had tried to kiss me. Then I remembered a hand over my mouth at one point and struggling to breathe through my nose, but my nose was blocked because I’d been crying, and I had thought for a while that I was going to suffocate.
My eye was swollen shut, bruised green and deep purple, yellowed around the edges. My underpants were gone. I couldn’t remember them being removed. There was blood all over the back of my skirt—so much blood, as if I’d been caught off guard by my monthly courses. My thighs were bruised just as badly as my eye. I tried to use the toilet, but my urine stung and burned. It was easier to hold it.
I walked back to the mirror and tried to look at myself again, but this time there was so much shame in my eyes that I couldn’t bear to see it. I gingerly washed my face with water and limped back out to Maria. I found her setting up a little table beside my sofa. Milky tea and a bowl of chicken soup.
“Thank you, but I can’t eat,” I told her.
“Sit,” she said firmly, and when I did, she dipped a spoon into the soup and lifted it to my mouth. I ate it, too weak to protest.
“It’s happened to a lot of us, you know,” she said. “There was a strange mercy in the German disdain for us. They were happy to kill us and torture us and starve us to death, but they didn’t see us as human, so they were at least less inclined to rape us.” Rape. I hadn’t let myself think the word. Now, though, it sat in the forefront of my mind, and I considered it from several angles. The soldiers raped me. I was raped by the soldiers. I have been raped. This morning I was someone who had never been raped. I can never say that again. I am changed by this. Am I ruined by this? Oblivious to my inner monologue, Maria continued softly, “But these Soviets are different. Some of their commanders have encouraged them to do it. They say the men need sex because they have been away from their wives for too long. They tell them they are entitled to it, and who bears the cost of that? Us.” She sighed and shook her head. “Again, it is the Poles who must suffer. As if this country hasn’t been through enough.”
Rape. I was raped. Lots of my countrywomen have been raped, too. Do they also wish they were dead? Will there be a whole generation of Polish women who will find themselves unable to look in a mirror because the shame is too great?
“This may be hard to believe right now, but you will be okay.”
I didn’t reply. I couldn’t. She had been so kind to me, and I didn’t want to tell her that I already knew she was wrong.
* * *
There was a tap at the door an hour later. Maria grabbed the rifle before I even had time to react. There was something so reassuring about that pint-size woman approaching the door with a rifle in her hand, as if she could take on the whole Soviet army.
“Who is it?” she demanded.
“It’s me,” Wiktor said gruffly, then a little lighter, “Please don’t shoot me, dear.”
Maria unlocked the door, and then Wiktor and Truda and Mateusz all rushed inside. I thought I would feel better when I saw them, but I didn’t. All I felt was shame and guilt, especially when I saw that Truda was crying, and even Mateusz’s eyes were red-rimmed.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted. My lips were so swollen that the word sounded distorted. “I’m so sorry. I lost you in the market and then when I couldn’t find you, I tried to walk home and—”
“Don’t,” Mateusz gasped, visibly horrified. “It’s my fault. I should have waited longer for you, I looked for a little while and then I... I thought I would find you walking home but...” He blinked, and a tear trickled onto his cheek. He swiped it away so quickly I thought I might have imagined it. He and Truda sat on either side of me, but I couldn’t look at them. I covered my face with my hands and began to sob.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
We were all saying it—them to me, me to them, and the worst thing was none of us had anything to be sorry for at all.