Half Life by Jillian Cantor (easy to read books for adults list txt) 📕

first, on October 31, 1918, a few weeks before the end of the war. And then after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, Warsaw was liberated from Russian rule, and for the first time in my lifetime and more, over 100 years, Poland was Poland again. No more Austrian Poland, Russian Poland. Out of the horribleness and death and destruction of the war, my country had at long last regained her sovereignty. I wished my father were alive to see it.

Klara and I returned to Krakow once things stabilized, near the end of the war. And with Chernikoff still closed, Klara practiced piano on her own at the house for hours each day, but now without the sour attitude. She had been without a piano for so long at Hela’s that she was grateful just to be able to play again. And I was grateful to be able to taste the end of the war, to revel in the feeling of my Poland being Poland, and to hear the sounds of Klara’s beautiful music, filling our house with light and joy and wonder again.

ONE OF THE FIRST THINGS I DID WHEN WE GOT BACK TO KRAKOW was go to Professor Mazur’s home to check on her daughters. She and I had been together only in the lab, teacher and student, researcher and assistant. We had not been friends—I did not know her daughters. I had met Nadia and Emilia only once before. And I didn’t even know the exact location of the Mazurs’ home because I had never been there. But Klara remembered where it was from that time I went to Sweden and she had spent time with the Mazur girls and their governess. When I asked her for help, she stepped away from her piano and said, “Mama, I’ll go with you to see them.”

The Mazurs’ house was only five blocks away from ours, in a location I’d walked by a few times before on Nadzieja Street. Klara and I walked there together, our arms linked. At fifteen, she was lithe and beautiful, and she wore her pale blond hair in curls. She was a few inches taller than me, and when we walked together now I got the distinct feeling she believed she was holding me up. When I looked at her though, I still saw my little girl.

Nadia, the Mazurs’ older daughter, nearly eighteen, answered the door when we rang the bell. She had blossomed in the years since I’d met her, and here she was before me now, a ghost of her mother, small and pale with shining black hair. She looked at me, uncertain. Then her eyes caught on Klara and recognition glimmered on her face. She smiled. “Oh, Klara! Marya?” She greeted us, opening the door wider.

I handed her the loaf of bread I’d baked last night with what I could scrape together at the market. Yeast and flour were scarce; my loaf had barely risen and more resembled a misshapen cracker.

Klara gave Nadia a hug. “Come in,” Nadia said to both of us. “I have been hoping you would return to Krakow.”

“I was so very sorry to hear what happened to your mother. How have you and your sister been?” I asked, as we walked inside. Boxes were stacked in the corner of the foyer, and the parlor room was mostly empty. “Are you moving?” I asked.

Nadia nodded. “Papa was offered a job at a university in Chicago, and Emilia and I can study there.”

“America,” Klara said, her eyes wide, with surprise, or was it jealousy? I had never met Professor Mazur’s husband, but I knew he was also a professor, literature, or . . . history?

“It’s been hard,” Nadia said. “Everything has been hard. The war . . . Mama’s passing.” She blinked back tears. I held on tightly to Klara’s hand. I wished there was something I could’ve done to save Professor Mazur, but I was also so grateful that Klara and I had found safety during the war, that my family had come through it intact. “It will be good to start over somewhere new. For all of us,” Nadia was saying now.

I nodded. “Your mother meant a lot to me,” I said. “I still can’t believe she’s gone. We were supposed to go back into her lab together, once the war was over. There was so much more work to be done.” I sighed.

“She had told us.” Nadia nodded vigorously. “Oh! Hold on, I have something for you.”

Nadia disappeared into the other room, then returned a few moments later with a stack of notebooks. I recognized them immediately: Professor Mazur’s research journals. She had never been without one in the lab, and she was always scribbling down notes. Nadia put the pile of them into my arms now, and I had no choice but to accept or let them drop to the floor.

“What am I supposed to do with these?” I asked, stunned.

Nadia shrugged and smiled at me. “We didn’t want to get rid of them, but we don’t want to move them either.”

“But I don’t . . .” I stammered.

“I’m sure you will take good care of them,” Nadia said. Then she turned to Klara to ask about her piano schooling. I heard Klara telling her about Chernikoff still being closed, and Nadia saying that in America she hoped to study biology, maybe become a doctor.

In my arms, Professor Mazur’s life’s work felt so heavy that I suddenly wondered if I might collapse under its weight.

IN THE SPRING OF 1919, WE HOPED THAT CHERNIKOFF WOULD reopen, and that Klara could continue her musical education. But Max Chernikoff’s son had also been killed in the war, and Max, consumed by grief, announced his permanent retirement. His school would never reopen. Klara had been without a professional piano education for nearly four years, and now there was nothing in Krakow for her. I wasn’t sure what to do for her, and I wrote Leokadia a letter to ask for her advice. She had gotten Klara, and me,