The Rabbit Girls

by Anna Ellory

  She jumps up excited. ‘But Dad, it is . . . the Wall . . . You said it would never happen, but it did. It’s down. It is over.’ But as she looks at his face she realises he is lost; he didn’t hear what she said. She sways and places her glass on the table.

  He pulls at the watch on his wrist, his fingers gain no grip and it looks like he is plucking the metal links as though they were feathers. She tries to calm his hands, but he continues.

  ‘The ceremony . . .’ He wheezes, the words strain with effort. ‘Of innocence . . .’ His chest rattles. ‘Is drowned.’ Tears pool in his eyes then flow, gathering speed and momentum, across his cheek.

  She tries to stop his hand but he bashes blindly at her. She feels the sob that comes from his chest mirrored in her own.

  ‘My. Love. My. Light,’ he wails, the torture in his voice so horrific she holds a hand over her mouth, shaking her head. Watching the tormented.

  He becomes still, silent.

  Her feet grip into the carpet and her hands ball themselves up in her sleeves.

  Taking a step closer she says, ‘Dad?’

  Tears wet the pillow and his hair is stuck to his forehead. His cheeks are flushed and a low murmur of a howl vibrates in him.

  ‘Miriam?’ he asks, still here, with her.

  He begins to sob with abandon. His breathing, thick and fast, tumbles over itself.

  He touches her arm to bring her closer.

  ‘Frieda,’ he starts.

  Before she can say anything, his head arches back, his body stiffens. He jolts, buckles and crashes back on to the bed.

  She steps back, alarmed.

  Then again.

  Every sinew of his body taut. Vibrating. The bed ricochets with the force. His hands claw. Teeth grind. His head knocks against the pillow, faster and faster.

  ‘No,’ she cries. Then she thinks.

  She moves to the bedside table. Shin knocking on the bed.

  Midazolam. The pressure plus alcohol has turned nimble fingers into thumbs as she opens the lid and draws up a millilitre of fluid.

  The air in the bed whistles and groans. The base rattles. The noise echoes. Hollow.

  Saliva leaks out from the corner of his mouth.

  Placing the syringe between his lips, she angles it, squeezing the fluid into the inner cheek, and massages it around his bristly jaw into his gums. His teeth are clamped shut in a grimace.

  She is supposed to reassure him with her voice, but finds she doesn’t have one.

  She waits.

  Hoping.

  Praying.

  His body still twitching but, she notices, with less force. He breathes in long, loud rattles.

  Tears fall, hope leaking from her eyes.

  She is overwhelmed by the need to hug him, to have his strong arms around her and feel safe; just once more.

  She moves him into the recovery position and goes to the phone in the lounge. With fumbling fingers, she calls an ambulance, hangs up, then calls for Hilda.

  3

  HENRYK

  From the moment she left my office, Frieda didn’t speak to me again in the class, yet I had been drawn into her sphere. She licked her finger to turn a page, I was aware. She moved her thumb across her bottom lip, I was aware. Her pencil moved, I was aware. Wanting to know what she was thinking, what had caused the urgency to press the pencil deeper into the paper. She pressed her lips together when she concentrated and when she wore her hair long, curled slightly at the ends, she would bat it away from her eyes. And all too often I became caught in the vortex of those eyes; forest deep.

  She was not without admirers, but she went around with a boy named Felix: tall, thin and as skittish as a beetle. I could not see what she saw in him. I tried not to think about it, but thoughts of her seemed to consume me.

  As I walked into my class each day I looked to her desk first. As I read the dry papers I was supposed to teach, I saw them through her eyes and made a point to mention Yeats or Joyce, to offer her something. Her eyes bored into mine, telling me something I could not know.

  I wanted to take back what I had said in the office, to run the risk of being caught with banned books so that I could hear her voice, listen to what she had to say, absorb the languages that rolled off her tongue. It was dangerous and I knew it, yet I continued to be riveted by her every move.

  There seemed no other way.

  MIRIAM

  By the time the ambulance has been and gone, Dad sleeps, pale as bone, and Hilda, creased and colourful as ever, drinks from a delicate cup and saucer. Mum’s best china: white with a sapphire trim.

  ‘You did well,’ Hilda says. ‘I think it’s coming to the end now; it’s always tough, but you did well.’ Her tone commands Miriam to look at her, so she lifts her head before returning to watch his breaths fog up the oxygen mask, askew on his face. ‘He’s comfortable.’

  ‘There is so much I didn’t know,’ Miriam says.

  ‘It can feel that way, but it’s really normal,’ Hilda says, raising her cup. ‘To want more time.’

  ‘He was talking earlier, something about drowning, innocence . . . a ceremony,’ Miriam says, her voice shaking. ‘And he has numbers.’

  ‘Numbers? A tattoo?’

  Miriam nods and puts both hands, hidden by sleeves, up to her face. ‘I thought they were together,’ she says, muffled by the clean fabric of her jumper.

  The smell of ironing evokes a time, aged ten or twelve, when she was sprawled in the middle of the bed watching the steam rise from clothes as Mum pressed every crease into oblivion.

  ‘What did you do in the war?’ little Miriam had asked brightly.

  ‘The what?’

  Mum replaced the iron and turned her back to find a hanger from the pile.

  ‘War, Mum, you remember.’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘We talked about it in school today.’ When Mum didn’t respond in a heartbeat, Miriam’s estimation of the appropriate time to do so, she continued, ‘Anita’s parents fled France for England before coming back and Dieter said that his grandparents were in a camp, like a death camp. Were you a nurse back then too?’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘We are reading about . . .’ But Mum’s head was low, her fingers playing with the intricacies of a collar button.

  ‘Please don’t cry, Mum.’ Miriam moved to the side of the bed.

  ‘I’m fine, love,’ she said, dashing tears away with her thumb. ‘Did you talk with your father?’

  ‘No – he’s . . .’ He was in his office. She had poked her head in and realised it was the start of an episode as cigarette smoke enveloped him in a cloak of fog. She had kissed his forehead and opened the window before joining Mum in the bedroom. It was best to let Mum find out about the episode for herself. ‘What happened? If you want to say, that is.’

  ‘I worked at the hospital, helping wounded soldiers back to the front line,’ she offered, busying herself with another shirt. After a long pause, she continued, ‘We lived in a small place not far from the hospital, in an apartment with no windows, it was so small you couldn’t fling a cat in there.’

  ‘Swing a cat,’ Miriam corrects.

  ‘Why would you swing a cat?’

  ‘Why would you fling one?’ They laughed together.

  ‘Can you go and stir the soup for me?’ She came around the ironing board to the edge of the bed and planted a kiss on her forehead.

  ‘I thought they were together,’ Miriam says again.

  Hilda takes large strides around the bed. ‘I have cared for a lot of survivors.’ She places an arm around Miriam’s shoulders. ‘It is very hard on the families, especially if they didn’t know.’

  ‘He isn’t Jewish, so why would he have been . . . there?’

  ‘There are some records, it’s surprising how much you can find out now.’ She gives Miriam a considered look. ‘You can leave your father for an hour or two, you know? It’ll do you some good to get out too.’

  The idea of leaving the
safety of the apartment makes her mouth dry and she licks her lips with a dry tongue and tries to swallow.

  ‘I’m sorry, Hilda, but I . . .’ Her words form then change and form again. She thinks, double-checking, rethinking how to say what she wants to say. Double-thinking. Triple-checking. Wringing her hands in her jumper. Her mind jumping from feathers, the grip on her wrist, Frieda, her mother, and finally landing on him.

  ‘I can’t,’ she says. ‘But thank you, Hilda.’

  Hilda looks at her then changes the subject. ‘I think he’s over the worst of it. He needs to sleep it off, but you may find it happens more.’ Hilda looks at him and, as though linked to what she said, both his legs tremor slightly. ‘This may be the way he goes.’

  Miriam places her hand over her stomach to stop the fracturing within.

  His legs stop shaking, as he mumbles, ‘Frieda.’

  HENRYK

  A Wednesday in March, it came to be that I was no longer employed by the university. It was a day her seat was empty.

  They didn’t tell me at the end of the term, the end of the week or even the end of the day. The head of department, Herr Wager, a formidable ex-officer of the Third Reich, with the scrawny dean of the university, Erik Scholl, by his side, entered the classroom.

  ‘Apologies, Herr Winter, but your class has finished. You are no longer a member of this faculty. Please collect your jacket.’ He placed an enormous hand on my shoulder and turned me forty-five degrees towards the door.

  ‘Why?’ I asked, but I supposed it didn’t matter why.

  ‘Sorry, Henryk,’ Erik said. ‘Only Nazi officials have the required education to teach at this facility now.’ He stood taller as he rubbed the blackboard clean of my writing and started filling it with his own.

  I gathered my jacket from the back of the chair. Some students watched with interest, others with pity and many focused on their books as I shut my briefcase.

  ‘Can I get my things from my office?’

  Erik turned his back and started addressing the class. My class.

  I was pushed through the doors and into the corridor. Our shoes the only noise as I was escorted to the main double doors. Herr Wager opened them for me, but remained inside.

  ‘Don’t leave Berlin, there will be questions for you,’ were his final words. And in that moment, I thought it must have been Frieda, she must have reported me.

  Two large hands squeezed my arms, leaving their imprint behind. ‘Goodbye,’ Herr Wager said.

  A sting lodged in my eyes and throat. And a spike of ice formed across my chest. They would find the books, they would arrest me. I walked away from the university, fear giving my feet wings, and turned the corner away from the entrance, which had just become my exit.

  I saw her out of the corner of my eye coming towards me.

  ‘Professor,’ she called, and on impulse I turned towards her, even though I knew I should turn away.

  Her hair blazed out behind her, white in the sunshine. She was running towards me, and I stood motionless, unsure of where to place my feet. I wasn’t sure if I should run away, duck and cover, or run towards her. What I did know was that I forgot to breathe, so that when she caught up to me, I was as breathless as she.

  ‘Professor,’ she gasped, and her voice dropped an octave. ‘I have something for you.’

  I kept my arms crossed at my chest, to try and get some command over my body in the presence of her so close to me. We were the same height and the intimacy of being unable to look away from her face, to hold her entirely in my vision, was unnerving.

  ‘Haven’t you done enough?’ I said. She looked wounded and I dropped my hands to prevent them from reaching out to touch her. Despite fearing she had caused all of this, I couldn’t master myself enough to walk away, to run away, as I should have done.

  She was the image of my demise.

  MIRIAM

  The image of her father fitting until he dies, and there being nothing that anyone can do about it, sits heavily with Miriam. The silence expands until Hilda swallows the dregs in her cup, places it down with a tinkle and picks her bag from the floor, knocking the newspaper from the table as she does so.

  Hilda taps on the headline. ‘God, indeed.’ And she laughs. ‘Speaking of which, I had a discussion with your father’s doctor, Dr Baum, today. I was going to talk to you in the morning, but now I’m here . . .’

  Miriam looks up, meeting Hilda’s eye.

  The turn of conversation makes her senses sharpen.

  Full alert.

  At the mention of his name, even though ten years have passed, comes the familiar sting. Dr Baum sat behind his desk, the bustle of the waiting room behind the closed door. The doctor illuminated as the sun streamed through the window so she could never really see his features.

  She digs her nail deep into the nail bed and pulls at the loose skin she uncovers. Her mind runs so fast through all the ‘meetings’, as if they were one. The stale coffee, the thick pile of her medical notes, the antiseptic and the prescriptions, and her husband’s clammy hand clasped over hers.

  An overwhelming need to wash her hands grips Miriam like vertigo. To peel the layers of skin away, to turn back time, to when his hands had never touched hers.

  Trying to force air into her lungs so she won’t faint now, with Hilda in front of her, Miriam can smell Dr Baum’s office. She knows she is not there. She is in her father’s room, she is home, Hilda is in front of her, a creased worried expression on her face, yet the air is permeated with the smell of the thick, wool-covered foam seats of the doctor’s office.

  She can feel her husband’s hand like a glove over her own, smell his hot breath and hear Dr Baum clear his throat as he theatrically placed his glasses on the notes, offering his sympathy and his prognosis. Discussing options for her, agreeing a way forward for her, shaking hands and leaving with pills.

  For her.

  She clasps the fabric covering her stomach, a soft nylon, almost sheer, it hides her fingertips as they touch her warm flesh, to help her find her centre.

  ‘There is a care plan meeting happening next week,’ Hilda says.

  The words fall like heavy drops.

  ‘I’m not sick.’ She looks to Hilda, to see if she knows her past. And her present. But Hilda is taking her father’s pulse.

  ‘It’s for your father. Routine. To check we are doing everything to support you.’

  Miriam moves her fingers on her stomach. Thumb. Forefinger. Middle. Ring. Baby. Pressing each one into her skin, then back. Baby. Ring. Middle. Fore and thumb.

  ‘You did really well, it’s not nice seeing them like this. I do understand.’ Hilda consults her watch. ‘It is very late, or actually it’s very early. I shall leave you to rest.’

  Hilda picks up her bags.

  ‘Remember, keep an eye on his respirations, call the paramedics again if you need to. Plenty of fluids once the midazolam wears off. And Miriam . . . sleep for you, okay?’

  She manages a faint smile. Hilda is a wave of fabric and colour, her glasses perch in her curly hair like a bird in its nest. She hugs Miriam, who stands solid, Hilda’s perfume creating a floral smog. ‘Stay where you are, I’ll see myself out.’

  As soon as she hears the door close, Miriam rushes to lock it and turns the catch. She sees her feather, which lives between the door and its frame, on the floor with a snatching of dust and places it in her pocket.

  4

  MIRIAM

  The next day, her father is settled and flush-faced. Unable to find the energy to sustain her usual verbose rubbish, she cares for him in silence. Her eyes are red and heavy, having not slept, just rested in the chair, watching him. The world seems harsh in the morning light.

  The kitchen cupboards are almost empty: crackers, coffee, but not much else.

  ‘I’ll have to go out today,’ she says to herself as she pulls out a pack of crackers. Wandering into the living room she switches the television on. East meets West is still, after a month, the only
news.

  ‘I was terrified.’ A young man with a mop of black hair and wearing a denim jacket is speaking to the camera, a microphone close to his mouth. It’s old footage, she has watched it already, but as she watches it again, she eats.

  ‘Once I’d taken the first step, well, I thought they would kill me. Shoot me right there and then,’ he continues. ‘But I just kept walking.’ He looks away from the camera back to the Wall behind him. ‘And I won’t be going back.’ The camera pans back to the reporter as the man is carried off on the wave of the crowd.

  ‘And the festivities continue. Christmas really has come early here at Checkpoint Charlie.’ The reporter signs off and they cut back to the studio.

  As pictures of Helmut Kohl, Gorbachev and President Bush flash on the screen, Miriam hears the post arrive through the letter box.

  She turns the television off and leaves half a cracker on the kitchen side before collecting a letter addressed to her father in close-knit writing, familiar.

  Herr Winter, it says, but it’s for her.

  It seems to weigh heavily as she stumbles back to his room.

  Dad sleeps.

  She is alone.

  She kisses his papery cheek. ‘Please don’t leave me,’ she says, smoothing hair off his face, and places an extra blanket from her mother’s bed over him. She picks at the scab that has formed over her thumbnail and stares at the floor, the effort of breathing is enough. She cannot do anything else but wait.

  Time pressed down on her before, like a silent companion, but after last night it has started to tick. And it’s loud.

  ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been here for you,’ she says to her father. ‘I want to help you.’ She slices the envelope open. It doesn’t matter what is inside. She knows it’s from him.

  She pulls out the back of a polaroid. Reading her name in tight print. Frau Voight on the back, the only content.

  Frau Voight. The back of the picture reads. But Dad’s name is written on the envelope.

  ‘He sent this to you,’ she says, alarmed at the image of herself. A heat starts in her chest and races to the top of her head.