and opened the door into a small apartment. Anna
dropped the bag that she was carrying and ran from
room to room, throwing open cupboard doors and
exploring every corner of the place. It did not take long. The apartment had a small living room and
dining room. There was a decent-sized kitchen. Baba will be able to make all our favorites in here, Anna thought. There were two bedrooms. She would be
sharing one of them with Baba. But the best part was the balcony. It was almost the same size as the living room and partially shaded by a thick growth of vines that climbed up and over a wooded frame.
Anna ran to the railing and gazed out at the city.
“Look, Papa,” she shouted. “You can even see the sea from here.” She had caught glimpses of it during the bus ride from Haifa.
Papa joined her on the terrace. “We will go there,
Annichka,” he said. “You will be able to swim in
that sea.”
“When?” she asked. “Can we go today?” Her
family had vacationed by the Baltic Sea in Poland
when Anna’s mother was still alive. That had been
such a long time ago.
Papa laughed. “No, my darling, not today. But
soon,” he added when Anna’s face fell. “First we
must go down to the concert hall. Mr. Huberman
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will be speaking to all of us this afternoon.” At
that, Anna’s face quickly brightened. “Come, let’s
freshen up,” he said. “We don’t want to be late for this first gathering of the orchestra.”
A short time later, they were seated in the con-
cert hall waiting for Mr. Huberman to take the
stage. “Concert hall” was a generous description of
the space. It was a work in progress. The floors were unfinished wood. So were the walls. And the ceiling
was a simple tin covering. There were workmen and
carpenters everywhere, pounding nails into the floor and walls. Sawdust flew across the room like the sand blowing across the desert.
Everyone from the ship was there, along with
other musicians whom she didn’t recognize. Papa
and most of the men were still wearing suits, but
the women were wearing light dresses and the boys
were in open-necked shirts. Baba was fanning herself, trying to stay cool in the overheated building. Anna couldn’t see Eric in the crowd, but she was sure he had to be there. Nervous and excited chatter competed
with the pounding of the workers’ tools. She should
have been exhausted after the long journey and her
recent illness. But she felt more alive and alert and excited than she could ever remember.
Suddenly, there was a hush. Anna looked up.
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Bronislaw Huberman walked across the stage and ap-
proached a microphone that had been set up for him.
He gazed out at them all. When Anna had seen him
at the audition in Warsaw, he had looked so serious, focused on every musician who entered the theater
and on what they were playing. Here, on the stage
of this newly forming concert hall, he was still quite formal looking, in a three-piece suit and tie. But he looked relaxed, even happy. Anna stared, her mouth
open. This was the man who had written her father’s
name on that slip of paper that ensured her family
would be able to get out of Poland. He was the man
who had sent the travel documents—even the extra
one for Baba. Not only was he a great musician, as
Papa had repeatedly told her, he was a rescuer. And
for that, she and her family owed him more than they would ever be able to repay. Anna inched forward in
her seat.
He smiled at them all, raising both hands above
his head and grasping them together as if he were
cheering for them. “I welcome you all to Palestine,”
he began. “I know this journey has been a long one
for you. But the journey is over. You are all here. You are all safe.”
At that, the audience erupted in spontaneous
applause. No one clapped louder or longer than Anna.
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Finally, Mr. Huberman raised his hand to hush
the crowd. “We will begin rehearsals tomorrow,” he
continued. Murmurs broke out among the audience
members, and Mr. Huberman raised his hands once
more. “Yes, tomorrow. We are scheduled to give our
first concert in December—only a few months away.”
Huberman. “And I have great news for all of you. That first concert, the first introduction of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra, will be conducted by none
other than the greatest maestro of our time, Arturo
Toscanini.”
Anna thought Papa was going to fly out of his
chair at this news. Along with everyone else, he was cheering and clapping so loud. He looked as if someone had just given him the best birthday gift. Even
Anna knew who Toscanini was. She and her father
had listened on the radio to concerts conducted by
Toscanini, who came from Italy but conducted all
around the world. Each time, Papa would close his
eyes and say, “Listen, Anna. He demands perfection
from his orchestra and they give it to him.”
The cheering went on and on, and Mr. Hube man
could do nothing to quiet them. Finally, he just
laughed and waved, and walked off the stage.
Before heading back to their apartment, Anna
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caught up with Eric, whom she finally managed to
find in the crowd. He looked more relaxed in his shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows.
“We’re living in the building next to yours,” he said.
How does he always manage to discover these things so quickly? “We’ll go and explore the city.”
Anna smiled and nodded. She had to unpack.
They had to get settled. And tomorrow, she would be
starting school while her father was in rehearsals. But yes, exploring the city with Eric was definitely on her list of things to do.
Chapter
24
Papa distributed the suitcases and they got to work
unpacking. Anna mentally divided up the room she
was going to be sharing with Baba, being careful to
make sure there was equal space for both of them. She quickly unpacked her clothes and her books. Once
those things were put away, she placed several of the framed flowers from her pressed flower collection on the wall on her side of the room and stood back to
admire them. Perfect! They immediately brightened up the white walls. While Anna was putting away
her things, Papa was busy with his books. Baba was
rummaging through the kitchen and muttering to
herself. “I should have brought my soup pot. How
will I feed this family without my soup pot?”
Slowly but surely, everything was finding its place.
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But when Anna went to look for her clarinet, she
couldn’t find it.
“Papa,” she called as she searched through the
boxes, “I don’t see my clarinet. Do you know where
it is?”
He looked up from the pile of sheet music that he
was sorting. “No, I don’t. But I’
m certain it must be here.”
Anna continued going through the boxes. “I know
it was there when we were packing. Remember, I put
it on the pile with my special things?” Her pressed
flowers had arrived safely, but where was her clari-
net? “I don’t remember if it was there when we got
on the ship,” she added. The truth was, she had been so sick after the train ride that she couldn’t remember much about what they had brought on board.
Now, the same sick feeling was beginning to build
from deep inside her. Her clarinet! The gift from her mother. Her prized possession! It couldn’t have
gotten lost, could it?
“Don’t panic,” said Papa as Anna darted from
room to room. “There are still a couple of boxes out on the balcony that we haven’t emptied yet. Perhaps
it’s in one of them.” Anna ran out the screen door and dove into the last of the boxes, throwing the contents about the terrace and digging down toward the
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bottom. When they were empty, she looked up.
Nothing!
How could this be? She was feeling sicker by
the minute. Papa was trying to stay optimistic. “I’m sure it will turn up,” he said. “Perhaps the ship will locate it and send it here, or it will turn up at the port in Haifa. In the meantime, you can practice with
mine.”
Normally that would have brought a smile to
Anna’s face. Papa rarely let anyone touch his clari-
net and this would have felt like quite an honor. But in this moment, his offer did little to make her feel better. Anna didn’t reply. She walked into her new
bedroom and looked around, feeling lost and alone.
And then, she sank down onto the floor, buried her
face in her hands, and sobbed. Baba hovered like a
hummingbird. Papa had nothing more to say that
might comfort her.
Anna cried and cried, letting the tears wash
down her face like a warm spring rain. She cried
for her home left behind, and her mother who was
gone, and her friends who had disappeared. And she
cried for her beautiful clarinet that was either on a train in Germany, or on a ship in the middle of the
sea, or perhaps even overboard and on the bottom of
the ocean, like that man’s hat that had flown off his
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173
head. Wherever it was, it was lost to her. When Anna finally went to bed later that evening, she turned her face away from Baba, not wanting to talk. And when
she awoke in the morn ing, she was still quiet and
distant.
Papa kissed her good-bye before leaving for the
concert hall and his first rehearsal. “Please try to be happy, Annichka,” he said.
Anna gulped and tried to smile for her father. She
did the same for Baba, who was still hanging close by and watching every move that Anna made. “I’m okay,
Baba,” Anna said. “Really, I am.” Baba didn’t look as if she were convinced, but she finally backed away
and allowed Anna to get ready for school.
It was raining that morning. Anna made her
way down the hill from the apartment to a small
clapboard building where she would be studying
along with the other children of the musicians in
the orchestra. They were going to learn Hebrew, the
language of this country. And once they were reason-
ably fluent, they would enter a regular school with
local children.
The ground was slick with mud, and she slipped
and slid all the way there. The rain didn’t help to lift her spirits. But she had to admit that she was at least somewhat curious about this new school. Most of all,
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she was looking forward to seeing Eric again—her
friend! She entered the small room and found a seat
next to him. He nodded understandingly when Anna
whispered to him about her lost clarinet.
“I lost my trumpet once,” he said. “But someone
found it and returned it to me.”
“I don’t think anyone is going to return my
clarinet.”
“Maybe you’ll get a new one.”
Anna shook her head. “Not any time soon. It’s too
much money.”
Even though the musicians would be paid a
modest salary to be in the orchestra, Papa wouldn’t
be teaching for quite a while. He would also need
to learn Hebrew before he could offer lessons to
students. And Anna knew that so much of their
money had been spent in just getting here. There
wasn’t much left over for an expensive clarinet. She didn’t want to think about it anymore. The sadness
was too overwhelming. So instead, she tried to focus on the Hebrew lessons. But that didn’t make her feel much better. The language was difficult and made
trickier by the fact that the written letters didn’t look anything like any letters she had ever seen before.
Hebrew script had wiggles and dots and marks and
lines that were meaningless to her. At the end of the
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175
first hour of trying to copy an exercise into her work-book, Anna was so frustrated that she laid her head
on her desk and closed her eyes.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
She looked up into the sympathetic eyes of Mrs.
Rose, their teacher. Mrs. Rose had a face that was as soft and as round as her body, with eyes the shape of almonds and short, curly hair the color of sand. She was barely taller than any of the children in the class.
She reminded Anna of Baba. Any minute now, Anna
expected that she would pull a cake out from behind
her back and offer it to her. But more than anything, Anna loved her name, a reminder of her collection of dried flowers.
“I don’t understand anything,” Anna moaned.
“Not yet. But you will.” Mrs. Rose wore her glasses
so low on her nose that Anna was tempted to reach
out and push them up. “You’ll see,” the teacher con-
tinued. “You will be talking like a sabra in no time.”
“A what?”
“It refers to a rather ugly cactus plant from the
desert with sharp thorns on the outside. But the plant has a soft and sweet pulp under those thorns. Here,
we use the expression to refer to a Jewish person born in Israel; someone who is tough on the outside, but
soft on the inside.”
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Anna wasn’t sure if she would ever feel like a
sabra. She counted the minutes until the class ended.
Then she packed up her books and headed out the
door with Eric.
Chapter
25
“Follow me,” he shouted. “I know a shortcut to the
rehearsal hall.”
Once again, Anna had no time to wonder how
he had learned about that in such a short time. She
picked up her pace and followed Eric down a set of
stairs, under a fence, and across an open field. The ground was getting muddier and slipperier from the
rain that continued to fall. It was all Anna could do to keep up with Eric and stay upright.
Finally, they arrived at the concert hall and
pushed open the door. Before entering, Anna paused
and tried as hard as she could to wipe the mud off
her boots. But in t
he end, it didn’t really matter. The unfinished wood floor was already covered in dirt
and mud from the carpenters who were still there
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working on the construction of the hall. Inside, there was an overwhelming smell of paint and turpentine.
Anna wrinkled her nose but didn’t have a chance to
say anything to Eric. He motioned her to follow him
to a spot to the left of the stage. From there, Anna had a full view of the members of the orchestra, including her father.
Mr. Huberman was onstage, poised in front of the
conductor’s stand with his arms raised and a baton in his right hand. He had removed his formal jacket and vest, and the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up above his elbows. “Again, please,” he ordered. “From the
beginning of the second page.”
He counted out a few quick beats and then
brought his baton up to signal the musicians to
begin. But with the sound of the steady rain that
was pounding on the tin roof, it was nearly impos-
sible to hear anything. The rain was louder than
the drums. On top of that, some water was leaking
into the concert hall and dripping onto the musi-
cians. One of the violinists jumped out of her seat
as a trickle of water became a stream that poured
down onto her. “I cannot play like this,” she moaned.
Others chimed in to agree.
Finally, Mr. Huberman laid his baton down on
the stand. “It looks as if we will have to adjourn for
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the day,” he said, rolling the sleeves of his shirt down to his wrists. “There are many things I can control.
But the weather is not one of them. Enjoy the rest of your day, ladies and gentlemen. I will see you all back here bright and early tomorrow morning. And let us
hope that the rain has stopped by then.”
The musicians rose and began to put their instru-
ments back into their cases. Eric ran off to speak to his father. Anna didn’t even notice Mr. Huberman
approaching until he was standing next to her.
“I saw you and your young friend come into the
hall,” he said.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Are we not allowed to be here?”
She was horrified that she might have broken some
kind of rule about who could and couldn’t come to
the rehearsals. Why didn’t Eric warn me about that?