Róża takes some strands of hay. She keeps one long strand intact and breaks others. She illustrates the value of notes this way: the long strand is a whole note; two half-size strands represent half notes; four quarter-size strands represent quarter notes. “I’m sorry, I can’t tear the hay small enough to show you the eighths!”

Shira rummages in the hay and pulls out the paper with the beginning of Brahms’s Scherzo on it. Róża can see, she is examining it anew. There’s still so much to explain—the flats, the ties—but Shira looks tired. She’ll teach her more tomorrow.

Róża writes out the musical notes to a simpler piece: their nightly lullaby.

Cucuricoo!

Di mom iz nisht do.

Vu hat zi geyn?

Tzu bakumen a glaz fun tay.

Vas is gegangen tsu trinken es?

Mir aun dir.

The tune repeats, gentle and lilting, like a boat crisscrossing a placid lake. For the rest of the afternoon, Shira hums it quietly, contentedly, over and over, pointing at it note by note as she goes.

At first, Shira does not understand how her mother’s marks on the music page match the sounds of their lullaby, but then something snaps into place and Shira sees how the pattern of notes matches the swaying melody, the simple rhythmic repeats. She turns once again to the start of Brahms’s Scherzo, and what has looked like her mother’s scribbles coalesces into the repeat crescendo of staccato notes, sounds she remembers from her mother’s humming, her father’s practice sessions. A new feverish feeling, this one from excitement and urgency, washes over her. The concertos her parents played, the symphonies her grandfather listened to, the music that rushes through her own head, can be put onto paper! Shira can write all of it into these staffs—even the feelings embedded within. She reaches for a pencil.

Chapter 19

On a cool September day, frantic screams pierce the silence of the barn. Peering through a crack, Róża sees Krystyna shooing a pig out of the root cellar. Next: the pig darting around the front of the barn, squealing.

“What is it, Mama?”

“Shh. A pig got loose.”

From the despair in Krystyna’s shouts, Róża guesses the pig feasted on the winter store. Róża had watched as the family stockpiled the harvest and stowed it in the cellar, hoping to avoid a German raid. It seems the pig sniffed it out.

Róża thinks: This could be what finally exiles her and Shira from the barn. Krystyna will no longer have enough to feed her family, plus two. Róża hoists herself, weak and stiff, to standing; then she sees the barn door shifting open. She ducks beneath the hay, grabbing Shira with her. She squeezes Shira’s wrist tight, a code for utter silence.