Ula and Adela act bossy, as if they are the nuns and the other girls are their wards. A pale, reedy girl, Kasia—the same girl who said “hallo” to Zosia her first day and, really, the only one who talks to Zosia—complains. “Why do I have to wash again, just because Ula says so? My hands are clean.” Zosia doesn’t dare say anything. She’s noticed Ula staring at her hair and Adela crinkling her nose and fixing her eyes on Zosia’s worn-out shoes.

She tails the group as they move through the corridors, past the paintings of sad-faced saints. She peers into different rooms along the way.

In the afternoon of her fifth day in the convent, the sight of a small violin stops Zosia in her tracks. She stands, solitary, before an open doorway, breathless.

The violin, amber, with thin black streaks along its belly, rests on a desk in a classroom strewn with other instruments: an accordion, two guitars, assorted drums and triangles. Everything looks dusty and unused. Did they once hold music lessons here? Do they still?

From the threshold, Zosia stares at the violin in wonder. Her grandfather’s workshop was full of these—honey timbred and smelling of spruce and resin and glue and varnish—and there was the one with the star that her father played, head cocked and arm flying in the evening, whose strings he let her press as he moved the long bow up and down.

A few beats, and Zosia tears herself away to rejoin the others. But she memorizes her way back, and over the course of several days she inches her way through the doorway and into the room until, finally, she stands before the violin, her fingers aching to touch the taut strings and the smooth curve of its scroll. Kasia—two years a ward, orphaned, and then separated from her only sister—follows Zosia and asks her why she wants to keep visiting the violin. Zosia only shrugs. Whether she remembers or just imagines it, the violin conjures her mother holding her high in the air, dancing round and round to Gypsy rhythms, quick and exciting.

The next day during yard time, a nun called Sister Nadzieja asks Zosia to follow her inside to the classroom. Zosia fears she is in trouble, but Sister Nadzieja smiles kindly. Except for the violin, all of the instruments have been put away, and the violin looks clean, even shiny.

“I passed by here yesterday as you were admiring the violin. Would you like to try and play it?”

A bow now rests beside the violin, and Zosia sees that both are sized for a child. By way of demonstration, Sister Nadzieja lifts the violin to her chin and with a scrunched arm moves the bow steadily across the strings. The sound is round and smooth and loud. Zosia takes a step back, scared.