Page 90 of The Storyteller of Krakow

I looked to the door and saw Kasia.

‘Who are funny?’ she asked.

‘Men,’ I said, realising I had been talking to myself again. ‘Have you a minute? I have the ending to the story.’

‘You mean, your story?’ she said, coming to sit next to me on the sofa.

‘Yes. Mine. So I told you I saw him again.’

‘The bear.’

‘Yes, but first Matthias. Let me tell you about that before I forget.’

26

1947, GERMANY

Two years after the war ended, I crossed into Germany with a small suitcase, a folded Red Cross travel permit, and a piece of paper so creased it was nearly soft as cloth. On it, in careful block letters, was an address in Munich I had practised pronouncing in the dark: Bülowstraße 17.

This journey was a long time coming. I had battled with myself about it, deciding one day to do it, the next to forget about him.

I had gone home, to Poland, finally making a choice even though it seemed, at first at least, to be the wrong one. I had gone home, to our house that was no longer like I had pictured it in my head.

It had been ransacked, paintings gone, chess set gone, even the piano. There was nothing left in its shell to suggest that we had ever lived there. But I persevered. Even though we were now under the control of our once Soviet allies who had reverted to their ways of old – although not sending us to a gulag, they still saw us as second-class citizens.

It made me wonder if Poland would ever belong to herself again, or whether she was destined to be ruled and carved up by anyone that saw fit.

For some, it meant leaving their home in search of a life elsewhere – England, America, even Australia; it didn’t matter – they just wanted to be free.

There was that word again – free. Would I ever be free?

I spent those first two years working for a farmer, long days with little pay, staying in the shell of our home, wondering how to be free but at the same time, not being forced to go somewhere else to find it.

I suppose that is what made me go to Matthias. I had kept my romantic notions going still. Telling myself stories of what could be, of that look that he gave me and how it had meant something. And in the long days of work, in the quiet, in the silence that filled my life, it became my only hope – as fanciful as it was.

So I found myself on a train, not knowing if he were alive or dead. No idea if he had returned home or perhaps sought freedom elsewhere. But you see, I was not myself, not the woman I grew into. I needed this story of mine to continue because I had little else to hope for.

The train slowed, and I saw a boy in a cap unloading sacks from a wagon. An old man sat on a bench and smoked, staring at the train. I stepped down.

I asked for Bülowstraße 17, in careful German. A woman pointed without smiling.

As I walked, I imagined what he would look like now. I pictured him stronger, bigger than the skinny, broken man who had left. Perhaps he would smile when he saw me. He’d be surprised, but then he would laugh. His warrior woman had returned. I imagined him taking my hands. I imagined him saying he had not stopped thinking of me either. And that’s where my imagination ran out, for once. I did not know what would come next in this story, but it excited me that I did not know the ending.

The street was quiet. The houses close together, each with a narrow strip of garden. Number 17 had pale shutters and a gate that leaned slightly off hinge. There were flowers in the window – early spring geraniums, red against white plaster. My heart began to hammer so hard I felt it in my throat. I stood outside the gate longer than I meant to. A curtain shifted inside. I opened the latch. The path to the door was swept clean. His mother was obviously a good woman – a woman who knew how to keep her house in order.

I knocked. The sound echoed louder than expected. Footsteps inside. The door opened.

Matthias stood before me and I gasped. I had hoped he would be here, of course, but the fact that he was shocked me.

He was older, of course he was. Three years can change a face more than a decade when those years follow war. The boyish angles had settled into something firmer. There was a faint scar near his temple I did not remember. But his eyes were the same.

For a moment, neither of us spoke. ‘Lena,’ he said at last. His voice, saying my name, it felt like I was in my head, telling the story rather than living it.

‘I found it,’ I said foolishly, holding up the folded paper as if it were proof of something larger. He stared at me as if I were a memory that had stepped out of its proper place. ‘I mean, I found you. The address was right,’ I yammered on.

‘It is,’ he said. ‘You’re here.’

I waited a beat, waiting for him to smile, to hug me, to say something – anything. But when he didn’t I carried on.