Whenever I bathed Baby in his bucket, the boy’s life became too real to me. He was so vulnerable, a dark little duckling with a wee stem of a neck. While I made him clean, I wondered what I might tell him someday about his mother, how she’d made me kill her, how she’d guided my hand with the knife. I tried to invent prettier, more scenic deaths for her. Something with a snowfall. Something without a blade. But in Warsaw, my imagination had left me. I did not know where it went, but I hoped it didn’t occupy anyone else the way it had occupied me. I wanted the death of my imagination more than anything. It had no place in this world after war. Once, I told myself, I was happy to live for another, to continue for her sake. But without her, I was just a madman’s experiment, a failed avenger, a girl who didn’t end when she should have.
Papa saw my sadness. He said that we had hope still. He said we had a country so cracked that it was easy for Pearl to slip inside and hide in the most unseen corners. He’d say this on our daily visit to the orphanage when we went to see if she had been shuttled into its care. But no one who looked like me was waiting at the window; no one who sounded like me was singing at the gate.
“If we don’t find her,” I began on the way home one time. But I didn’t have a chance to finish this sentence. An odd correction was made to my thoughts when a stray dog appeared at my side and then promptly dropped at Papa’s feet. This dog was a mud-covered scrap, ugly and mongrel. The state of his paws made it clear he had traveled a long distance in search of someone. On us, he could smell the same struggle.
Papa thought that the dog would cheer me. He was not wrong in this. I loved this mongrel’s protective spirit, the way he barked like a pistol and snarled at anyone who raised his voice to me. This dog, I noted to Feliks, he would have been a match for Mengele. Feliks did not disagree.
“But I’m glad that he will know only this zoo,” he said. “And not the other.”
Together, we watched the dog dig tunnels through the animals’ cages. This was something that pleased him to no end, and I could only hope that he would never dig up the poison pill Papa buried in the yard while he went about this business. I knew that if I saw that pill at the right moment — I could not resist the finality promised by its whiteness.
Feliks saw this temptation in me. He, too, assured me that Pearl would return. Maybe, he said, she was just waiting until the animals came back to the zoo. He said that the zookeeper’s wife had plans to visit the grounds, and already, there was talk of the zoo’s revival. Soon, the animals would march, two by two, into their rightful houses. I stalked about their cages in wait, and tried not to dwell on the cages I’d known.
But on the day I want to speak about, it was not an animal that arrived in Warsaw, but a coffin. I wasn’t there to see it lowered onto the street. I didn’t hear the cry of the mistress of the orphanage as she opened it.
I was in the fields with Baby and my dog. I was training him to be a stronger dog. He liked to beg, and I could not break him of it. Begging would not do in these vulnerable days. So I gave him a new trick to use instead — I taught him to dance. Whenever that dog danced, I heard Zayde laugh. I had thought I would never hear Zayde laugh again, but there he was, all chuckle and knee-slap. None of it ghostly or remembered, but clear as spring. That was fair motivation to keep up with the practice. Watching this shabby canine waltz — it made me dream again.
On this day, we were practicing in the field with Baby lolling in the grass, an uninterested audience. We had music too, of a sort. In the distance, you could hear the sound of paving stones being laid, one next to another — the stones sang out, their clinks carrying over the city and up into the drifts of the crab apple trees. Here and there, a starling asserted itself, warbling, its cry so forceful that its hasty body trembled. It was to this music of stone and bird and Zayde’s laughter that the dog undertook his choreography.
I told my dog that he had to practice. Someday, I said, someone might discover his talents and put him in a movie. That could be our future — didn’t he agree? My dog did not agree. He disliked practicing just as much as Pearl had; he had no interest in proving himself worthy of the art. But he danced for me all the same, and I applauded him after the full revolution of a turn.
When I stopped clapping, though — I still heard applause. Someone was clapping behind our backs. I blushed. Because dog-dancing is nothing to be proud of; it is a sport for the solitary, a sad sort of whirl.
But when I glanced over my shoulder, I saw myself. Or I saw a girl, a strong girl, a girl who was no longer lonely. The girl was happier than I’d imagined I could ever be again. She was clapping and smiling and the dog gamboled toward her and shimmied at her feet, abandoning any idea of a show. Still, the girl kept clapping. She clapped even as there were two crutches propped beneath her arms.
Have you ever seen the best part of yourself stationed at a measurable distance? A distance you’d never thought possible after so much parting? If so, I’m sure you’re aware of the joys of this condition. My heart thrilled with reunion, and my tongue ran dumb with happiness. My spleen informed my lungs that they’d lost the big bet—I told you so! my spleen said — and my thoughts, my rosy thoughts, they kept thinking toward a future I’d believed long lost.
She put her crutches down and we sat back to back, spine to spine, in the manner of our old game.
I’ll admit — I peeked at what she drew.
I peeked not to cheat, but oh — just because she was my sister. I had to see her. I am sure you understand.
Pearclass="underline" Chapter Twenty-Two Never the End
And we drew poppies. We drew them as tight buds that might never see a bloom, we drew them for Mama and Zayde, and then we added a river for Papa. We drew a train, a piano, a horse. We drew the children Stasha would have, and the children I never could. We drew boats that carried us far away from Poland, and planes that brought us back. We did not draw a needle, no; we did not draw a crutch, much less the man who had undone us. But we drew skies that would protect us our whole lives through, and trees that would shelter two girls who might never be whole, and only when we finished drawing did my sister even try to speak.
“Let’s try again,” Stasha said.
I didn’t need to finish her sentence. I knew what she meant — we had to learn to love the world once more.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the following:
Jim Rutman, for your gallant investment in my writing and the years of brilliant insights that illuminated the path for this book. It wouldn’t be real without you.
Lee Boudreaux, editor-heroine beyond compare — I remain in awe of your commitment to every dream, sorrow, and longing contained within.
Reagan Arthur, Michael Pietsch, Judy Clain, Jayne Yaffe Kemp, Carina Guiterman, Tracy Roe, Kapo Ng, Sean Ford, Carrie Neill, Nicole Dewey, and the teams at Little, Brown and Company and Lee Boudreaux Books that I’ve been so fortunate to work with. Szilvia Molnar, Danielle Bukowski, Brian Egan, and the fantastic people at Sterling Lord Literistic. All of the amazing foreign publishers, for welcoming this novel.
The David Berg Foundation, for their gracious support, and my teachers and peers at Columbia.
Pranav Behari and Adam Kaplan, for always being my heartfelt and invaluable writing-family.
Stephen O’Connor, Lydia Millet, Joyce Polansky, Karen Russell, George Sanchez, Rudy Browne — that I have enjoyed your influence and friendship is a wonder.