28

THAT NIGHT IN HER HOTEL ROOM, ELLEN FOLDED HERSELF INTO the formidable wingback armchair at the foot of her bed. For a long time she hugged her knees and rocked back and forth, hoping for inspiration. But the longer she rocked, the harder focusing on her piece became. A few indistinct themes flickered through her head, but she dismissed them quickly as dry and lightweight, nothing that would impress the sort of people who’d created the fabulous posters plastered all over the city.

At one in the morning she gave up and went to bed, disgusted and scared at her own emptiness. A half moon shone through the open French window, and a soft wind blew at the curtains. She closed her eyes and listened to the hourly trumpet call, the hejnalج from Saint Mary’s Church. Its regularity was now almost a comfort. But the thought of the church’s spire and the crown gave her a chill again.

Eventually, she fell asleep and dreamed of Marek Gruberski, the musician from the Ariel café. He appeared in a swirl of sand, his features emerging like a developing photograph. The long brown hair fell gracefully at his shoulders. When he saw her, he began to sing the “For-a-GirlTune.” They approached a wide river, the Vistula perhaps, but with a classical setting, like a painting. Marek held a rod over his head and beckoned until she came to him, wearing bells and harmonizing the song. Together, they stepped into white light; then Marek was gone. Ellen’s foot hit a cobbled stone on Szeroka Square. She ran to the Ariel café, but the door was locked. She sang the “For-a-GirlTune” at the clouds that floated in the windows around the square, trying to call him back.

On the second floor of a brick building, at an open French window, sat a striking gray haired old woman wrapped in a fringed plaid blanket. The woman rocked back and forth in time to the “For-a-GirlTune.” She nodded and smiled at Ellen. The room behind her was filled to the ceiling with bright green cut grass.

“From your mouth to God’s ear,” the woman said. The Yiddish accent was thick, but clear enough for Ellen to understand. “Such a lovely voice you didn’t get from Itzik.”

Ellen awoke the next morning so perplexed by her dream she was determined to return to Szeroka Square that day.

It was late afternoon by the time she arrived. She walked the perimeter of the wide, rectangular street, searching for the French window where the old woman had sat. She couldn’t find it, or not the exact one. Instead, she noticed that even in Jewish Kazimierz, the highest airspace was silhouetted with church steeples, not synagogues. She wondered if the architectural dominance was intentional, or if she was becoming as paranoid as Sy Messner’s tour group.

She walked over to the Ariel café.

A paunchy older man was doing paperwork at the reception table. “Are any of the musicians here yet?” she asked him.

A chair in the second room scraped the rough wooden floor, and Marek looked around the partition. A smile sprang to his face. “Hello again!” he called to Ellen.

“Hi!” Ellen couldn’t believe her luck at finding him.

There was an awkward pause. Neither of them seemed to know how to pick up from where they’d left off.

“I’m just replacing a string,” he said, holding up his guitar with its hanging string as if proof was required. “You came for the tape?”

She remembered how slowly his face had come into focus in her dream. “Sure, if you have it!” she said. She liked his street clothes, the blue jeans and the black T shirt.

He looked hesitant. “One of the members of our group is bringing it, but he will not be here until later.”

“That’s okay.” She smiled. “I can wait. I’m going to be in Kraków for about two months.”

He tilted his head with a happy look. “That is a long time for a tourist.”

“I’m working with the Pronaszko Dance Theatre.”

He looked puzzled.

“I’m a visiting choreographer,” she explained. “I’m working on a piece for the company. They’ll be performing it, I hope, at the end of August.”

Marek tugged at the tuft of hair in the middle of his chin and smiled broadly. “I thought there was something different about you. You are not like the other Jews who come here.”

“What do you mean?” she asked testily.

“I don’t know,” he said, averting her gaze. “Most Jews come here to cry. They don’t see Poland. They see Auschwitz.”

She wondered if this was his payback for the remarks about the menorah, or the survivor, Mr. Landau, saying, “All Poles are anti Semites. It’s in their blood.” Maybe he also heard that woman, another survivor, say, “The Poles were worse than the Germans!”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Not all Jews think that way.”

He shrugged. “There were a lot of Poles in Auschwitz too. Jews don’t own suffering. In my family, we also had people there.”

Ellen didn’t like the way he seemed to be challenging her to condemn Jews for complaining. “Have you ever been to Auschwitz?” she asked, as a kind of defense.

“Sure, I went when I was in school, but I don’t go to those places now.” Marek waved the subject away. He turned back to his guitar and began to thread the string through the peg. “American Jews say we are anti Semites, but that is not how it is with us at all.”

Genuinely curious, Ellen asked, “How is it then?”

“I will tell you one thing,” he said, turning the peg. “After the war, we stayed, with the Russians and everything. The Jews left.”

Ellen lost her attraction to him. “What do you mean left?” she said, remembering Pronaszko’s same use of the word.

“They could leave. They could go to Israel. But the ones who stayed here, we did not hate them. There was a Jewish boy in my class, Kopelman. He was not our good friend, but it did not matter. The truth is, he kept to himself. He was not one of us. It was as if he could not hear us. So what Kopelman said to us also did not matter.” Marek raised his head and looked at her. “I am not saying this was a good thing, but it is not like these people think.”

Ellen tried to imagine what it would be like to live among people who did not see or hear her. “To me, that would be an unbearable way to live.”

“Then don’t come to Poland,” he said.

She could not believe how brutal the conversation had become.

He sighed. “I’m sorry. I am not explaining it very well. To me, it is sad that Poland lost its Jews. It is a different country now than the one my grandparents knew. My grandmother says, ‘The spice is gone. Now we all taste like potatoes.’”

She was surprised by the sweet smile that appeared when he spoke of his grandmother.

“My grandmother’s best friend was a Jewish girl,” he said. “From when I was very young, she told me about this girl and her family. The stories of the Jews are her best stories, how they played together and how wonderful it was, and the Jewish festivals. It was my grandmother who sang me their songs. She did not know the words, only the tunes. Maybe there were no words. I don’t know.”

Ellen was amazed and touched by this. “Do other people like your grandmother’s stories too?”

He nodded. “People don’t know how to say it, but in a way, I think they miss the Jews. Our generation does not have these Jewish friends like my grandmother had.”

Ellen heard the contradiction between this sentiment and the anger he had expressed toward Jews like his schoolmate Kopelman, and toward others whom he somehow held responsible for depriving the Poles of their full measure of martyrdom during the war, and for being able to escape to Israel. She wasn’t sure he realized this. “What do people miss about the Jews?” she asked him.

“I don’t know. For some people, it is nostalgia for another time. For me, it is something I hear in their music. It is very powerful, this emotion they had. I hear prayers in the notes. And these prayers are hidden everywhere, like the covered-over Jewish words, Hebrew street signs, and store names on the doors in Kazimierz. You have seen this?”

“Sort of,” she admitted. But what he was saying made her uncomfortable. It was as if the Poles, now free of the constraints of real relationships with Jews, were enjoying a romantic, unthreatening Fiddler on the Roof fantasy of who they wanted them to be. It was creepy, a form of necrophilia.

A round woman, her hands and apron covered with flour, poked her head out of the kitchen and wiped her wide brow with her wrist. Her eyes were short slits in the heavy mass of her face. She said something to Marek in Polish.

“I have to eat my dinner now, before people start to come,” he told Ellen. “Would you like to join me? The cook says she will make you a plate too. We can sit over there.” He pointed to a small table next to the kitchen door.

“I’d like that very much,” Ellen said, relieved that they had made peace, however unsettling.

While Marek went to get their food, Ellen sat down at the table and inhaled the smells of Grandma Sadie’s kitchen, the chicken and onions, the chopped liver, and the fried chicken skin her grandparents called griebenes. How she missed them.

Marek returned bearing two heaping plates of roasted chicken and cooked vegetables. Ellen liked the way he enjoyed what she used to call “Grandma food.”

“Smacznego,” Marek said as they began. “That is Polish for bon appétit.”

“Smacznego,” Ellen repeated.

“Not so bad, for an American.” He smiled.

“The chicken’s very good,” she said. “But speaking of very good, how do you know English so well?”

He smiled slightly. “My mother teaches English. Also, when I was nineteen, I was sent on a special program to a music conservatory in London. I learned more English there, and I made friends. We are still, as you say, in touch.” He smiled.

She wondered if the friends included a girlfriend and felt a jab of jealousy. “Have you traveled much?”

“Not so much as I would like. Not enough money. Too much politics. It is not easy, being from Poland.” His smile seemed less certain.

“I understand,” she said. “Being American has a way of making traveling easier. Of course, there was the time I was the one American around for an anti-American demonstration in Lima. That was a treat.” She rolled her eyes, enjoying the admiring way he now looked at her. It seemed the right time to ask him on an adventure. “Marek, have you ever heard of a town called Zokof?”

He seemed surprised but not displeased with the question. “No, I do not know it. What province is it in?”

She pulled her map of Poland from her purse and pointed to the town.

“Oh, yes,” he said brightly. “It is near Radom.” He leaned over her and the map with a gentle familiarity. “It is very possible that your song was from there. They were famous for their music in that area.”

“My song?” She laughed, feeling the warmth of his skin. “It sounds a lot better as your song, believe me. My grandfather used to murder the tune.”

Marek laughed for the first time since she’d arrived. She liked the sure, masculine sound of it.

“Your family is from Zokof?”

“My grandfather was born there. When my father was in Warsaw about a year and a half ago, he visited, just to see it.” She was careful to add, “It was sort of a last minute thing,” because she didn’t want Marek to think of her father as one of those mourning Jews. “He met an old man who lives there.”

“A Jew?”

“Yes, why?” Ellen’s nervous defenses rose again.

“Because I have never met a Jew from that region. I think they are almost all gone.”

Ellen was relieved he didn’t say they’d left.

“He might be able to tell us something about your grandfather’s song. Did you tell your father that you heard it here in Kraków?”

“My father died last December.” It was still hard for her to say this, and she was grateful when he put his hand on hers in a consoling way.

“I am very sorry,” he said.

“Thanks,” she responded quickly, having become unhappily used to the etiquette of condolence.

“Maybe this Jew in Zokof remembers some music from the old days. That would be very interesting,” Marek said hopefully, as if trying to cheer her.

“Maybe,” she said halfheartedly.

“The only way to learn about these songs in the small towns is to talkto people who remember them,” he pressed on gamely. “In the cities it is easier. For example, I can find a lot of information about the music of Mordechaj Gebirtig because he was from Kazimierz. You know Gebirtig?”

Ellen looked at him blankly.

“The man who wrote the song about the town on fire, ‘Undzer Shtetl Brent.’ It is very famous. I am certain your grandfather sang that to you too.”

She felt foolish. “No, he only sang the ‘For-a-GirlTune.’ That’s what I called it. I’m sorry. I’ve never heard of Mordechaj Gebirtig.”

Marek shook his head. “You should know about this history as much as you know about Auschwitz. It would give you something to be proud about.”

Ellen made a face. “It’s not like I know so much about Auschwitz either.”

“Well, you are not going to learn that from me. But I could teach you something about Jewish music.” His smile teased her.

“I bet you could.”

“We could go together to Zokof. I could take you in my car,” he said. “A week from Tuesday maybe?”

Ellen nodded yes, her insides fluttering.