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suburb of Chicago. She knew this because her parents had told her so often of the joy that followed. Of their own expectant return to the country they had fled in order to throw off the shackles of Communism.
    There had always been a shadow in their eyes when they spoke of that decision. As she grew older she knew why. When they left Poland it was a world of black and white, and they returned to one that was a shifting shade of gray. The bad days before she was born was a time of secret police and cruel, arbitrary punishment of dissent, but no one had to travel thousands of miles to a distant country to earn a living. They said something good had been lost alongside the visible, more easily acknowledged bad. Talking to the old men and women who gathered at the foot of the Via dei Polacchi she had come to realize there was a gulf between them and her that could never be bridged, a strange sense of guilty loss she could never share. Yet there was a bond too. She was Polish, she was poor. When she played the right notes—a mazurka, a polonaise—there were misty eyes all around and a constant shower of small coins into the fiddle case.
    And on this day there was the tramp too, with a hateful look in his eyes, one that said, she believed . . . shame on you, shame on you.
    As she bowed a slow country dance she told herself that, if he continued with these attentions, she would upbraid him, loudly, in public, with no fear. Who was a tramp to talk to anyone of shame? What gave him the right? . . .
    Then, feeling a hand on her shoulder, she ceased playing and turned to find herself staring into the amiable, bright blue eyes of a middle-aged man in a gray suit. He had a pale, fleshy face with stubbly red cheeks, receding fair hair and the easy, confident demeanor of someone official, like a civil servant or a school headmaster.
    “You play beautifully, Felicia,” he said in Polish.
    “Do I know you?”
    He took out an ID card from his jacket and flashed it in front of her face, too quickly for her to make much sense of the words there.
    “No. I am a Polish police officer on attachment here in Rome. There is no need for you to know me.”
    She must have looked startled. He placed a hand on her arm and said, in a voice full of reassurance, “Do not be alarmed. There is nothing for you to worry about.” His genial face fell. “I am simply performing an unhappy task which falls to this profession from time to time. Come, I will buy coffee. There is a small place around the corner.”
    The man had such a pleasant air of authority that she followed him automatically into the Via dei Polacchi, even though she couldn’t remember any cafe in this direction.
    They were halfway along when he stopped her in the shadow of an overhanging building. There was such sadness in his eyes, a sense of regret too.
    “I am sorry,” he said in his low, calm voice. “There is no easy way to say this. Your uncle Henryk has been killed.”
    Her stomach clenched. Her eyes began to sting. “Killed?”
    “Murdered, as he worked. With two other people too. Such a world we live in.”
    “In Warsaw?”
    He shrugged. “This would never have happened before. Not in the old days. People then had too much respect. Too much fear.”
    There were so many questions, and none of them would form themselves into a sensible sentence in Felicia’s mind. “I must go home,” she said finally.
    The man was silent for a moment, thinking, a different expression in his eyes, one she couldn’t work out.
    “You can’t afford to go home,” he observed, frowning. “What’s there for you anyway? It was never your country. Not really.”
    The narrow street was empty. A cloud had skittered across the bright summer sun casting the entire area into sudden gloom.
    “I can afford a bus ride,” she answered, suddenly cross.
    “No you can’t,” he replied, and took her by both arms. He was strong. His blue eyes now burned, insistent, demanding. “What did your uncle