A Day of Small Beginnings (38 page)

Ellen took this as encouragement, not as a come on. “Thanks.” She smiled and examined the jeans and thick soled black shoes
on the young Poles at the next table, wondering if Pronaszko’s dancers didn’t have a point in objecting to an outsider choreographing
for them. Maybe it wasn’t outside influences they needed. From New York to Kraków, everyone was starting to dress alike, as
if they were all shopping in the same friends’ closets. In a way, there was something sweet about it, but she had an uncomfortable
sense they might all be surrendering too much of themselves.

“I’ll order you the beetroot soup and the pierogi. They are specialties here. You will like it.” Pronaszko called the owner
over and with great élan, and without asking her permission, ordered their dinner. She was offended but, for the sake of the
subject they were about to discuss, she let it pass.

“How do I get your dancers to loosen up and try things?” she asked him.

“This is their problem,” he said, frowning. “They know same, same, same. No color, no variety. I wanted you to make them see
how you use improvisation in your choreographic work, to show them the process.”

Ellen smiled, relieved to know the reason he had chosen her to do the first improvisation. “How do you get to the point where
you don’t mind their resentment?” she asked.

“You ignore it. You do what is best for the company, for its art. You do not need them to like you. You need them to work
so that they learn to live with the terror of creativity.”

She laughed at his dramatics. “And you call yourself an anti-communist?”

He answered with what she thought of as the European continental smile, head bowed in a show of false modesty, while the eyes
reveal a practiced cynicism. “So, what do you have in mind for us?” he said, jerking his head up suddenly and returning to
his professional demeanor.

She pulled out her notebook and began to flip nervously through the pages. “The piece I worked on for you in New York is called
Four Corners.
It has the sound of something very basically American to me, like the old town squares up in New England, or an Amish quilt
pattern, or square dancing. I like the idea of superimposing that on a Polish sensibility. Obviously, a lot will get influenced
by the way your dancers move.”

Pronaszko nodded slightly.

“My idea is to pull images and sounds of very different types of people from the four corners of the stage. They appear successively,
each interacting with one or more of the other corners. I have three hip hop types coming together with a superslow whirling
dervish, each with their own music. There’s interplay with the music too. You get one style, one beat, then the other. The
volume of each musical identity goes up and down and fuses as they interact.”

Pronaszko’s eyebrows rose, but Ellen couldn’t yet tell if he was interested. “I have leaping, tumbling gymnastic types who
dance to Japanese Kodo music. They come together with smooth, gliding types, dancing to country western music. The whole piece
plays with the idea of diversity.”

Pronaszko played absentmindedly with his silverware. “Unfortunately, I do not believe in the melting pot,” he said, sniffing.
“I like the title
Four Corners.
It evokes something. But to just introduce types and treat them like puppets, what is the point? This sort of thing is done
all the time. I don’t like it. I think we should try for something bigger.”

Ellen wasn’t prepared to have him brush off her work without more discussion, but she liked that he was pushing her. “Not
big enough?” she repeated, amused. She took a sip of water.

Pronaszko sighed and pulled out a cigarette. When their dinner arrived, he became more interested in extolling the virtues
of the sour beetroot soup with minced meat raviolis—ears, he called them—and the wild mushroom pierogis, than he was in hearing
about the thought process behind her work. He cut a pierogi in half and pushed it around his plate. Then he put down his fork.
“I want to hear a point of view,” he said slowly. “I want to hear a cry of passion, a subject from your soul. You talk about
types.
I am not interested in types for types’ sake. I did not bring you here to play with mere concepts. That is for the timid.”
He slammed his open palm on the table, jangling the silverware, startling her. “I am interested in evoking response.”

“Response to what?”

“That is for you to decide.”

A silence fell between them. Pronaszko studied her face. “Ellen Linden, I chose you because you have a certain pure American
fire. You do not know how that looks to us, how exciting, how alive. You have that gift of passion without intellectual self-consciousness. We cannot get enough of that here.”

Ellen was surprised to hear a European admit this.

“All right.” He lifted his hand slightly from the table and returned the two of them to a lesser state of tension. He pointed
his forefinger at her. “I want something new out of you. I want something freshly dug.” He returned to his food, stabbed a
few pierogi, and bit them off his fork. “When you have worked out an idea and you want to see how it looks on some dancers,
let me know.”

Ellen realized she would have to start over. The pressure felt like a knee against her spine. Yet she was exhilarated.

They exchanged careful smiles.

“How about a vodka?” he said.

How confidently she raises her glass and drinks to him in Polish. This Ellen Linden is no fool. Not for her to make herself
sick with vodka like her grandfather. Poor soul, trying to impress Hillel and that Pole Piotr in Warsaw.

28

T
HAT NIGHT IN HER HOTEL ROOM,
E
LLEN FOLDED HERSELF INTO
the formidable wingback armchair at the foot of her bed. For a long time she hugged her knees and rocked back and forth,
hoping for inspiration. But the longer she rocked, the harder focusing on her piece became. A few indistinct themes flickered
through her head, but she dismissed them quickly as dry and lightweight, nothing that would impress the sort of people who’d
created the fabulous posters plastered all over the city.

At one in the morning she gave up and went to bed, disgusted and scared at her own emptiness. A half moon shone through the
open French window, and a soft wind blew at the curtains. She closed her eyes and listened to the hourly trumpet call, the
hejnalج from Saint Mary’s Church. Its regularity was now almost a comfort. But the thought of the church’s spire and the crown
gave her a chill again.

Eventually, she fell asleep and dreamed of Marek Gruberski, the musician from the Ariel café. He appeared in a swirl of sand,
his features emerging like a developing photograph. The long brown hair fell gracefully at his shoulders. When he saw her,
he began to sing the “For-a-GirlTune.” They approached a wide river, the Vistula perhaps, but with a classical setting, like
a painting. Marek held a rod over his head and beckoned until she came to him, wearing bells and harmonizing the song. Together,
they stepped into white light; then Marek was gone. Ellen’s foot hit a cobbled stone on Szeroka Square. She ran to the Ariel
café, but the door was locked. She sang the “For-a-GirlTune” at the clouds that floated in the windows around the square,
trying to call him back.

On the second floor of a brick building, at an open French window, sat a striking gray haired old woman wrapped in a fringed
plaid blanket. The woman rocked back and forth in time to the “For-a-GirlTune.” She nodded and smiled at Ellen. The room
behind her was filled to the ceiling with bright green cut grass.

“From your mouth to God’s ear,” the woman said. The Yiddish accent was thick, but clear enough for Ellen to understand. “Such
a lovely voice you didn’t get from Itzik.”

E
llen awoke the next morning so perplexed by her dream she was determined to return to Szeroka Square that day.

It was late afternoon by the time she arrived. She walked the perimeter of the wide, rectangular street, searching for the
French window where the old woman had sat. She couldn’t find it, or not the exact one. Instead, she noticed that even in Jewish
Kazimierz, the highest airspace was silhouetted with church steeples, not synagogues. She wondered if the architectural dominance
was intentional, or if she was becoming as paranoid as Sy Messner’s tour group.

She walked over to the Ariel café.

A paunchy older man was doing paperwork at the reception table. “Are any of the musicians here yet?” she asked him.

A chair in the second room scraped the rough wooden floor, and Marek looked around the partition. A smile sprang to his face.
“Hello again!” he called to Ellen.

“Hi!” Ellen couldn’t believe her luck at finding him.

There was an awkward pause. Neither of them seemed to know how to pick up from where they’d left off.

“I’m just replacing a string,” he said, holding up his guitar with its hanging string as if proof was required. “You came
for the tape?”

She remembered how slowly his face had come into focus in her dream. “Sure, if you have it!” she said. She liked his street
clothes, the blue jeans and the black T shirt.

He looked hesitant. “One of the members of our group is bringing it, but he will not be here until later.”

“That’s okay.” She smiled. “I can wait. I’m going to be in Kraków for about two months.”

He tilted his head with a happy look. “That is a long time for a tourist.”

“I’m working with the Pronaszko Dance Theatre.”

He looked puzzled.

“I’m a visiting choreographer,” she explained. “I’m working on a piece for the company. They’ll be performing it, I hope,
at the end of August.”

Marek tugged at the tuft of hair in the middle of his chin and smiled broadly. “I thought there was something different about
you. You are not like the other Jews who come here.”

“What do you mean?” she asked testily.

“I don’t know,” he said, averting her gaze. “Most Jews come here to cry. They don’t see Poland. They see Auschwitz.”

She wondered if this was his payback for the remarks about the menorah, or the survivor, Mr. Landau, saying, “All Poles are
anti Semites. It’s in their blood.” Maybe he also heard that woman, another survivor, say, “The Poles were worse than the
Germans!”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Not all Jews think that way.”

He shrugged. “There were a lot of Poles in Auschwitz too. Jews don’t own suffering. In my family, we also had people there.”

Ellen didn’t like the way he seemed to be challenging her to condemn Jews for complaining. “Have you ever been to Auschwitz?”
she asked, as a kind of defense.

“Sure, I went when I was in school, but I don’t go to those places now.” Marek waved the subject away. He turned back to his
guitar and began to thread the string through the peg. “American Jews say we are anti Semites, but that is not how it is with
us at all.”

Genuinely curious, Ellen asked, “How is it then?”

“I will tell you one thing,” he said, turning the peg. “After the war, we stayed, with the Russians and everything. The Jews
left.”

Ellen lost her attraction to him. “What do you mean
left?
” she said, remembering Pronaszko’s same use of the word.

“They could leave. They could go to Israel. But the ones who stayed here, we did not hate them. There was a Jewish boy in
my class, Kopelman. He was not our good friend, but it did not matter. The truth is, he kept to himself. He was not one of
us. It was as if he could not hear us. So what Kopelman said to us also did not matter.” Marek raised his head and looked
at her. “I am not saying this was a good thing, but it is not like these people think.”

Ellen tried to imagine what it would be like to live among people who did not see or hear her. “To me, that would be an unbearable
way to live.”

“Then don’t come to Poland,” he said.

She could not believe how brutal the conversation had become.

He sighed. “I’m sorry. I am not explaining it very well. To me, it is sad that Poland lost its Jews. It is a different country
now than the one my grandparents knew. My grandmother says, ‘The spice is gone. Now we all taste like potatoes.’”