Page 58 of The Storyteller of Krakow

She nodded, but her eyes didn’t quite meet mine.

‘I suppose,’ she said, then stepped past me and looked into the rear of the truck where two beds were nailed into the wooden floor, ready for stretchers to be placed on them.

‘Not much room, is there?’ she said, wrinkling up her nose.

‘It does the job,’ I tried. It was like I was talking to someone I had met, briefly, at a dinner party or something. There was none of the friendship that I had stupidly hoped could be rekindled.

We did not talk as we moved towards the stretchers, stepping over uneven ground, boots crunching in the dry dirt. The men we were paired with grunted with each lift, tossing casual glances our way as if to measure our strength. I was glad to see that Janek was not one of the men. I didn’t ever want to see his face again.

‘Don’t you worry yourselves,’ one soldier said, grunting with the stretcher. ‘We’ll do the hard lifting. You just make sure you can drive properly!’ He laughed in my face.

‘Stupid chuj!’ I said, loud enough for him to hear.

‘Lena!’ Zosia reprimanded me. ‘That’s awful.’

‘Well, he is one,’ I said.

‘What did you call me?’ The soldier had put the stretcher in the back and came and stood before me. ‘You swine of a woman! You think you can talk to me like that? Fuck you! You drive a truck. We fight. Who do you think you are?’

‘She didn’t mean it.’ Zosia stood between us.

‘I did!’ I yelled.

Zosia pushed me away. The soldier went back to his men, spat on the ground and pointed to me.

‘The arrogance of him!’ I started. ‘How dare he? What does he think, because we are women, we can’t say what we want? We can’t talk back?’

‘Lena, what has got into you?’ Zosia looked at me, and I could suddenly see the old Zosia, full of concern for her friend.

‘Nothing,’ I said, then felt for the necklace, and then the coin and rubbed it between my thumb and forefinger. It had become a habit these past few days. And I knew it was silly, but I felt the coin gave me some form of confidence, or power. The more I did it, the more I felt I was unstoppable.

‘You’re different,’ she said.

‘I was thinking the same thing about you.’

‘Here.’ She went to the truck and got a canteen full of water. ‘Drink. You’re probably a bit dehydrated with all the drills and training.’

I took it and drank, then wished I hadn’t. She was doing what Janek had done. She was even watching me with that same look.

‘Janek said something the other day,’ she said finally, almost as if she had to get his name out there and out of the way unless I tried to mention him first. ‘He said that you could be stubborn sometimes. I didn’t think you were. But I see it now.’

‘And that’s a bad thing, is it?’ I felt the heat of anger rising in me.

‘No. No.’ She shook her head and almost looked a little frightened of me.

‘I think he just said it, you know, in passing. We were just talking about things, and he just mentioned it.’

‘What else has he mentioned?’

‘Nothing much!’ She gave a half-hearted laugh. ‘You know Janek. Always wanting to look after people. Me. He takes good care of me.’

I quickly felt the rage at her subside and be replaced with concern.

‘Zosia, you know, he’s not who you think he is.’

‘He just gets worried, is all,’ she said. ‘He just likes to know where I am and things. He’s really quite happy, too, because he was injured, did you know that? In Egypt? He fell and broke his leg, so he can’t go in with the others. He’s chained behind a desk, he says! Chained, he says, like an animal! He’s funny, isn’t he?’

I shrugged.