by Glenn Meade
I lie. I can’t tell him the truth.
His eyes barely focus. “How did you get in . . . how did they allow you?”
“I begged and begged.” I lie again. I’m so choked with tears.
He gives my hand a frail squeeze. His chest wheezes hoarsely when he speaks.
“We’ll get out of this, Lana. We’ll get out. We just have to stay strong.”
“Yes, we will.”
“I’m going to make sure you keep to your promise . . . I haven’t forgotten.”
“Promise?”
“The bridge . . . I want to see that jump.”
He offers the ghost of a smile and winks, his eyelids fluttering.
“Of course.” I caress his face.
I force him to swallow two long white pills. I have no water. I make him swallow hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“David, you must listen to what I tell you, it’s so important. There are enough antibiotics for ten days. They will make you better. You need to take two every four hours. Can you please make sure you do that? Please?”
He nods, but I’m not convinced he’ll remember. The emaciated man beside him looks more alert. I close David’s hand around the pill bottle.
“Please,” I tell the other man. “He’s my husband. He needs to take two of these pills every four hours to get better. Can you make certain he does that? Please, I’m depending on you to remind him.”
The man nods, but I wonder if he knows what time it is, let alone how long until four hours elapse.
“Yes, I’ll remember. Two every four hours.”
“I beg you, make sure he takes the pills. Or his health will get worse.”
“Do you have pills for me?”
“Are you sick?”
“We’re all sick here.”
“I’m sorry. I have none for you. But I’ll try to come back. I’ll try to get more.”
I know that it’s unlikely I’ll ever be allowed back but I’ll say anything if it helps David. A far-off shell explodes. The prisoners murmur with fear, their nerves frayed. When two more explosions sound, the corrugated roof rattles. The nervous guard grabs my arm.
“Time’s up.”
“But Commander Shavik said I could have half an hour . . .”
“Didn’t you hear me? We’re leaving now.”
He drags me out. I hold on to David’s hand until our fingers stretch and part.
We always said we’d never leave each other, no matter what.
I don’t want to leave him now.
My eyes can’t leave his face.
We both know—we both know that we may never see each other again and the pain of that knowing shatters my heart.
The last thing I see are David’s wet, desolate blue eyes stare after me as he waves a dazed and frail goodbye.
David, my beautiful, wonderful David—what will become of us?
When I return Carla asks me where I have been.
I cry the moment she asks me. I can’t help it. I pretend I’m crying because I’m happy. But I know that David is so very ill. That he may not survive.
My spirit is broken but I can’t show Carla that.
I say brightly, “I saw your daddy today, Carla. I saw him. I spoke with him.”
She’s stunned. “How—how is he?”
“He’s fine, sweetheart. He is fit and healthy and he sends his love. He wants me to give you a big hug from him.”
She looks at me, doubtful, but I know she wants to believe me.
I hear far-off exploding shells. We cling to each other, a fevered Luka asleep beside us.
And then the thing I’m dreading most happens.
Arkov marches into our dormitory. I smell alcohol from him.
“You’re to come with me.”
I stand.
“Not you. Your daughter.”
“My . . . my daughter?”
“You heard me.”
I’ve been waiting for this to happen.
“Please don’t harm her.”
Arkov grunts. “Do as I say. Shavik wants to see her.”
“For . . . for what?”
Rage erupts on his face. “Question me again and I’ll give you both a beating you won’t forget.”
“Mama . . .” Carla gives me a pleading, confused look, and starts to cry. “Please, I don’t want to go, don’t let him make me . . .”
I stroke her hair, try to calm her.
“Please, Carla, just go to Shavik. Tell him you love your brother and father. Tell him they mean everything to you. Tell him you’re desperate to save them. That we need stronger antibiotics. Ask him to show mercy. You must do it, do it for your father and for Luka, for all of us.”
I see tears in Carla’s eyes.
Arkov clicks his fingers. “Come, on, come on, I haven’t got all day.”
He marches Carla away by the arm.
My soul feels shredded. My shoulders heave and I break down in tears.
By revealing myself, what have I allowed to happen?
What have I done? I’ve paid a terrible price for seeing Shavik. For those little white pills.
And then I cry, a torrent of tears I can’t hold back.
I pace the dormitory for over an hour until Carla returns.
She looks completely dazed. Like a sleepwalker. I hug her close and try to talk to her. She barely looks at me and doesn’t speak. She has tears in her eyes.
“Are you hurt? Did Shavik hurt you? What did he say to you?”
I know something happened to my daughter when she met with Shavik and it cuts me to the bone. But Carla barely shakes her head and won’t talk.
A guard comes and tosses me stronger antibiotics for Luka. “What did you do to earn those, woman?”
The far-off shelling resumes. After I give Luka the pills, Alma rushes in.
“Can you hear the gunfire getting nearer? The rumor’s going around that Shavik will have to evacuate us all by the morning if he and his men hope to escape.”
But I’m barely listening. I watch Carla as she numbly folds and unfolds Luka’s blankie—as she always does when she’s frightened or upset.
Another explosion.
Luka jolts in his fevered sleep. Carla strokes his hair, his dark curls damp on his brow, his breath rasping.
Alma says, “What’s wrong with Carla? She’s gone very quiet.”
Before I can answer, a handful of drunken guards enter the dormitory and tell everyone to prepare to leave by 6 a.m.
The women must gather their few belongings and there’s total fear and panic in the air. The word goes around that Shavik doesn’t have enough trucks to transport us. He has to wait until morning for more to arrive.
Carla is still silent. She worries me but frail Luka worries me even more. He’s still fevered, not well enough to move anywhere.
Rumors fly. “They say our troops are only ten miles away!”
In the yard beyond the barred window, the guards are packing away their equipment. Drinking heavily like the cowards that they are, as if afraid of the battle to come.
Except Shavik, who’s all business. I see him waving his hands and giving orders to his men.
I’m praying that the camp will be liberated soon.
But a worried Alma whispers, “Even if they move us, they’ll kill us, Lana. We’re only a burden—we’re witnesses. We have a chance to escape now while there’s panic. But we have to do it before the trucks leave tomorrow.”
I think: Shavik said that we would be evacuated for our own safety.
But every day now his men are drinking, on edge, fingering their weapons. Can they be trusted to obey orders? I’m full of doubt.
When I don’t respond fast enough, Alma becomes agitated. Her eyes stare at me with a wild, almost mad look.
“For heaven’s sake, aren’t you listening to me?”
“I hear you Alma.”
“Then answer.”
“I’m thinking.”
“This is no time to think, it’s tim
e to act.”
Alma is frantic with panic. Others begin to look at her. I grasp her shoulders.
“Alma . . . Alma . . . get a grip of yourself.”
She calms, but I know that what she says makes sense.
I know our lives are at risk.
The guards are like loose cannon, capable of anything.
Now is the time to take our chances and flee.
But how?
And what about David? My poor David . . .
Later, as Carla and Luka sleep, I sit in a corner with my diary and pen.
I think long and hard.
This may be the last time I will write. My writing may even be of no consequence. But I must record all that has happened to us even if there’s only a small chance that others will read my words.
The world must know. Not only what has happened, but to take hope, that the human spirit has a power that endures.
I know this to be so, despite all our tragedies.
Evil can never destroy the light of goodness that shines within us.
How can it ever?
When there is not enough darkness in the world to quench the light of one small candle . . .
A little after midnight my head hurts from thinking.
But a plan sparks in my mind.
I pack Luka’s blankie and his pills inside his Thomas the Train backpack. Luka looks wretched, his face bathed in sweat.
I don’t waken the children just yet, only Alma.
“What is it?” she asks drowsily.
And I tell her—tell her what I think is our last hope of escape . . .
The writing ended abruptly. Carla flipped over the pages but they were blank, except for the childish drawings in Luka’s hand at the back of the diary.
She was tormented by questions.
What happened to her mother and her father and to Luka?
She tried to think straight but it was impossible.
What happened to her in Shavik’s office?
She could recall nothing, not even meeting with Shavik.
And then her mother’s words in the diary rang in her mind like church bells.
It’s done. I did what I had to.
What Shavik did makes me cry.
The indignity her mother must have endured at the hands of Shavik in return for the medicines.
Had she herself been assaulted, too?
She felt her temples throb with a blinding headache.
She put down the diary.
She sat back in the chair for a long time, staring at the ceiling.
Closing her eyes tightly, she slowly opened them again.
She felt sadness, pain, rage. A jumble of feelings.
She struggled hard to pull more memories from her mind.
For a time her headache felt so blinding she could barely focus.
At first, nothing came.
And then it suddenly felt as if someone had opened a floodgate and a dam broke inside her skull.
Memories washed in. They came in such an emotionally charged burst that she almost drowned in the deluge.
The time on the bus when the guard struck her father.
The long march to the camp. Luka wearing his Thomas the Train backpack as she clutched his small hand. She remembered him begging for water. And the desolate, terrified look in her mother’s eyes.
She remembered all the mothers, terrified, exhausted. The little children crying. The stricken agony on her father’s face, which almost seemed like shame—he must have felt so helpless he could do nothing to ease his family’s suffering.
In her mind she saw again the distraught mother who stole some chocolate for her little boy and was hung by Boris Arkov, her child wailing until he was taken away and never seen again.
She saw the brutal faces of the guards, and the pitiful faces of their victims.
And that one glorious day—bathing in the river with her mother and Luka, the feel of the cold, bubbling water on her body.
It all came back.
She buried her face in her hands, sobbing.
It all felt too much to take in.
She reached under Dr. Leon’s desk and pressed the buzzer.
15
* * *
“Where did you get my mother’s diary?”
“I thought I explained. You had it with you when you were found. That and the silver dollar.”
“Found where?”
“Wandering the streets of a deserted town four miles from the camp. You read the journal to the end?”
“Yes. Who found me?”
“NATO special forces on a reconnaissance mission in the area.”
“Did I tell them what happened to me?”
“Not at once. You were shell-shocked, badly traumatized, and suffering from hypothermia.”
“Was the camp overrun?”
“Yes, the same day they found you.”
“What happened to Luka?”
“I’ve no idea, Carla. But I believe the camp was searched and found completely empty. I’m sure Baize can tell you more.”
Carla collapsed back into her chair. “She—she kept all this from me, all these years.”
“Baize kept silent on my instructions.”
“Why?”
“I couldn’t risk triggering your memory. Baize simply loves you and did as I asked her. Even if her silence came at a heavy price.”
“What do you mean?”
Dr. Leon said gently, “I think I’ll leave that for Baize to explain. What are you thinking, Carla? What do you feel?”
“I can’t think right now. I’m still reeling.”
“But you’re coping?”
“No, I’m not. Not after reading so much horror.”
“I know it seems inconceivable that men would inflict such depravity on other human beings. So many people were killed and tortured in your mother’s homeland. Men, women, children. The savagery was terrible. Butchery not seen on a scale since the Nazis’ mass killing of Jews.”
She looked at Leon. “You asked what I feel. I feel angry. And ashamed.”
“Why shame?”
“That I could forget my mother and father and Luka for so long.”
“Not your fault, just your mind’s way of coping. But you’re beginning to remember, aren’t you? It’s starting to come back.”
“Yes. Images. Recollections. Some of them clear, others kind of vague, and hazy.”
“It’s going to be like that in the coming days and weeks. I’m also certain the memories will get sharper. You have to be prepared for that. I’ll be here to help every step of the way.”
Dr. Leon removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger.
“If it all becomes too much, or if you need to talk to me at anytime, just remember I’m at the other end of a phone, twenty-four/seven.”
“Whatever happened to Shavik and Arkov?”
“I read various reports that claimed they were dead. Others suggested they assumed new identities and vanished. So many of the minor players have never been apprehended and punished, I’m sorry to say.”
He pushed his glasses back on the bridge of his nose.
“Do you recall anything about when you were summoned to see Shavik? What he did or said to you? If he harmed you?”
“No. Nothing. It’s a blank.”
“Of course, we have to consider there’s the real possibility he physically or sexually assaulted you.”
Carla felt herself recoil.
“But I have to tell you that this aspect of your case has me really confused.”
“Why?”
“For example, all the perpetrators of child abuse that I have worked with were previously abused as children. Often when they reach an age where they have power, they reenact the trauma in the role of the powerful one, the abuser.
“Equally, the abuse could have the opposite effect. It may prevent them from having normal sexual relations, even when they don’t remember the abuse. I’ve known clients who ca
n’t even look at their own genitals, and can’t get any further than a fully clothed hug with the opposite sex.”
“Meaning?”
“There’s no indication of any of that with you. Either your memory has suppressed the abuse, or no abuse never occurred.”
“But why would I suppress it if nothing happened?”
“That’s what’s so confusing. Something happened, I feel certain of that. What it was, I’ve no idea.”
“The missing diary pages. Do you have any idea what they might contain?”
“No, I don’t.”
Leon reflected. “I remember when you first came to me.”
“Remember what?”
“How for months after you arrived in this country you could relate to no one, not even to Baize and Dan. You’d hide away in your room, curled up in a ball like an addict trying to detox.”
“I didn’t talk much?”
“No. You seemed to remember nothing of your past, either, or want to, yet you had constant nightmares. Some nights you’d wake, screaming. You see your arm . . .”
Carla held up her scarred right arm, as Dr. Leon said, “On one occasion, you punched your hand through a glass window. You suffered deep lacerations that required major surgery. And then eventually you settled down.”
“At least I know now the recent nightmares make sense. For a while I thought I was going mad. Now I’m not sure which is worse.”
“What do you mean?”
“The feeling that I was going insane or knowing the truth.”
She rose from her chair.
“Where are you going, Carla?”
“To see Baize. I’m sorry. I can’t talk about this with you anymore today.”
“That’s all right. But go easy on Baize, okay? She’s had a lot to deal with in the past, losing her only son and your family. We’ll need to talk again, you and I. You’ve had a lot to take in.”
“When?”
“Soon as you feel up to it. This isn’t going to be easy. Working our way through everything could take a long time. But we want to make sure you’re in a fit mental state before your baby arrives.”
“I . . . I’d like to keep this.” She picked up the diary, ran her fingers over the scuffed leather.
“Of course. It’s yours.”
Carla flipped toward the back pages and the crayon drawings.
Touching the faded colors with her fingertips, she faltered.