When the World Turns White

The following passage is from my novel,The Diary Keeper, set in Kraków in the snowy winter of 1992 – not unlike the one we’re living through right now! The book is a tongue-in-cheek love story about a cranky photocopy-shop owner, Leo, and a mysterious young woman, Tamara, who keeps returning to his shop with a series of diaries she wants photocopied. Despite a solemn vow never to read client material, Leo secretly takes the leather-bound books home to his twelfth-floor flat each evening, where he can devour the hand-written pages undisturbed. As Tamara’s tragic story gradually unfolds, so does Leo’s fascination for her, soon igniting into a passion he has not experienced since his heart was broken in his youth – and one he is wholly ill-equipped to deal with.

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THE DIARY KEEPER

SNOW

It was snowing heavily when she arrived.

If there’s one thing in this world I love, it’s snow. When the snow is falling, I can forget about my gammy leg, my debts and my fears. I can appreciate rather than begrudge my ten-minute walk to work from the tram stop each day. I can enjoy braving the elements as I make my huddled way across the milky whiteness of the medieval market square, head bent to keep the marauding flakes out of my eyes. Whiteness and silence everywhere. Being surrounded by that vast white silence is the nearest thing any of us will come to experiencing paradise.

When coated in pure layers of whiteness, even Stalinist buildings can compete with things of beauty normally way out of their league. The twelve-storey block where I live can stand proud against the ancient spires and glittering domes of Krakow that blink from the snow-hazed horizon. Derelict communist factories in abandoned wastelands can rival the soaring architecture of the Wawel Castle, the Cloth Hall, St Mary’s Basilica … No matter where you happen to be, once the snow starts falling and your surroundings are covered in that white, downy, gleaming substance that appears to be spilling straight out of heaven, any view is enough to take your breath away. Perhaps that’s why the world is always so quiet in the snow. Perhaps everyone just stops breathing.

These were the thoughts that were going through my head this morning as I trudged through the fresh layers of snow on my way to my photocopying shop. In fact, so deeply locked was I in my silent world that I didn’t even return the poor old porter’s greeting as I humped past his cubicle in the dimly-lit stone passageway. Neither did I notice her standing at the bottom of the steps that led down to my basement shop.

Her being Tamara Salamon, of course.

She was huddled beneath the metal awning that announces Xero with Leo, head lowered, hands firmly wedged in coat pockets, a shopping carrier bag lying by her feet. She didn’t pay the slightest attention to me as I started my careful descent of the steps. When I was a mere half-metre away from her I asked, “What are you doing here?”

Her entire body jerked. “Oh, I’ve come to pay for my book,” she replied somewhat distantly. Her fur hat, nose and lashes were flecked with snowflakes that contrasted sharply with the red rims of her eyes. She looked more than ever like some sort of wintry spectre. Some ghostly apparition that had strayed from its icy tomb.

“I don’t open till ten o’clock.”

“I thought you opened at nine.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“What time is it now?”

“9.51,” I snapped, after a glance at my cheap Russian watch.

“Okay. So that’s almost ten o’clock then, isn’t it?”

“Not for another nine minutes it isn’t.”

She frowned. “I’m sorry, but does that matter? You’re here now, and so am I.”

“Of course it matters! I need to open up first, sort myself out, get things ready—”

“Then why didn’t you arrive earlier? Or why don’t you change your opening hours to nine o’clock instead of ten?”

“The only shops that are open before ten in the morning are food shops. Everyone knows that.”

“In England all shops open at nine. That’s much more sensible.”

And suddenly, I felt that I’d had enough. I mean, who the hell did she think she was, telling me what time I should open my shop, what time I should arrive, whether or not Poland should mimic bloody England … Yes, I had well and truly had enough!

“Why are you doing this?” I asked in as civil a tone as I could squeeze out of my voice box. “Why are you checking me out all the time?”

“I’m not checking you out. I just want to pay for my photocopied book, if it isn’t too much to ask.”

There was something about her challenging tone of voice that triggered the fluttering of a long-banished memory. But before I had the chance to dwell on such things, she continued, “Oh, and I’ve brought another diary along. For photocopying, I mean.”

“What’s so special about your diaries?” I blurted out. I know it was rude, but I just couldn’t help myself.

She frowned at me. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

“Well actually, I think it is. I’ve photocopied all two hundred and ninety-seven pages of the first one, and three hundred and twelve of the second one, so I think that gives me a right to ask a simple little question about them.”

“There’s no need to get so agitated. Quite frankly, judging by the size of your shop I’d have thought you’d be glad of my business.”

That really did it! Who in Christ’s name did she think she was, marching into my shop at such inconvenient times, full of her English airs and graces?

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Extract from The Diary Keeper by Wendy Skorupski

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