Echo: California–New York

In La Colonia, a barrio of whitewashed bungalows on the outskirts of Fresno County, Ivy Maria Lopez and her mother walked toward the post office, hoping for a letter.

Ivy dawdled, playing the harmonica.

She was far enough away that Mama couldn’t hear the music, but she kept the notes low and muted anyway.

Clouds the color of charcoal smudged the sky, brooding.

“Ivy, always with so many questions about frivolous things. This is why Papa says you have your head in the clouds. You must come down to earth.”

She was a vagabond in a jeweled robe, following a caravan across the everlasting sand under a starlit sky.

None of them thought her frivolous or indulgent.

The more she played, the more the harmonica seemed to fill her with a bravado and a worthiness she’d never felt before.

In one magical instant—as if someone had snatched a gray veil from their heads—a blue sky startled them and the noses of mountains jutted forward, radiant and dewy in the glare of the sun.

In a swath of sun on the side of the house, two large T-shaped poles faced each other, with clotheslines strung between them.

And Ivy couldn’t help but notice the lilt in Mama’s voice.

After they were inside, he shut the doors, put his hands on his hips, and gave one curt nod toward Mama and Ivy, frowning.

Papa kept walking until they emerged from the trees, and then he swept his arm toward a dilapidated house.

Prim and clean, the home sat in a grassy yard where the flower beds had been raked and planted with geraniums.

Unlike the Yamamotos’, there wasn’t a dead leaf, weed, or withered blossom sullying the yard.

Mama relented. “For just a few minutes.”

There was a white dresser and vanity, matching nightstand, and a canopied bed with a white chenille spread.

Out the window, Ivy saw a long, squat building with a tin corrugated roof in the middle of a dirt field.

You’d be a teacher’s assistant. Would you like that? It seems redundant for you here.

I heard him play Rhapsody in Blue on the radio and it was sublime.

When she reached the last verse, she infused it with as much gumption and longing as she could pull from her heart.

And then nonchalantly, Ivy added, “Oh, and Papa said we needed to check inside the house. We could do it while we are there.”

He said, nevertheless, he would consider it a favor if he could take a look because he does not want to purchase if there is evidence that something un-American took place there.

Mr. Ward wants to find any evidence that can implicate the Yamamotos to get what he wants.

Incredulous, she walked farther into the room, not sure, at first, what she was seeing.

She trilled the last note, making it sound like a piccolo.

Mr. Lopez, sir, I’ve been thinking about what I might send to my family that could be of some comfort to them in the internment camp, something that won’t be too difficult to bring back home with them someday.

Father refused to talk about what had happened to him at the camp, insisting that it was nothing compared to what was done to others, and becoming tearful and adamant that he was one of the fortunate.

It was strange how on such an auspicious occasion as tonight, in one of the most famous venues in the world, Friedrich’s thoughts kept wandering back to his beginnings.

It was the most popular musical in the city right now, and a coveted ticket on Broadway.

When the house lights dimmed, a smattering of clapping erupted.

Every performance in front of an audience was always a journey fraught with the unknown.

Friedrich slipped into the opera’s story, the music filling him with the emotion of Porgy’s plight, much of it resonating in his own heart: a lonely man with a crippled body; a bully who thought he could rule the world; an ever-present evil; the loss of a loved one to something beyond his control; and what seemed an insurmountable challenge.

The music was bigger than Friedrich, overpoweringly beautiful, euphoric, and true.

He brought the orchestra to a crescendo and a final emphatic finish.

“It will be my pleasure. And I’ll offer him assistance pro bono.”

One day, a representative from the Women’s Auxiliary gave an impassioned plea for old instruments that could be sent to poor children who might otherwise never have a chance at music.

He was on furlough now, before his next tour of duty in South Korea, and was in the audience tonight.

Three young women fussed over him as he drifted in and out of delirium.

During moments of lucidity, he watched them straighten his sheets and sit at his side, leaning toward him, expectant.

As he languished, they read him stories from an ancient book.

Prisoners, mostly French and American, and even the German guards, came to his bedside and asked to see the talisman that had saved his life.

Ivy breathed into her flute and surrendered to the song, its tender, heartrending proclamation of love bringing tears to her eyes.

With no job, a sick daughter, and a wife who deserved better, Otto became despondent, often wandering the streets of the village before dawn, worrying.

Otto worked day and night at the kitchen table making a model: sanding the pear-wood comb, stamping the reed plate, and meticulously tuning the instrument to match the sound of the harmonica he so loved—the one that Eins, Zwei, and Drei had baptized with their breath all those years ago.