“Where shall we go?” cried Fruma, the baker’s wife.
She rolled her eyes—a tradition as old as their marriage. “After thirty years? After three days to pack our entire lives into a single cart? You ask me now?”
Levi lifted the fiddle again. And the tune that poured out was not sad. It was defiant. It was the sound of a door opening, not closing. It was the creak of a cart leaving home, and the first hopeful note of a stranger’s welcome. It was the fiddler on the roof, dancing on the edge of a knife, refusing to fall.
“Yes,” he said. “Now.”
The young man lowered the bow. “My name is Levi. Yussel was my grandfather. He taught me to play on this very roof. I came back to play for the wedding of Motel and Hodel. But I heard the news.”