A Day of Small Beginnings (60 page)

His expression softened. “I know I am a pain in the ass. The company thinks so too. But with my English, I am a useful pain
in the ass.”

Ellen raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You know, it wasn’t so long ago that I didn’t think you were such a useful pain in the
ass either.”

He looked down, like a boy expecting a scolding.

She saw he didn’t realize she was joking and felt sorry for him. “Andrzej,” she said cautiously, “what do
you
think of my using this subject for the dance?”

“You should not pay attention to what they say,” he answered quickly. “They are thinking about the new Poland, yes, but they
must know that the old Poland will always be with us too.” He shook his head. “Actually, you are lucky, because now it is
the fashion to like Jewish things. People our age are becoming curious about them. They think of them more as part of the
past. You are the first Jew some of the people in this company have met. They do not know what to say to you.”

Ellen was completely taken aback. “You mean I’m a novelty?”

He nodded. “You must understand, it is difficult for us to appreciate who are the Jews. In Warsaw, I grew up in an apartment
that was built on a mound. My mother told me this was once the Ghetto. When the war was over, it was less expensive to build
over the rubble and the remains of the Jews. So that is what they did.”

Ellen was appalled. “I have to tell you, this isn’t a normal way to behave toward people who used to live among you.”

He nodded. “You are right, of course. What can I say? But that is the way it was. All of Warsaw was a ruin. Rubble everywhere.
They had too much to rebuild. It is different with us now, truly. In Warsaw, we have a Yiddish Theater, and almost everyone
acting in this theater is Polish. People ask, Who comes here? Who understands this language anymore? But it is not just tourists
in the audience, or even the old Jews who know this language. Polish people come. They want to hear these plays and this language.
It is part of our history, you see? You cannot separate it.”

“But where do you go with that? There are no more Jews here.”

He shook his finger at her. “That is not true. I meet Jews here today. When I was a child I had a half-Jewish friend. His
parents were very unusual because they raised him Jewish. His mother is the Jew, and he said that makes him Jewish. But he
was unhappy because it is very difficult not to be Catholic in our country. He is very beautiful, and the girls always liked
him, except there were no Jewish girls. His parents were going to move to Israel so he could marry. But then he met people
at a place in Grzybowski Square, most of them half-Jewish also, or with a grandparent who is Jewish. They have a rabbi who
comes and talks to them and helps them. So it is better for him now, and I think he is much happier. He has a girlfriend,
a half Jew, but the right half, he says.” Andrzej shrugged, with a kind of resigned sadness.

Ellen put her hand on his shoulder. “Thank you for telling me all this. You know, you could choreograph a hell of a dance
about you and your friend,” she said.

He smiled at her, in his old flirtatious way. “Then I think today you should accept my offer to have coffee.”

“I accept,” she said, and they went down the stairs of the old building together.

45

I
N THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED, SUMMER HEAT AND A GRIMY HUMIDITY
enveloped Kraków, enervating even the tourists, who could be seen dragging themselves through Old Town from site to requisite
site.

In the studio, Ellen ran on adrenaline and nerves, impervious to the weather, instructing the company with such determination
the dancers seemed disinclined, or simply too overheated, to challenge her. Most afternoons, the air was thick with the smell
of sweat, which made large spreading stains on their leotards and tights. But she drove them on, demanding precision and energy
in their every movement.

Pronaszko came by every day to watch them work, but he refused Ellen’s invitations to stay for an entire rehearsal. “When
you have something substantial to show me, you will let me know,” he told her.

With the performance date approaching, she thought such patience risky and out of character for a man who had insisted on
a tight schedule for finishing the sets, props, costumes, and all her lighting designs. Construction had already begun on
the simple, stable tree structure the two of them had drafted with the set designer. On edge from keeping track of these details
and from the constant adjustments she was making in her choreography, Ellen only hoped Pronaszko’s relaxed attitude indicated
confidence in her abilities. She gave herself a week’s deadline to finalize the piece, then took Pronaszko aside. “I’m going
to have the musicians here for rehearsal next Tuesday. With the live sound, I think you’ll get a feel of the piece. We’ll
do a run through of Part Two.”

Pronaszko ran his hands through his hair. “Done,” he said happily.

Ellen felt as if she’d just thrown herself out the window.

That night, she took the tram to the Ariel Café and met with the musicians. Pawelؠand Stefan were both wildly excited about
performing for a dance company. “We will bring our performance clothes with us,” they promised eagerly.

“No. No,” Ellen said, hoping not to sound so alarmed by the suggestion that they would take offense. “Wear your regular clothes.”

“But what will we wear at the performance?”

“We’re going to get you black jeans, white T-shirts, and black baseball caps.” She didn’t have the heart to tell them their
sentimental Polish ideas of Jewish dress were
uncool,
and that she wasn’t interested in reinforcing their notions of mythological Jews in her piece. She assumed they would figure
out for themselves that the caps looked like modern yarmulkes. Marek had put his arm around her and said, “You are the director.
We’ll wear what you think is best.” She’d laughed, he had kissed her cheerfully, and they’d all had a shot of kosher vodka.

T
he following Tuesday, Marek, Paweł, and Stefan appeared at the studio door with a bass, a clarinet, and the electric violin
Marek had suggested they use because he thought the sound would carry better outside. The whole company was there, rehearsing.
Ellen was nervous, for herself and for the musicians. “Come in,” she said, hoping to sound welcoming. She introduced the musicians
to the company and asked Marek to explain to them why he was interested in Jewish music.

She watched him speak to them in Polish, and noticed that with him, they asked questions. She didn’t know if this was because
they were now more absorbed in the dance piece or if his commitment to it, as a Pole, held more weight with them. Henryk spoke
up fervently. Marek responded, and the discussion took on a heated quality. She saw that he was already at home among them,
while she, in her folding chair, felt awkward in her inability to participate. They all had so many opinions, she thought,
none of which they ever expressed to her. Their distrust, or whatever it was, pained her, and her inability to follow what
they were saying made her feel, once again, the frustrations of the deaf.

When the dancers and musicians had finished talking, she took Marek aside. The dancers began warming up. Stefan and Paweł
were getting out their instruments. “What did you say?” she asked him.

“I said I was trained in classical music, but I discovered Jewish music quite by accident and now it is the music I love most.
I said I think of it as Polish music and that the more I play it, the more it is evolving into something not really all Jewish
anymore, and not really Polish, but something between.” He winked at her. “I said that to me, this music is a sacred kingdom.
Henryk did not understand this.” He shrugged. “But I told them that the story of the tune we’re playing is very special to
you.”

“What did you tell them?” Ellen asked anxiously.

Marek picked up the electric violin and began to tune it. “I told them it is the story of how a man named Aaron Birnbaum,
who wrote some of the best Jewish music of his generation, loved a woman named Freidl, and how he made his love live for generations
with this tune, even if he and Freidl had no future.”

Ellen got a knot in her throat. Marek must have seen her distress because he laid down his violin and tenderly began to stroke
her back. She saw Andrzej glance up at them and knew that he had guessed their relationship.

Marek whispered, “You know, they told me they like this dance. They are discovering things in it. They think it is very spiritual.
The Jewish part, for them, is exotic. That is all it is. But they like it. It is not what they thought it would be.” He smiled
at her. “I thought maybe I should tell you now because probably they will not. They don’t know how to talk about this with
you.”

“But I need them to talk about it so they understand it.”

“No. You need to teach them the feelings you want them to dance. It is not their job to have to know what everything means.”

She wasn’t sure if he was right about this, but still, it came as a tremendous relief to hear him say it.

T
hat evening, Ellen returned to her room completely exhausted from the rehearsal. It had gone more smoothly than she had expected,
and Pronaszko had seemed genuinely pleased. But now she lay on her bed staring at the wingback chair, overwhelmed by the enormity
of what she did not know about Torah, Talmud, Jewish history and lore. Such ignorance could cost her, she told herself. She
could be making gross historical and theological mistakes in her choreography and not know it. That would bring dishonor to
the memory of her father and grandfather, to Freidl, to the Jews of Zokof, to Polish Jews, to Jews everywhere. She would be
ridiculed. Pronaszko would turn his back on her. Her work would never be commissioned again. Her head chattered on and on.
She felt as if she were falling. Instinctively, she curled into a fetal position. Her breathing became shallow and quick.
Minutes passed. She clutched two fistfuls of her hair and finally forced herself to say aloud, “That’s enough, for God’s sake.
Breathe.” She sat up and leafed through her notebook, looking for something to distract her from her anxiety.

Halfway through, she stopped at the question she had written at the studio.
Who is Miriam?
It seemed to her that if she could find Miriam’s place in the dance, the prayer would truly pour out of her heart, as Marek
had suggested it could. At the very least, it calmed her to search the Tanakh for references to Miriam.

What she found was that after Miriam’s Song of the Sea, much is made in the Torah of her two younger brothers, Moses and Aaron,
but other than one strange scene where God struck Miriam with leprous white scales for disapproving of Moses’ marriage to
a Cushite woman, the only other time she is mentioned is at her death.
The Israelites arrived in a body at the wilderness of Zin on the first new moon, and the people stayed at Kadesh. Miriam died
there and was buried there. The community was without water, and they joined against Moses and Aaron.

Ellen thought it odd that the death of Miriam was followed not with descriptions of her burial or how people mourned her,
but by the absence of water. She recalled a Passover Seder a few years back, when her cousin Laura, who had taken on the peculiar
job of being the “Jewish one” in her family, had placed a glass of water on the table. “It’s a symbol of Miriam’s Well,” she
had said. “We need to bring the women back into our story.” But Ellen didn’t remember her explanation of what exactly Miriam’s
Well was, and she couldn’t find any mention of it in the Tanakh. Eventually, she closed the book and fell asleep.

F
reidl stared intently at Ellen from the wingback chair. The white handkerchief floated above her head, filled with light.
But under the great plaid blanket her bearing suggested a profound sadness.

Ellen sat up in bed. It had been many nights since Freidl had come to her. “Where are you when you aren’t with me or Rafael?”
she asked.

Freidl shrugged weakly. “A place like that you shouldn’t know from.”