Later, Róża calls the box office to buy a second ticket for Aron, but the concert is sold out.

Chapter 46

Tzofia spends long days in a practice room at Heichal HaTarbut. She doesn’t break for a snack or even a brief walk outside; she works concertedly on her recital pieces, measure by measure, her eyes fixed on the wall, streaked by the tines of metal music stands and the backs of folding chairs. To this day she marks the progress of her practice sessions with coins—five shekels crossing the length of a side shelf or else slid back and starting all over again—to master her playing free of mistakes.

Her talents were discovered here when a violoncellist from the Palestine Orchestra heard her playing at a campfire at the kibbutz Neve Ora. He urged the musical director, still looking to fill spots, to come hear her, and it was he who arranged for her advanced training. Now, so many years later and a first violinist with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, she practices “Dryades et Pan,” part of the program she recently recorded and will perform, along with the Brahms Scherzo, live next Tuesday in London and the following Sunday in New York.

She goes by Tzofia Levy now. Journeying here with Rivka’s family, she adopted their surname. Her given name, lost with her blanket, no longer rattles inside her; and the urge to search for her mother, each time it arises, is quashed by the fact that she does not know her mother’s name either. Years earlier, just before her own daughter, Shoshana, was born, she tried to discover it. At Yad Vashem, she stared at the inscription: To them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters.… Despite searching through survivor records and Żegota transport lists, she couldn’t unearth it.

She did locate an address for Pan Skrzypczak and wrote, thanking him for all he taught her. He replied, a long letter—the marks on the page transporting her to Mother Agnieszka’s chamber, his figure bent over music pages, etching notes in dark pencil. In the letter he expressed his great relief for her survival and safety, his delight in the successes he knew she was capable of. All his dearness flooded back to her with his insistence that she had taught him the more. He wished to see her perform, and she was preparing to mail him a ticket to an upcoming concert in Vienna when she got word of his death. In unguarded moments it still makes her ache and stirs thoughts of reconnecting with Kasia, and Sisters Alicja and Nadzieja, who cared for her—but she has no wish to return to Poland. She stays pointed forward, focusing on her family, her music.