The Yellow Bird Sings

by Jennifer Rosner

  Róża stands, silent.

  Hershel continues to gasp for air. His head is still in the skirmish. “They won’t follow us down here. They don’t know the deep woods like we do.”

  Sonia cuts in, “Nevertheless, we’ll need to set up new patrols immediately.”

  A debate ensues about the best lookout spots.

  Hershel says that a peasant, from whom they stole food and tools, scouted out their camp and told the Germans. “He led them to us; I saw.”

  Róża feels as though she may go crazy. It is near dark and no sign of others coming down.

  “Hershel, please tell us,” she finally begs. “Where are the others? Who didn’t make it?”

  Hershel looks up at Róża. The others go silent.

  “Ilan and Mayer, may they rest in peace.”

  Sorrow mixes with relief as Róża thanks God that Aron and Chana are alive.

  “Also we lost little Paweł,” Hershel says in a breaking voice. “They’re burying him now. Ruthie couldn’t corral him and he got hit.”

  Paweł: partisan-in-miniature; Issi’s older brother; he asked Aron practically once a day when he’d be old enough to go on his first mission. Róża kept her distance from the children here, except for him.

  Róża looks around at the other mothers, enveloping their children. Ruthie—whom she’d refused to help by holding Issi—bent over the hillside, her hands clutching dirt.

  Something breaks loose inside Róża and skitters down the stairs of her heart. Her fingers feel for the stitches at the waistband of her pants, the re-stowed address card. She can’t wait any longer; she must get to Shira now.

  She builds the case in her mind: She knows how to survive in the woods on her own. And once she has Shira with her she can determine where to go next, whether to return here or find another place to hide. She wishes she could see with her own eyes Aron and Chana safe after the attack; but she doesn’t wait. Her clothes and boots well-enough dried, she turns from the fire, stuffs her pockets with potatoes, and begins walking, away from the newly forming camp, in search of Celestyn and the convent that’s held Shira in safekeeping.

  Chapter 37

  Spring 1944

  The Oberleutnant returns to the convent and demands another recital. It is early evening. Mother Agnieszka intercepts Zosia, carrying clean towels from the laundry, to retrieve her violin, quick. As Zosia walks nervously to the calefactory, her fears focus on Adela being in the audience. What might she say or do?

  But the Oberleutnant is there alone. Settled in an armchair, he speaks kindly to Zosia, encouraging her to take her time with the tuning and warm-up. Mother Agnieszka stands in the corner, her hands clamped tightly in front of her habit.

  Zosia takes a preparatory breath, a deep, silent inhale and exhale. Pan Skrzypczak taught her this, though she’d already learned such controlled breathing in the barn with her mother. She plays the second part of Bruch’s Violin Concerto no. 1, lyrical and languorous. Though she is nervous, her playing is smooth. Pan Skrzypczak told Zosia that Joachim advised Bruch on this work and that he not only received its dedication but was the soloist to first perform it. Zosia likes to think of this: another bit of music that kept Joachim from loneliness.

  The movement builds with sentiment and passion, then subsides to a tranquil close. When Zosia brings the violin to rest beneath her arm, the Oberleutnant, flush cheeked, applauds. “Max Bruch?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know that his wife inscribed on his tombstone, ‘Music is the language of God’?”

  Zosia didn’t know this. She doesn’t dare answer.

  The Oberleutnant stands. From his coat pocket he produces a waxy bag with a jam-filled roll inside, which he hands to Zosia.

  Zosia looks at it, stunned. It smells as if it were just baked, with powdered sugar sprinkled on top. There has been so little food at mealtimes, her stomach nearly leaps to her mouth. It takes her a moment to find her voice. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you,” the Oberleutnant says. “I will come again.” And with a nod to Mother Agnieszka, he departs.

  Zosia looks to Mother Agnieszka for permission to eat the roll.

  Its taste is like a cloud, airy and sweet, with a tang of plum jam so perfect as to mix earth with heaven. The last bite is practically in her mouth when she holds back, saving a taste for Kasia, a taste for her mother.

  * * *

  Mother Agnieszka interrupts Zosia’s next violin lesson to confer with Pan Skrzypczak. How much music has Zosia mastered? How quickly can she learn more, if the Oberleutnant keeps asking to hear her play? Mother Agnieszka’s face is pinched with distress, but Zosia is pleased because Pan Skrzypczak agrees to give her an extra lesson every week.

  * * *

  Sister Alicja ushers Zosia to the side chapel for a class on receiving communion. “Because you’re seven,” she says, and Zosia thinks of past birthday parties, hers and her mother’s, with music and frosted cake and treasure hunts along the river. Birthdays in the orphanage are marked with thin slices of spice bread after lunch.

  The chapel hovers cavernous and gloomy, its dark crossbeams stark against the white walls. Almost no light enters from the small stained-glass windows that dot the wall just below the pitched ceiling.

  Other girls troop in and Zosia hears one of them whisper, “We are meant to consume the blood and body of Christ.”

  “What?”

  “That’s right.” She points to the wine chalice and wafer cup on the altar. “The wine and wafer are blood and bone.”

  Zosia grows dizzy, fearing she might vomit. Sister Alicja kneels beside her. She puts a finger upon Zosia’s cheek, gently, like the flutter of wings.

  “You needn’t worry, Zosia. It is a holy sacrament. And it is accompanied by a beautiful chant. Let me teach that to you now.”

  Sister Alicja sings it and almost immediately it is conjoined in Zosia’s mind with companion notes, minor in key, that deepen and enrich it. Zosia is calmed, less fearful of her communion, and eager to get to her violin later and play what she hears inside.

  As the day approaches, Zosia and the other girls excitedly try on lacy white dresses and shiny white shoes, stored in the chapel closet, pulled out each spring. Kasia offers to braid Zosia’s hair—“It will look pretty for your service!”—but Zosia refuses. Kasia is trying to cheer her, Zosia knows, as when she invited her to join in on the prank of putting potato skins upon the mouths of the portraits. But Zosia worries. Supplies have grown scarcer and Sister Alicja has had to stretch out the bleachings of her hair. She doesn’t want Kasia to spot brown at the roots. And if she offers to weave a daisy crown?

  Zosia takes to wearing a white kerchief over her head daily, tied with the tiniest knot at the back. She studies hard for her communion. “Communion” is not a word she understands, though she thinks it might mean connection, and she feels she should want connection with Jesus, who the nuns say is the greatest teacher of all. Safe within the parables, prayers, and hymns—nowhere a spark for others’ hatred of her; nowhere the danger of losing all she might come to love—she finds her devotion to Him.

  When her name—Zosia Nowakówna—is called, no other name stirs within her, even as the air’s grassy scent evokes hay, nights entwined with her mother. She solemnly walks forward and kneels, opening her mouth to receive the sacrament, dry and papery. Afterward, she sings and prays. The littlest children think she is trying to be a nun.

  Chapter 38

  Róża was emboldened when she left the camp, but now, in the woods without company or protection, knowing that Germans could be nearby, she struggles to keep her doubts in check. What if I am caught? What will become of Shira then? Several times she comes close to backtracking, but she propels onward: she must see that Shira is all right.

  For days, it pours. Her boots soak again; her feet chill, then chafe. The wetness seeps to her bones. She sleeps in burrows of sticky mud and damp pine needles. When she walks, she varies her steps, aiming always for the cover o
f leaves rather than the earthen ground that sucks at her soles and imprints deep tracks. She prays that Natan’s compass has her properly directed due south.

  Her last substantial meal was the soup she made at the new campsite. Since then, she’s rationed the five potatoes she stuffed into her pockets before leaving—too few, yet more than she was entitled to take for herself.

  She has one potato left.

  * * *

  Zosia is folding cloth napkins at the long refectory table—though there is hardly any food, only thistle soup and groats and dusty bread—when Sister Nadzieja rushes in. She is dressed to travel and she is holding Zosia’s coat and hat.

  “Come, Zosia.You must get into the carriage right away.”

  “Where are we going?” Zosia had been in her private musical world, chaotic compositions of raw yearning, unlike the orderly music of the church, filling her ears, her head. Only now does she register what’s happening around her: people running in the street, sirens wailing closer than ever. The smell of burning.

  “We have to get out of the city. They are bombing everything.”

  “No. I can’t!” Her yellow bird was to bring her mother here. If Zosia leaves, her mother won’t be able to find her.

  Sister Nadzieja wrestles to get Zosia into her coat, but Zosia twists away, her arms flapping.

  “You must, we all must. I’ll keep you safe, I promise—no one will spot you in the carriage.”

  “But this is where she’ll come for me!”

  “Zosia, I’ll carry you if I have to. I have your blanket and your violin packed. And your outdoor shoes are here. Quick, put them on.”

  “You don’t understand, my mama—”

  * * *

  Zosia cries bitterly as she is lifted into the carriage, its benches near filled with girls from the younger children’s room. Please, I don’t want to go! As the carriage jerks around the corner and Siostry Felicjanki disappears, she feels an imaginary chain snap inside her.

  * * *

  The streets overflow with people fleeing the city. Zosia stares at the children perched on their fathers’ shoulders, cradled in their mothers’ arms, propped on backs, dragged along sideways. All around, terrified people rush past, layered in extra clothes, bowed under the weight of suitcases, bags, and bundles. One lady, her arms stretched to their full length to convey a painting, trips over the broken sidewalk. Zosia sputters and coughs, then goes silent.

  The air is clotted with smoke and dust. On bombed-out city blocks, the overpowering smell of sulfur joins the scents of yeast sours and rye as they pass the remnants of a bakery; singed flesh and rot as they pass a gutted butcher shop; burnt hide and cedar oil as they pass a tannery in ruins. Zosia limits her closemouthed breaths until, as they begin to head into the countryside, the scents of unburnt moss and pine signal fresher air.

  It takes hours to reach the new convent—a strange compound of buildings, dark and cold, connected by a confounding maze of corridors, far away from ul. Poniatowskiego 33. Zosia isn’t cheered by the grand pipe organ in the chapel or by the spacious girls’ room, a common room transformed. She grows frantic for Kasia. Every few minutes, she erupts into sobs.

  “Where is Kasia? Why isn’t she here yet?” she demands.

  Sister Nadzieja assures Zosia that she is on the way.

  “And Sister Alicja and Mother Agnieszka?”

  “They will also be arriving shortly.”

  They come in the next carriage—Sister Alicja embraces her in a warm hug and Kasia hitches to her, not letting go—yet Zosia remains distraught. By nightfall, she is joined in her sobbing as word arrives that six boys and the two sisters charged to evacuate them were caught in the bombings. One of those sisters, the resident baker, Halina, was beloved by the children because she was always willing to play chasing games in the late afternoons. But Zosia liked her for different reasons: because one of the cats resembled her and because she smelled of bread, like Zosia’s grandmother.

  Amid the keening and chaos, some of the children wander the halls, exploring, but Zosia does not want to see any more of this place. It smells musty, and the stone statues, everywhere, have scary, vacant eyes.

  Sister Nadzieja checks on Zosia as she squats in a dark corner, squeezing her eyes shut, rocking forward and back.

  “Zosia—”

  “When will Pan Skrzypczak come?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Zosia hears despondency in Sister Nadzieja’s voice.

  “He was going to teach me new music—”

  * * *

  Zosia develops a fever. She lies, red cheeked and shivering, in a bed that’s been jammed in a narrow hallway, away from the other girls. Her hair is slick; her eyelids flutter open and closed. The unfamiliar surroundings disorient her further.

  Sometimes she recognizes the people who tend to her: Sister Alicja laying a cool compress on her forehead; Mother Agnieszka carrying a fresh blanket to her bed. Other times, she doesn’t know who these robed people are. They keep calling her Zosia, but she is not: she is Shira! She lives in the barn with her mother, and before that she was in her grandparents’ house. Her tata was there, too, with his watery voice and tickly beard.

  She wants her snuggle blanket, the one with the bumpy edging. She tries to yank off her covers, but they are heavy and taut. She kicks and flails, she throws her pillow. She dreams.

  She is with her mother in the barn, but her bird is missing; she can’t find him anywhere. She searches the hay, frantic. “Mama, please, will you look for him?” and she watches, satisfied, as her mother leaves for the farmhouse. But her bird is there, perched in the rafters. He is cloaked entirely in black like a nun. His wet-black eyes, usually so bright against his yellow face, now look muted and flat. In his beak are crushed white flower petals.

  “Mama!” Zosia yells, and flings her arms out to her sides to steady herself. She has to clutch the rails of her bed to keep from tipping out.

  “Easy now, we’re just moving your bed again. Your fever has you yelling out names.”

  “Names? Where am I?”

  Zosia’s bed is now in the nuns’ corridor. Sister Alicja is beside her, prayer beads in her lap, a hand on Zosia’s forehead.

  Zosia wakes next with long-ago music in her head: a sleep song, a hen’s call, her mother’s gentle voice.

  Mama? she asks.

  But it is not her mother who touches her cheek, who takes her hand, who nurses her back to wellness.

  * * *

  She was with her parents in her dreams.

  Sister Alicja told her that when she was sick, she called out names.

  Her mother’s? Her father’s?

  Maryla taught her made-up new names for them, but she only ever knew them as Mama, as Tata.

  Did she yell out her own given name? This thought, too, brings a rising shame, as her hiding name has taken hold deeply within her. For so long she’s thought of herself not as Shira but as Zosia. She took her communion with it.

  Zosia worries about what she’s blurted out, and she worries about what she’s left behind and forgotten. As much as possible, she keeps her mouth shut, her violin her only mouthpiece, her spoken words coming out in half-swallowed, halted bursts.

  Chapter 39

  Róża reaches Celestyn’s outskirts after weeks of walking through thicketed pastures, thistles biting at her ankles, her empty canteen bobbing against her chest. Dried mud cakes to her skin; her scalp crawls once again with lice. Spotting a puddle, she bends to it, bringing a handful of brown water to her lips. It tastes of ash.

  Everywhere, there is smoke. Throughout the city, buildings have been bombed away, and some are still burning. But nowhere are there signs of German soldiers, German cars.

  She darts down an abandoned street, head lowered, taking note of where the sewers are—she’ll drop into one if she has to. Even if she can’t retrieve Shira right away, she is determined to find the convent. And if, as it appears, the German army has in fact retreated, maybe it will be
safe enough—maybe she needn’t wait much longer—to see her girl.

  Róża takes cover in an alleyway behind a row of outsize refuse cans until nightfall. She wants to rummage through the cans—for food, for newspapers—but she doesn’t dare. She remains hunched and solitary in the dusky shadows. Once it is completely dark, Róża traverses the long city blocks, one bloody, blistered foot in front of the other. She skirts mounds of crumbled brick, shattered stucco roof tiles. She does not pass another soul.

  Is the city under curfew? What if someone is watching from a window this very moment?

  Even if the Germans are gone, she may be the target of certain Poles.

  She keeps to the shadows, moving quickly, scanning for street names. In her head she recites the convent address story—thirty-three-year-old Józef crosses the long bridge, looking toward the heavens—over and over. There are church spires everywhere, and Róża fears she is turning circles as she skitters first in one direction, then in another, toward them. But then she catches sight of a sign indicating the way to Siostry Felicjanki.

  She stops. She has made it!

  A melody, bright and exultant, comes to her, reminding her of Shira. She takes the melody up, lets it repeat in her mind.

  Before rounding the street corner, Róża allows herself to imagine, in a way she hasn’t dared until this moment, Shira and her together again. Safe. In a tucked-away cabin somewhere, eating soup with kreplach and sweet lokshen kugel. Shira chattering away, little hands cupped around her imaginary, still alive bird, who chirps aloud his melodious eighteen-note song. Bathed clean, hair washed and braided, maybe tied off with daisies, a pretty frosted cake for dessert.

  Smoke billows scarf-like behind the street sign, luminous in the moonlight. Róża’s hands rise to her dirt-stained cheeks, her protruding cheekbones. She wonders if Shira will recognize her. After staring at the sign a minute longer, Róża takes a deep breath and turns onto ul. Poniatowskiego.