Shadows of the White City

by Jocelyn Green

  Sylvie braced herself.

  “Jozefa had a baby when she was twenty-nine years old. She wasn’t married, and she was already an actress. She named me Rozalia and gave me up for adoption, requesting a few things regarding the people who adopted me. She asked that I be adopted by a couple who lived in a small town and could have no children of their own. She wanted me to be cherished as a miracle. From what Mr. Janik told me, I was.”

  Sylvie pressed her fingers to her temples, willing the room to stop spinning.

  “But she always regretted giving me up. She tried for years to track me down, but the orphanage wouldn’t cooperate. It was only after my father—” She stopped, stricken.

  “Nikolai was your father,” Sylvie said. “Go on.”

  Rose balled a handkerchief against a fresh wave of tears. “Well, only after he left for America did they tell her I’d been placed with him and my—and Magdalena.” She paused, stumbling, it seemed, over calling the woman something other than her mother. “She sent a letter to the house in Wloclawek, but by then Magdalena and I had moved out of it. It’s just like Mr. Janik said. When Nikolai left to make a home for us here, Magdalena took me somewhere else so we wouldn’t be alone with the Russian soldiers billeted with us.”

  If Sylvie had doubted the power of words before, she knew what they were now. They were blows that bruised. They were blades, scraping away at everything she thought she knew, whittling the foundation out from under her feet, and Rose’s. The poor girl was falling apart right in front of her.

  “Rose,” she said. “Jozefa has already confessed to lying. Why should we think she is not lying now? Did you tell her what we learned from Mr. Janik?”

  “I didn’t. Well, maybe just a tiny bit. I told her my mother played the violin, so she’d understand why it was important to me to keep playing mine. She seemed genuinely surprised by that information, and I wondered why she didn’t already know it, as my mother’s sister. Mr. Janik said Magdalena learned to play the fiddle from her father. But Jozefa wouldn’t have known that if this letter is true. If I was adopted by a couple she never met.”

  As if on cue, Kristof’s violin began to sing in the apartment above them. “Did she pawn your violin because she didn’t want you to play it?” Sylvie asked. “Or for money?”

  Rose swiped at her tears once more. “She told me she was going to trade it in for a better, more expensive one. But she didn’t. That was another promise that went unfulfilled.”

  “Why do you think she didn’t want you to have it anymore, especially when she knew you loved it?” Sylvie had her own guesses. But it would be so much better if Rose could reach the same conclusion herself.

  Bending, Rose scooped Tiny Tim from the floor and buried a kiss between his ears before settling him on her lap. “For a while I thought she was worried someone would hear me playing and it might be a clue for anyone trying to find me. But now—I don’t think she liked the connection to Magdalena it represented. I told her that when I played it, I thought of my mother. It sounds strange to say it, but maybe she was jealous.”

  “That’s not a strange thing to say, at all,” Sylvie said. “She clearly wanted you all to herself. Away from me, away from your own memories, even. If she could have done it without a guard, she wouldn’t have hired Ivan, either.” Sylvie stopped just short of calling Jozefa manipulative, though she had more than earned the label. “Does she say why she told you she was your aunt?”

  “She does.” Rose flipped to the second page of the letter and began to read. “‘You must wonder why I told you I was your aunt. Forgive me for that, but I thought it would be less of a shock to you, to adjust to that relationship first. If I had told you from the beginning I was your mother, without any documents to back it up, would you have believed me? Be honest, now.’”

  Rose looked up. “She’s right. If she had said she was my mother right away, I would have called her a liar and run the other direction. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to spend a few weeks with her.”

  The calculation on Jozefa’s part was truly staggering. Rose folded the bright blue shawl threaded with dove grey into a triangle and set it on the table, pushing it toward the center. What a horrible thing to do, corrupting the precious memories Rose had of Nikolai and Magdalena, memories Rose had fought to preserve her entire life.

  “So you believe her?” Sylvie dared to ask.

  “You have to admit, her behavior makes more sense if she really is my mother. She had to win my affections and trust before admitting who she was—because admitting she’s my mother is also a confession that she gave me away. She gave me up to an orphanage, not knowing what kind of family would take me in, if any. No wonder she didn’t want to tell me that. No one wants to hear that her mother didn’t want her. But, Mimi”—she bit her lip, reached across the table, and took Sylvie’s hand—“she wants me now.”

  Sylvie could summon no reply. Her breath came quick and shallow.

  “She says she’ll be in New York City until the end of October to see the sights there before sailing back to Poland. She—” Rose referred to the letter once more and read, “‘I want you to come home with me, but this time I won’t trick you or force you. Take your time to think about what I offer. A life with your own true mother in Europe. No one can love you more than I do. Allow me to make up for all the years we lost, years we should have been together. If you decide to come, write to me at my hotel, and I’ll wire money for a rail ticket. The ship leaves on October 30. I pray that you will be on it with me. But if you aren’t, I wish you all the happiness one life can hold. If you never respond to this letter, I will understand that, too. I have much to be forgiven for. In case this is my last letter to you, I will leave you with the same words I left you with when I made the worst mistake of my life and gave you up.’”

  Rose’s face clouded. Then, with a broken voice, she sang. “A-a-a, a-a-a, byly sobie kotki dwa . . .”

  The lullaby. The song Kristof had translated from Mrs. Górecki.

  “I thought Mrs. Górecki taught you that song.” Sylvie had already admitted to visiting her during her search.

  “She only taught me the words. The tune was already embedded in my memory. My mother put it there.” A shuddering sob escaped Rose. “I have to go. I mean, to my room. I’m sorry, Mimi, I need to be alone and think.”

  She took the letter with her, Tiny Tim at her heels, and the music upstairs stopped, too.

  The composure Sylvie wore grew thin and loose as she stared at the vacant chair.

  Emptiness magnified the erratic creaks and clicks of the building. Minutes slid out from under her as she replayed every word spoken since Rose had read the letter. Was this the truth, at last? Ought she to rejoice for Rose’s long-lost mother’s return? Just now, she couldn’t.

  A knock on the door.

  She opened it. “Kristof,” she breathed.

  Instantly, the faint lines on his brow deepened. “What is it?”

  “Ivan?” Rose emerged from the hallway, her face still blotched and streaked. “Oh, hi, Mr. Bartok.”

  “I’ve interrupted something,” he said, concern filling his eyes. “I only came to see if you’d like to start up your lessons again. I’ll come back later.”

  “It’s all right, don’t go. Mimi, you might as well tell him. I don’t mean to be rude, Mr. Bartok, but I’ve a terrible headache. Please excuse me.” She receded from view.

  Sylvie sank into her chair at the table, faltering. “Jozefa—” She struggled to regain herself.

  Kristof moved a chair closer to Sylvie’s and sat. “I thought she left yesterday.”

  “She did. Rose received a letter from her today. Jozefa says she’s Rose’s mother.” Vertigo swept through her. The world was cracking and shifting beneath her.

  Eyebrows drawing together, he dropped his voice low. “Explain.” The way his gaze held hers felt to Sylvie like a hand to the elbow, helping her keep her balance.

  Through the push and pull of his prompts a
nd her answers, she recounted the news. From the parlor, the clock on the mantel struck six o’clock. When it chimed seven, they were still talking. In the end, it came down to a question.

  “Are you afraid Jozefa is lying again?”

  Sylvie whispered her confession. “I’m most afraid she isn’t.”

  Streetlamps washed all the starlight from the sky and sent a dim glow between Sylvie’s curtains. Quiet pulsed as she lay on her bed, listening for any sounds that signaled Rose was awake. She heard nothing but the sighs of the wind.

  When four-year-old Rose had first moved in with Sylvie, she had strained her ears for the slightest whimper coming from the other side of the wall. During storms and after nightmares, Sylvie had rushed to the terrified child. She’d gathered her close and rocked her, smoothing the feathery, silken hair that still smelled of soap from her bath. Rose hadn’t known much English yet. Sylvie had kept talking to her, anyway. Kept singing. Praying that some ray of tenderness would break through. “I’m here. You’re safe,” Sylvie had said. “It’s going to be all right.” But Sylvie understood that perhaps Rose didn’t want to be there. She didn’t want to be merely safe. She wanted to be with her parents.

  If Sylvie could have absorbed every ounce of Rose’s grief, she would have done so. “Help us, God,” she had prayed aloud, pushing back against the shadows. “I don’t know what to do. Help her. Help me help her.” She knew two things only. That God had entrusted Rose to her care, and that she was wholly unequal to the task.

  Neither of those things had changed.

  Kristof had asked her tonight what she would do if she decided Jozefa was telling the truth. She hadn’t been able to form a response then. But it was a question she needed to answer. Would Sylvie place her own love for Rose above Rose’s longing to reunite with her mother? Or would she, like the mother of King Solomon’s time, let another woman have Rose even though it meant her own sorrow?

  She’d always known her stewardship of Rose was a temporary assignment. She just hadn’t expected to give her up so completely, or so soon. Every fiber in her being cried out to deny Jozefa’s claim, to convince Rose to stay home. Stay safe.

  But lines from Rose’s diary stopped her. She tries to control me now, but is she trying to protect me, or only herself? I want to be loved for who I am, but sometimes I wonder if she needs me to feel better about who she is. Sylvie had to ask herself if those words were closer to the truth than she’d ever wanted to admit.

  “Lord,” she pleaded, “I don’t know what to do. Help me. Help her. Help us.”

  Kristof had prayed with Sylvie, too, before he returned to his apartment. They’d been standing at the door, and she’d rested her forehead on his shoulder. His arms had formed a loose circle around her, but not like a cage. Like a shield.

  “I’m here,” he had whispered after she’d joined her amen with his. “It’s going to be all right.”

  If Jozefa was Rose’s mother, what right did Sylvie have to stand between them?

  She wanted to do the right thing.

  No. She wanted to want to do the right thing.

  “Oh, God,” she prayed, “I will never stop needing your help.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1893

  It was over.

  Sweat trickling down the sides of his face, Kristof kept his arms upraised for another beat after the end of the last piece the Exposition Orchestra would ever play at the World’s Fair. In the silence that followed the last note, gratitude and satisfaction swelled his chest. Bravo, he mouthed to his musicians. They had followed him through the heights and depths of Strauss, Liszt, and Tchaikovsky, and they had brought the audience with them. Charles, his new concertmaster and first violinist in Gregor’s place, had proven himself worthy of the role. Kristof hoped his parents had been here to see him.

  He lowered his arms, and applause erupted behind him. It may not have been a perfect performance, but it had resonated with their listeners, and that was more than enough. He walked off stage, allowing the praise to lavish the orchestra, and paused in the wings, watching.

  He would miss this. Conducting was so much different from playing. Conducting was connecting. Connecting himself to the entire piece, connecting the sections to one another in a coherent whole, connecting the music to the audience. There was such freedom and fulfillment in that. Come November, when the Chicago Symphony Orchestra season began, he hoped he could channel some of this satisfaction into being first violin again.

  Kristof walked back on stage and took a bow. When he straightened and viewed the audience for the first time, his breath caught. Sylvie stood in the front row, her eyes glossy, clapping for him. Despite the staggering news from Jozefa delivered just last night. He’d been sure she had to work at the bookshop today, but there she was, wiping a tear from her glistening cheek. He bowed to her alone.

  Only when he straightened did he see that she hadn’t come by herself. Standing in a long line beside her were Rose, Olive, Meg, Nate, Anna, Karl, and Walter. Two rolling chairs rested in the aisle, no doubt for the Hoffmans. They could have no idea how deeply moved he was.

  Throat tight, he smiled his thanks to each of them before gesturing to the orchestra once more.

  When at last the ovations were finished and he’d shaken hands with the musicians, he joined Sylvie and her family. Her smile was radiant, even with the cares he knew were riding just below the surface. “I didn’t expect you to be here,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t miss it,” she told him. “You were marvelous.”

  Compliments assailed him from Rose, Walter, and everyone in between. He was so unused to this that he hardly knew how to accept it.

  “Hazel was sorry she couldn’t be here,” Meg said, “but she couldn’t get off work.”

  “Here, Mr. Bartok!” Olive thrust a fistful of yellow wildflowers toward him, bits of grass and clover mixed in. “Don’t worry, I didn’t pick them at the Fair, because that’s against the rules. I brought them all the way from my own yard.”

  Kristof bent one knee to accept the precious gift. “Did you know that no one has ever brought me flowers before?”

  Olive beamed when he tucked their stems into the buttonhole of his lapel. The little blossoms drooped against his tuxedo, but he wouldn’t trade them for the most prized bloom from the Rose Garden.

  “Perfect,” he said, and he meant it.

  When he stood, Karl clapped his shoulder and shook his hand with an affectionate grunt. Anna reached up and took his face in her papery-dry hands. “I’m so proud of you.”

  Kristof bent and kissed her cheek, and she circled her arms around him in a motherly embrace. “God setteth the solitary in families, indeed,” he said to her and was rewarded with an extra squeeze.

  Sylvie came alongside him. “Tessa is minding the store today, and we all have time to help you celebrate. How does Blooker’s sound?”

  “Blookers?” Olive laughed. “What are blookers?”

  Kristof chuckled with her. “Blooker’s Dutch Cocoa Mill is a place where you can get fresh hot chocolate. It’s a replica of an old Holland windmill, but this one uses its giant blades to grate chocolate instead of grinding meal. In all the months I’ve spent at the Fair, I’ve never been.”

  “Oh, you must!” Sylvie said.

  “Then by all means,” Kristof replied. She could have told him to hop on a camel in Cairo Street, and he would have. “If it’s agreeable to the rest of the party, let’s go.”

  Outside, Nate and Walter pushed Karl and Anna in their rolling chairs, Meg beside them. Olive held fast to Rose’s hand, and Kristof drew Sylvie’s through his arm. Together, they strolled southeast, around the edge of the Grand Basin, past the Agriculture Building with its shining Diana at its pinnacle, and skirted the South Pond. From the right, the telltale odors of cattle, horses, sheep, and pigs wafted from the Stock Pavilion. An electric elevated train clattered by on the track over their heads. A moment later, they passed the French Bakery e
xhibit just before Blooker’s.

  “Did you sleep last night?” Kristof quietly asked Sylvie. “Did you tell Meg about . . . ?” He tipped his head toward Rose.

  “Not well, and yes, I did,” she replied. “We spoke before the concert began. But let’s not allow that to overshadow your well-deserved celebration, all right?”

  He smiled. If she could muster enthusiasm for hot chocolate, he’d let her. It was somewhere to put her mind other than on that bruised and tender place.

  The wooden windmill’s rotating blades cast a giant pinwheel of light and shadow on the ground. The rich fragrance of warm chocolate reached Kristof even before he opened the large wooden door, allowing the rest of the family to enter ahead of him. But inside, it was overwhelming.

  A frolicking fire greeted them, along with a Dutch maiden in wooden shoes. None of the tables could seat all nine of them, and Kristof didn’t complain when he and Sylvie were shown to a cozy table for two.

  “I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you came today. That you all came,” he told Sylvie.

  “Of course I came.” She unbuttoned her jacket, and he moved behind her, sliding it down her arms. He draped it over the chair, which he pulled out for her. “All of us were looking forward to it, especially Karl and Anna. This will probably be the highlight of several months for them. I don’t know if you realize what a gift your music is. It was so good for Rose, too. I could tell she was enjoying it immensely.”

  A smile edged his lips as he sat across from her. “I’m glad to hear that. See much of Ivan these days?”

  Sylvie lowered her voice, though Rose was two tables away. “Not since Monday. He started work yesterday at the Polish Café, at the other end of the Fair. I wondered if she would protest when I told her we didn’t have time to visit him today, but she understood. I think she’s anxious about telling him of Jozefa and her offer to join her. Even if she’s not as fond of him as he wishes, she still doesn’t like the idea of hurting him.”

  Kristof wanted to ask if Rose liked the idea of hurting Sylvie, but that wasn’t fair. It was Jozefa who had blown into Sylvie’s household like a dignified hurricane, tearing her relationship with Rose up by the roots.