Page 37 of The Storyteller of Krakow

‘She did. She was tired out, really. You know, with everything today.’

I nodded. ‘And at school too. You said she was being bullied?’

Kasia nodded sadly. ‘It’s been going on a while. She doesn’t really like to leave my side, if I’m honest. And I know why. Of course I do. And when she’s at school, she talks to the bear she takes everywhere with her. Won’t talk to the other children. It was fine a few years ago. I mean, kids when they were five years old all had a cuddly toy, right? But she’s getting older, and the other kids don’t really want to play with stuffed animals any more. I mean, computers, phones, all of that. That’s what interests them now.’

‘I see,’ I said. And I did see. That’s all I seemed to see nowadays. Families in cafés and restaurants, their kids watching a screen.

‘I heard you tell her that story about the scared soldier,’ she said. ‘I think it made her feel better. Did it help, you know, Wojtek going to him like that when he was scared?’

‘No idea,’ I said. ‘Never happened. Not to me anyway. It was a story someone else told me. There were a lot of stories about Wojtek, and over the years they became more and more embellished. Who knows what’s true and what isn’t at this point?’

Kasia seemed a little deflated with what I had said. ‘I did know him, though,’ I insisted. ‘And he may or may not have helped that soldier, but he certainly helped me. And he changed me too.’

‘He did?’ She settled back, as if she too were ready for a fairytale.

‘He did. I told you before that I’ve known men like Albin. Your ex. I’ve known men who hide behind the booze to do what they like. Who knows if they are dealing with their own demons, but they still hide. I’ve known men who think they can take what they want – as if they own you.’

‘That’s how I feel with Albin,’ she agreed. ‘It’s like I feel I can’t get away. Like he’s just too much of a presence to ignore.’

‘Plus, there is regret,’ I said. ‘And feeling obliged. And feeling scared. And feeling alone. It’s very hard to get rid of someone from your life when there are all these other feelings attached to them. That’s what I struggled with, I can tell you. And that’s when I really, truly got to know Wojtek. But that was later, when we went to Egypt.’

13

1943, EL-QUASSASIN, EGYPT

It was not long until most of our unit was transferred to Egypt.

It was 1943, that I know, towards the end of the year. I don’t remember the month, but I remember the cold. I swear the cold from the gulag had made some form of imprint on my very bones so that each time the temperature dipped, it registered in me immediately.

I knew of Egypt. I had read of the pyramids, camels, of the mysticism and mummies. Yet where we ended up, in a camp in the Nile Delta, around seventy miles from Cairo, had little of that. It was like Iraq, barren, sandy and, like I said, cold in winter, and even cold on summer nights.

There was little shelter from the winds that blew, little topography that could keep the heat on the ground when the sun shone. As soon as night fell, all warmth escaped and we were left under a blanket of stars.

I liked the stars, and I liked lying under them at night watching them and wondering about what was above them. Was there a heaven? Was Piotr there?

As a child I had been raised a good Catholic, had read the Bible as one does, but I was never sure I believed it, always wondering if there really was some big man in the sky. Then, after Piotr died, then Mama and Tata, I really felt that there could not be a divine being watching us all, because if there was, why did He let all this happen?

But those stars, watching them, made me want to believe in something – anything – that gave me some sense of direction or security even.

Egypt should have felt like an arrival, but it didn’t. It felt like being poured from one container into another and it still wasn’t home – or any semblance of a place to at least pretend it was home.

The air was different – drier, with a salt edge when the wind shifted, and the light in the day had a hard, metallic quality that made every shadow look like a bruise. The camp here was bigger, louder, more permanent in its chaos: rows of tents, lorries lined like teeth, men in British khaki barking orders, Poles like us trying to look like a unit and not a crowd of survivors in borrowed uniforms.

And somewhere in the middle of that noise, I had lost Zosia.

Not all at once, not in a dramatic argument that would have at least given me something to hold. It happened in small slips: different duty rosters, different queues, different tents. Days became drills and waiting and the ordinary grind of keeping yourself clean enough not to get sick.

When I did catch sight of her, it was usually from the edge of something – a crowd at the water point, the mess line, the infirmary tent. Her head bent towards someone, her hands busy, her face turned away before I could call out. And often Janek was there. Always close enough that if she moved, she would brush up against him. His hand would hover at her elbow just as it had done mine. His voice would come in low and steady, as if he were teaching her how to breathe.

I told myself I didn’t care. I told myself I was made for solitude and I had got used to it in Siberia until it became a second skin. But the nights proved me a liar.

In the dark, when the camp quieted, and the desert wind found the seams of the tent, I reached for conversation. I missed Zosia’s small laughs. I missed the way she would look at me as if I were human and not only hard. I missed having one person who knew where I had come from and didn’t flinch. It was on those nights that I realised I had needed her more than I had cared to admit.

I had tried to fight for it, for Zosia, for our friendship. Not with fists, not with screaming; those were easy, or at least they had been when I was a child. But quietly. Simply walking up and saying, Come sit with me. Of making a place for her beside me and not letting anyone crowd it out.

She was always busy though, rushing off again to the infirmary, promising that next time we would talk, that she would come and find me on her break, but she never did. And then there were the times that Janek was there. Smiling at her, helpful, reasonable. He wrapped himself around her all the time.

One afternoon I had finally managed to corner her outside the mess when the sun was low and everything was briefly golden instead of cruel. ‘Zosia,’ I had said, too quickly, afraid I’d lose my nerve. ‘Walk with me. Just for a minute.’