From that night on, Tzofia plays to see the chestnut hues in her mother’s black hair, the lines around her father’s eyes. Her memories more distinct, her thoughts grow less dissonant, as she continues to play. She remembers a dinner of chicken paprikash—the tips of her grandmother’s fingers were tinged red for two days afterward—and staying up past midnight, her eyes transfixed on her mother’s vibrating wrist as she pressed her fingers to the strings of her cello. No scared whispering that night, but she could feel the distress in her mother’s playing and in the off-tempo bounce of her grandfather’s knee. Her father didn’t even take up his violin, he just paced the room, and her grandmother took to cleaning top to bottom, polishing the wooden sideboard with extra vigor. All of them acted as if they’d forgotten her bedtime, but she sensed that they preferred to be together, huddled in the tight space of the parlor.
In time, she becomes known not as the girl who plays the violin but as the violinist. An elderly man named Yizhai, hunched and graying and smelling faintly of cabbage, claims her for his own.
“How is my little violinist?” he asks her whenever they pass, giving a slight bow of his head. Tzofia smiles a wordless reply.
Maybe Tzofia would never be one for words. But horsehair on string, bow-arm at just the right angle, with her violin, all that Tzofia holds inside floats out of her in long, even strokes. Rather than the mass of her own body, rather than words, choked and dry, it is the heft of the violin upon her shoulder, the smooth rest for her chin, the steady pressure demanded of her hand on the bow, that roots Tzofia in the world.
Chapter 44
Aron and Róża stand outside Celestyn’s Carmelite church at noon. It is Aron’s idea, since the central committee has no records on Shira and the town officials seem not to know anything. As churchgoers leave mass, Aron approaches and asks what they know about the bombed convent. Some walk past without answering. But a nun brightens at the mention of the Felicjanki.
“I believe they are staying with the Siostry Nazaretanki,” she says.
Róża’s “Really?” comes out at the same time as Aron’s “Where?”
“Last I heard, they’ll be hosted there until their convent can be rebuilt, or—”
“Do you know if any children moved with them?” Róża asks.
“I imagine so; there was a recent communion.”
“Communion?”
“Can you tell us where?”
“The Nazareth’s nunnery is on ul. Swiętokrzyska at the far limit of Celestyn.”
* * *
They begin walking right away. Curled leaves rustle about their feet, blanketing the char and rubble. It is dusk by the time they reach the gate. Róża clasps the iron bars, cold on her fingers. Aron rings the bell. After a few minutes, a young nun habited with an all-white headdress and high boots comes over.
“May I help you?”
“We are searching for my daughter, Shira Chodorów,” Róża blurts.
“Who?”
Róża’s shame catches in her throat. “She … had a different name, I don’t—”
“I think I’d better get Mother Agnieszka.”
While they wait, Róża stares at a garden patch, tightly pruned and browning. When an older nun shuffles toward them, her heavy robes rustling, it distresses Róża to see a tremor in her face. As if, already, she is saying No.
“I’m Mother Agnieszka.”
“My daughter…” Róża swallows. “I didn’t realize she could have survived in the woods.…” She begins again. “In the barn, she was always humming and tapping. And when we were made to leave … I was given this card. I’ve come now…”
Róża stops. She sees a flicker of understanding, perhaps the recognition of their resemblance; then a downcast look in Mother Agnieszka’s eyes.
“I am terribly sorry. A rabbi and his wife offered to secure her a more appropriate placement. They were leaving, too. I thought it was best for Zosia to be among her people.”
Róża utters the name: “Zosia.” Aron is silent.
A different nun, who had drawn near, then rushed away, comes to them now with a garden spade in one hand, something disinterred in the other. “There was a particular spot near the hedges she visited often—when I saw the rock, I had a hunch she buried this there. I regret that I didn’t dig it up for her.”
Róża recognizes Shira’s shred of blanket, limp and soil covered. With tears streaming from her eyes, she takes it and holds it close, sniffing in vain for the faded scent of her child. She smells the rooted earth.
“We pray for her every day. We pray that she is safe,” the sister says.
Mother Agnieszka does not stop shaking.
* * *
Tzofia is absorbed in her practice session—her legs driven firmly into the ground, rooted, her whole self thickening—when Rifka interrupts her. Rifka is Tzofia’s same age, here with her parents and their goose in tow, after escaping the Lublin ghetto and waiting out the war on a farm that the Germans overlooked. Rifka knows the camp’s routines inside and out: each afternoon at two P.M., Marian brings cookies to the children’s room; Aniela teaches her special art class on Tuesdays; and the fresh milk delivery happens now! She begs Tzofia to come. They can slip in through the kitchen’s back entry and each have a glass.
Tzofia lets herself be led there. Rifka presses open the swing door and they slip into the space, much larger than the convent kitchens, humid but clean, lined with metal racks of dry dishes. While Tzofia watches, Rifka carefully pours two glasses of milk and hands one to Tzofia.
“My parents say that we will soon travel by boat to a better land. You’ll come too, won’t you?”
Tzofia shrugs. With the glass at her lips, she inhales the milk’s rangy smell, tastes the cool froth. It reminds her of the cups of honeyed milk her grandmother gave her before bed; the clink of glasses when she and her mother “toasted” their shared birthdays before devouring large triangular slices of cake; the feel of Krystyna’s arm on her shoulder, patiently showing her how to pat the cows on their long sides. She slurped up the cows’ sweet milk, still warm despite the chilled tin cup, as many times as Krystyna would refill it, marveling all the while at the animals’ freedom to make whatever noise they liked. Then, returning to the loft, she hesitated, her eyes reluctant to adjust to the dimness and dusk, her body resistant to being stifled and stilled. She wanted to be back with her mother—she did—but she did not want to be swallowed up by the barn’s silence.
As she thinks of it, Tzofia’s chest goes tight and she gulps for air. She leaves Rifka and walks back to the practice room, its window still open a crack. She reaches for her violin.
Bow to string. It is the only way Tzofia knows to converse with the silences life has made her companions. Always, she begins her practice with the lullaby her mother sang to her in the barn: Cucuricoo! Di mom iz nisht do … She moves on to Brahms’s Scherzo, then assorted pieces she learned with Pan Skrzypczak. Bartók’s Rhapsodies no. 1 and no. 2; Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee.” The jumpy bow strokes remind her acutely of her bird, his tremulous two-note call. She looks around for something new.
Tzofia sorts through the box of music that someone journeyed with here, prized above other worldly possessions. She finds a piece by Ravel, Kaddish, for violin and piano. She scans the score, then starts to play through the melody, stopping many times to get each tone, each articulation, exactly right. When she feels she has it, she plays from the beginning, filling in the piano in her head as she goes.
The melody—its slowness, its tender sadness, the way each note seems both tense and peaceful at the same time—reminds Tzofia of music her father played. At first, the piano gives only the sparest accompaniment, its high notes ringing out distantly, shimmering crystal-like alongside Tzofia’s melody. But the piano’s part soon grows richer, circling Tzofia’s music with arpeggiations, embracing it like two bodies entwined. Tzofia remembers herself in the barn with her mother, lying in the hay, silent, music in her head.
Only now she’s singing her melody out loud, and her mother’s dark eyes shine encouragingly. She quickens her tempo a bit, letting each note lean forward expectantly, and she sways with the ebb and flow of her music. Her tone grows warmer, more joyful. In the piano’s chords she hears consolation, like a hand extended. Tzofia and her mother walk together, out of the barn, through the garden and the field …
A single chord lands uncertain, as if hesitant, stopping to make up its mind. It comes so unexpectedly that Tzofia wonders if it’s a mistake, but the next chord in the piano clarifies: it is determined, turning away, going back. Where?
Tzofia’s melody rises, as if in protest, as the piano’s music becomes darker, deeper. Tzofia unfolds her melody in long waves that swell and crest with yearning, while the piano sinks further, further into its depths, until it’s just a quiet rumble, the echo of a distant cry. With the piano far away, Tzofia’s delicate melody plays its own sad arpeggiations, each reaching higher than the last. She tilts her body out again, she brings her violin into the air, her music becomes bolder. As if in response, the piano strains across its keys to reach chords, quiet but ecstatic, that bridge the distance between the instruments, touching the melody one last time. Tzofia holds on to her final note as long as she can, until her bow slides imperceptibly from motion to stillness, from sound to silence.
In the score sitting before her, the piano ends where it began, the same invocatory note ringing like a bell, as if in an endless cycle. But Tzofia plays the piece through only once, holding her bow on her string long after she has stopped playing, her eyes closed.
Outside, the call of birds.
* * *
The nuns pray for Zosia every day because, as rumor has it, Jews from across Europe crowd illegally into cargo ships bound for Palestine and meet with detentions, diversions to other ports, even bombs buried within.
Róża grows shaky to think of it. Shira survived the bombings; she was here, safe and sound. Yet the only remaining trace is her blanket, dug up from beneath the privet by a sister who kept closest watch. Róża grips it tight.
* * *
She continues searching. At a refugee center, she is given the address of the nearest displaced persons camps. One in particular seems to be the favorite of Bricha workers who “rescue” surviving Jewish children from Christian homes. Maybe this is where the rabbi and his wife have taken Shira?
Upon arriving there, Róża searches the faces of the children huddled around picnic tables. She walks through a yard where other children play tag. She inquires at the office.
“No records with the name Chodorów. No Shiras or Zosias, either. Could it have been changed?”
“It was Zosia when she was in the orphanage.”
“Maybe she’s taken on a different name.”
“Can I please look at all the names you have on your list?”
“You can, but between you and me, our records aren’t great. We do our best, but with all the comings and goings—people arrive here in the middle of the night, and if there’s word of a possible transport from Hamburg, they depart suddenly and without notice. In just the past weeks, I’ve heard of boats heading to Palestine, New York, and Morocco. Waves have come and gone. It’s hard to keep up.”
“Is there a child here who is especially musical?”
“Excuse me?”
“Musical. Always humming and tapping.”
“There was a girl who played violin at the campfire. A real talent. But she left last week, to where, I don’t know. Never talked much, but she sure could play.”
* * *
Róża asks around about the campfire violinist. Everyone speaks of a quiet child around the age of eight or nine, who played like a virtuoso.
“I never heard anyone like her, and so young!” one older man tells Róża.
“There was a family with a child her age she hung around; maybe they took her with them?” the man’s wife chimes in.
“Do you know the name of that family?”
“No.”
“Or where they may have gone?”
“I’m sorry.”
* * *
Róża and Aron travel to Hamburg Port. Róża searches the boat records; she stands on the docks and stares out at the heaving sea. They may have passed within ten kilometers of each other as Róża traveled west from Celestyn and Shira traveled north from the camp to the port. They may have missed each other by a matter of days. Now there is no knowing where Shira has gone to.
Aron’s face registers Róża’s despondency. “Oh, Różyczka.”
Wherever Shira is, she won’t be traceable now. He doesn’t say it, but they both know: Shira is lost to the universe.
They circle the city on foot, directionless. The air from Róża’s lungs gets stoppered in her throat. If she could hold out hope that Shira would search for her—but would Shira even know her name?
Aron wipes tears from her eyes and brings water for her to drink. He sits beside her on a bench. A solitary goldfinch whirls overhead.
“Róża, please. Honor Shira by living a beautiful life.”
Róża blinks up at the sky as Aron takes hold of her hands.
Part 4
The girl does not need to be silent any longer, so she plays her music out loud. She plays, not for the flowers that grow in colorful clay pots on her terrace or for a distant, long-ago garden. She plays for the airwaves. Her notes travel at the speed of three hundred and thirty-two meters per second, faster even than a yellow bird.
After longest silence, she wishes for her music to reach as high as the heavens, as far as the sea.
Chapter 45
New York
Autumn 1965
Róża pulls two knit blankets from a high shelf, spreading one across the bed, the other on the couch; then she transfers her thick sweaters, individually wrapped in plastic bags, to the middle drawers of her dressing closet. Autumn’s chill has come early to Brooklyn this year, but it’s all right. Their apartment is cozy, and in the evenings, when she and Aron stroll the neighborhood and talk, vendors stand ready on street corners with her favorite roasted chestnuts nestled in paper cones.
She climbs a step stool to retrieve the woolen coats and hats to be traded out with the lighter things in the front closet. Then she tidies up the music room, what might have been a child’s room, though she and Aron don’t talk about that. The one time she got pregnant here—not far along; she didn’t even suspect until the spotting began—her body just couldn’t hold on to it. She let herself bleed out, crouched over the toilet, her head pressed against the cool metal of the towel rack, silent and still as if she were yet in hiding, overcome once again by the scent of rust and rot.
She knew then that she couldn’t bear another child—where would the necessary light come from, after the burials beneath hay, snow, rabbit, rubble?—and so with discretion she avoided Aron on her most fertile days, and they played aunt and uncle to Chana and Hershel’s four children. The curve of the children’s cheeks, the pudge of their arms, the translucence of their fingers, it all stung, and it was only after the youngest surpassed five—Shira’s age in the barn—that Róża could wholly embrace them, despite the regular Friday night dinners and birthday celebrations. With her own birthday just two days apart from Shira’s, family picnics on the Narew River stirred within her: how Shira covered her eyes and fidgeted with anticipation, waiting for the cello song to start, then exclaiming over her grandmother’s cakes, frosted like jeweled castles, each year more beautiful than the last.
Sometimes, visualizing her girl’s luminous face, or poring over her old photograph, now framed atop her bureau, Róża thinks maybe beauty can save the world. But then something cuts in. The liquid brown of a girl’s eyes at the grocery counter, or a snippet of music—a violin solo on the radio—shakes her to her fault lines. A long-buried memory ambushes her. She’d turned crazy with anguish immediately after Shira was taken from the barn. When Henryk and Krystyna stepped inside, she fell into Krystyna’s arm
s, crying. Her girl was gone from her. Gone from all of them—
* * *
For dinner, she makes meat loaf and wedge salad. That’s what’s featured in the magazines here. Later, she’ll walk with Aron to the nearest Italian bakery, where they’ll share a cannoli, taking smaller and smaller bites, in turn, until it’s gone.
Emerging from a past life means embracing new things, steering away from reminders. Not scanning the faces of passersby on walks; not returning to the library, again, to search the records; not rummaging through the bottom of a trunk to feel for a tattered shred of blanket, an old watch and compass, a small card with an address printed on it.
Of the reminders Róża skirts here in Greenpoint—the Jewish bakery cases packed with babka and rugelach; certain dress shop windows; any recipe containing mushrooms—one exception is the cello. First rented, now owned, Róża plays and teaches. She accepts students at least ten years or older, a steadfast rule. Not the young ones; never the kindergarten prodigies. The teenagers, lanky and impressionable, she finds most endearing: how they dress in their sturdy jeans and speak in their perfect English, raving about their favorite American rock idols even as they rehearse their measures by Haydn and Beethoven and Bach. After trudging up the tight stairs to the apartment, they settle into a chair in the music room, shifting into a sun puddle by the bay window, wrangling their cellos between their legs. Róża encourages them through their warm-ups and exercises: open string bowing, left hand pizzicati, double stops for the advanced students.
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