Page 2 of The Storyteller of Krakow

I might have said all this to someone, if there had been anyone at the home who wanted more than the silly stories I told them – the ones made up to calm addled minds, or the ones I tried to remember from my early years. But that was all they wanted from me – stories that end neatly; that and discussion of their children, grandchildren, Sunday dinners, and the same jokes repeated until they go soft at the edges.

These were conversations I couldn’t much join in on, not having any children myself, and no family around. They wanted to talk of lives that revolved around normalcy, with no thought that some of us could never be normal, never understand it, nor welcome it into our lives. We were too different to begin with, not suited to fit the role of wife and mother. Not fit for expectation either. I certainly was different. I came out of the womb with flailing arms as if I were ready to fight the world. At least that’s what my father said. I believed him, and I’ve been trying, clumsily, stubbornly, to make some kind of sense of that fight ever since.

Kasia, the nurse from the home, suddenly appeared, stopping me in my musings of life, her brown hair trying to escape the pins that moored it, creating a wispy halo. She looked pale, I noticed, paler than usual. Kasia always looked wan, tired, and worried at her wedding or engagement ring. I saw this time she made the same motions at her wedding finger.

But I supposed that Bogdan’s death had upset her. People said he was difficult, and he was, but death has a way of sanding the edges off. I was about to say something brisk, something to keep her from getting pulled under by it, when I noticed that Kasia wasn’t alone.

Beside her stood a small girl. I would guess eight, maybe younger, wearing a puffy red jacket that was too big and a knitted cream hat that sat at an awkward angle on her head. She wore just one matching woollen mitten, the other gone, perhaps abandoned somewhere on her walk here. In her pink, chilled hand, she held a rucksack with a unicorn on the front, and from the opening, a bear’s head stuck out proudly.

‘Lena!’ Kasia said. ‘You didn’t sign out. You know what Joanna is like. I told her I had forgotten to sign you out and was on my way to find you.’

‘Looks like you found someone else?’ I said, nodding at the child.

‘My daughter, Hana. I got a call from the school to tell me she was sick, so I picked her up on the way. I knew you would be here again,’ she said, a hand on her hip as if she were my mother.

‘It’s winter,’ I said. ‘Not many places to be this time of year.’

Kasia had stopped listening and was scanning inside the café.

I looked inside too and saw a man staring back at Kasia, his face stubbled and eyes bleary, waving at her.

Kasia’s hand tightened on Hana’s shoulder as she hovered by our table. She looked from the window to the door and back again. The man was still watching, still waiting.

‘Do you mind?’ she asked at last, nodding at Hana. Her voice was careful, polite. ‘I’ve just seen someone I know. I—’ She broke off, swallowed, and tried again. ‘I just need a quick word. Two minutes.’

Before I could ask who he was, she shifted Hana’s rucksack strap back onto her shoulder, smoothed the girl’s hat with a quick, absent swipe, and took one step towards the door. She paused there, half in, half out, like she might change her mind. Then the man lifted his hand again, and Kasia exhaled, surrendering. She slipped inside and left me with the child.

‘So, you’re sick?’ I asked the child.

‘I am,’ she offered, then gave a meek cough.

‘How old are you?’

‘Seven.’

‘So still young.’

‘I suppose,’ she said, looking inside for her mother.

‘You don’t seem sick.’

‘I am.’ Another cough.

‘I’ve seen sick people. You’re not one of them.’

Hana pulled her bag tightly to her chest.

‘Is that a bear in your bag?’ I asked.

Hana nodded.

‘Aren’t you too old to carry about a toy?’

‘That’s what the girls at school said,’ she answered.

‘So why do you have it?’

‘It’s Wojtek,’ she said, labouring the pronunciation, dragging it out – ‘Voy-tek’ – so that the K was clipped and made me take note of what she had just said.