Mission preparations ramp up, with seven men and women readying to leave. Aron is among them. People check munitions, pack food into sacks, fill canteens with water. Róża and Shmuel inspect the restitched bandoliers one last time before handing them out.
“How long will they go for?” Róża asks.
“However long it takes.”
When Aron enters the shop, he slings two of the belts crosswise over his shoulders. A little boy named Paweł, dark curls down his back, trails him, asking, please, if he can come on the mission. Aron kneels down and places a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Not this time, Pawełek, but soon.” He returns to standing, glances over at Shmuel, then at Róża.
“I will see you soon as I can, Różyczka,” he says, and lopes out of the shop.
By the time Róża steps into the main square, Aron is nowhere in sight.
* * *
For the next two days, Róża listens as Chana bemoans her assignment—to stay and cook, per Sonia’s orders, despite Chana’s pleas to join the mission.
“I don’t understand it. I would fight courageously.”
“Yes, you would.” Róża doesn’t mention Chana’s utter lack of training with a gun.
“I’m more fit than both Fregel sisters put together.”
“But who would make soup for us, Chana? Would you leave us to subsist on their concoctions?” Secretly, or not so secretly, Róża is grateful that Chana wasn’t permitted to go. She is grateful, too, for the protected sleeping bunk and the ready food here. She joins a small table of women at lunch.
After the others disperse, a young mother asks Róża to hold her baby, Issi, while she takes a bowl of soup. Róża protests, but already he is placed in her arms. As he wriggles against her, she feels a contracting in her uterus, a tingling in her breasts. She is transported back to new motherhood, to holding the warm bundle of her own baby close, the mingling of calm and utter joy. A lullaby comes to her lips, the beginning of a hen’s cucoo. No.
This baby’s heft, his doughy smell, his cry packed with gaping need—it is all too much for Róża. She thrusts him back into his mother’s arms.
“I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”
“But, please—”
“I said I can’t.”
Róża walks away, her body pulsing with ache, with sorrow. How can she possibly explain to this mother, whose child is safe beside her? What is whole does not comprehend what is torn until it, too, is in shreds.
* * *
Near dusk on the mission’s third day, Róża trudges to the watch post where she first encountered Hershel on patrol. Little Paweł is there with him, keeping watch.
“Any word?”
“No,” says Hershel.
“No,” says Paweł.
A light snow dusts the air. Back near the campfire, the falling flakes glint like fireflies.
Despite what she’s been telling herself about Aron—that she’s only just met him; that she can’t possibly grow attached to another person she may yet lose; that she needs to stay focused on her mission to find Shira—Róża has been awaiting his return.
The following night, five of the seven fighters—Aron not among them—stagger in, exhausted and bedraggled. Róża sees who’s there, who isn’t. She doesn’t wait to learn what’s happened, doesn’t ask for the story, the details; she runs, half-hunched, to the dugout, another burial, and curls in her bunk, knees pulled tight, her wet cheek pressed against the cold, damp earthen wall. What ruckus trails in from the crowd around the fire she blocks out by burying herself beneath straw, covering her eyes and ears with her arms slung over her face.
When she feels a hand on her shoulder, she shrugs it off, refusing to open her eyes. “Chana, no! Just leave me—”
The hand finds her cheek, and it smells of metal and smoke. Before Róża can sit up, Aron’s hands are cradling her face. Instinctively, Róża wraps him in her arms, rough straw stuck between them.
“Why didn’t you return with the others? I thought—”
“Itzhak hurt his ankle; I helped him back, slowly.”
Aron leans in to kiss her, and Róża’s insides go taut and fluttery, until unbidden thoughts wedge in: wild carrot seed; blood on snow.
He must feel her shudder because he shifts to her side, nuzzles his face in her hair.
“It’s all right, Różyczka. We can just hold each other awhile.”
A small cry escapes Róża’s throat. She pushes her thoughts away and pulls Aron close.
Chapter 35
Before vespers, Zosia walks to Mother Agnieszka’s spare chamber. Despite the fierce cold outside, she tugs at the window and opens it a crack, hoping that her bird will hear, that he will come with news of her mother. Hands healed, she cradles the violin in the crook of her arm and tunes it, her shallow breath slowing as she finds each note.
She practices Bloch’s “Nigun,” which Pan Skrzypczak taught her was the second of the three-part Baal Shem, composed in memory of Bloch’s mother. She thinks of her own mother, wishing to be hopeful, yet the music’s every note is infused with a haunting melancholy.
Zosia still remembers home, her family: that particular moment on Friday nights before everyone took their seats at the dinner table, lighted candles flickering in their eyes. There would be a hush and then they’d settle, and each would tell stories of their week, at the bakery, at university, in the workshop. As the war drew closer, the stories changed, grew darker; unasked questions sat on their lips and worry lodged in the lines of their faces. Still, they played their music afterward—folk songs, gypsy dances, the insistence of hope—escalating to a fever pitch, ending in meditation.
Zosia thinks she can hear those same songs alive inside the “Nigun”—until it plunges into discordance and darkness. The moan of chords, the bow pressed upon two strings at once, then the sound narrowing to a single note as the music slows and slips into echoes and finally cries out: a solitary wail, repeating, higher and softer, until it trails off, no longer heard.
Zosia lingers, bow on string even after the sound stops. Flecks of white rosin drift and float into the surrounding air. She is expected in the chapel soon. Still, she extends her packing ritual: loosening her bow and re-stowing the sponge and pad; laying the violin in the case; lowering its lid and snapping it shut. For an extra beat, she stands motionless and listens. In the ringing silence, she pulls the window closed and scurries out of the chamber, through the corridor, into the bruised night.
* * *
But Zosia doesn’t make it to the chapel. A German soldier roaming the convent grounds has followed the sound of her playing and stops her now along the outside corridor.
“It was you playing the violin. Yes?”
The soldier’s pale eyes glow yellow by the lantern. Zosia nods, too terrified to speak.
“Good. You will play a recital. Fetch your violin.”
“Now?” Zosia wants to ask, but a nearby gunshot startles her into silence. If only she could summon help, but all the sisters are at vespers and the soldier stands blocking the pathway to the chapel.
Her legs quake as she retrieves her violin from Mother Agnieszka’s chamber, the soldier following close behind. They come to stand outside the chapel. Sister Nadzieja spots them through a transom window and whispers to Mother Agnieszka, who comes out.
“Good evening, Herr Mueller. May I ask what is happening?”
“A recital. My Oberleutnant will be arriving any minute—he enjoys music and this will be a special welcome for him.”
Mother Agnieszka holds her eyes steady on Zosia as she speaks. “Very well. We’ll assemble in the calefactory.”
Whether vespers has ended or has been interrupted, Zosia doesn’t know; all she knows is the calefactory is near instantly transformed into a recital hall, with once fine, now shabby armchairs reserved for the soldiers.
The nuns, their faces as white as the starched cloth at their cheeks, rush about, arranging the children in rows. The children squirm and fidget, exc
ited at the night’s unexpected turn. Zosia’s belly jitters. Her hands seem hardly to belong to her—they shake so violently—and she can’t think what to play. Definitely not “Nigun,” though she just practiced it. Not Brahms’s Scherzo either. She might break down in the middle of it. Sister Alicja quickly ties a kerchief around Zosia’s head—“This will keep your hair out of your face”—before she lights additional lanterns at the front of the room.
The soldier leads in his comrades: one, towering in height and stone-faced, with fancy insignia on his collar and armband; the other, stocky and chuckling, in a plain brown uniform jacket, his hand on the pistol in its holster. As they enter, the room goes silent.
Zosia sends a pleading look to Mother Agnieszka, who bobs her head in a calming, rhythmic motion. Zosia struggles to breathe.
It occurs to Zosia to play the rhapsodic middle of Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen. She recently practiced it with Sister Nadzieja. Tuning her violin hastily, she quarter turns, hardly noticeable, to avoid directly facing the soldiers and the children seated behind them. She puts bow to string to start—her arm steady despite how nervous she feels inside—and plays, the guiding rhythm a Romani march, soft and introspective. In her mind, her bird, solitary, restless, seeks out a resting place in the icy branches of a tree. His warbling notes reverberate in the night sky like a call and response: Are you there? Yes, I am here. Where? Right here. Settle yourself. Settle.
A long, rising note, barely audible, ends the middle sections—a gloomy place to stop. Zosia takes a chance and continues, playing the final movement: upbeat and rousing, a showpiece. As she keeps watch on the intricate fingering and bowing, she really performs now, angling outward to the audience, aware of the sound echoing in the room, escalating, frenzied, and exciting. The last measures push Zosia, and she rises to their challenge with the quickest of strokes and wild plucking. She feels expansive as never before, legs rooted, bow-arm flying, her fingers dancing between the strings. She closes her eyes. The music soars beyond her own sensibilities, into the listening crowd. She finishes with a strong, dramatic bow stroke.
An uneasy silence follows. All eyes turn to the Oberleutnant. His previously severe expression has grown soft. When he speaks, it is as if regaining a lost voice.
“Amazing,” he says in German.
Kasia begins applauding. The nuns join, and the children laugh and clap with a jubilance unknown in the convent’s confines. The soldiers clap too. Zosia floods with relief. The only ones who sit unmoved are Ula and Adela.
Before tonight, Zosia only ever really wished to be heard by her bird, by her mother. As terrifying as it was, she loved performing for an audience.
When the men get up from their chairs, they are newly gracious. They leave without taking anything from the kitchen, without holding roll call.
* * *
Next morning, Zosia lifts her blanket to her face and breathes into it before making up her bed and wetting her hair in the bathroom sink. Sister Alicja came in the middle of the night to bleach it, and now Zosia hopes an extra rinse will take some of the smell out. With her head in the basin, she reaches for a towel, but Ula and Adela step in and block the shelf. Zosia retracts her arm and wrings out her hair by hand. She turns quickly to leave, but Ula gets in front of her.
“Your hair looks like straw.”
Adela reaches out to touch it. “Why is it so stiff and wiry?”
Ula grabs a clump too. “And what kind of color is this?”
Both girls tug, hard, before letting go.
Ula and Adela walk out of the bathroom, toward the refectory. Hair dripping and in stocking feet, Zosia trails them as they slip into the larder. She waits a few seconds, then opens the door to catch them snatching rolls from the bread box.
“I will get you punished for this.” Zosia’s voice shakes, but she thrusts her face forward, not backing down.
“You wouldn’t,” Adela counters.
“You make any more trouble for me and I will summon Sister Alicja. You’ll see, she will take my word over yours.”
Ula and Adela stare in surprise. Zosia takes a slight step toward them, daring only because of what’s at stake.
A moment passes. Ula places her roll back in the bread box and brushes flour from her whitened fingertips. Adela bites into her roll, then stuffs it into her pocket as she walks past Zosia, out of the refectory, Ula rushing after her.
Chapter 36
Aron seeks out Róża in the nighttime, just to talk, to hold her in sleep. Nestled close in her bunk, he asks her, “What happened to your family?” And so she tells him how the soldiers came to her parents’ house in Gracja.
“At first, it was to ransack my father’s luthier workshop. They smashed his workbenches, stole his tools. Spilled his varnishes everywhere and even broke one of his violins. A few weeks later, they came for us.”
She tells him how her parents hid her in their closet; how she reached for the frosting tip in the pocket of her mother’s coat while she blocked out the awful thumping sounds, her parents stumbling down the stairs.
But she cannot manage to tell him that she’d lost Natan, shot in a trench he’d been forced to dig, and that Shira was with her there in the closet, hunched amid wool blazers and camel-hair overcoats—yet is not with her still.
The words Róża swallows while awake script her dreams while she sleeps.
She is crocheting tiny bird scarves for the coming winter. Her fingers work the yarn quickly, three neat stitches across and one stitch down, over and over again. But it’s not yarn at all, it is copper-wrapped gut spooling from the pocket of a splayed-open violin case, and each tug tightens the wire’s grip on the small bird tangled within it. Three across, one down; three across, one down. Róża stitches on, until she hears a frantic flapping, a strangled chirp.
“Nie!”
“You had another nightmare.” Aron leans over her, troubled.
Róża tries to shake it off. Her hands throb. Splotches bloom red on her skin, as if pecked. Did she harm herself in sleep? Róża turns toward the earthen wall. She tucks her hands gingerly beneath the backs of her thighs so Aron won’t see.
* * *
For weeks, they sleep entwined, Róża’s head pressed against Aron’s shoulder, his arm wrapped around her hip. Until the night, when time both stops and pulses, when Róża sets herself free to feel and to remember—then all that has been exiled rises up and it is her first night with Natan, his soft lips on hers and her body opening to the sweet, sharp wholeness that brought her unknown pleasure, unimaginable hope. And it is night after night with Henryk—his eyes, then his heavy frame atop hers, Róża praying that Shira would remain asleep. And it is the night when Shira was taken. Gone. The feel of her padded hands and the smoothness of her belly, the smell of her hair, her wide-open curious stare. As Aron moves gently inside her, Róża buries her face in his chest. He wraps his arms tight around her.
* * *
As Róża pairs with Aron, Chana pairs with Hershel. Hershel cooks alongside Chana on her shifts and Chana accompanies Hershel on his walk each day to the patrol station.
Róża is surprised to see Chana holding a gun one morning.
“Yes, I am learning to shoot. Hershel is teaching me. Stop looking at me like that.”
* * *
Róża is repairing torn jackets late one afternoon when Hershel rushes by, shouting, “German soldiers! They are coming!”
In a matter of seconds everyone is running, some to the bunks, others to the steepest area of the forest. Questions fly from every direction.
“How close?”
“How many?”
“Where will we go?”
Aron comes in for Róża. “Cross the stream and take the steep pass with the others. The Germans won’t follow there; they don’t know the terrain. Go as quickly as you can, then wait. I’ll come when—”
“Aron, please, come with me now; I can’t—”
“I have to stay and fight. I’ll follow, I promise you.
”
Chana runs past with two rifles. Róża catches her by the arm. “Chana, where are you going? We have to run, right away.”
“I’m fighting.”
“No! You can’t!”
But there is no time to argue. They both hear the rumble of gunfire. Chana dives into the metal shop for bullets. Róża runs, as Aron instructed her, toward the stream.
Sonia is at the water’s edge, directing people to cross it. They hesitate before stepping into the icy flow. “Go on!” she yells. Róża wades in, submerging the boots Aron gave her. They soak in seconds. She instinctively jolts back, hardly able to catch her breath, but then she pushes forward, the cold water seeping through her pants, searing her calves, her thighs. It’s a struggle to make headway; the water is deep and the rocks slippery. But eventually she reaches the other side and follows the trail of people, dripping and shivering, down the pass.
Some who crossed ahead carried their saws and other tools. Already they’ve built a fire and are at work on temporary shelters. Others grabbed sacks of potatoes and soup pots. They’ve been run out of camps before. Róża steps close to the fire, desperate to get dry and warm, then sets herself to starting a soup. Every few minutes she scans the top of the pass for Aron, for Chana.
Why don’t they come already? The fire has not fully dried her clothing, and her boots are miserably wet still. With every crack of gunfire, Róża feels more despair.
At dusk Hershel stumbles down the pass.
“There were eight and we routed them,” he says in heaving breaths. Someone helps peel off his soaking coat; someone else hands him a dry one. In the meantime people shout out names with the hope that he will report, “They’re fine; they’re on the way here now.”
The Yellow Bird Sings Page 14