Page 59 of The Storyteller of Krakow

‘He always tells these stories too, about all sorts of things he has done. He told me what he did for you in the gulag. How, after your father died, he looked after you.’

‘After my father died?’

‘Yes. He said you were all alone and he made sure you survived.’

‘That’s not true,’ I said. ‘I met him the day we were liberated. I knew him for one week before we left.’

‘Why would he say it if it wasn’t true? Perhaps with all the illnesses you had, you just can’t remember?’ she tried.

‘What illnesses? What are you talking about? I was quiet, withdrawn, yes. I wasn’t sick. I wasn’t dying. I was like everyone else. We’d lost people, I’d lost everything⁠—’

I stopped suddenly, feeling a ball in my throat. I was about to cry, and I hadn’t cried properly since I was a child, and there was no way I was going to let Zosia see my first tears as an adult.

‘I don’t know what to say, Lena,’ she said.

‘Neither do I,’ I said. ‘Let’s just work together today, and then we don’t have to talk again, how’s that?’

‘I don’t want that, Lena,’ she said quietly.

‘Well, could have fooled me. You weren’t exactly warm when you saw me.’

‘I didn’t know how to act. God, Lena.’ She suddenly looked like she was going to burst into tears herself. ‘It’s a lot – all of this. And you. And Janek. I mean. I just don’t know.’

I felt my shoulders sag, my body relax a little. ‘Zosia. I’m here for you if you need me. I know Janek. I know you love him. I know you want to believe him, and I know how confusing it all is. But I’m here. When you’re ready, we can talk about what happened, and what is happening to you…’

Suddenly, her head snapped up, and her body became ramrod straight. ‘I don’t think you know what you’re talking about, Lena. Janek and I are fine. Janek is a good man. If anything…’

‘If anything?’

‘If anything…’ She jutted out her chin. ‘It’s you who has a problem. Janek told me how you use men. How you want their attention, then throw them away. He said how you were always trying to prove you were better than him; humiliating him in front of others, showing off that you knew how to fix an engine. He said you wanted to be a man and at the same time wanted to use all the men. You have a problem, Lena. You simply don’t know how to be a proper woman.’

She turned and stalked away from me towards the piles of medical supplies that were now being unloaded and taken into the infirmary.

I watched her go and didn’t feel an ounce of anger towards her for what she had just said to me. Because I knew that they were not her words, but Janek’s. He had twisted his way into her mind, changing her, controlling her, pretending to be hurt by the smallest slight.

It was him I was angry at. Him and all the men who sized me up, measured my worth against how pliable I was. They all thought I didn’t listen – didn’t hear them murmuring things as I walked past, or asking me about my shorter hair, or if I would like them to buy me a skirt so they could finally see what my legs looked like. I had ignored them, but now, I was angry with them all.

I rubbed at the coin around my neck, then thought of the jacket I had taken on the ship and stashed in my belongings.

I didn’t know when, and I didn’t know why, but I’d prove I was as tough as them. I’d show them, Zosia, and myself that I, Lena, a woman, was a warrior.

18

MAY 1944, MONTE CASSINO, ITALY

The rain had stopped before dawn, but the mud remained.

It clung to everything: boots, stretchers, tyres, the hems of our trousers. It held the smell of cordite and blood as if the earth itself refused to let go of the battle. I wiped my hands on a rag already stiff with grime and climbed back into the driver’s seat of the truck, pressing my palm for a moment against the cracked steering wheel.

Above us, in our small camp, the shattered crown of Monte Cassino loomed against a pale May sky.

The abbey was no longer an abbey. It was a carcass of stone, blown open by Allied bombers in February and ground to powder by months of artillery. The Germans were dug into every fold of the mountain, into caves and cellars, behind walls that had once heard only prayer. Now they spat machine-gun fire down onto the valley.

‘Ready?’ Anka asked, slamming the back doors shut after checking that the stretchers were secured.

Her nurse’s armband was grey with dust. Her dark hair had worked free of its pins and clung damply to her cheeks.

‘As I’ll ever be,’ I said.