view of the harbour from the balcony and she woke to the sounds of the fishermen from the wharves and the cries of the gulls.
By day she would wander the narrow streets and photograph the old women, the boys kicking footballs, and the men gathered around hookahs smoking. She would sit and talk with them. As a mark of respect, she wore modest attire, a scarf or hat covering her hair, remembering her grandfather’s travel journals from Iran, Egypt and Palestine.
One afternoon in her room Theo asked her to take a photograph of him; an unusual request,
'I'm thinking about going to Albi for a few days. The cathedral is supposed to have vivid depictions of the damned around its altar.' Theo noted that Eva was still concentrating on her view finder.
'What about your moody friend Sandrine?’ Eva suggested without looking up.
Theo's smiled broadened. Sandrine was a waitress he had met in the Bistro Benoit and had taken as a lover. She was an unpublished poet, voluptuous with lush red hair and chestnut brown eyes. At the very mention of her name, Eva would mimic the hand gestures Sandrine would make when emphasising a point.
''She's finishing a collection of verse, cannot be disturbed.'
It was Eva's turn to smile. 'She's always finishing a collection, Theo. Still she suits you. She's passionate about what she does and very much in love with you.’ The last three words were an imitation of Sandrine's voice.
Theo had hit a nerve. He liked that. 'But she's not you.' Theo had shifted his body slightly in the chair, leaning toward her. 'Noticed me all of a sudden, Kassinski?'
'Always have.' Eva looked up and met his gaze. He was handsome, unpredictable and generous, but couldn’t replace Jonas, never in a lifetime. 'I'm happy with the way things are, Theo. You know the story.'
A shadow flashed across his features. 'You've never told me once how you feel about me.' He was gazing out of the window again. She felt a seismic shift in their relationship. Bringing her gaze back to the viewfinder, she said as gently as possible 'I'm still here, aren't I?'
Without looking toward her Theo said, 'Eva, I'm in love with you.'
This was met with silence, followed by the shutter click.
He wouldn’t make eye contact as he lit another cigarette. A shadow crossed his features as he exhaled.
Then events across the border with Spain became the centre of discussion; the gathering clouds of civil war. Theo had gone to the city of Albi to sit in the cafes of Toulouse Lautrec, armed with his sketchbooks, leaving Dariusz and Eva alone. Dariusz had told her over coffee in the men’s apartment that he was in love with her. She smiled and told him also that there was no possibility it could ever be reciprocated. She told him about Jonas, that Theo was comfortable with the arrangement, and that was the way she wanted things to remain.
Though he smiled, Eva could sense a deeper hurt from him, his large eyes welling up before she looked away. On his return, Theo sensed immediately the uneasy atmosphere between Eva and Dariusz which was now hanging about them. Neither of them said anything to Theo, but he figured it was Eva’s allure and a curt rejection to an advance that was the reason.
Dariusz was perhaps a little more fragile than Theo, always a bit more sensitive to criticism, whereas Theo believed absolutely in his own capabilities. The three began to drift apart over the remaining weeks.
They returned to Paris after a month, with the news that the Spanish Civil War had escalated and now the International Brigades were being formed. Dariusz and some of his French friends had signed up to fight Franco’s forces. Theo and Eva tried to talk him out of it, but nothing could shake him, Eva suspecting that it was in reaction to her rejection.
‘Europe’s being twisted in the hands of Hitler and Mussolini’s Fascism. It has to be fought,’ Dariusz argued. ‘The battle against this rise of evil is going to be on Spanish soil. Something has to stop the Fascists. The Socialists have to unite!’
In his fervour, almost overnight Daruisz turned his back on film. Theo and Eva were shaken by his sudden change. He hardly spoke to them from then on and left that autumn, marching over the Pyrenees and into Spain, armed with his camera, tripod, notebooks, and tilted trilby. There he and his French comrades linked up with the German, British, Irish, Canadian and German Socialists who had arrived to assist their brethren in Spain.
Theo became disillusioned and restless in Paris. Then he received the news that his father had suffered a stroke and his mother was unable to cope with him alone. He decided to return to Poland.
By the late summer of 1936, Eva found herself back in Krakow, Theo almost a distant memory; a chapter closed. He tried a few times to rekindle their relationship but his letters remained unopened. He came to the library where she had resumed her assistant duties, this time without any headscarf or over-sized clothing. She had started to radiate a confidence that attracted men and women to her, to build friendships and to socialise.
When she saw Theo with his hair trimmed, a well-cut suit and clean shaven appearance, she rejected him outright, furious at what he had become. With heated whispers across the desk, she repeated to him that they had no possible future together. It had been fun, a wonderful adventure, and she thanked him sincerely for his help in healing her. but that was it.
He scowled, his face a sneer beneath his flawless grooming, and told her it would be the last time she would ever see him. Her parting image of a man she had spent nearly two years with was of an immaculately clad businessman storming away from the desk.
She returned to her chair in Henk’s library and felt the comfort of home, but couldn’t settle, the fifteen months in France embedded into the marrow of her bones.
The winter turned to spring and the days began to slowly lengthen. For Christmas, Henk bought her a bicycle. She kept busy taking photographs around the country, and cycling to the central train station, travelling by train on the weekends. She would display her photographs in the library and her work came to the attention of the dramatic society. She photographed the stills for the Dramatic Society’s productions and took head shots for the budding actresses who would post them hopefully out to Hollywood.
In Warsaw, one afternoon in Ksiegarnia Polska bookstore, she ran into Dariusz. Between the aisles of antique books and prints he walked straight up to her. It took her a split second to recognise him. He smiled, but without the usual bonhomie. His eyes had a more serious heavy-lidded appearance. His beloved trilby looked reconditioned and, to her shock, where his left arm should have been, the sleeve was pinned to the coat.
He looked down at the empty sleeve with a rueful smile. ‘Lost it in Barcelona — shrapnel,’ he shrugged.
Eva touched her old friend’s cheek tenderly.
‘Please let me buy you lunch, how are you?’
Dariusz Szpilman took a light from Eva and exhaled, his right hand tapping the ash lightly. Since losing his left arm, she noted, his right cheek had developed a tic. Some of the ash missed the ashtray and blew away on the draught from the cafe’s door. He brushed some of it off his coat, his first impulse being to use his left hand. The inability to do this simple act depressed him further.
The lunchtime rush hour had abated and they were alone, apart from a bored looking waitress staring out through the window. His shoulders were a little rounded for a young man and he was more slumped in the chair.
To him, Eva looked even more beautiful than he remembered her being, even at the beach near Nice where he had seen her golden body in a bathing suit. In the trenches of Catalonia at times it was her shimmering image that kept him going. It sustained him through the rain, blistering heat and make-shift hospital where he was rushed after the explosion. The Russian surgeon, exhausted by his day’s workload, had more hacked off his arm than cut it. Dariusz had been conscious throughout, pinned down by the shoulders and legs, brandy poured down his throat to numb him. He hallucinated for days after the amputation, imagining Eva coming to him as an angel to mop his fevered brow. Flying above him with the elegant wings of a swan, she seemed to lift him by the hand, holding his head close to her breasts.
As he was convalescing from his injuries, he was approached to join the Polish secret service. His cameras had been shipped back to Warsaw and some of the images became intelligence documents. Once fully recovered and back in Warsaw, Dariusz set out to assemble a team of operatives. Eva was an ideal choice because of her language skills. He had located her through the Krakow University attendance registers.
Travelling to the university, he had spotted her. His heart began to race as she strode across the campus. There was a maturity about her, and knowing her habits from their days in Paris, he rightly guessed which bookstore in Warsaw she would visit.
He had followed her from a distance, boarding the same train as she had, staying a carriage back,
