A Day of Small Beginnings (58 page)

Marek turned on his side to her. “There is only one way for martyred peoples to care about each other.”

“How?”

He smiled and placed his hand on her left breast. They both felt her heartbeat. He took her hand and placed it on his chest.
“Here, in the spaces between words, where there is God.”

She slapped him gently. “You’re a hopeless romantic.”

He laughed. “Of course. I am Polish. We are romantics.”

When the hejnal/struck eight, Marek said he had to leave. “I will call you,” he promised.

They got out of bed, and she held him close.

After he’d left, she dozed off again. She had an image of Marek, his eyes closed, performing the tune on the violin, praying.
It woke her up. She threw on a robe, took out her notebook, and wrote down one word.
Pour.
Then she opened her nightstand drawer, took out the Tanakh, and turned to the book of Zechariah. She took out her great-aunt
Hindeleh’s ribbon and ran it through her fingers, scanning the page until she came to a passage where God said, “Does anyone
scorn a day of small beginnings?” She remembered how Rafael had recited this question at the lamppost in the cemetery.

She fingered the page, knowing she had found the title of her piece.

T
he next day, before she went to the studio, Ellen called her mother in Cambridge.

“Mom, I need you to send me the broken gravestone Dad kept in his study,” she said.

“Why, dear? I thought we would display it in the living room, in honor of Dad’s trip to Poland.”

Ellen wasn’t sure how much to explain. She knew she had to be cautious when speaking to her mother about her relationship
with everything to do with Zokof, and that to mention religion would only lead to argument. She didn’t want to have to defend
opinions she wasn’t sure she was committed to. But she was certain about the gravestone. “It doesn’t belong in our living
room, Mom,” she said. “It’s disrespectful.”

“Then why was it given to Dad?”

“Rafael thought it was safer in America, but he and I have talked about it now and I think Dad would agree it belongs here.”

There was a short pause on the other end of the line. “Well, all right, if that’s what you’ve decided. What would you like
me to do?”

Ellen appreciated her mother’s respect in not arguing any further. “Can you FedEx it so it gets here ASAP? And be sure it’s
shipped at their highest level of care, whatever it costs.”

“Okay,” her mother promised.

When she got off the phone, Ellen pulled out her book on Jewish gravestones and began to consider symbols she wanted to add
to the gravestone’s new center. The text, she hoped, would come to her when she began to work with the stonemason.

A
ll through the week Ellen worked on her dance. She found that the more she put her notebook aside and let the images she had
written there flow through her head and into her body, the more the piece seemed to organize itself. When she had a fair
number of choreographed sections in place, she set up a meeting with Pronaszko. The piece wasn’t finished. She just hoped
that what she had assembled would hold.

“The dance is called
A Day of Small Beginnings,
” she said. “I took the title from the Book of Zechariah. God asks, ‘Does anyone scorn a day of small beginnings?’” She glanced
at him quickly and decided against elaborating further.

He listened, head bowed thoughtfully, as she told him she’d be using Polish and Yiddish proverbs along with ambient sounds,
also Polish folk and jazz music in addition to the klezmer tune he’d heard at the studio. “The piece is in four parts,” she
said. “It juxtaposes Polish and Jewish images and evokes the difficulties of the relationship between the two peoples.”

He nodded in his measured way, seemingly undisturbed by the subject, as he had been when she’d introduced it to him weeks
before.

She was nervous. “I have musicians,” she said. “They’re the only ones who can do the klezmer tune.”

“That is fine, if their price is reasonable. I like what I am hearing. You have something nicely elusive here,” he said, fluttering
his fingers. “But with substance.”

She tried to suppress her almost giddy relief that he was pleased.

Straightening his back, Pronaszko raised his head imperiously. “You have read the Book of Zechariah,” he said. “You must remember
the rest.”

Ellen had not expected him to be familiar with the Bible.

“In Zechariah,” he said, “God promises there will be other people, citizens of great cities, who will come to seek Him in
Jerusalem. ‘Ten men of nations of every language, He says, will take Jews by the sleeve and say, we want to go with you, since
God is with you.’”

He eyed her like a prankster and said, “When I was a young man, I studied for the priesthood. But...Terpsichore seduced me
instead.” He sat back and laughed, enjoying her surprise. “I was always taken by those words from Zechariah. They made for
much discussion among the seminarians after the war, when the Jews were almost gone. Now tell me, what will we need for sets?”
He lifted his chin expectantly.

She was tempted to ask what the seminarians had said, tempted to tell him why the phrase appealed to her, but she did not
want her creative confidence rocked by the notion that he knew more than she did about the very phrase that would ignite her
work. She told him she wanted to perform the piece in Szeroka Square, and he suggested they make a date with his set designer.

He pushed back his chair. “I think this is a day of
good beginnings.
” He smiled. “The rest I will see with the company. In these next weeks, as we begin to work, I promise you I will be very
hard on you and the company. But now, when we are still on speaking terms, I think it is a good time for me to say I believe
I made a good choice in you.” He rose.

“Thanks,” she said, hoping she did not appear as overwhelmed as she felt. “We can begin next Monday.”

“Monday is good.” He shook her hand as they parted this time, like colleagues.

I watch and am astonished. Is this a midrash in dance she wants to make of our story, a teasing out of meaning from Torah?
I do not understand. But in my blue emptiness I feel a change, movement like the rise of a wave.

44

T
HE GRAVESTONE, WRAPPED PRECIOUSLY WELL, ARRIVED UNHARMED
from Cambridge. For a long time, Ellen held it in her lap, tracing the Hebrew letters she could not read, wondering if the
words inscribed on its rough gray surface did justice to the woman it memorialized. The stone was heavy, roughly two inches
thick and about two and a half feet high. She leaned it against the wall on top of her bureau and studied it for a long time,
regretting that she had not paid it more attention after her father’s death.

That evening, she called Marek at the Ariel Café to tell him the news. “We need to meet with your stonemason,” she said.

“I have already spoken to him. He was very interested to do this work. You must show him what it is you want him to do.”

“I’m working on the design, and I’ll have the text ready soon too. But, Marek, what about the cemetery wall? When will you
be able to build it?”

“After your performance, I will have more time.” There was a pause on the line. “You understand, I must work. I cannot be
there every day.” He spoke haltingly, as if he would have preferred to promise her it could be done in a week or two, as she
might have wanted to hear.

Ellen had a bad feeling that rebuilding a stone wall around a cemetery could take months. “What if we get people to help?
What about Stefan or Pawel?”

“Maybe. But I do not think they can come often. And they may not want to. It is difficult to ask musicians to do work that
is not good for the hands. That is their living.”

“I understand,” she said, appreciating that it was his living too. “You know, maybe I should call the Lauder Foundation in
Warsaw about it. They might have volunteers for this kind of thing.” She felt better for having thought of it, especially
since her father had been the one who had suggested the foundation to her. “It’s worth a shot.”

“No, no. I promised Rafael I will build the wall, and I will build it.”

“But it could take a long time, Marek. I have to get back to New York for the fall.”

“It will be done. I promise.”

It was clear he did not want her to question him any further about how he was going to accomplish this. She decided it was
best to trust him. Before going to sleep, she sat at the end of her bed and stared again at the gravestone. That night, it
appeared in her dreams, but when she awoke, it was the space between the two pieces that she thought about. She imagined the
upper piece suspended in a frame over the lower one, with some kind of mortar filling the gap between them.

The following night she dreamed she was standing under a dome formed by huge gravestones. She could see the blue sky through
the cracks, and Freidl, alone, outside. Ellen ran to her and reached to her through the cracks. But the stones were thicker
than her arms were long. She awoke, distraught.

O
ver the weekend, she met Marek and the stonemason
ukasz Rakowski at a milk bar on Grodzka Street in the Central District.
He was a heavyset man, short, with a head of thick hair that rose at an angle to his head. His palms and fingers were callused
but warm, and reassuring to Ellen when they shook hands.

She laid out the sketch she had made of the top and bottom halves of the gravestone, separated by a cut-out area in which,
she explained to him, a new stone should
float.
“I’ll need you to engrave the new stone with text and to carve these symbols,” she said, pointing to her drawings. “Can you
do that?”

ukasz studied the drawing and rubbed his hands together. Then he touched the page and traced rough shapes with his thick
fingers, as if trying to get the feel of what she wanted.

“Her name is Miriam?” he asked Marek in Polish.

Ellen understood the question. Stunned, she asked him how he had guessed the name.

“Usually, the musical instruments are for Miriam,” he said, pointing to the timbrel Ellen had drawn.