The Moment

One of the homes that Frank, Kozina and my grandpa hid in over the three years   

The cool metal of my Burp gun both reassures and frightens me. I don’t want to use it, but I will if I have to. I lock eyes with Frank and Kozina for a split second.  ‘Stick to the plan’ is the message we shared in that short but loaded glance. The plan for the past three years has been ‘strelil’ (shoot). This is not a good plan - it is a plan made by desperate men.

Another home that hid the men.

More voices and boots storm into our home. Frank flashes six fingers and uses the other four to maintain grip on his machine gun. There are six Partisans downstairs - how many more were outside surrounding the house, trapping us up here on the second floor? We stand motionless, paralyzed by fear atop the stairs. We are trapped up here with no way out, ‘strelil’ is really our only hope.  

The harsh clamor of intruders resonate through our home. The cacophony of sound overwhelms the three of us whose secret existence have led to silent, ghoulish lives, where we hide during the days and become active only at night under the shroud of darkness. The different dialects from all over Yugoslavia drift up the stairs to our perch - one of the voices sound familiar, like Jancar, a boy Frank and I grew up with but I can’t be sure of it.

Their sounds travel around the main floor and up the stairs to where I stand praying for our lives to be spared. I had deserted the Communist Army and would be sent to death by firing squad if caught. Frank and Kozina hold secrets of Tito and his Partisans - they survived a massacre of tens of thousands of innocent men at Kocevski Rog. They had come back from the grave to threaten the vice-tight grip Communists kept on the truth.  They want us dead and we will do anything to survive.

A boot stomps down on the first step. The polished black leather boot is just visible around the supine stairs. The soldier begins to ascend the stairs. This is it. My heart stops. My breath held. My finger on the trigger. Time moves slow and thick. The sweet smell of his Lucky Strike cigarette reaches my nostrils and adrenaline replaces paralyzing fear - my heart beats fast and hard surging  blood through my veins. The closer you come to Death the more Alive you feel. He stops, resting his boot on that first step as he turns slowly and sits down with his back towards us. Kozina inhales sharply, and I wait for the Partisan’s head to turn in response to the sound - it doesn’t. He doesn’t turn around, but if he does he will be looking down the barrels of three guns aimed at him.

An eternity passes. The soldier enjoys his smoke as we stand, a mere ten feet away, without breathing, waiting to kill or be killed.

The stairs groan with the shift of the soldiers weight as he stands - the barrel of my gun follows the middle of his back with my finger poised on the trigger. Anger rolls over me as he grinds his Lucky Strike out on the floor of our home with his big, black boot before he turns and walks away. His footsteps recede into the kitchen.

We exhale.

From the kitchen, gruff and crude tones mix with Mother’s fragile voice.  I can’t hear what they are saying to Mother, or what she is saying in response. Her words have saved us from capture before, I only pray her words will spare us yet again. A pang of guilt pierces through the fear reminding me how dangerous our existence is to our loved ones.

The floorboards creak as footsteps quicken towards the stairs. I inhale sharply and aim to shoot whoever walks up these stairs.