Page 74 of The Storyteller of Krakow

‘I’m back,’ I said quietly.

‘You could have been shot. Or arrested. Or blown apart by a mine. For a bear. I’ve been beside myself!’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I was longer than I thought I’d be. I found him though. He’s here.’ I gestured helplessly towards Wojtek as the soldiers cooed at him and tried to coax him towards the supply area.

She looked at him, then back at me.

‘Of course he is,’ she muttered, and the edge of her anger frayed into relief. ‘Of course you found him. Of course you did.’

She studied my face more closely in the lamplight.

‘You’re not hurt?’

‘No.’

‘You swear?’

‘I swear.’

Her hands dropped, though she did not step away.

‘Promise me,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘That you will not do that again. Never again. Not in a stolen uniform like some half-baked partisan from a bad novel.’

Despite everything, I smiled. ‘I am a very poor partisan.’

‘You are a valuable driver,’ she snapped. ‘And my friend. And I will not have you throwing yourself into artillery fire for an animal who clearly knows his way home. I need you here with me, Lena.’

She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again with weary resolve. ‘Promise me.’

I thought of the night slopes, the broken stones, the blue eyes of a wounded German in the dark.

‘I promise,’ I said at last. ‘I won’t go back out and risk myself like that again.’

Anka studied me for a long moment, as if searching for lies. Then she nodded once. ‘Good. Now get to bed before someone notices.’

I followed her to the tent and lay down, closing my eyes and wishing for sleep. Yet, my mind would not settle. The German.

He rose behind my eyelids the moment I tried to close them: frightened, human; not just the enemy, a young man just like Piotr had been.

You are a good man, he had said before he realised I was a woman. Good?

I turned on my side. Good? What kind of a good person leaves another bleeding on cold stones because his uniform is the wrong colour?

Piotr had worn a Polish uniform, and it had got him shot. Whoever had pulled that trigger had never thought twice about it, and I told myself to do the same. But I couldn’t.

Was it because I was just pretending to be a man – was it that if I were a real man, I would simply kill and not care? Was my weakness that I was a woman and could not stop caring? Or was it that this was my strength?

I turned onto my side, then onto my back again, trying to stop asking myself questions I was not sure I had complete answers for. I listened to Anka breathe. I listened to the small, ordinary sounds of the women around us as they slept and told myself to forget the German. Someone else would find him, wouldn’t they?

But what if they didn’t?

What if he died?

What if he was found and told them my name? Would I be in trouble?