Page 56

FIFTY-FIVE

LUKA

May 1945

Time: Nine weeks and three days , I write at the top of my journal entry after peeking at the previous page that says: Nine weeks and two days.

Name: Luka Dulski

I graze the tip of my pencil to the blank space following the prompt.

What do I remember today:

While staring at the red marked scars lining my knuckles for a moment, I collect my thoughts before jotting them down.

My family is dead, but I’m alive.

Etan. I know him. We’re friends.

He’s doing much better than I am.

He’s here with me.

I like to eat and listen to the record player.

That’s good enough for today.

I close the journal and place my pencil down.

A man in uniform passes by my bed with a little girl by his side, holding his hand.

His shoes are loud on the floor, making my ears hurt.

I blink and the black uniform becomes green, and the little girl begins to scream as he drags her down the row of beds.

I blink again, and his uniform returns to black and the little girl is calm and walking on her own.

Every time I drift into a dark haze, I see something different—something other than what’s in front of me.

I try to grasp hold of the image just to understand the meaning, but no matter how hard I try, it fades away.

“Luka…”

I open my eyes, giving up the fight.

Etan is standing by my bedside, his hands tucked into his pockets.

After nine weeks, I can finally see his face is becoming fuller, less hollow around his cheeks.

He looks healthier. I’m not ready to see what I look like.

I won’t recognize the reflection.

Etan said we were prisoners together in Auschwitz, performers together, he a violinist, and me a singer.

It’s hard to imagine anyone performing in a prison.

It’s hard to imagine me as a singer when my voice sounds like I’ve swallowed a bunch of rocks.

Most of the time I still whisper, feeling less pain that way.

“Are you doing all right? You look a bit lost today,” he says, pulling up a stool from behind my bed.

“Sure. I wrote in my journal,” I say, gesturing to the closed notebook on my lap.

“The nurse says it helps.”

Etan’s lips curl into a half smile.

“She’s right. You’re getting better every day. You remember much more now each day than you did weeks ago. It’s progress.”

“I suppose.” I glance at my hands again, flexing my fingers while watching the scars stretch and shrink as if they’ll speak to me in some way, or fill in the missing pieces I can’t find.

“There are still so many gaps. There are still so many things that don’t make sense.”

“They will,” Etan says, his head tilting to the side.

His empathy is pure, full of optimism.

“Give yourself time.”

Time.

The word on everyone’s lips here.

Time will do this, and time will do that.

In time, we’ll all be better.

Is it true though?

The man in uniform returns from whoever he was visiting, the little girl still holding his hand.

“Come along, Ella, we have one more person to visit before we go,” he says.

Ella… Ella.

I open my journal and flip through the pages until I find the one where I’ve been keeping track of names that come to mind.

I find the letter E with a dash following.

It could be for Etan.

E could be for—the vision of a long flowing braid with wisps of golden hair flying against a face covered in light freckles.

A sweet, gentle laugh.

She turns her head and—Etan is waving his hand in front of my face.

“Where did you go?”

“Do I know someone named Ella?” Etan stares at me without answering and I don’t understand why.

It’s a yes or no answer.

“Well?”

“You tell me,” he says.

“Blonde hair, a braid, a beautiful laugh…” I describe the vision.

Etan shifts his weight from one foot to the other.

“No one really had much hair where we were?—”

I repeat her name in my head several more times, trying to call for another vision to appear in my mind.

I shut my eyes and say her name once more.

A reel of darkness steals my memory again.

I reopen my eyes, finding a nurse passing by.

“Did I mention the name to you before?”

“Yeah, yeah you did,” he says but with unease like he doesn’t want to say anything more about this person.

By dinner time each day, I’ve exhausted my mind past the brink of being able to form new thoughts and I easily fall asleep, ready to chase memories through dreams, hoping to capture them and keep them with me when I wake up.

I imagine a long braid, blonde wisps of hair against a face full of freckles.

I reach out and sweep the hair off her face, finding a glittering smile with dimples at each end.

A nose that turns up just slightly at the end like a doll’s face.

And eyes the color of the Mediterranean Sea.

She’s beautiful. Her cheeks blush after holding her stare to mine for too many seconds and she looks down, but her smile remains.

My heart thunders in my chest and my stomach fills with nerves that make me happy.

The smell of coffee and eggs pushes the image away and I open my eyes to the sun shining in through the window, marking another day here in this bed, in this place where I don’t want to be anymore.

“Good morning,” a nurse says, placing a tray of food down on my lap.

“How are you feeling this morning?”

“Fine, thank you,” I say.

“Can you remember what your name is?” she continues.

“Yes. My name is Luka Dulski.”

“That’s music to my ears, my good man,” she says.

The nurse continues delivering trays down the row of other patients like me, but then returns to the foot of my bed.

“I haven’t had a chance to finish my food yet,” I tell her.

“Take your time, dear. When you’re through with breakfast though, there’s someone here to see you. I can bring you into a more private space so we can make sure you have quiet, and a bit of time to process your thoughts to see if you remember this person. Does that sound all right with you?”

My family is dead—my mother, father, grandmother, and grandfather.

She’s the nurse who told me so.

“Of course,” I say.

I scrape up the food on my plate and eat faster than I should.

Though it’s been a while since I’ve gotten sick from eating too quickly.

“You’re supposed to take your time with that, Luka,” the nurse says, returning to my side.

“I did. I would like to see whoever came to visit.”

The nurse helps me into a wheelchair, not because I can’t walk, but because of the risk of falling.

The injury I sustained to my head will need time to heal, though it doesn’t hurt anymore.

But the nurses and doctors insist I be cautious for a while.

The nurse wheels me out of the ward and into a closed off space with a small window.

“I’ll be right back with your guest,” she says.

I wheel myself over to the window to look outside from this angle of the building.

There isn’t much to see other than another building almost within reach.

“Luka…”

I suck in a breath before turning around, searching for a memory of the voice, but nothing flashes through my mind.

I twist my chair around, finding a young woman with short blonde hair, rosy cheeks.

She’s frail, with a lot of uncertainty in her bright blue eyes.

“Yes, that’s me,” I say with a hoarse rasp.

My response makes her chin tremble, but she walks closer to me.

“Do you remember who I am?” she asks, her voice unsteady.

The longer I take to answer, the more sorrow fills her pretty eyes.

“What’s your name?”

She shudders an inhale.

“Ella. Ella Bosko.”

“Ella,” I repeat.

“I know—I know your name.” But how are we connected?

“You do?” she asks, her voice full of hope.

“There’s a girl with a long blonde braid, freckles, and the sweetest laugh—I see her in my dreams,” I tell her.

Her eyebrows furrow as she stares at me.

“I did have a long braid,” she says, weaving her fingers through short strands that end at her chin.

Again, she takes a few more steps closer to me and kneels so she’s not hovering over me.

The light that filters in through the window behind me highlights freckles across her cheeks.

“You’re Ella—the one in my dreams.”

She smiles and sniffles.

“Yes, it’s me. I don’t know what you went through after I last saw you…”

“Were you in Auschwitz, too?”

Her eyes gloss over and widen.

“Yes, I was, but there were many months between the time I saw you last and?—”

“When I suffered a head injury and lost my memory,” I say, finishing her sentence.

She nods and places her hand gently on my knee.

The warmth of her fingers sends a chill up my spine.

“We loved each other very much, but we were separated in Auschwitz, so it was hard to see each other.”

“We loved each other?” I ask, a smile lifting my cheeks.

“Yes,” she says, her voice breaking.

I’m hurting her and it’s the last thing I’d ever want to do.

“Are you—my wife?”

Ella laughs through a gentle sigh—and the sound paints a picture in my mind…

I see her sitting in a tree beside me.

Both of us are swinging our legs.

I wrap my arm around her and hold her tightly.

“No,” she says.

“Was there a tree—did we sit in a tree, and did I wrap my arm around you? Or am I imagining something that didn’t happen? It’s hard to tell the difference lately.”

With another trembling breath, she nods, hope flashing in her eyes.

“We had a tree. It was our tree. Our favorite of all the trees.”

“You mean to tell me I sat in a tree with a beautiful girl who I loved and didn’t ask her to marry me?” Suddenly, a form of desperation pleads for the answer.

“Someone else you love once told me, ‘Marriage is nothing more than a binding piece of paper, and nowhere on it do the words describe the meaning of love.’ That was enough for us.”

The words drawl in my head as a voice different from Ella’s.

“My grandmother said that, didn’t she?” I whisper.

Ella smiles again. “She did.”

“She must have loved you, too.”

“The world was once filled with love, and we’ll have that again soon, I believe,” Ella says.

“I hope so,” I say.

Ella sighs and drops her gaze.

“I don’t want to take up too much of your time today. I’m sure you?—”

“Time. Too much time? There’s not enough time,” I tell her.

“I almost ran out of time. Don’t go. Please. Don’t go.”

She presses her hand to her chest. “No, no of course not. I won’t leave if you don’t want me to. I just?—”

“Don’t be so courteous. If I’ve learned anything about myself in the last couple of months, it’s that I don’t like when people are careful when they speak to me. I already know I’m broken.”

“You’re not broken, Luka.”

“May I hold your hand?” I ask, holding mine out.

She doesn’t hesitate to lift hers and weave her fingers between mine.

“Just for a moment.”

With a struggle, she rises, wincing a bit as she does.

I recognize that pain.

I drop my feet to the ground and pull the brake on my wheelchair.

“What are you doing?” she asks, looking behind her to make sure I’m not doing something I shouldn’t, which I am.

I use the handle of my chair just enough to get my knees to straighten out so I can stand upright.

Once I’m up, I’m steady.

“Could I?—”

She’s staring up at me with curiosity and hope and what I imagine to be love because my heart is telling me to hold her closer, in my arms, right where she’s supposed to be.

I wrap my free arm around her back and ease her against me.

I rest my cheek against the top of her head and close my eyes.

I see her lips—I stared at them for a long moment once upon a time, before I realized I couldn’t stop myself.

Her cheek was damp from the sudden rainstorm, but she was warm and sent sparks shooting through my body.

I told her—I told her…

“I remember our first kiss. I compared you to a song—one I would sing over and over to recall that perfect moment,” I whisper in her ear.

She pulls away but doesn’t let go of me, staring up into my eyes, her breaths hard and heavy.

She rests her hand on my cheek and presses up on her toes then, her lips brushing against mine.

She’s part of me—inside of my heart.

If I lose her, I don’t know if I’ll still be myself.

It’s hard to breathe as I pull her closer, and kiss her harder, desperate to remember this moment and never forget.

We both tug away for a breath, our chests heaving against each other’s.

I cup her cheek and murmur, “I do love you. I need you. You’re the missing piece to the broken parts of me.”

Tears fill Ella’s eyes.

“I didn’t think I could cry ever again, but my heart—it’s been aching for you for so long. I sing myself to sleep every night with a song you wrote for me—I’ve kept you with me that way. I can always hear you if I need a reminder that you’re with me.”

Tears fill my eyes, too.

“Will you sing it to me?”

A quiet, sweet hum utters against my ear as she sings to me:

The sky is dark and gray

but behind the clouds, it’s blue.

Lovely days will come

soon for me and you.

The melody wraps around me like a blanket of comfort and safety.

And then it happens—a memory, so clear and vivid.

The two of us talking about forever, a swing beneath a tree, stars covering the sky over our farm, our quiet, peaceful place to call our own.

The song she’s singing comes back to me all at once, filling my soul.

I interrupt her with a whisper, my voice joining hers:

Keep me in your dreams,

and I’ll come to you each night.

Hold me in your arms

until the morning light.

Ella’s voice falters, her breath catching on the last word as she presses her cheek to my chest. “You remember the words,” she says, as a tear falls to my arm.

“I do remember,” I tell her, my voice cracking.

“I remember you, my darling Ella, and now I know you’re a beautiful singer, too.”

“No, no I’m not,” she says, her breath catching in her throat.

“Don’t be so humble,” I tell her, words that fire through me as a memory of one of our first conversations.

“Humble,” she whispers, closing her eyes and smiling.

The melody lingers in the air as I hold her, swaying back and forth.

The music between us, it’s a bridge of the past and future, leading us to a fresh beginning—the life we fought for, a love worth living for, and hope that will never die.

From the moment I laid eyes on her, I knew she would be the reason I would keep breathing and searching for the sun in the sky.

She saved me the first day she saw me, and she kept on saving me—against all odds.

No matter the risk.

For her, I would fight any battle, like she’s done for me.

In my heart, I always knew that one day, our love would be strong enough to pull us back together.

To survive for.

The Beginning.

* * *

If The Singer Behind the Wire had you reaching for the tissues, you will love Shari J.

Ryan’s spell-binding, unforgettable WW2 novel, The Doctor’s Daughter .

Get it here or keep reading for an exclusive extract.