Page 33 of The Storyteller of Krakow

‘Who the fuck is this?’ the man’s voice said as I entered a cluttered living room, bookshelves soiling piles onto the floor, couch cushions in disarray, and there, the cause of the crash, a smashed green vase on the laminate flooring.

Then, I saw the owner of the voice and realised I had seen his face before – the man from the café that day I had first met Hana, the one whom Kasia had had to go and talk to.

‘This is Lena,’ Kasia said, quickly wiping her face with the sleeve of her jumper. ‘She’s a friend.’ She gave me a weak smile.

‘Friend? You don’t have friends. And this old thing?’ The man began to laugh.

‘Lena. This is Albin. My ex-fiancé and Hana’s dad.’

‘Albin,’ I said, making eye contact with him and not breaking it.

‘What are you doing here, Lena?’ Kasia’s voice rang too high, trying to inject some levity into the situation.

‘Don’t you remember?’ I said, still not taking my eyes off Albin, daring him to look away first. ‘You invited me for dinner.’

‘Oh yes! Silly me!’ Kasia said.

‘And we have things to discuss. So I think maybe, Albin, it might be time for you to leave?’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Albin said, taking a step towards me. I could smell alcohol on his breath, and his eyes were oddly glazed – drugs of some kind obviously.

‘I’ve asked very nicely,’ I said.

‘Oh yeah, what you gonna do about it, Grandma?’

I almost laughed when he said that. It was so cliché. As if he’d watched a movie to figure out how to insult and threaten someone at the same time.

I grinned at him. Then, before he could say anything else, I thwacked him hard in his shins with my cane.

He fell quickly, writhing about like a stuck pig. God, men were so weak, I thought. I’d seen women dying in the war, seen my female patients die from diseases that caused them pain on a scale that no medication could really ever take the edge off. And here this man was, acting as though he had been shot.

‘Lena, I—’ Kasia came to me, then almost went to bend down to help him, when I pulled her by the arm.

‘Where’s Hana?’ I asked.

‘In her room,’ she said.

‘Go to Hana and make sure she’s okay and I’ll deal with this.’

‘No. But, Lena! You can’t. You don’t know what he’s like when he gets like this.’

‘Please, Kasia,’ I said. ‘It’s better you don’t see or hear what I’m about to do.’

Kasia, stunned by my tone and the strangeness of all of it, did as I said and left me alone with Albin.

I set my cane down and opened up my handbag. Inside was a small service revolver; it had been mine during the war, and no longer worked. But I kept it in my handbag at all times – you never knew when you might need to frighten someone.

‘Albin, look at me,’ I said.

He didn’t at first and still lay on the floor, curled up in a ball, rubbing at his shins as if his legs were about to fall off.

‘Albin!’

He looked up and saw me, an old woman, with a black faux fur hat on her head and a revolver in her hands, pointing it directly at him.

‘Now then, Albin,’ I started.

‘Whoa! Whoa there!’ He began to stand, his hands up in defence. ‘What’s going on here? Who are you? What are you doing?’