A zing of currents zap through my left arm, warning of an incoming tremor. I hold on to the brick even tighter, coming within reach of the separating wall. I shift my balance and grab a hold of the metal frame of the nearest cot and pull my hand away from the brick. Blood drips from my fingertips. My muscles spasm, then rest. I breathe through a mild tremor and force my hand to steady enough to write.
Blood is all the ink I need.
I press my index finger to the partition and trace out the words in smears of blood:
TIME WILL FIND US
If she ever comes through this barrack—if she is ever assigned to this space, she’ll see the words. She’ll know. She’llknow I’m alive. At least for the moment. Still holding out hope that I’ll find her before it’s too late.
Or she may never see these words. She may never know that I’m fighting to stay alive. For her.
These men have all disappeared except one or two who might already be dead in their cots. If I don’t wake again, at least these words will remain.
Our words found each other in the darkness once before. I can only pray for a second chance.
THIRTY
STEFAN
SANOK, POLAND
May 2, 1943
This old brick building has always felt like a second home to me. Silberg Textiles, the factory that I would keep running just as well as Father and Grandfather—if the Nazis hadn’t seized the business two years ago. I would have never imagined myself living beneath the factory like this—like a scavenging rodent. Going on fourteen months of trying to find resources, connections, food, and updates on the war and coming up short each day.
A stolen radio does nothing but give more bad news. I’ve risked slipping out into the streets at night, searching for any visible member of the resistance who might have more information than me or who might be able to help me find Rosalie and my family. But all I’ve found are dark roads, void of people.
The wooden board beneath scrapes against the jagged stone floor as I feel around for the fraying end of a string. I must have swept it away when I was asleep. Once I find it, I yank it justenough, so the lightbulb flickers to life. I lift my wrist overhead and squint through one eye to read the time on my watch.
Sleeping during the day just to remain awake at night hasn’t become easier over the months. Sleeping in general feels impossible more days than not. I lie here, sketching notes into dust with my fingertip—routes I could take toward the Sanok Jewish Ghetto. The mice scamper around my head, pipes drip, and machinery rumbles from the floors above. The noises are chaos in my head while I try to remember the sound of Rosalie’s voice, the smell of her hair, her gentle touch.
I don’t know if she’s all right. I don’t know if my family is alive. And I’m going mad, feeling as though I’m trapped in a different world than they’re in.
I roll to my side, my back aching, head pulsating, and stomach cramping with hunger. My boots rest on the cobwebbed shelf next to my paper-wrapped bottles of pills. I pat down my pocket, making sure my documentation is still on me, and grab my boots to slip on.
Every footstep along the corroding cement floor catches shards of broken material, debris from aging bricks along the wall, and dirt. “Bruno, Eryk,” I whisper, their names sounding like a quick zip on my tongue.
From both sides of me, in the shadows of shallow wall inlets, the two of them sit up as if I’ve scolded them. I’m the only one who just manages to wake up at the same hour every night. I can’t fault them.
“I’m awake,” Bruno says.
“Yes—same,” Eryk follows. They’re quick about shoving their feet into boots and hopping up, ready to scavenge the building for food.
“I was dreaming about overstuffed dumplings, fresh and warm from my grandmother’s kitchen,” Bruno says.
Both mine and Eryk’s stomachs rumble in response.
I’m only a bit younger than the two of them. They both work here and have worked here for years. First for my father, then for the Nazis who forced them to labor without say. They aren’t Jewish, which makes them luckier than me, but both have families living down here too, just in another storage space. None of them have anything left to their names. Finding a dry spot to call home was their only option, and I’m grateful for the companionship. Still, I know I’m the most restless of them all. I’m a danger to them if we’re found down here. I can’t just sit here, feeding off the scraps we find. Not when half of my heart is missing outside these walls.
Only the three of us go up to the main floor to find what we can at night. At least the nights where there isn’t a lazy police officer squatting on behalf of a Nazi.
The first two flights of stairs lead to an exterior vent, offering a view just wide enough to check for a watchman.
The rain is coming down harder than a garden spigot and the gated post at the entrance, where a police officer would be standing for the night, vacant.
“All clear,” I tell the other two, stepping down from the crate we keep lined up beneath the vent.
“Is the old man asleep or missing?” Eryk asks.
