Page 17

SIXTEEN

LUKA

Apollo finally gets his sister to sleep and tucks a thin sheet around her just before bobbing his head around to get my attention.

It’s his cue that he’s ready to go.

We slip out of the apartment, avoiding the wooden planks that moan and whine, only opening the front door enough to squeeze through the space so the hinges don’t squeal, then weave down the stairwell, skipping the stairs that sound like they might collapse with each footstep.

“Is your Ella bringing you herbs to help your poor grandmother tonight?” Apollo asks as we head down a quiet alleyway between two buildings.

I shrug despite knowing he can’t see my gesture in the dark.

“Everything is becoming harder to come by, and I didn’t think this was possible just a year ago. She promised to do what she can, but I told her to stay within the city. God only knows if things are worse outside Warsaw.”

The summer heat funnels between the walls regardless of the time of day, making it so the air is constantly as oppressive and thick as it is inside the building.

There is no fresh air anywhere, only the smell of sweat, rot, and waste suffocating us night and day.

The cobblestones of varying subdued colors are now covered with dust and dirt, littered with scraps of newspaper, broken belongings, and weak people who can’t make it back to their living quarter for the night.

There are bodies everywhere, not just the ones of the dead, but ones like mine that are hollow, frail, pale, and barely functioning.

I’m grateful to avoid my reflection, but I do wonder what I look like in comparison to others walking around with limbs too thin to hold up their frail frames with unrecognizable skeletal faces.

Just a year ago, my heart ached watching neighbors sit on their front stoops in torn clothes, living off essentials and losing weight by the day.

Never did I expect how much worse it would become.

We’re all trying to survive without reason.

It’s just what we’re supposed to do.

This is what we tell ourselves even when looking up to the top of the brick walls the height of two people, one on top of another, fixed with barbed wire.

Each corner I walk around unfolds into another length of space holding a line of people waiting and begging for a crumb of bread, or a possibility to barter for bare materials.

On the side streets I pass through, I overhear whispers of resistance, and rumors of life outside the walls.

The other side of the walls is like a foreign place now.

“I don’t blame you, telling her not to leave. It’s scary enough to wonder what’s happening outside these walls,” he says.

“What I do know is…that girl loves you. You’re lucky to have someone, even if you can only be with them in secret.” Apollo has mentioned before that he wishes he had someone to love, to give him hope and a reason to smile.

I tell him there will be plenty of opportunities once the Germans are gone.

We both realize it’s nothing more than wishful thinking.

Apollo doesn’t go down into the tunnels for the same reasons I do, but he’s found a group of men who play cards for money and despite playing with one cent coins most of the time, it’s a small escape each day—a hint of an ordinary life.

We search around for stubs of scrap wood to use as a torch once I’m inside the tunnel.

It’s very difficult with the number of broken wagons and deteriorating building structures are on every corner.

Together, we lift the sewer top and shove it to the side so we can make our way down the ladder.

My heart thunders with each rung I descend, knowing I’m a step closer to pulling Ella into my arms. I’m not sure she realizes how many ways she’s saved me from falling into a hopeless pit of despair while we’ve been stuck here between the encumbering walls.

She’s my last breath, the thread that keeps me dangling over a ledge—the thread I hope never breaks.

I want to say all these things to her but I’m afraid of the burden I’d cause.

We’re both putting ourselves in danger by climbing through the sewers every night but sometimes the wrong decision is the only choice left.

Apollo closes the sewer cover from within, the thud echoing between the walls.

I grab a match from my pocket and strike it against a dry crag of flint above the water level and use the glow to guide me through the maze of connecting passages.

It amazes me how many people meander down here regularly—everyone with their own unique reason, whether business, trading, meetings with members of the Polish and Jewish resistance.

Except for some Jewish and Polish police, most Polish citizens are desperate for the return of our freedom.

No one questions each other down here.

We might all be naive in thinking the Germans aren’t aware we’re down here, but no one can afford to make assumptions either way and the underground passages are our only way to contact anyone outside the ghetto walls.

“All right, brother, I’ll meet you back here in a bit,” Apollo says.

“Tell Miss Ella I send my hello and thank her for the cheese she brought for us yesterday.”

After months of meeting one another down here, Ella and I found a split between three tunnels, one that leads to an enclosure, a place for a bit of privacy unless someone is lost and trying to find their way to a sewer hole.

She’s usually already here waiting for me, as she’s said she doesn’t want to waste even a short second of time before the resistance guards on the Aryan side close the entrance for the night.

The Germans make their rounds around the city blocks outside the walls a half hour before curfew every night and no one wants to be caught in their sights then.

I wedge the torch between a few rocks, finding that I’ve arrived here first tonight.

My mind doesn’t wait for logic or reason, but my blood runs cold, my limbs stiffening with worry.

Maybe she got held up with her family.

Or the guards might have delayed the entrance time due to a change in the Germans’ schedule.

I just need to be patient. She’ll be here.