“Is the Garden of Eden so small that it can only fit in your Mama and Papa, your brother Schneur, and the cheder melamed?”

"Felix declared, rather theatrically, that thus passes an upside-down year,” Ernst comments. He flexes his fingers. He is tired from the concert, but buoyed by the evening. New Year’s eve.

Hannah smiles. “I know. He is quite proud of himself. Wolf loved it. 1881. Turn the number around, whether back to front or upside down, and the numbers stay the same.”

“But it has been an upside-down year for our family, has it not?”

They are sitting in the dressing rooms of the concert hall. Soon, Ernst will retie his bowtie, smooth his palm over his hair, and join the rest of the orchestra for a post-concert toast, a New Year’s Eve tradition. Another tradition: Hannah attends the concert, claps proudly during the standing ovation, and then goes backstage to congratulate her husband.

The backstage part is a trial. Hannah dreads navigating the backstage labyrinth, fears she will be lost forever and be found decades later by some flautist who, devastated by an off note, runs blindly into the depths of the theater and stumbles upon a pile of bones.

But for now, they sit cozily in his dressing room. The violin case is still open and the wood glows red in the gaslight.

“1881. It has been an upside-down year for our family.”

She cocks her head to the side, ready to hear.

Of course, she has her own opinion of this year. Last week, she had unscrewed her fountain pen and composed a card for Dr. Werther. She hopes he has received it, the post at this time of year is sluggish. Last year… she shudders. She hopes she has come to a place of more serenity now.

“Well, you were away for a while.”

“Yes.”

He still only alludes to her time in the sanatorium, although there is not a day when she does not draw on what she learned there. Sometimes, she reaches into the carved wooden trunk in their bedroom and draws out a sheaf of paintings. Every day, they had to draw a self-portrait. They were allowed to choose pencils or charcoal or watercolor. There could spend all day on it, or just ten minutes. They could add props: the women were particularly fond of adding mirrors, most of which were just washed-out gray, showing no reflection at all.

Once, she asked Dr. Werther about the strange exercise.

When you are a young girl of marriageable age, he had said, you look at yourself in the mirror through the eyes of a stranger, only thinking of how others see you. And when you are a child, you use the eyes of a parent. Women at your stage, they look at themselves through the eyes of their husband, or the women in shul, or society. It is time, do you not think, that you form your own impression of yourself?