The Lines We Leave Behind by Graham Eliza

Author:Graham, Eliza
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781503903838
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2018-10-31T16:00:00+00:00

13

June 1947

‘That was that,’ I tell Dr Rosenstein. ‘A costly mission to bring out an important enemy officer destroyed.’

And Ana had saved me for a second time, burning her left hand badly as she pulled me away from the flames.

‘But the landing-strip tragedy wasn’t the end of the operation?’ Dr Rosenstein asks. ‘Tragic and costly though it was? You managed to get the servicemen to safety? Which was your objective, wasn’t it?’

‘True.’

‘And then what?’

‘Once we’d escorted the men to the next courier, Ana and I returned to the farm. By then spring was well and truly there.’ I’d still felt leaden, unable to even decipher the emotions inside me, but Ana was unexpectedly gentle and kind.

They were sitting outside the farmhouse in the spring sunshine. Almond and apple blossom flowered on the trees in the orchard. The valley in which the farm sat lacked the jagged limestone formations of the karst, softer and lusher in its vegetation.

Amber felt her muscles relax. This morning she had carried bucket after bucket of water from the well into the farmhouse for the farmer’s wife. Water, always water, needing to be carried – having had so many extra people living with them, the family needed repaying in any way possible. Fetching water for cooking, or cleaning, or irrigating crops was the simplest way to do this. When Amber returned home she was never going to take taps and running water for granted again. ‘What?’ Ana asked.

‘I was reminiscing about modern plumbing.’ Amber examined the marks on her palms where the bucket handles had dug into her.

‘Hundreds of thousands of Yugoslavs don’t have running water. Millions, perhaps,’ Ana said almost automatically. ‘Our revolution will bring about vast improvements in living conditions and sanitation for the proletariat.’ She caught Amber’s eye. ‘Yes?’

‘Is absolutely everything ideological to you?’ Just weeks ago she wouldn’t have dared to talk to Ana like this. The raid on the landing strip had released something inside Amber and she no longer feared what the Partisan woman thought of her.

Ana’s face darkened. Then she smiled briefly. ‘All right, I’ll admit it: the bathroom in our apartment in Zagreb was possibly my favourite room. And we had soft towels and bath oils, too. I liked coming back from the hospital after a long shift and lying in the bath.’

‘Glad you approve of some decadent bourgeois comforts.’

Ana scowled and then softened her expression into a smile. ‘It is good to see you looking a bit more cheerful.’ She pulled out a tin from her pocket. ‘Make yourself useful, you child of the bourgeoisie.’ Amber extracted and lit a cigarette for her.

‘Can’t wait to get this bandage off me.’ Ana took the cigarette from her.

‘At least it’s not your right hand. If you were your own patient, you’d be urging patience.’

Ana sniffed.

Though who was Amber to counsel this woman on the virtues of patience and acceptance? She remembered her own silence over the last few days, her inability to communicate, even with the POWs for whom she’d been responsible.

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