Page 18 of The Storyteller of Krakow

One woman swore she had walked out of Siberia on feet wrapped in rags. A younger girl, no older than sixteen, kept repeating the names of her sisters under her breath like a rosary, terrified that if she stopped saying them, they would vanish for good. I let them speak. I let their words pile up in me, not because I knew what to do with them yet, but because listening made me feel less like a ghost.

One afternoon a woman with cracked hands and a headscarf tied tight under her chin sat beside me and, without any preamble, began to talk about her son as if saying his name out loud was the only way to keep him alive.

‘How did you find out?’ I asked.

She rubbed her thumb against the side of her index finger, a small, frantic motion, and for a moment she didn’t answer. Then she said, very plainly, ‘A man came to the house. One of his unit. Not a proper officer, just a boy, really, in a coat that didn’t fit. He stood in our doorway like he was afraid to step inside, and he kept shifting his cap between his hands.’

‘He said my son had been brave. He said it was quick. “A bullet,” he told my husband, as if that was a full explanation. He wouldn’t look at me when he said it. He just stared at the floor and touched his own shoulder like it hurt. Then he held something out, my boy’s metal button, the one from his uniform coat. I knew it straight away because I’d sewn it on myself, twice, when it came loose. I didn’t take it. I couldn’t. I watched that boy in the doorway trying to make the words gentle, trying to make the death neat. As if neatness would make it bearable.’

I opened my mouth to say something comforting and found nothing in it. Then thought of Piotr, of how her story was so similar to my own. I tried to tell her this, started at least to, but she wasn’t listening. She didn’t want to hear that this had happened to others; it was her story, her son, her boy, and by me adding mine to it, I suppose it made it less unique and perhaps then took away from her son being so cherished. So I stopped trying to add my voice to their stories, and instead, simply listened.

For a little while it worked. They began to make room for me on the hard ground. Someone handed me a tin cup without being asked. Someone else nudged a pack of cards towards me and said, ‘Go on then, doctor’s girl, let’s see if you can bluff.’ I couldn’t, but I tried, and they teased me for it, and it felt, dangerously, like the beginning of some form of belonging.

And then, as quickly as it had opened, it closed. I would sit down and conversations would thin out, fray, and soon stop. A woman who had been halfway through a story would suddenly remember she needed to check the bread. Another would stand and wander off as if she’d just heard her name called. When I asked a question, I got quick smiles, answers that were too short.

I noticed it most when Janek appeared at the edge of the barn door, smiling that easy smile of his. The women’s shoulders would tighten. Their eyes would slide away from mine. Whatever thread I’d been holding between us snapped. I didn’t understand it then, and naively thought that perhaps they were jealous that Janek came to see me and not them. Was this what women were like? I had had so few female friends as a child that I had no idea. Perhaps this was the way of the world and I was only now being taught my much delayed lessons.

Perhaps a week went by of all this, when I left the barn, leaving the women and found myself a gnarled tree, with a few waxy leaves that held on under the dense heat, and sat under it and watched the camp. Because that was all I could do now. Watch and wait.

But the camp itself was stark.

No birdsong that I could hear. Only the flap of canvas, the shuffle of worn shoes, a bark of laughter now and again, the whittling on of female voices as they talked about which man they quite liked the look of.

The sun beat down without mercy during that summer, burning the back of my neck. My skin, unused to such heat, prickled, tightened and reddened with a ferocity that no amount of cool, damp cloths placed on it would abate. I thought absurdly of snow, how it once blinded me, how I once prayed for warmth. Now I longed for that cold.

Yet I continued to sit under that tree with no shade. I continued to burn my skin, and found myself retreating like I had done in the gulag, until soon the days turned to months and the heat began to wane.

Janek thought it was wise that I sit alone under a tree. He would come to me often, bringing me extra rations, telling me to eat as usual, but his demeanour had changed slightly, almost as if he didn’t feel the need to protect me any more.

One day, I told Janek how odd it was about the women, about how they would not talk to me so much and how the men, I thought, actively pretended I was a ghost.

He grinned at me. ‘I thought you needed the quiet after everything you’ve been through. So I told the men, and please forgive me for this, but I told them that you are mine. And I told the women that you needed your quiet. They all understand.’

‘You told people I was yours?’ I asked.

‘It’s just so they leave you alone, Lena,’ he said. ‘If they think you are with me, then nothing will happen to you.’

‘But nothing would happen to me anyway,’ I said.

‘It won’t now, of course,’ he said.

‘You shouldn’t say that,’ I said. ‘I’m not yours. I’m not anyone’s.’

Janek’s smile faltered, only for a second, and then he put it back. ‘Lena,’ he said, softly, too softly. ‘Don’t be stubborn.’

‘I’m not being stubborn,’ I said, sounding much like I did when I argued as a child with my parents. I could feel heat rising in my face. ‘You’ve made me into something. You’ve made it so they won’t even sit with me.’

He stepped closer, close enough that I could smell the sourness of his breath. ‘Better they don’t sit with you than the wrong man decides you’re an easy thing to take,’ he said. ‘You think this is Poland? You think this camp is full of saints? I have seen what hungry men do when they think no one will stop them. And as for the women. I’ve seen how some of them are, showing leg as they walk past us. They’ll teach you the wrong things, Lena.’

‘I can look after myself,’ I said, trying to inject some authority into my voice. ‘I’m in the Anders’ Army. Like you. And I’m free.’

His eyes narrowed, and the softness went out of him. ‘Free,’ he repeated. ‘Listen to me. You are alive because someone watched out for you. Because I watched out for you.’ He lifted his chin towards the tents, towards the women’s barn, the moving crowd. ‘If you want friends, you can have them. If you want talk, you can have it. But you will not put yourself in danger just to prove something to me. Not after I’ve kept you breathing.’

I wanted to tell him that living was not the same as being owned. I wanted to tell him that I had lost enough people without handing myself over like a ration ticket. But the words tangled in my throat. I could feel other eyes on us, and I understood, suddenly, that he had chosen this place to have the conversation on purpose, away from the women who might have stood up for me.

He let the silence stretch until I dropped my gaze. ‘Good,’ he said quietly, as if we had settled something sensible. ‘Now say you understand.’

‘Say it Lena,’ he said again.