List was a hit in Poland—so much so that Addy had come to be something of a celebrity in Radom, which of course provoked constant teasing from his siblings. “Brother, an autograph please!” Genek would call after him when Addy was home for a visit. At the time, Addy didn’t mind the attention, or the fact that in his handsome older brother’s ribbing he sensed a hint of envy. His siblings were happy for him, no doubt. Proud of him, too; they’d watched him compose since his toes barely reached the pedals of his parents’ baby grand. They understood how much this first break meant for him. It was Addy’s big-city life, he knew, that his brother secretly coveted. Genek had visited Toulouse, had met Addy once in Paris; each time, he’d left mumbling about how glamorous Addy’s life in France seemed in comparison with his own. Now, of course, things are different. Now, there is nothing glamorous about living in a country where Addy is virtually imprisoned. Even with his hometown overrun by Germans, Addy would do anything to return.
In the square, the last few bits of daylight cast a rose-colored glow over the marble-columned fa?ade of the Capitole. Addy watches a flock of pigeons take flight as an old woman makes her way toward a series of roofed arcades to the west, and he is reminded of an evening last summer when he and his friends had sat at sundown at a café in a similar square in Montmartre, sipping glasses of Sémillon. Addy replays the conversation from that evening, recalling how, when the subject of war arose, his friends had rolled their eyes. “Hitler is un bouffon,” they’d said. “All this talk of war is just a fuss, une agitation. Nothing will come of it. Le dictateur déteste le jazz!” one friend had professed. “He hates jazz even more than he hates the Jews! Can’t you just see him walking around Place de Clichy with his hands over his ears?” The table had erupted in laughter. Addy had laughed along with them.
Reaching for his pencil, he returns to his pad of paper. He plots a melodic phrase, and then another, writing quickly, willing his pencil to keep up with the music in his head. Two hours pass. Around him, tables begin to fill with men and women settling in for their evening meal, but Addy hardly notices. When he finally looks up, the sky has darkened to a deep periwinkle blue. It’s getting late. He pays his bill, folds his pad of paper under his arm, and walks across the square to his apartment on Rue de Rémusat.
He enters the courtyard of his building, unlocks his mailbox, and rifles quickly through a small sheaf of letters. Nothing from home. Disappointed, he climbs four flights of stairs, hangs up his cap, and removes his shoes, arranging them neatly on a straw mat by the door. He drops his mail on the table, flips on the radio, and fills a kettle with water, setting it on the stove top to boil.
His place is small and tidy, with only two rooms—a tiny bedroom and a kitchen just big enough for a bistro table—but it suits him; he’s the only one of his four siblings who is still single, despite his mother’s prodding. Opening his icebox, he peruses its contents: an ounce of creamy Camembert, a half liter of goat’s milk, two speckled eggs, a red Malus apple—the kind his mother used to set out for a snack when he was little, sliced and drizzled with honey (Addy likes to keep one, always, within reach)—a sliver of steamed cow tongue wrapped in butcher paper, a half-eaten bar of dark Swiss chocolate. He reaches for the chocolate. Careful not to tear it, he peels back the silver foil and breaks off a square of the bittersweet cocoa, letting it melt for a moment in his mouth. “Merci, la Suisse,” he whispers as he sits down at the table.
At the top of his pile of mail is the latest Jazz Hot review. Addy skims the headlines. STRAYHORN JOINS ELLINGTON IN COMPOSITION PARTNERSHIP, one of them reads. Two of his favorite jazz composers. He makes a mental note to keep an eye out for their work. Beneath Jazz Hot is a pale blue slip of paper he’d missed earlier. When he sees it, his heart skips, and the remnants of chocolate suddenly taste sharp on his tongue. He picks it up, turns it over. Typed across the top are three words: COMMANDE DE CONSCRIPTION. It is a military conscription order.
Addy reads the slip twice. He has been ordered to join a Polish column of the French Army. He is to report immediately to L’h?pital de La Grave to complete his medical exam and paperwork; his duty will begin in Parthenay, France, on November 6. Addy sets the order on the table and stares at it for a long while. The army. And to think that this morning he was lamenting for his brothers, grappling with the thought of them in uniform, terrified of their fate. Now, his circumstances are no different from theirs.
Addy’s ears start to ring and it takes him a moment to realize that the water has begun to boil. He rises to switch off the burner, running a hand through his hair. As the kettle’s whistle grows faint, Addy is struck by how quickly things can change in this new realm of his. How, in an instant, his future can be decided for him. Retrieving the conscription notice, he makes his way to the kitchen window overlooking the corner of the Place du Capitole, presses his forehead against the glass. Sidney Bechet’s clarinet sings softly through his radio’s speakers, but he is oblivious. The army. Several of his friends have been called up, but they are all French. He’d hoped that as a foreigner he might be exempt. Perhaps, he thinks, there is a way out of this. But the small print at the bottom of the slip suggests otherwise. FAILURE TO REPORT TO DUTY WILL RESULT IN ARREST AND INCARCERATION. Merde. He is in good health. Of fighting age. No, there is no way out. Merde. Merde. Merde.
Four stories below, Moretti’s Occitan cross, inlaid on the paving stones, reflects beneath the street lamps like a giant granite tattoo. Overhead, a half moon is on the rise. How is it possible, Addy wonders, that amid such serenity a war is being waged across the border? Where are Genek and Jakob now? Are they awaiting orders? Are they in combat, at this very moment? Addy glances up at the sky, picturing his brothers pressed shoulder to shoulder in a trench, oblivious of the rising moon, thinking only of the mortars flying overhead.
Addy’s eyes begin to water. He slips a hand into his trouser pocket and retrieves his handkerchief, a gift from his mother. She’d given it to him a year ago, when he was home last for Rosh Hashanah. She’d found the fabric in Milan, she said, on one of her buying trips—a soft, white linen to which she’d hand-stitched a small border and embroidered his initials in the corner, AAIK. Addy Abraham Israel Kurc. “It’s beautiful,” Addy had declared when his mother handed him the handkerchief. “Oh, it’s nothing,” Nechuma had replied, but Addy knew how much care she’d put into making it, how much pride she took in her craft. He rubs his thumb over the embroidery, imagining his mother at work in the back room of the shop, a bolt of cloth laid out before her, her tape measure, scissors, and red silk pincushion at her side. He can see her measuring her thread, twisting an end between her fingers and bringing it to her lips to wet it before guiding it through the impossibly small eye of a needle.
Addy breathes deeply, feeling the rise and fall of his chest. It’s going to be all right, he tells himself. Hitler will be stopped. France hasn’t seen any fighting yet; for all one knows, the war will be over before it does. Perhaps his friends in Toulouse, who had begun to call it the dr?le de guerre—the phony war—were right, and it is only a matter of time before he’ll be able to return to Poland, to his family, to the life he’d left behind when he moved to France. Addy thinks about how, a year ago, if someone had offered him a job in New York City, he’d have likely jumped at the opportunity. Now, of course, he would do anything—anything—just to be home, sitting at his mother’s dining room table, surrounded by his parents, his siblings. He folds his handkerchief back into his pocket. Home. Family. Nothing is more important. He knows that now.
SEPTEMBER 22, 1939: The city of Lvov surrenders to the Soviet Red Army.
SEPTEMBER 27, 1939: Poland falls. Hitler and Stalin immediately divide the country—Germany occupies the western region (including Radom, Warsaw, Kraków, Lublin), and the Soviet Union occupies the eastern region (including Lvov, Pinsk, Vilna).
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jakob and Bella
Lvov, Soviet-Occupied Poland ~ September 30, 1939