He hands Zosia a piece of composition paper filled with notes drawn in thin pencil. Sight-reading as she can, it conjures the dance of light on her red-and-white-stitched bed quilt; the cinnamon-sugar smell of mandelbrot wafting in from the kitchen. “Oh,” she exclaims, “my grandmother always hummed this while she did her Friday baking!”

As soon as the words are out of her mouth, Zosia looks up anxiously. Her teacher’s expression holds pure kindness in it, but she floods with fear.

Revealing details of her past even to Pan Skrzypczak, who supports her in what she loves, feels threatening.

“I’m sorry, thank you,” she says in a jumbled rush, and, paper in hand, she runs to her hiding closet and curls up in the front compartment among the robes. After several minutes, hands still shaking but her breathing calmed, she peers at the music page. In its notes she hears her grandmother’s voice, the interwoven sounds of her mama’s cello, her tata’s violin.

Through tears Zosia sees that with the title space left blank, it appears as an entirely nondescript piece of sheet music. No danger in it.

Zosia vows that, next lesson, she will express her heartfelt thanks to her teacher.

Chapter 32

Soldiers arrive at the convent in the middle of the night to search the children’s rooms. Zosia is unsure where to go—to her hiding closet? or into the line with the other girls?—until Sister Alicja swoops in and rushes her to the lavatory, where, in the window glass, illuminated by a single bulb, Zosia sees the reflection of her hair, newly dark at the crown, white to the tips.

Sister Olga can be heard pacing up and down the line, shushing the children. Zosia is terrified that Adela will once again ask why she isn’t in line. A loud clatter ensues as bureau drawers are opened and shut, possessions turned out from trunks. Then a strangled silence—a moment in which Zosia remembers waiting for her mother’s hands to fold over hers—before Mother Agnieszka’s voice, alarm overlaid by a pronounced steadiness, dismisses Sister Olga to her chamber and summons the soldier into the corridor, away from the line of children, close to the lavatory. Sister Alicja stiffens upon hearing the soldier just on the other side of the door, speaking about a discrepancy in ration cards. Zosia’s thoughts still fix on Adela: perhaps she won’t have a chance to say anything now?

“Why is there an extra bed?”

“I beg your pardon?” Mother Agnieszka asks.

“I counted eighteen beds but only seventeen children.”

Sister Alicja’s face blanches white. Zosia feels a rising panic. Mother Agnieszka’s voice, when it comes, is a pitch higher.

“One of our little girls has typhus, poor dear. I can take you to the infirmary to see her if you’d like.”

“No—that won’t be necessary.”