A Day of Small Beginnings (63 page)

Ellen was drawn back to the performance by the sound of the gravestone dancers, standing in their square of white light. They
were chanting the prayer El Molei Rachamim. The dancers themselves did not know that Ellen had taught it to them with the
name Freidl Alterman inserted in its proper place, beseeching God to grant her perfect rest in the shadow of His wings, to
let her soul be bound up in the bond of everlasting life.

Genia appeared at the trunk of the tree holding a white handkerchief. A spotlight illuminated the female figure in the tree,
who turned her back to the audience, extended her arms, and dipped, as if performing an American Indian eagle dance. But with
the “For-a-GirlTune” playing again, and a certain uplift in the woman’s arms, the dance took on a slightly Hassidic quality.
Genia climbed the trunk. The two women met, danced briefly side by side, the handkerchief held between them, until the draped
figure climbed to the top of the trunk. Directly lit by the white spotlight, she balanced so high up, and so precariously,
Ellen was afraid she might fall. Stretching open her arms, she revealed that the inner side of her plaid blanket was lined
with tiny golden mirrors. Each of them, illuminated by the spotlight, shone like sparks.

Marek blew the shofar.
Teruah!
The ram’s horn’s staccato screams sounded its battle charge, saying,
Transform the world to one of justice and compassion! Speak up! Say, Here I am! Bringing light where there is darkness, understanding
where there is ignorance, healing where there is illness, and hope where there is despair.

The Polish banner dancers entered in a line from stage right, each with a hand on the shoulder of the person in front. The
Jewish gravestones entered from stage left, each with a hand on the shoulder of the person in front. As Poles and Jews they
formed two lines, facing the audience, one behind the other.

A wild, laughing refrain of the “For-a-GirlTune” took over from the shofar, and magically, the mirrored blanket, tied with
ribbons at its four corners, rose from the female figure’s shoulders and swooped forward toward the banners and gravestones.
Tied to the dowels, it became a wedding canopy over their heads.

The music stopped. The figure, illuminated by the tree-trunk spotlight, shook a timbrel. The sound of approaching wind grew
louder.

In unison, the dancers pivoted a quarter turn and faced each other in two lines, as modern Poles and Jews, under the wedding
canopy. Ellen was startled at how fraught the moment was with tension and love, confusion and hope—a holy moment, she thought,
separate from the world and at the same time brutally of it.

Suspended in that uncertainty of which way they would go, the dance ended in a blackout.

T
here was a slight pause before the applause began, as if the audience needed a moment to collect itself. The dancers came
forward and took their bows. The applause built. They turned and clapped for the musicians, who stood and took their bows
from their places in the tree. The dancers took more bows and applauded their audience.

By the time Ellen came onstage there was a standing ovation and what she understood as Polish
bravos.
She beckoned Pronaszko to come from the wings. Ever the gentleman, he presented her with a large bouquet of flowers and kissed
her hand before taking his bow. “Perhaps we should think of an American tour,” he said, smiling, not taking his eyes off the
audience. “God be praised.”

Backstage, Ellen was overwhelmed with almost uncontainable glee at having brought about the din of rejoicing that had broken
out among the cast. She startled Andrzej with a hug, telling him how great he’d been, and laughed at Piotr, who was swinging
Ewa around, screaming. But her joy began to dissipate as she posed for photographs with Pronaszko, traded compliments with
the set designers, and smiled at the dancers until she could feel the muscles of her face.

Sadness, like an enveloping silence, began to separate her from everyone. Claiming to have a bad headache, she declined their
invitations to celebrate, sincerely promising a rain check.

Leaving the dark streets of Kazimierz in Marek’s car, she wrapped her weary arms around his neck and kissed him. “You were
so beautiful,” she told him. “So amazing.” He stopped the car, took her head in his hands, and looked at her. “What is troubling
you?” he said.

She was glad he had not been fooled by her smiles. “Marek, I don’t know if we did anything for Freidl.”

He didn’t offer his opinion, and she was grateful he didn’t argue. “We will go to Zokof,” he said.

47

T
HE COMPANY PERFORMED
A D
AY OF
S
MALL
B
EGINNINGS
FOUR
times that week, although for Ellen, never so powerfully as on that first night. The morning the set was struck, she walked
the length of Szeroka Square, from the Old Synagogue to the grassy memorial for Kraków’s Jews, and stood for a long while
surveying the Remuh Synagogue and the surrounding buildings, with their windows reflecting a clouded sky.

She had hoped for a glimpse of Freidl, but there had been no sign of her. No dreams. No images. No tune. Through the days
and nights following the last performance, Ellen had found herself whispering, “Where are you?” Before she went to sleep she
would plead to her, “Don’t be angry with me. I need you. Come back.” It horrified her to imagine she had sent Freidl back
to the blue emptiness, to eternal conscious suffocation and silence. “Teach me in the way I should go,” she said. But still
Freidl did not return.

She sent Rafael a note asking him, in the gentlest way she knew, if anything had
changed,
but she hadn’t yet heard back from him. If she could, she would have driven directly to Zokof, as Marek had offered. But
Pronaszko had insisted on setting up meetings with her to discuss future projects. She could not just abandon him, or the
company.

On her last day at the studio, it seemed to her the dancers sensed her distance. In a new, halting, and embarrassed English,
they tried to entice her back into their circle with amusing stories of things that had gone wrong backstage and how they
had worked them out without help from her or from Pronaszko. She appreciated this, and she told them so. She told them she
hoped they would do other pieces together. Privately, she encouraged Andrzej to start working on his choreography, promising
to send him dance tapes she thought might inspire him. But even as the company lingered, offering their reticent good-byes,
she was content to let Pronaszko reclaim his flock.

By the end of the week, her clothes lay strewn over the lumpy bed and the wingback chair, ready for packing. She knew that
when she returned to New York, she would remember that chair like a floating object in a Chagall painting. In its arms she
would always find either the naked Marek or the proud Freidl. She snapped a Polaroid of it and held it, side by side, with
the studio picture of her grandpa Isaac and Hillel.

Now all that remained was the trip back to Zokof. She had not seen much of Marek after the last performance. He’d had several
engagements with his group, but he’d made a short detour to Kielce to check
ukasz Rakowski’s masonry work on the new gravestone.
Late that night, he had left with the desk clerk at her hotel a batch of Polaroids he’d taken with her camera. “Almost finished,”
he’d written on the outside. The photos showed the new inscription that she had written. Ellen had been thrilled at the meticulousness
and creativity of
ukasz Rakowski’s work.

A few days later, Marek picked her up at the hotel.

“It seems like forever since I saw you,” she said.

He smiled, brushing his hand along the soft folds of her blouse. “I have the stone in the trunk. It is wrapped many times
around, to make it safe.”

Ellen had thought they would be picking it up along the way in Kielce. Excited that the finished gravestone was in her reach,
she asked to see it.

“We should wait,” Marek said. “It will be better to see it again when it is where it belongs. That will be more respectful,
I think, than to open it here in the street.”

He looked so earnest, and he had put so much time and effort into getting the stone made, she couldn’t refuse him. “Okay.
I can wait.” She kissed him and got into the Fiat.

Inside, he reached into the backseat and grabbed some newspaper clippings and a magazine.

Ellen saw a challah, loosely wrapped in paper, lying there. “Did you get that at the Ariel Café?” The little restaurant where
they met was already evoking nostalgia.

He handed her the reviews. “Look at these first. Then I will tell you about the bread.” He put the car in gear and negotiated
the narrow streets of Old Town toward the Planty.

Ellen slid her seat as far back as it would go and put her feet up on the dashboard. She scanned the reviews even though they
were in Polish. “Pronaszko told me we got a good review in the Catholic weekly paper.” She fanned herself importantly with
the reviews. “I’ve become his new personal saint.”

Marek pointed to the illustrated magazine in her lap. “Then let him pray that you will accept his commission for a new piece.
Look at the article they wrote in
Przekrój.
This is a very popular weekly magazine here. And did you see that one from the
Gazeta Wyborcza
? That is a major national paper.”

“I know. Pronaszko went completely berserk when he brought it in. Their reporter came to the dress rehearsal and asked me
a couple of questions about modern dance and our staging. But I didn’t think he was particularly interested in what we were
doing.”

“Well, he
was
interested. He calls it ‘a passionate prayer for Polish Jewish relations.’”

Ellen held up the
Gazeta Wyborcza
article. Its accompanying photograph showed her dancers facing each other under the wedding canopy, the Freidl figure overhead
in the tree. She examined it for some sign of Freidl’s departing soul and, despite her better judgment, felt disappointed
when she couldn’t see it. “You’ll have to translate these for me later,” she said. “Tonight?”