Page 61 of The Storyteller of Krakow

‘Lena!’ Anka shouted.

‘I’m here.’ I coughed, forcing the wheel straight.

I drove as the soldier with one arm had taught me. Weave, foot to the floor, don’t stop. Drive like the Devil himself is chasing you.

At the dressing station, orderlies swarmed the ambulance before we had fully stopped. Stretchers were whisked away. Surgeons stood at makeshift tables under canvas, sleeves rolled, faces set ready for the next case that would more than likely not survive.

I stepped down from the cab on trembling legs.

Anka joined me. ‘Five minutes,’ she said. ‘Then back up.’

I nodded.

Five minutes meant a cigarette for Anka and a mouthful of tepid water for me. It meant leaning against the warm metal of the ambulance and staring at the mountains.

‘When this is over,’ Anka said quietly, ‘I will never complain about mud again.’

‘When this is over,’ I replied, ‘I will never complain about anything.’

‘We say that,’ she said, flicking her ash into the mud. ‘But I suppose one day it will be normal again, and we will get angry at normal things. Perhaps that’s a good thing?’

I looked at Anka, a woman I had easily dismissed in Egypt as silly, and without much substance – as others apparently had too. But she had come to mean a great deal to me. She had shown me that a person, a woman, could be many things all rolled into one.

Yes, she was still obsessed with her looks. She would laugh at anything. She would flirt with men constantly. But I had seen how hard she worked, how she was never afraid, how she was eager to get back into the fray without a word of complaint. She did not let the things she had seen mar her at all. Her brightness in the evenings shone through, making others smile, laugh even.

‘I’m proud of you,’ I suddenly said, then felt completely foolish.

‘Are you?’ She looked at me. ‘Really?’

‘Why wouldn’t I be? You worried that day, on the ship, that you wouldn’t be able to do this. Now look at you.’

‘Covered in mud,’ she said.

‘Anka, come on.’

She nodded. ‘I know, I know. I am proud of myself. I am. But it’s hard to be proud of it all when really I don’t feel like I’m myself.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, I feel like I’m not me. Like I’m watching myself do these things. Like I’m not in my body.’ She shook her head, flicked the dead bud into the mud and immediately lit another cigarette.

‘You remember Noor?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘You asked me what she’d said to me, and I said I couldn’t tell you.’

‘I know.’

‘I can tell you. It’s pointless keeping it to myself now anyway.’

‘How so?’

‘Because it’s almost come true. So you may as well know, now.’

‘Go on,’ I chivvied.

‘She said…’ She blew out a plume of smoke. ‘She said I would surprise myself and others. That people would admire me. That I’d be brave.’