fallen angel. He jumped when I approached, and it was only then that I realized that every stranger who approached George Fox was an SS man in disguise. I wanted to say something kind and transfiguring to my father-in-law, but I stood before him wordless.

  “You look pale, Jack,” George said at last. “Have a glass of cognac with me.”

  “Ruth lost her whole family. I always knew that. But I really didn’t know it at all.”

  “The story you just heard,” George said, looking straight into me, “Ruth blames that story for Shyla’s death. But I disagree with her.”