Chapter Forty-Two

IAM NOT A morning person, but Sienna is. All sparkly and bright, ready to go. I can tell by the animated look on her face when she enters my house that she has news. After eight weeks straight together, we know each other’s looks, pauses, twitches, gestures, and various smiles. Each tiny movement has its own special meaning.

“You have something to tell me.” I note her long, confident stride into the library as though she’d rather run than walk. I have staff, of course: a butler, cleaning lady, and a chef. But they have all been instructed to leave me alone during the Sienna sessions.

Today she wears celery-green bell bottoms with a black-and-white polka-dot blouse tied at the waist and a thick gold rope chain necklace with a large diamond-studded dangling S. A little on the tacky side, I think, but I keep that to myself.

“There’s something you must see.” She points to the couch. “Sit, Lena. I think you should sit.”

“Well, that just makes me want to stand.” I hate surprises.

“Fine, stand.” She places an article, a double-page spread, on the coffee table. It’s in Polish, and from the Gazeta Wyborcza. I look at her. “You don’t read Polish,” I say, putting on my reading glasses.

“True, but I read translations. There’s a historian who I’ve been in touch with at the U.S. Holocaust Museum. I told her if there is anything new about the Warsaw Ghetto or the resistance to let me know about it. Well, she sent me this article the other day translated, and...”

But I don’t hear her right now. Staring back at me from the page is a black-and-white image of an elderly, elegant, full-figured woman sitting on a piano bench, wearing a long, black velvet gown with an expensive-looking pearl choker. Her dark hair laced with gray is pulled back into a tight chignon at the nape of her neck. My heart palpitates. It’s not the woman who steals my attention at first. It is what’s perched behind her in a glass case. A violin. Not just any violin, but the Behrmans’ Stradivarius. How is that possible? And the woman in the photograph... pianist Diana Mazur.

I read the photo caption twice, but the words don’t register at first, even though I know exactly what I’m reading, who the pianist is. I bring the newspaper close to my face—my lips practically touch it. Can it be? Well preserved in her early seventies, possessing soft, dark eyes, high cheekbones, and a patrician nose. She looks like an older version of her mother. I grab Sienna’s arm to prevent myself from falling.

“Yes,” she whispers, holding on to me tightly. “It’s her. Dina Behrman. She goes by Diana Mazur. The Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra is honoring her parents’ life’s work sixty years after the war. A commemorative original symphony was created. Mazur, a celebrated pianist, will accompany the orchestra for a one-night-only performance in two weeks. Apparently, Diana rarely plays publicly, just records her music. But this... she agreed to perform.”

Little Dina lived.As Sienna rambles on, giving her assessment, I close my eyes, feeling the tears push up against the back of my lids. Tears I cannot shed but are there anyway, chafing the folds. Little Dina who feared her own shadow, the only child in the synagogue basement who didn’t take the poison, somehow, miraculously, survived. And so did the violin. I press my shaky palm to my pounding chest as I read the article slowly. I peer up repeatedly at my ornately wallpapered ceiling. Eryk... Dina is alive, I tell him. I kept my promise.

Dizzy and disoriented, I must have fainted. I feel a wet cloth pressing across my forehead, sprinkling stray droplets onto my skin, waking me, bringing me back to the present. Opening my eyes, I see the most beautiful face looming over mine like a full moon. Ethereal beauty that reminds me of what once belonged to me but is now all hers. I cling to Sienna’s hand like a life preserver.

“Lena, are you okay? Do you hear me?” Her voice fills with worry. “What do you need? What can I do?”

“You gave me what I needed. What I’ve always needed,” I whisper. “Dina is alive. The violin is...” But there is no end to the sentence.

“I will go there with you, to the performance.”

“No, no, I can’t go back there.” I sit up, my voice sounding much younger and higher pitched than its years. “Impossible. I simply can’t.”

Sienna kneels on the floor next to me. “Dina is alive because of you. This moment must be in the film. I must capture this.” She looks at me, this radiant doppelg?nger of my youth, this unstoppable pain-in-the-ass young actress-cum-director who is making her life’s work my life.

“Never. Not even for this.” My mouth trumps my heart, as my hand pulls away from hers.

But Sienna doesn’t take no for an answer. She reclaims my fingers with a tenderness that feels something akin to daughterly love, though I have never raised a child. This must be what it’s like. Look at us, I think, a childless woman and a woman who is motherless. Somehow, we found each other, two puzzle pieces meant to fit. The answer is still no.

But Sienna, trailer-park tough, is not having it. “Well, that’s too bad, because I already bought us tickets.” Her eyes are glued to mine. “We are traveling together in my plane, accompanied by my security team. I will be with you every step of the way.”

I open my mouth to protest, but she is ready for that too. She hands me a cigarette already pulled out of the pack to shut me up, and reluctantly I take it. As I inhale the comforting smoke, we both know that any fight I put up now is futile. Working with her is like looking in a goddamn mirror.