He invited me out for that very night. I should have said no; it was not proper to accept a date on such short notice. But I was intrigued and, after a few hours at dinner, smitten. It was not just looks that drew me to him. Krys was different from anyone I had ever met. He had an energy that seemed to fill the room and make anyone else present fade away. Though he came from a working-class family and had not finished high school, much less gone to college, he was self-taught. He had bold ideas about the future and how the world should be that made him seem so much bigger than everything else around us. He was the smartest person I had ever known. And he listened to my opinions in a way that nobody had.

We began spending all of our free time together. We were an unlikely couple—I was sociable and liked parties and friends. He was a loner who shunned crowds and preferred deep conversations while taking long walks. Krys loved nature and showed me places of rare beauty outside the city, ancient forests and castle ruins buried deep in the woods that I had not known existed.

One evening, a few weeks after we had met, we were walking along the high ridge of St. Bronisława Hill, a hill just outside the city, heatedly debating a point about French philosophers, when I noticed him watching me intensely. “What is it?”

“When we met, I expected you to be like the other girls,” he said. “Interested in superficial things.” Though I might have been offended, I knew what he meant. My friends seemed largely interested in parties and plays and the latest fashions. “Instead, I found you another way entirely.” We were soon spending all of our free time together, making plans to marry and travel and see the world.

Of course, the war changed all of that. Krys was not conscripted, but like my father, signed up to go and fight from the start. He had always cared too much about everything and the war was no exception. I pointed out that if he just waited it might be all over before he had to go, but Krys would not be swayed. Worse yet, he had ended things with me before leaving. “We don’t know how long I will be gone.” Or if you will return, I thought, the notion so awful that neither of us could bear to voice it. “You should be free to meet someone else.” That was a joke. Even if there had been young men left in Kraków, I would have had no interest. I argued with more force than my pride now liked to admit that we should not break up, but rather get engaged or even married before he left as so many others had done. I wanted at least that piece of him, to have shared that bond, if something happened. But Krys wanted to wait, and when he saw things a certain way, there was nothing in the world that could convince him. We spent the last night together, becoming more intimate than we should have because there might not be another chance for a long time, or maybe ever. I left tearfully in the predawn hours, sneaking into the house before my stepmother could notice I was missing.