The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story

CHAPTER 19

ANTONINA STOOD IN THE KITCHEN, KNEADING BREAD DOUGH, a daily ritual, when she heard Ryś’s excited voice at the back door:

“Hurry up! Starling! Come here!”

Apparently, her son had another new animal friend, and she liked his choice of species. Starlings had always charmed her with their “long, dark beaks, springy hop, and cheerful cackles,” and she enjoyed watching them pogo-hop on the ground and dig for worms, tail and head nimbly twitching. The feast of the starlings always foretold winter’s end and “the earth softening up its belly for spring.” Flocks of starlings form wonderful shapes as they circle the sky—troika reins, kidney beans, cone shells. Turning as one unit, for an eye blink they vanish, then suddenly reappear a moment later like a shake of black pepper. Bouncing and fluttering on the ground, they reminded Antonina of “feathery jesters,” she noted in her memoirs, and it pleased her to think of Ryś catching and befriending one. Standing at the sink, hands in gummy dough, she called over her shoulder that she was too sticky to greet his new treasure, but would later. Right then the kitchen door sprang open and she suddenly understood the real meaning of Ryś’s words. There stood Magdalena Gross, wearing an old summer coat and a pair of tattered shoes.

All the Guests and friends in hiding had secret animal names, and Magdalena’s was “Starling,” in part because of Antonina’s fondness for the bird, but also because she pictured her “flying from nest to nest” to avoid capture, as one melina after another became burnt. Passersby wouldn’t be surprised to hear animals mentioned at the zoo, and one gets a sense that it also just felt right to Jan and Antonina, that naming the usual animals helped them restore a little normalcy to their lives.

In the topsy-turvy alleyways of occupied Poland, the fame Magdalena had enjoyed before the war now endangered her. What if someone from her past spotted her and, from good or bad motives, told of her whereabouts? Rumor has long ears, and as an old Gypsy saying goes, Fear has big eyes. With Magdalena on board, the other Guests had to be doubly careful, and Magdalena dared not show her face, so familiar in some Polish circles. “Madzia’s usually happy eyes became a little sad now,” Antonina wrote in her diary. Antonina and Jan sometimes also called her “Madzia,” an affectionate nickname from the softened form of Magda—as the hard formal g becomes a soft j sound, it yields to convey tender emotions. “She missed the freedom and exciting lifestyle she had before the war,” which included a large circle of friends in the arts. In 1934, for example, Magdalena had helped Bruno Schulz, a Chagall-like painter and author of prose phantasmagoria, find a publisher for his first book, Sklepy Cynamonowe (translated as Cinnamon Shops), a collection of short stories about his eccentric family. She put Schulz’s manuscript into the hands of another friend, novelist Zofia Nałkowska, who declared it innovative and brilliant, and guided it through publication.

Hiding indoors by day, Magdalena couldn’t roam the zoo to find models, so she decided to sculpt Ryś.

“He’s a lynx,” she joked. “I should have good results with this sculpture!”

One day, as Antonina was kneading dough for bread, Magdalena said: “Now I can help you. I learned how to bake delicious croissants. I may not be able to sculpt in clay now, but I can still sculpt in flour!” With that she plunged a palm into a big bowl of dough, sending up a small white cloud.

“It’s terrible that such a gifted artist has to work in the kitchen!” Antonina lamented.

“It’s only a temporary situation,” Magdalena assured her, gently elbowing her away from the bowl and kneading the dough with powerful hands.

“Some might say that a woman as little as I am couldn’t be a good baker. Well! Sculptors develop enormous strength!”

Muscling into clay had given her powerful shoulders and hands annealed by her trade. In her circle, which included Rachel Auerbach and Yiddish poet Deborah Vogel, among others, what Bruno Schulz called the “unique mystical consistency” of matter really mattered, as did the hands that handled it. This was a topic their set often discussed in long, thoughtful, literary letters crafted partly as an art form. Few have survived, but, fortunately, Schulz recruited many of his own for short stories.

In Paris, before the war, Magdalena would surely have studied Rodin’s vigorous sculptures of hands in the Rodin Museum, a small music box of a building surrounded by rosebushes and brawny sculptures. She was justly proud of the way strong, agile hands cradle newborns, build cities, plant vegetables, caress loved ones, teach our eyes the shape of things—how round swells, how sand grits—bridge lonely hearts, connect us to the world, map the difference between self and other, fasten onto beauty, pledge loyalty, cajole food from grain, and so much more.

Magdalena seasoned the villa with “loads of sunshine, energy, and a great spirit,” Antonina wrote, “which she never lost, even during terrible crises, and she faced horrendous ones in her life. No one ever saw her being depressed.” Antonina sometimes wondered how on earth they’d lived without her until then, because she’d become such a robust part of their clan, sharing their lives, everyday concerns, hardships, and insecurities, helping with house chores, and whenever they had too many Guests, giving up her bed and sleeping atop a large trunk for flour, or on two armchairs pushed together. “Like her nickname, Starling, she whistled at hardship, when many in her situation would have succumbed to despair,” Antonina recalled in her memoirs. Whenever the household expected a visit from a stranger, Magdalena would hide, and if the visitor seemed dangerous or, worse yet, wanted to go upstairs for some reason, Antonina would alert her with the usual alarm of piano notes or, when that wasn’t convenient, a sudden outburst of song. She regarded Magdalena as “a bit of a rascal” and a rousing chorus of Offenbach’s “Go, go, go to Crete!” the perfect getaway tune for someone that prankish and high-spirited.

Whenever Magdalena heard that music, she dashed to a hiding place, which, depending on her mood, might be the attic, a bathroom, or one of the deep walk-in closets. As she confided to Antonina, she usually did so laughing quietly about the absurdity of the situation.

“I wonder,” she sometimes joked, “how I’ll feel about this music when the war is over! What if it happens to be playing on the radio? Will I dash for cover? Will I even be able to stand this song of Menelaus going to Crete?”

Once its sprightly melody had been a favorite of hers, but war plays havoc with sensory memories as the sheer intensity of each moment, the roiling adrenaline and fast pulse, drive memories in deeper, embed every small detail, and make events unforgettable. While that can strengthen friendship or love, it can also taint sensory treasures like music. By associating any tune with danger, one never again hears it without adrenaline pounding as memory hits consciousness followed by a jolt of fear. She was right to wonder. As she said, “It’s a terrific way to ruin great music.”