Robert Craven - Get Lenin

‘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, occasionally walking through, ensuring she didn’t get off at any stop. He watched her as she made her way through the station, her hips swaying beneath her recognisable blue raincoat. She was sourcing some titles for the library and he caught his breath at the sound of her voice again as she spoke to the sales clerk.

Pretending to browse for a title, with a weight in his throat, he approached her and eventually gathered his courage to speak to her. He was deflated that she didn’t recognise him straightaway, her eyes trying to recall his face, a smile indifferently fixed in place.

Seated in the cafe, he asked after Theo, but Eva shrugged nonchalantly. After the initial small talk, Dariusz lowered his voice and got to the point. ‘Eva, how would you feel about working for our government? We need someone to go to London on our behalf, someone with fluent English.’ He reached into his coat and placed an envelope onto the table. Eva opened it. Inside was a new Dutch passport requiring a photograph, a Dutch press pass, Dutch travel documents and airline tickets.

‘Our friends the British have helped us with the journalist card.’

Eva was taken aback at his sudden change from friend to something quite remote and distant. Something was cold behind his eyes. It was a pain she could recognise. It was warping him and she idly wondered if his eyes were a mirror to her own soul. She could almost see the same darkness touching the corneas of his eyes.

He glanced around the cafe. The bored waitress had gone back into the kitchen leaving them alone. He stared into her eyes: They were grey yet capable of projecting warmth, her auburn hair long again and fashioned into a ponytail. Her mouth mesmerised him: Hehadheard her voice almost every night in his dreams. He wanted to blurt out that he loved her, had loved her since the day they met in the university bar, introduced by the louche artiste Theo. But the moment passed and he tried to focus.

From the depths of his side coat pocket he produced a photograph. He paused. He felt an awful pang of regret for his next words even before they were uttered.

It had taken time, a lot of digging into the bureaucratic static that existed between Poland and Germany. It wasn't lost on him that he was probably the only one-armed Polish spy in Europe, but he had to see Eva just one more time in the flesh, to hear her voice and catch the faintest whiff of her perfume. Then he would disappear, slip into the shadows and become a section chief, sending the likes of Eva to certain death.