Head and heart.
When I lift my pencil again, blood spatters my white apron, the snow, the men standing beside the man who dared plea for a different outcome—who dared to beg for a chance to remain alive. The air reeks of gunpowder. The shivering bodies surrounding me tense, breaths grow heavier. No one moves. Everyone stares straight ahead, following a reminder that silence is a chance to survive.
The “fit” march forward, and the “unfit” walk to their death—except for the one who protested the decision. He’s now silent, and still…dead on the ground.
I tell myself not to look, but my eyes betray me, finding Stefan in the crowd, watching him stumble away until he disappears into the industrial spread of steel frames and scaffolding, half-built factories topped with smokestacks.
He’s alive…for now.
But I know better than to plan beyond a single breath in this place.
FOUR
ROSALIE
SANOK, POLAND
October 5, 1940
From my perch in the clock tower, the entire village square in the heart of Sanok sprawls wide like a framed painting. Once full of color with horse-drawn carriages, music drifting between café windows, and the chatter of street vendors, now there are only falling leaves and silence, even on a Saturday. The view that has always been my solace since Mama and my baby sister died is disappearing little by little each day.
Somewhere in my mind, I’m still an eight-year-old girl, cowering in the corner of our cottage, staring at blood. But the sight of Sanok’s village square tethers me to the present—being sixteen, losing a grip on happy memories, as well as the hope that joy might one day return to Poland, or anywhere in the world.
A year ago, the German Reich stormed into Poland and has been taking over city by city, town and village. Now the square is silent, emptier than I’ve ever seen. Even the pigeons know to stay away. It’s nothing but a gray palette of grief. Inside, I’m surrounded by red and brown bricks that threaten to crumble if Ipress too hard. The only exit is a spiral staircase that creaks with every breath.
“Do you hear that?” Papa calls from his workbench, dark wood, stained and scratched, always covered in tools.
He moves fast, checking the gears, the weights, the thing he calls an escapement. He taps his fingers and bobs his head as if he hears music no one else can hear.
“It’s slow,” I say. I feel it too…the rhythm is wrong. I stand up from my seat at the window and move closer to the barometer, staring at the dial. “A storm’s coming. The pressure has dropped.”
Papa peers down at his old, oversized chronograph wristwatch then joins me and squints at the numbers. “You’re right.” He pats my back and groans while straightening his posture. “I’ll lift the pendulum bob.”
After Mama passed away, those words meant we were staying in the clock tower for the night. I would set out the blankets so I could go to sleep. Papa would stay up, listening…to the ticks, to the quiet, and to the time he couldn’t get back.
“Time can’t slow for a storm,” he always says. “Every second matters.”
I’ve always known this.
If he had come home sooner that day when Mama needed me…
If I hadn’t been so scared…
If the town clock hadn’t been wrong…
Papa said their deaths weren’t my fault.
But I still have the scissors.
With me by his side, Papa works day and night, protecting the clock tower, making sure no one else in our city loses their life because of the wrong time. But no matter how many seconds we count, gears we clean, or weights we wind…nothing will ever turn back time. Nothing will bring them back.
I return to my perch at the window and lean my cheek up against the cool glass, staring at the somber view of silence.
“How are you planning to finish your school paper if you’re too busy staring out the window all day?” Papa asks, grumbling as he stands up from a long stare at the barometer.
“I saw a notice pasted to the brick wall beside the post office on the way back from school.”
While the Reich continues to set new laws, prohibitions, and regulations for all Poles, the Jews have it worse than everyone else. They’re being forced to walk around with white armbands donning a blue Star of David as if they’re contagious lepers.
