Kasia begins applauding. The nuns join, and the children laugh and clap with a jubilance unknown in the convent’s confines. The soldiers clap too. Zosia floods with relief. The only ones who sit unmoved are Ula and Adela.

Before tonight, Zosia only ever really wished to be heard by her bird, by her mother. As terrifying as it was, she loved performing for an audience.

When the men get up from their chairs, they are newly gracious. They leave without taking anything from the kitchen, without holding roll call.

Next morning, Zosia lifts her blanket to her face and breathes into it before making up her bed and wetting her hair in the bathroom sink. Sister Alicja came in the middle of the night to bleach it, and now Zosia hopes an extra rinse will take some of the smell out. With her head in the basin, she reaches for a towel, but Ula and Adela step in and block the shelf. Zosia retracts her arm and wrings out her hair by hand. She turns quickly to leave, but Ula gets in front of her.

“Your hair looks like straw.”

Adela reaches out to touch it. “Why is it so stiff and wiry?”

Ula grabs a clump too. “And what kind of color is this?”

Both girls tug, hard, before letting go.

Ula and Adela walk out of the bathroom, toward the refectory. Hair dripping and in stocking feet, Zosia trails them as they slip into the larder. She waits a few seconds, then opens the door to catch them snatching rolls from the bread box.

“I will get you punished for this.” Zosia’s voice shakes, but she thrusts her face forward, not backing down.

“You wouldn’t,” Adela counters.

“You make any more trouble for me and I will summon Sister Alicja. You’ll see, she will take my word over yours.”

Ula and Adela stare in surprise. Zosia takes a slight step toward them, daring only because of what’s at stake.

A moment passes. Ula places her roll back in the bread box and brushes flour from her whitened fingertips. Adela bites into her roll, then stuffs it into her pocket as she walks past Zosia, out of the refectory, Ula rushing after her.

Chapter 36

Aron seeks out Róża in the nighttime, just to talk, to hold her in sleep. Nestled close in her bunk, he asks her, “What happened to your family?” And so she tells him how the soldiers came to her parents’ house in Gracja.

“At first, it was to ransack my father’s luthier workshop. They smashed his workbenches, stole his tools. Spilled his varnishes everywhere and even broke one of his violins. A few weeks later, they came for us.”