“When you play, the way you stand is very important. Also the way you hold the bow.” Sister Nadzieja’s words rise up as if from an underground cavern, deep and comforting, and her eyes remind Zosia of the chestnuts she and her mother found, fallen from a tree in the pasture.

Sister Nadzieja kneels down and arranges Zosia’s feet to be at shoulder’s width beneath her. She shapes her hand around the bow, her littlest finger curled up upon the screw, her first finger upon the pad. She positions the violin, tilted to the side beneath Zosia’s turned elbow, and places the rest under Zosia’s chin. Finally, holding Zosia’s hand, she guides the bow up and down along the D string.

With Nadzieja’s steady hand upon hers, the sound reverberating close to Zosia’s ear is crisp and strong. Zosia freezes midstroke, terrified of what she might be giving away. Such sound as this, rich and whole, might be for others to make, but not for her. Tears stream down her cheeks.

“That was a wonderful first try!”

Zosia had been too small to hold her father’s violin by herself, though she’d often imagined it. How she longs to run the bow across the strings again and hear its reverberating note.

“Now, once more,” Sister Nadzieja urges.

In Zosia’s thin arms even the little violin sags; the bow founders in her hand, and the sound becomes airy and uncertain. But Nadzieja stands by, supporting her arms, encouraging her to keep at it. Sister Nadzieja is a friend of Sister Alicja’s and she doesn’t seem to think there’s danger in the sound. And what it gives Zosia—standing with planted feet, the sense that her trapped-in feelings count enough to resonate beyond—is more than she has had here. Her strokes grow longer and more even.

Zosia returns to the classroom whenever she can: before breakfast and after chores. She practices everything Sister Nadzieja teaches her. Scales and arpeggios. Simple songs. Pressing her cheek, deep angled, to the violin, she plays what she hears in her head. Sister Nadzieja praises her playing and Zosia flushes with pleasure as she continues on, reaching for the sounds she remembers floating from the parlor of her Gracja home.

In time, Zosia’s notes, rounded, long, and melodious or plucked, short, and halting, come to feel safe, safer even than silence. They accumulate and order themselves in Zosia’s head, as monologues, as dialogues. As arguments. As pleas. As the simplest of prayers: for her mother to appear, to take her back.

Chapter 25