Page 50 of The Storyteller of Krakow

Moments later, a carer appeared, looking at her watch, then looking at me and shaking her head. I knew her, but couldn’t place her name.

‘Lena, have you any idea what time it is?’ she asked, unlocking the door.

‘Late, I assume, by your tone.’

‘Kasia, thank God, called us to tell us where you were. Joanna is not happy about this at all,’ she said.

Ignoring her, I made my way to my room, the questions still rambling through my brain, the thoughts, the pain in my back and legs.

God, I was tired.

I immediately took my tablets upon reaching my room, then got into bed, fully clothed, waiting for the pain to cease and for my brain to re-boot itself.

Instead of a peaceful sleep, my brain took me into a vivid dream of a house I used to live in. It was after the war. I was perhaps forty at the time, slim, youngish. It was the same house, the structure, the paintings on the wall, but with one difference.

Piotr, my brother, was there.

So was Wojtek.

They sat side by side on the sofa. I was confused.

‘You’re dead,’ I told Piotr.

Piotr smiled his smile. ‘Why are you alone, Lena?’ he asked.

‘I’m not,’ I said.

‘You have no friends,’ he said. ‘You still think of Wojtek as your friend. But can you not want more?’

‘A husband?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘Someone.’

‘I’m okay.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ Wojtek piped up.

‘You need someone,’ Piotr repeated. ‘You need someone with whom you can be yourself. Now. Before it’s too late.’

In an instant, the dream turned into something else, as dreams tend to do, and I was with someone I had made myself not think of in years. He had his hand on my back, guiding me down a long corridor of white.

‘Why are you here?’ I asked him. ‘Are you dead too? I only dream of the dead.’

He looked at me and smiled. ‘You never had to be alone,’ he said.

‘How can you, of all people, say that?’ I screamed at him.

‘You made it something more than it was,’ he said. ‘But I’m here now. Does that count for anything?’

‘It’s too late.’

I tried to run down the corridor, but my legs were too heavy, and I could not get to the end.

I looked back, wanting to see how far I had got, and that’s when I woke, covered in a thin layer of sweat, my knees screaming with pain.

I awoke only to that memory of the dream of my brother and the bear on a sofa when I was forty and alone.

Now, I sat on the edge of my bed and thought on it. My life had never been defined by what others had done. I had devoted myself to work, to being a doctor, to helping women and children. I had been happy. I had had love in my life. And yet, I was feeling an ache for something. What had my brother and Wojtek been trying to show me? What was it? And why couldn’t I stop asking myself damned questions?