The Amber Room at the Moskva Hotel

Isidora Jovanovic took a deep breath as she pushed open the ancient wooden door in front of her. Dust filled her senses as she entered the dark, dingy room. Instinctively she reached up under her coat sleeve and fingered the gold chain wrapped cautiously around her wrist. Attached at the end was a gold heart shaped locket. Her mind briefly wandered as she traced the filigree lines in the shape of an infinite figure eight.

She strode across the room, her light, green eyes searching for the mismatched piece of wallpaper. Upon finding it, her heart raced. She peeled back the tiny patch of wallpaper, revealing a square plate of solid amber with a frame of inlaid gold. Beautiful swirls decorated the sides, bordering a small clam shaped hole in the middle. She held the locket open, moving it to fit into the missing space. Today is the day, she thought, today I am going to kill Adolf Hitler.

Two weeks earlier

Isidora stumbled out of her four post queen-sized bed still half asleep. According to the coo-coo clock on the wall, the wrist watch on her end table, and the grandfather clock next to the armoire, she was 3 minutes late for her reading lesson. She threw on a coffee stained white t-shirt and tucked it into her dark grey trousers.

“Isidora!” screeched her mother from the landing at the bottom of the stairs.

“Coming!” Isi huffed back, slamming her bedroom door behind her as she slid down the cherry colored banister.

“Goodness child, look at you.” her mother clucked disapproval and frustration coating her voice, “Whatever am I going to do with you?”

“I could think of some things.” a tiny girl with raven hair sneered.

Isidora narrowed her eyes and stuck out her tongue. Anika was only 11 years old and thereby her parent’s favorite child. She hadn’t developed a mind of her own, which in their eyes made her all the more endearing.

“Oh honestly, that’s enough you two. Anika darling, father needs your help in the kafana…Isi, to the room. It’s your last chapter today and I won’t have you late again!”

“Too late.” Isi murmured as she plodded toward the basement, turning her head back to give one more tongue sticking to Anika. Her younger sister returned the favor and they parted ways…one of them to help the family business, the other to serve coffee and pastries. Isi took the stairs two at a time and landed with a thud onto the rotted basement bead-board, dust settling onto her long legs. She set her shoulders back and exhaled as she pushed open the tall, wooden door…the number 13 cocked sideways, hanging precariously over the peep hole.

Isidora Jovanovic lived in a world where everything was decided for her. There was a time to wake up, a time to use the rest room, a time to know when the right time was, and a time to learn to manage time.

The city of Belgrade where she lived was in utter ruins. Poverty and extortion were the two choices of living, and unfortunately for Isidora, her family happened to be experts in the latter. Her parents, Luka and Mila were the latest in a long line of Jovanovics to inherit the Moskva Hotel, which made their family wealthy and prestigious…if only they hadn’t become so by ill-gotten gains. Not that anyone besides Isidora saw it that way. Her last name was an inheritance, passed down from wealthy generations who at one point helped shape Belgrade into the city it was.

There were others too. The ‘families’ as they were called, controlled the city. They decided who could go to school and learn to read and who would be cast into the unwanted side of society— serving the educated. Books controlled the outcome of one’s life. They had the power to give…and they had the power to take away.

The ‘families’ had rounded up all the books in the city years ago, burning anything they saw as “left” or “unpatriotic” or “extreme”. Why? The same reason for everything they did. Because that’s what Hitler would have done. It’s why they repeatedly ostracized anyone who didn’t have one of their fancy last names, why they banned the ability to read from those who were deemed “unfit”, and why they forced those same “unfit” ones into lives of labor and servitude. But the real reason they wanted to control the books was because years ago a man found what was revealed to be portals to the past…or as they liked to call them, eyes of the future.

The books allowed the ‘families’ to discern locations of portals scattered throughout the city that enabled them to travel to past moments in time. Each portal had an ornament that could be used to enter and leave these periods of history as often as the possessor of said ornament desired. Because only the families had access to these portals, the large majority of Belgrade lived in destitution. Violence and crime surrounded the city in a bubble as people became more desperate to provide for their households.

Isi entered room #13, a wide smile forming across her lips at the scene before her. Her tutor, Jovan, was trying to coax a bird down from a hole in the crown molding. Tall and broad shouldered, he towered over the tiny Sparrow, trying to scoop the creature into his large, calloused hands. The bird squawked and flitted about, threatening to stab the tan fingers within his reach.

“Aw come on little guy, don’t be like that!” Jovan cajoled, reaching into his pocket and providing a peace offering in the form of a wrinkled raisin.

“I don’t think that’s gonna do it Jovi.” Isi smirked, pulling a seat out from under the table and setting it next to the window.

Jovan blushed, leaving the crumb. “Well he might change his mind.”

Isi hated reading, but she loved spending time with Jovan. His family had worked at the hotel since the early World War and had helped her family to learn the ways of the portal in room 13, explaining to them the ins and outs of the hotel in the early 1940’s. Her family, was blessed (or so they’d been told) with a portal that allowed them access to Hitler’s ways so as to better emulate him. The hotel Moskva was the leader’s favorite home away from home and housed the headquarters for his beloved advisors during 1941. Jovan’s ancestors, the Andrics, were literary confidantes to the Gestapo. They regulated the books that came into Belgrade, and made sure none were damaging to the ideals of the fuehrer’s cause.

“Alright that’s enough zoo keeping for now. Are we ready to learn?” Jovan grinned, pulling up a seat next to hers.

Isi groaned as she cracked open the large, leather-bound volume on the table before her. “I don’t see the point.”

Jovan looked sternly at her as he often did when she complained about the responsibility her parents thrust upon her. The responsibility, (or burden she called it) of learning to read, so that she could travel through the portal and begin the greater education of learning from the fuehrer. Generations of Jovanovics before her had maintained the prolific status of the family by completing their training under the powerful man. If the ‘families’ thought her parents weren’t indoctrinating these same ideals with Isi and her sister, they’d revoke their right to hold books, land, even the hotel itself.

“You know why we are doing this Is. Think about your mom and dad. Think about Anika!” Jovan implored, his brow furrowed and wrinkled. “Don’t you want to make them proud?”

“Make who proud?” Isi questioned, fidgeting with the collar of her shirt. “The families?”

Jovan nodded solemnly. Although his family had been consulting hers for years, the ‘families’ hadn’t trusted the Andrics with their own portal. An incident had happened with Jovan’s oldest brother Oskar years before. Rumor was that he had gone mad, made wild talk about destroying the fuehrer. He disappeared through an unknown portal and hadn’t returned since.

“I mean yeah, I guess.” Isi replied. She liked Jovan, but didn’t feel the same as him about the ‘families’. The things she had read in this book, (a journal of his ancestor Ivo) were devastating. Hundreds of thousands of people had been murdered; all because one man had said they weren’t worthy to live. Her hatred for the fuehrer, and in turn, the ‘families’ had only grown as she learned how to read. It was like there had always been a spark inside of her, and the words she read had fanned it into a raging flame. Over the past few months, a plan had begun to sprout in her mind…a dangerous, hopeful plan. She was going to kill Adolf Hitler. She was going to kill him, and bring justice to the people of Belgrade. And she was going to use her family’s portal to do it.

Present Day

Isi closed her eyes as she pressed the sides of the locket firmly into place. How strange, she thought, to hide such beauty behind something so ordinary. Within minutes she was transported to another world and time. The streets of 1940’s Belgrade were lined with men in grey-green military uniform. Stern faced men with cudgels and Mauser pistols at their sides. The Serbian people looked demoralized and despondent. Outside the hotel entrance, piles of books were set aflame, turning to ash. Isi looked up at the glazed Emerald tiles of the roof and felt her heart ache. She knew this was the right thing to do, but she also knew if she failed here today, the ‘families’ would seek out and destroy her world as she knew it. She shook those paralyzing thoughts free. What she was doing was bigger than her family. It was bigger than her world. Right then, she muttered, best to get on with it.

She entered the gold framed double doors. Her sleek, mahogany hair tied tightly in a bun and out of her face. She felt in her pocket for the matches and the canister of kerosene, they were there. She glanced over her shoulder before making her way to the secret entrance to the basement. The room she had come to know well over the last year or so. She made her way down. The door stood tall as ever, its wood rid of scratches and stains, the gold numbers standing straight and firm over the glass peephole. She composed her fist and knocked firmly 3 times. “Chamber maid.” She announced with a deep voice.

“Enter.” Came the gruff reply.

Her breath caught in her throat as she opened the door. Where once was wallpaper, the walls were solid amber. The rays protruding from the small basement window provided enough sunlight to make it look like the room was shining. The fuehrer sat with his back to her, unconcerned. She made toward the bed, straightening and fluffing the pillows. Noiselessly she turned down the sheets, tucking the ends down into the sides of the bed. Still he took no note. Her heart thundered in her chest, her pulse thumped in her ears. She made way to the fireplace. The smell of petroleum filled the air at this point and it was at this moment the man decided to look up from his writing. His eyes went from the stained bed to the floor to the girl in front of him within seconds. They grew wide, and then narrowed with hatred.

“You’re not Helena.” He whispered his face gaunt with terror.

“No.” The young girl replied. She met his gaze, tears filling her eyes and spilling over onto her cheeks. “I’m Isidora.”

She dropped the lit matches. The amber room blazed with light, its golden hue illuminated by the massive flames stretching into the ceiling.