Free Nocturnes by T. R. Stingley

couldn’t. Instead of fighting, he let it take him completely. As he succumbed to a restless slumber, he heard a child crying out on the strand. “Mommy, mommy!…”
    “…Mommy, mommy!...” The child, a boy of eight or nine years, darted past them, weaving his way through the throng of strangers, seeking the comfort of his family. On the breast pocket of his black coat was sewn the yellow Star of David: the identifier of their race. Isaac watched the boy as he ran through that sea of yellow stars…as some children, somewhere far from Warsaw, might be running through a field of sunflowers.
    All around them, the dense mass plodded forward, pulling carts and dragging trunks and luggage as if they were about to board the Titanic. All the mementos of a doomed people, already dead, but not yet buried…not yet burned.
    The members of their once proudly-defiant clique had dressed in black, as in mourning, and had set out for the ghetto, as ordered by the Nazis. The entire Jewish population was being relocated so that the Germans could “ensure their safety from a hostile population.” Patrik had insisted that they link arms and sing Jewish folk songs. “A solidarity of the damned,” he had icily remarked. They had posed for a final photograph as free Polish youth before they were herded into the walled death-pool of the ghetto.
    Isaac was amazed at the resolve and the repose of his friends. In particular, Lessa seemed almost a stranger when compared to her previously-fearful self. His wife was now a leader among the young Jews. Her humor and compassion were sought out by all who knew her.
    By contrast, Isaac was almost numb with apprehension. There had been rumors of this day for many weeks. Now they were passing away from their old lives and entering a time and place where they were at the mercy of a machine that wanted only their removal.
    He could only imagine the worst. A great many of their people had already been shipped away from Warsaw. No one knew for certain where these people had gone, but there were horrible rumors of mass killings, and open graves where hundreds upon hundreds had gone to their end. When he pondered these things—it was impossible for him not to—when he thought of his beloved Lessa at the hands of these butchers, he would nearly go mad with anxiety.
    For the next five months, Isaac waited breathlessly for the knock at their door. Each morning would find yet another family gone, taken from their community. The terror was brilliant in its execution: a three a.m. pounding at the door, the jackboot rush through the rooms, the bellowed threats and blows as they were rounded up and shoved onto waiting trucks already loaded with the startled, sobbing faces of the lost.
    Isaac knew that terror. He was the prime example of what terror was meant to inflict. A paralyzed waiting…a seasickness of certain disaster. The Nazis didn’t even need to come for people like Isaac. He was already a psychological slave to their will. Their random calculations, their night-terror tactics, had done the lion’s share of their work. Auschwitz was merely a formality.
    But Isaac was no coward. His fear was not for himself. The way his mind left him was a dark fantasy, an opportunity for the escape he had denied his wife. The moment had played itself out before him in so many ways and with so many happy endings that, after a month or two of waiting for them to come for Lessa and himself, he came to prefer the only place where they were safe…the sanctuary of his escapist thoughts.
    Lessa knew what was happening to her husband. But she had chosen to immerse herself in a routine of mercy and service. There were many lost souls in the ghetto. Food was scarce. There were few medicines to help the sick. Lessa did what she could with her creative compassion. And each day she would attempt to enlist the aid of the man she loved and still believed in.
    But Isaac stayed off the streets and implored her to do the same. The