Page 95 of The Storyteller of Krakow

I let her hold me. I let my friend Zosia hold me while my friend Wojtek snuffled at the fence. I let my past disappear, my stories become hazed at the edges. Here with two of my loves.

28

18 MAY 2014, KRAKÓW

The day started with rain, sliding down the windows. I sat on the edge of my bed, and watched it change the view from the window, making the world outside look blurry around the edges.

My past had been blurred at times, too, and that was fine. But after seeing Zosia and Wojtek my reality had focused. I studied hard and became a doctor. And then I helped women, those who were simply sick and those who were battered and bruised too. I set up shelters; I tended to their wounds both emotional and physical. I had found joy in my work. And most importantly, I listened to their stories.

When I told Kasia about my work as a doctor, she lit up brighter than my stories of the war. She wanted to do the same now – help women in crisis, find joy in her work, and it made me happy that it had all come full circle, that now, Kasia could show the world how much of a warrior she already was.

Zosia went home to Janek in Leith. I told her to write me, which she did. I told her to leave him and come home, which she did not.

She went a few years after I had seen her. A car accident. Janek went a year later.

I wished, of course, for a better ending for Zosia, but we can’t all have the endings we want, nor the ones we wish for others. I wished she had left Janek, that she had found some peace, but like so many women I had treated over the years, it wasn’t always so simple for them to pack a bag and leave the person who had tied a weighted rope around them.

There are words now for these things – emotional blackmail, emotional abuse not just the physical, controlling behaviour, gaslighting, love-bombing. But they all have a common thread – they start slowly, imperceptibly, until the person does not realise what has happened, and by that time, leaving becomes less of an option.

I liked to think that Zosia’s story pushed me forward with my own; that perhaps knowing what she had gone through made me the doctor I was – or the one I used to be.

Now, though, I was no longer a doctor, I was simply Lena, a ninety-year-old woman who was on her way to watch a statue of Wojtek the bear be revealed.

Kasia and Hana came to get me, with the young lad, Piotr, in tow, who had become a somewhat regular guest at Kasia’s, which delighted me no end. I hoped, and I had made mention of it to Kasia, that perhaps she might want a son.

‘Lena!’ Piotr gave me a high five. He had been teaching me all sorts of new things of late, and this one, I actually quite enjoyed, especially as it drew a few looks.

‘Piotr, good to see you,’ I said. ‘Now hand me that cane.’

He got me my cane and then bowed. ‘M’lady,’ he said.

I laughed.

‘Are you sure you don’t want a wheelchair?’ Kasia asked, watching me as I walked, or rather shuffled, along the corridor.

‘Not today, Kasia. Maybe ask me another time. But not today.’

I wanted to stand in front of Wojtek, along with soldiers that were still alive, families that were honouring those that had gone, on this, the seventieth anniversary of the battle of Monte Cassino. There was no way I, Lena, would sit for this.

‘Lena.’ Hana had her bear in her hands. ‘Do you miss Wojtek a lot?’

‘I do,’ I said.

‘Did you see him again? Mama says you went to the zoo in Scotland once. Did you see him again after that?’

I hadn’t the heart to tell her no, so I told her a new story, that I had gone to Scotland twice a year to see him and would feed him biscuits and talk to him.

Piotr looked at me, then at Hana, and nodded, and began to add to my story as we got into the taxi.

He was a good lad, Piotr. Good at stories. Good at picking up unsaid things. Kasia should really adopt him.

We reached the park, and the rain stopped, allowing slices of blue to appear between clouds. We quickly found ourselves among a horde of people. Some old and in uniform, some young. Some just families wanting to see the statue, knowing the story of the bear that went to war.

I suddenly found it all a bit much. Somewhere a band was playing. People were talking, laughing. Children screamed and ran around between legs. I wobbled a moment, and then felt a hand on my arm.

I immediately thought of Janek, despite myself, and wished to shake the guiding hand away. But then, I saw it was young Piotr, and relaxed. Piotr could guide me. Why, hadn’t he, my brother, been guiding me my whole life?

Kasia managed to get us a space near the statue draped in a Polish flag. Some politician spoke, and I couldn’t have cared less about what he was saying. I just wanted to see the bear.