Tears of Amber

by Sofía Segovia

At the first breath, life hurts. How could you not cry, the first time the light hits your eyes, or the first time you feel the dry brush of the air on your skin? How could you not cry when your lungs are filled with cold, unfamiliar oxygen, or when the soft sounds that used to reach your flooded ears arrive hard, unfiltered? How could you not protest when the world turns infinite and does nothing to contain the body that, until that day, had been so tightly held, so closely hugged in the dark softness of your mother’s interior?

children never learn as much as in the first three years of life. They learn, they live, but they never remember having learned or lived.

But unlike the vehicle’s gun that had fascinated Arno so, the man kept his arm up high, because someone like him would never humble himself by bowing. Not even before the people who’d granted him power with their votes and their faith, and who sustained him at the heights he seemed to enjoy so much.

But it was dangerous to express any doubts, so he exorcised his thoughts as much as he could—not even in the privacy of his inner being did he feel safe—and

It was easy to forget the reality of Jadwiga’s status, and, knowing her well, loving her, it was difficult to understand the scientific reasoning that, according to the Party, proved Slavs were inferior. For Wanda, it was hard to see inferiority in someone with a heart as good as this Polish girl’s, and her intelligence was undeniable; she’d made Ilse’s mathematics homework an adventure for the young girl; she devoted so much time and patience to teaching Freddy words he could barely pronounce, but which she understood perfectly when he repeated.

“The greatest enemy of the dominant species on earth, mankind: The subhuman is a biological creature, crafted by nature, which has hands, legs, eyes, and mouth, even the semblance of a brain. Nevertheless, this terrible creature is only a partial human being. Although it has features similar to a human, the subhuman is lower on the spiritual and psychological scale than any animal. Not all of those who appear human are in fact so.”

But the German Army was also feeling the cold, because weather is never interested in war and never takes sides. And time doesn’t stop even when ordered or threatened: one season ends and another begins; time neither listens to reason, nor obeys orders, nor forgives carelessness.

the cold is a venomous monster that injects itself silently into your

skin, that makes you forget to fear it. It’ll seduce you to close your eyes, Janusz, and take you to a dream from which you’ll never wake. Don’t listen to it, Janusz. Don’t listen to its sweet lullaby. Do that and you’ll die.

she would never take him to another doctor.

She’d prefer for him to die in the arms of the mother who loved him than hand him over to a medical system that sought to eradicate imperfection.

He measured time by the stabs of pain that prevented him from breathing, sleeping, eating, or looking up. He thought he remembered that, the previous day, there had been one thousand three hundred and forty-one pulses of pain, but he knew his count was off, because he’d lost track when sleep took him by surprise.

The war was not over for him. The war now possessed his body and his mind.

Karl didn’t budge, willing the warm summer light to chase away the winter inside him.

cacophonous

It was still there, but no longer at the center of his mind.

schemes to ease his suffering, and as a result didn’t notice as the aftereffects of war became tolerable without chemical help. One day, he suddenly realized it was only the drug’s warmth that he now longed for, that addiction and not pain was the only thing that kept him trembling and enslaved. Fill me or you’ll die, the absence of

Did you know that Heine wrote that where books are burned, it always ends in people being burned?”

The woman closed her curtains. Arno took it she was having one of her dark days. Arno looked around for something helpful to do, even if there was no request and would be no thank-you. He understood her sadness. Frau Hitzig needed help, she needed all her sons not to have died, she needed her neighbors to stop throwing mud at her door because of the absence of donation badges. She needed . . . she needed Arno to clean the door again.

They said Germany would be victorious this time, but he’d already lost: his father had returned, and how lucky that he was in one piece, everyone said. But Arno knew it was a lie: he’d returned, true, but not in one piece. Maybe the bullet had hit him right where he kept his joy and had smashed it to bits.

His father’s joy had died in the war. And his voice, too. He’d gotten better, though sometimes he still limped a little;

A soldier cries oceans, but he learns to do it in silence if he wants to survive the war. Karl had managed it: he’d left the war, but the war refused to leave him. It had followed him to his farm; it had invaded his mind. It had turned his dreams into nightmares, his bed into ice, his hands into lifeless instruments, his heart into a rhythmless, tuneless musician.

Wanda surprised herself. She would never have believed that, in the space of a morning, she could go from treasuring something to feeling nothing more than a distant nostalgia, thankful for the last impromptu opportunity to use it thanks to a mischievous daughter’s crazy idea. Hartwig was right: some celebrations can’t be missed. That day, they’d celebrated a birthday and a goodbye.

Why had she been so attached to fragile things? She closed her eyes to stop seeing herself

in the imperfect glass. Who would the next face reflected there belong to?

According to Frau Wollatz, they’d taken a lot from their main house, but not everything. And they had favored loading their car with belongings over people. Would their overloaded car be capable of transporting them to their destination in this weather? Did the Von Witzlebens know that silver spoons wouldn’t keep them alive?

The important thing was not where they were but that they were alive, and together. After years of relative peace in the war, in the blink of an eye, her life had been reduced to that: to understanding that the only treasure worth anything is life.

Why did she insist on infecting everyone with her anguish?

That day, she wished she were Edeline or Helmut so that the world would still speak to her in half-truths, softly, playfully, and with simple words. She wanted to believe and to be excited, as Freddy was, that they were embarking on an adventure.

But today, her mother had spoken to her with her anguish intact, without measuring her words. As an equal. Ilse was no longer a child; her mother had declared it with each word: The. Russians. Are. Coming.

The aircraft came and went in a leisurely way; they performed a pirouette and pretended to fly away, but before they reached the city’s outskirts, they doubled back for more. They made a show of their supremacy as they rained punishment on the earth. And under them, the city shook; it collapsed. Fire. Death. Many stories ending.