Whether vespers has ended or has been interrupted, Zosia doesn’t know; all she knows is the calefactory is near instantly transformed into a recital hall, with once fine, now shabby armchairs reserved for the soldiers.

The nuns, their faces as white as the starched cloth at their cheeks, rush about, arranging the children in rows. The children squirm and fidget, excited at the night’s unexpected turn. Zosia’s belly jitters. Her hands seem hardly to belong to her—they shake so violently—and she can’t think what to play. Definitely not “Nigun,” though she just practiced it. Not Brahms’s Scherzo either. She might break down in the middle of it. Sister Alicja quickly ties a kerchief around Zosia’s head—“This will keep your hair out of your face”—before she lights additional lanterns at the front of the room.

The soldier leads in his comrades: one, towering in height and stone-faced, with fancy insignia on his collar and armband; the other, stocky and chuckling, in a plain brown uniform jacket, his hand on the pistol in its holster. As they enter, the room goes silent.

Zosia sends a pleading look to Mother Agnieszka, who bobs her head in a calming, rhythmic motion. Zosia struggles to breathe.

It occurs to Zosia to play the rhapsodic middle of Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen. She recently practiced it with Sister Nadzieja. Tuning her violin hastily, she quarter turns, hardly noticeable, to avoid directly facing the soldiers and the children seated behind them. She puts bow to string to start—her arm steady despite how nervous she feels inside—and plays, the guiding rhythm a Romani march, soft and introspective. In her mind, her bird, solitary, restless, seeks out a resting place in the icy branches of a tree. His warbling notes reverberate in the night sky like a call and response: Are you there? Yes, I am here. Where? Right here. Settle yourself. Settle.

A long, rising note, barely audible, ends the middle sections—a gloomy place to stop. Zosia takes a chance and continues, playing the final movement: upbeat and rousing, a showpiece. As she keeps watch on the intricate fingering and bowing, she really performs now, angling outward to the audience, aware of the sound echoing in the room, escalating, frenzied, and exciting. The last measures push Zosia, and she rises to their challenge with the quickest of strokes and wild plucking. She feels expansive as never before, legs rooted, bow-arm flying, her fingers dancing between the strings. She closes her eyes. The music soars beyond her own sensibilities, into the listening crowd. She finishes with a strong, dramatic bow stroke.

An uneasy silence follows. All eyes turn to the Oberleutnant. His previously severe expression has grown soft. When he speaks, it is as if regaining a lost voice.

“Amazing,” he says in German.