“Good night,” she replies, her voice falling off in the distance.
I stare straight ahead at the darkening roads, wondering if I’ll ever catch another glimpse of her. “Wait!” I stop and turn around, as if she’d still be standing at the corner. But she’s gone. It’s too late. I never asked for her name…
FOUR
LUKA
The uneven pavement presses against the worn soles of my old shoes as I move along the darkening streets, keeping a stern eye out for any other meandering soldiers as I make it home right in time for curfew. I had been tempted to risk the time, if it had meant spending another few minutes with the girl whose name I might never know.
I turn the last corner onto my street, the road too narrow for vehicles to drive through. A few neighbors are sitting outside on wooden crates. One is smoking, another is talking to himself, and a young boy is searching through a pile of rubbish with determination, as if he’s lost something very important.
“What are you looking for, Jak? Did you lose something?” I ask him while passing by.
“No, no,” he utters through a groan. “It’s nothing.”
“Well, it can’t be nothing,” I argue. “You’re looking quite hard for—nothing, yes?”
Jak takes a step back from the rubbish and takes a few deep breaths, wheezing through them. “It was an old toy. I was going to give away, but it must have ended up in the rubbish pile.”
“What is this toy?” I ask.
Jak takes a shuddered breath. “It was just a stupid old stuffed bear. No one would want it, anyway.”
I’ve seen Jak with this bear. It’s small and he’s had it since he was very little. Though he’s only nine or ten now. I want to tell him I understand why he’s looking so hard for something that he’s attached to. We all need items like that now.
“Jak, come inside at once,” his mother shouts from the window above his head. “Have you seen the time?”
Jak kicks a box into the pile and scuffs his way into the side entrance. “Bye, Luka,” he says.
“See you soon, kid.”
I check my watch, finding I have a few minutes left before curfew, and dig through the pile, separating the larger items to one side so I can inspect what smaller items might have fallen to the bottom. One brown, stuffed arm sticks out from between some rusty tins.
I pluck the bear out and dust him off. “There you are.”
On the way up the black and white checkered tile stairs, I take a hard look at the poor bear, noticing the years of love and squeezing it has endured. Poor kid. I stop at the floor below mine and squeeze the bear to fit between the doorknob and doorframe of Jak’s apartment, knowing one of them will find it in the morning.
Amid the remainder of my hike up to the third floor, it’s hard to block out the background noise of arguing couples, and cries of hungry children. It doesn’t matter what part of our building we’re in, it’s all we hear lately. I fish out the key and unlock our apartment door, stepping inside to a flickering glow of candles on the wooden kitchen table beneath the double-pane window. Then I find Mother and Father hunched together on the sofa to my left. Mother never sits on the sofa. She can’t seem to sit still long enough. Father, though, he has the newspaper spread outacross the lace-covered coffee table as usual, but he’s not reading it—he’s staring through it as if it was glass.
Grandmother and Grandfather are seated in the two rocking armchairs at either side of the sofa, but aren’t rocking. Grandmother is holding her knitting needles, yarn looped between the two, stretching from the basket of colorful skeins by her feet, but her hands are still. Strands of her silver hair have come loose from the black scarf she always wears around her head, claiming it’s cold inside no matter what time of year it is. Grandfather’s white eyebrows are wild and look as if he’s ruffled them up with the heel of his palm too many times today. He has a pipe pinched between his lips, but there’s no smoke pouring out. It’s like a haunting still life.
I swallow hard as heat swells through my body. They’ve received news—my gut says so.
“Where have you been, Luka?” Mama scolds me, standing from her seat. “Do you have any idea how worried we’ve been?”
I’m twenty, old enough to take a walk without having to check in. Although, I suspect they might have gotten word about the disruption in the square.
“I took the long way home to avoid the soldiers. I didn’t mean to worry you.” I snatch my rolled-up hat out of my coat pocket and place it down on the coffee table, the coins clattering against each other.
“No more of this. I don’t want you performing anymore—and where is your armband? Luka? Do you understand what would happen if you were caught?”
“Dear, let him take his coat off. He’s all right, as we can all see.” My father sighs.
“This time, he is,” Mother argues.
“How about I go down to the square with you tomorrow and if any of those Germans give you a hard time, I’ll handle it,” Grandfather says, snickering. My grandfather has no tolerancefor what the Wehrmacht is doing to our country, and we try to keep him away from any encounter that will get him into trouble. My grandmother, however, she’s staring between my parents at the oil painting of a tulip field hanging on the wall. An escape, perhaps.
“I removed my armband when the soldiers showed up in the square. I thought I’d be safer making a run for it than sitting around waiting for them to ask me for my papers.”
