Page 31 of The Storyteller of Krakow

Over the next few days, as January gave way to February, and as the daffodils and snowdrops began to emerge from frosted ground, I found my bones suddenly feeling heavier. My breathing was somewhat laboured too, and my mind was in a fugue. I struggled to sit up, to make my legs search for the edge of the bed, to even grasp a glass of water. It all felt too much.

Of course, I could and probably should diagnose myself. I knew there was something amiss, but quite frankly I didn’t want to think about the answer – at my age, it was sometimes better not to know or at least not put a name to it.

So instead, I reasoned that this was simply old age, and what it felt like to grow truly old.

I mean, I knew I was old. I knew I would die soon. Each day, death crept closer and closer, waiting to take me away, but to where I was not sure. I once believed in God, in some form of afterlife, but the things I had seen, even the things I had done, I was not sure where that left me in terms of the great realm of the beyond.

I did not know when I would die, or how. But I knew it would come for me. It comes for all of us.

When I was young, I never believed I would die; that was, of course, until I saw it for myself in my youth. Then I saw that none of us is immune. And now, sitting here in my ripe old age of ninety with my bones aching, my back bent, my eyesight failing, I wonder if I really did suck everything out of life that I should have.

It was the girl, I knew, who had got me thinking this way. I did not have children of my own – never wanting them, never feeling that urge to be a mother. But with Hana, I found myself enjoying our time together, with me as a somewhat surrogate grandmother, with all the joy that a child brings and none of the responsibility. I supposed that made me selfish in some way, but I knew that really I wasn’t. It would have been selfish for me to have a child that I did not want and resented. At least with this situation, I was somewhat useful in this child’s life, and hoped I could bring her some form of joy, as she seemed to be giving me.

Yet, it had been days since I had seen Kasia in the building. I had ventured out little, due to feeling my age, and had instead taken meals from the dining room, to my room, and each time had taken care to look out for Kasia to ask when I might see Hana again. I wanted to, to talk to her about this bullying of the poor girl. Was it because she still carried a teddy bear, or was there something more going on?

I would not normally pry into people’s lives like this, but there had been a change in how Kasia looked – haggard, worried – and I just knew she needed help, or at least someone to talk to.

By the time a week had passed, I girded myself and went to speak to the annoying manager, Joanna, who lately had been somewhat easy on me as I had barely left the home.

‘Kasia’s had to take a leave of absence,’ Joanna said, sitting behind her neat desk, in her too neat office where not one spine of a book was out of line.

‘When will she be back?’ I asked, telling myself to keep my hands by my side and not to reach out and quickly free a few books from their posts.

Joanna cocked her head to the side and narrowed her eyes at me, making me now want to reach out and slap her. I knew that look – that look of someone who is about to tell you that it has nothing to do with you.

‘Why do you want to know?’ she asked.

‘Because I do.’

‘I just find it odd, Lena. You asking about Kasia like this. Is there something wrong?’

‘Why is it “odd”, Joanna?’ I asked, mimicking her tone.

‘Well, you’ve never asked before about any of the carers – you always say you don’t need one. In fact, you never come and talk to me about anyone or anything. You just disappear whenever you feel like it and, you know, with your age and with your condition⁠—’

‘Enough,’ I cut her off. ‘That is my business and none of yours,’ I told her curtly.

She then smiled at me and I knew what was coming.

‘And Kasia not being here is none of your business, Lena. If you need a carer, if you need to talk, we can arrange that.’

I turned and left her office without a word. Trumped-up little cow, I thought. I knew she was just getting her own back – she now wanted to ruin my day. Well. I’d show her.

It didn’t take much to find out where Kasia lived. I knew Kasia was chatty with most of the other staff, and a quick talk with one of them, where I said I needed her address to send the little girl a gift, got me her apartment number and street.

With profuse thanks, I went to my room, added an extra layer of clothing, my thick woollen coat, Wellington boots, hat, cane and set out in the sleet to find out what was going on.

It was late afternoon by the time I got to Kasia’s apartment block. A Soviet-era concrete mass that the council had tried and failed to cheer up with a lick of white paint that was already peeling away and yellow window frames. There had been so many of these, years ago, and one by one they had been destroyed and new homes built. But a few remained, blighting the landscape and giving some a constant reminder that the past was not that far away.

I had managed to get a taxi a few streets away, so I hadn’t had to wander far, not that I could at the moment. There was no way I was going to order a taxi from the home and wait for it there – too many eyes, too many questions. Much easier to slip out just before the exercise class began, and most residents would be sitting there, in a chair, raising one arm up, then the other.

Not that I ridiculed them for this. Exercise in any form was good. But for me, I could not stand the jolliness of the instructor who would tell us to ‘keep at it!’ ‘You’re doing great!’ ‘Oh my, Agnieszka, you’ll be running a marathon next!’

Which, of course, pleased Agnieszka no end, and everyone would pretend-laugh and keep raising their arms up.

No. Not for me, thanks.

So here I was, inside the foyer of an old Soviet apartment building, when I saw that the lift was out of order and Kasia was on the fifth floor.