by Anna Ellory
‘Do people believe you or him?’
‘Him. Always him. If you met him you’d believe him too.’
‘Never. This man, I’d see him.’
‘Keeping as far away from him as possible is my plan.’
‘But maybe you can fight back?’
Miriam says nothing as they work quietly, clearing the kitchen in a calm silence of solitude and company combined.
‘Shall we call a taxi? To go to the church?’ Eva says.
‘Oh yes, I almost forgot.’ And Miriam scrambles around getting ready.
‘I’d have driven, but my car . . .’
‘Jeff said it wasn’t working?’
‘No, it’s still not fixed. Garage don’t want to touch it until the New Year now.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Me too, have to rely on public transport.’ She makes a face.
Miriam smiles and picks up the phone to book a taxi.
The taxi driver drops them off by the Wall. There are people walking arm in arm, but Miriam doesn’t see a way to the church. Paying the driver, they follow a couple and find a whole panel of wall removed.
Miriam’s steps are cautious and slow.
‘Are you okay?’ Eva has flushed cheeks from the cold and her fingers are red-rimmed and glow. She rubs at them as if rubbing in an ointment.
‘Had a run-in with Axel yesterday, and I’m a bit sore, that’s all, I’ll be fine. Let’s keep moving, it’s cold.’
Miriam and then Eva duck under the loose metal bars that keep the rest of the Wall standing and find themselves on the death strip.
‘This is eerie,’ Miriam says to Eva by her side.
‘You know, I dreamed about walking through the death strip every night after this wall was built. I hate walls, doors, anything that will keep me in,’ Eva says.
Miriam looks at Eva as they step through the sand, once immaculate, now full of footsteps.
She works out the tangle of thoughts in her head to try and create some words.
‘In another life, I’d live by the sea: all that space,’ Eva says. ‘Over the Wall, there is no space, every day you are looking over your shoulder; waiting . . .’ She leaves the sentence in a knot as Miriam checks her watch in the bright light overhead.
‘I used to come here with Dad,’ she says, pointing to the tower. ‘We are early, let’s go up.’
Inside, the spiral stone staircase leads up to the bell tower. Their shoes on the cobbled steps vibrate through the air, water drips from somewhere and the windows that had looked out on the river are all boarded up.
‘It is very dark. Watch your step.’
The nape of Miriam’s neck tingles, hearing her own voice refracted around her.
‘Stairs are a bitch to old hips.’
Miriam smiles briefly. ‘It’s worth it . . . come on,’ she says, and even to her own ears she sounds flat.
They reach the railings which overlook the river, there are empty beer bottles on the floor and cigarette ends everywhere. The frost in the air stills the water and both sky and water merge into darkness.
She stands in the silence and looks at Eva, who is crying.
‘Are you okay?’
‘What you said earlier, it’s hurting me so deeply.’ She clenches a fist to her stomach.
‘What is?’ Unsure what to say, she turns back to the view.
‘You’ve left Axel, yes?’
Miriam nods.
‘So why not divorce him? So he cannot say or do again what he is doing. He is breaking you, even though you have left.’
And although her thoughts jolt at Eva’s words, her focus is on the drop.
Will it feel like flying if I fall?
‘I can’t,’ she says dreamily.
Will the wind whip or kiss my skin?
Eva says something, but the words sound tinny and lost. A pinprick of words from a distance.
The absence of anything other than that moment.
Flying, falling.
The end.
Miriam leans forward, pushes her weight through her hands.
‘Miriam!’ Eva’s voice brings her back to her feet, her hands loosen and she looks at Eva, who trembles and grips the handrail until her knuckles show white.
Miriam suddenly sees the incredible drop below her feet. Looking down makes her take a step back, away from Eva.
Away from the edge.
Miriam shakes her head and turns to the inner sanctuary where the bell used to be but is no more. Her eyes sting and she feels disorientated. She looks past Eva to the white slip of moon.
‘Are you a man or mouse?’ Eva asks.
‘I’m neither,’ Miriam says cautiously.
‘Exactly, you are a woman,’ Eva says. ‘And God only knows there is nothing stronger than a woman. You are acting like a coward, like a man, and you run and hide away like a little’ – her fore and middle fingers walk through the air, the moon allowing her hands to shadow their image – ‘mouse,’ she says.
‘You have freedom,’ Eva continues, pronouncing the free so that it elongates like smoke into the air. ‘Axel will never give up and you’ll lose your fight and go back.’ Eva turns around to go down the stairs.
‘No. I did stand up to him, at the hospital, he hurt me and I even spoke to the police.’
‘The police . . .’ Eva tuts loudly in the confined space, it sounds like a penny rebounding off the walls.
‘What else can I do?’
‘You can divorce him, or he will keep playing with you till you stop running.’
‘I’m doing my best here,’ Miriam says. ‘It’s not easy and to be frank I’d rather just die after Dad than deal with any of this.’
‘You want someone to fix your problems, but not to deal with them yourself. You left him – that is a woman – but you will go back.’
‘No. No I won’t.’
‘You will until you take control.’
‘How? How are you the expert?’ Miriam asks.
A pause grows and the drips in the tower become amplified.
Eva continues on the same thread. ‘You think like him, you are used, abused, but he has left something in here . . .’ She points at Miriam’s head ‘. . . and you forget what thinking from here is.’ She jabs Miriam in the sternum. ‘I cannot . . . I cannot watch you do this to yourself. No more. I’m sorry, Miriam, I will return the letters I haven’t translated. I can’t watch this happen again.’
‘Again?’ Miriam asks, but the emptiness at Eva’s words pulses in Miriam’s chest, echoing like the tower itself as Eva’s footsteps recede until they are gone.
Miriam looks down over the railings, really looks down. She stays there a long time gripping the bars.
Hard.
26
MIRIAM
She watches her step on the wet stairs as she descends from the tower. Despite numb toes she moves with speed. Turning each way, looking for Eva, her breath coming fast from lips white-tipped with frost. She moves towards the church, its domed roof lost in the night sky, she hears noises within and a slip of light filters through cracks in the door.
Miriam follows the trickle of people as they go into the church, it smells empty and damp and cold. She sits close to the door and looks at the broken and cracked floor tiles, once terracotta and green cut into diamonds but now smashed. She cannot recall any of the service. She sits until the people next to her stand. She stands, then sits when they do. She leaves just after them. Alone.
After the church, she gets a taxi with a decisiveness that she finds stimulating and terrifying equally. She travels through the Berlin streets: street lights bright and atmosphere buoyant as bars and clubs swell and throb to the dance of Christmas.
Miriam goes to the hospital in the dark for the last of the visiting hours. When on the ward, she takes out the bundle of transcribed letters and sits; the air is heavy from the whirring machines and clunky radiators. She kisses her father’s head and squeezes his hand, he has a tube up his nose and it cur
ls around his face. He has been shaved. His skin is soft and he smells baby-lotion fresh.
If these are all the letters she has from Eva, then she will share them with her father; he deserves to know. And if Eva cannot help anymore, Miriam will find someone who can. Eva’s words clang in Miriam’s heart and she feels guilt that she cannot live up to Eva’s expectations.
‘I would always regret not doing this, but even now we are on pretty shaky ground, Dad. I hope you hear me, I hope you understand. I have these, from Frieda.’ She unfolds the thick paper and reads from the beginning.
‘I am alive, at least, I think I am alive . . .’
After she has read many of the letters, a tear falls down his cheek. She dries it with a handkerchief.
HENRYK
Miriam reads to me. I try to focus, to hear what she says. Time stops ticking and starts to flow and soon it races away. I know there is something I must hold on to.
We moved back into our old home in 1946 as Emilie had wanted, we lived within walking distance of what was left of our friends. If Emilie had asked for anything I would have done it, whatever she wanted.
She worked at the hospital to support our family. She was happy, and I did everything to keep it that way.
But I will always remember that time, in the tiny apartment, her face looking at me as I returned to her from Frieda. Sitting in the chair, her small frame shrouded in blankets, plucking at the fabric with both hands. I walked into the room and she looked up, disappointment and loss creased her eyes, and if there was a moment where I wished the ground would shake, in which I was removed from her life, and Frieda’s, I asked a God I didn’t believe in to grant it to me then.
Back in our old home, her face still contained her grief and everything we touched contained the memory of Frieda, and I wanted to claw back what I had lost.
She would look away and not look at me again for hours at a time. I would never ask for forgiveness, but I could do everything to give Emilie the life she had always wanted. We had Miriam, and that changed everything.
For fifteen years, I stayed home with Miriam. I marvelled at her incredible growth, her intuition and resourcefulness, and the years flew by so fast, although I remember the days to be long.
When she was at school, I’d walk her there, stand by the blue gates as she chatted with her friends, whom I liked very much. Girls and boys like colourful flowers growing together, an eternal spring; it was a privilege to watch them bloom. They’d ask me questions about life, sometimes love, and I would happily help with French or English homework.
As I was leaving one day, a teacher stopped me, he knew me by sight as Miriam’s dad. He asked me if I could join him in his office.
‘Miriam tells me you were, or perhaps you still are, a teacher?’
‘Yes, I used to teach.’ Immediately I was on my guard, felt imprisoned in the confines of his office, a boiling cup of insipid tea in my hands, sitting so deep in a seat I could see the imprints of my bony knees through the fabric of my trousers.
‘Miriam is an exceptional student.’
‘Thank you, I am proud of her.’
‘Obviously, she’d achieve more if she talked less.’ He laughed. The desk was full of papers, magazines, books. Herr Blundell, his name on the door. He was Miriam’s head of year, I think, or maybe I didn’t know that then, only after.
Time fills in the blanks as we know them to be, rather than as they were.
‘She’s a lot like her mother,’ I had agreed, because Miriam was such a sprightly thing, at the end of the day I couldn’t wait to sit in an empty room and let it fill up with the silence that had been driven out by the chatter of both mother and daughter.
‘I have three teenage girls,’ said Herr Blundell. ‘It’s a rocky road to travel as the only man in the house, I can tell you!’
‘I can imagine.’
‘We blame hormones, a lot.’
‘Women have it rough.’
‘So, you don’t have a job now?’
‘No, I’m at home with Miriam.’ I felt I needed to qualify that somehow and added, ‘I used to teach at the university.’ His expression changed and I regretted my words.
‘Impressive. Were you published?’ Herr Blundell moved all the magazines and books to the floor and revealed a chair that didn’t seem to be there before, on which he sat.
‘Yes, for a while, anyway.’
‘Would you be interested in a job?’ he asked sincerely.
‘No, not really. If I’m honest, I don’t think I’d be up for it.’
‘Health problems?’
‘Something like that,’ I mumbled, placing my undrunk drink on a stack of magazines. ‘I have to go now.’
‘If it helps, I was there.’
‘Where?’ I struggled to remove myself from the chair and the question invited time to try to get up without sinking back into it again.
‘Buchenwald, first,’ he said, and it was like a fist into the gut. I deflated back into the chair, winded. ‘Then Auschwitz-Birkenau.’ He unbuttoned his collar. Three buttons down, he pulled his tie to one side and his shirt the other way, revealing one letter followed by five numbers. Just like the one I had on my wrist.
‘The bastards decided to brand me here.’ He pointed to his chest.
‘Why?’
‘I fought back,’ he said. Then he buttoned his shirt back up and replaced his tie, so that it was once again straight. ‘This school is a family, and if you wanted a teaching job, you would be very welcome.’
‘Does Miriam, I mean, do the students know you were . . . there,’ I said, pointing to his chest.
‘No. I teach history, but not my own history. The way I see it, I am a lynchpin to help the next generation understand and prevent this happening again.’
‘Most people don’t talk about this,’ I said, finally pulling myself out of the chair and standing up to my full height.
‘I know, but I see no shame in sharing this with anyone. You know why?’
I shook my head.
‘Because it wasn’t my fault, nor, if I am correct, was it yours.’
‘I think you have been mistaken,’ I said, and left the room with my heart running so fast my feet were numb after only a few steps. The smell of the teacher’s office lingered on me, as did his words: ‘I fought back.’
MIRIAM
Back at home she goes straight to the pile of German letters. Picking up a tiny scrap, she switches on the lights and reads. She doesn’t know what the difference is between the German and French letters. If Eva stops translating, what will Miriam miss?
I asked Wanda if she wanted a piece of paper to write to her family, but she had no one to write to. Her family were all separated by the time the war started. She had four children and six grandchildren. She speaks of an idyllic life. She is fifty-six.
We are her only family now.
She is a mother to us all. I imagine her wearing an apron in front of a stove, smelling of warm dough. Her children and grandchildren must have that image of her, milling around, waiting for whatever she had baked to cool enough to eat. She has lost them all. She sits in her bunk and she cares for us.
Wanda wraps her wings around us all, and still has the girth to offer a hug that feels like home. A home I had with you. She is the glue and right now she holds me, and paints a future that is not so bleak.
Miriam rereads the last letter. If Wanda died, would anyone know she had gone? Would anyone tell her stories, could anyone name her children? Eradicating the whole family is like removing the roots of a tree, if you remove the roots everything is destroyed.
At least I have lived. Miriam places the paper back on the table. Lived. She cannot think of a way in which her life can be defined that way. How has she lived? She doesn’t know. She knows that when she dies, no one will remember her either. She has done nothing at all, except be a ‘wife’ to Axel and a daughter to soon-to-be-dead parents. Orphaned. And now, without a friend. She understands why Eva left her at the chur
ch, she would walk away from herself too. She is pathetic, just as Axel has always said she is.
Christmas is as lifeless as a plastic flower, drooping in the condensed hospital heat, and the ward is full of limp spirit. The decade-old tinsel wilts on the walls.
She arrives early on Christmas morning. Her father has a yellow paper hat from a cracker perched on his head, which she swiftly removes. There is subdued cheer as Miriam sits next to her father, and all the visiting hours are consumed with her reading to him. She reads to him from the letters and starts to see a pattern. The French letters in Eva’s handwriting are personal: love letters; the German ones are more about the camp and the women within it.
Miriam feels a rush of affection for Frieda, who must have known her father so well, and then thinks that if Eva has been translating the love letters it must have been difficult after recently losing her husband.
Miriam hadn’t thought of Eva in any other way than as the translator of the letters. She was present in Miriam’s life and Miriam hadn’t even thought to check Eva was okay with what she was doing. Or to understand anything about her. The letters are so sad. Miriam loathes that she didn’t check on the woman who has been her only friend.
Her father squeezes her hand, turns his head to her voice, he says, ‘Thank you.’ His Christmas present to her. The sound of his voice, he is there . . . somewhere. She reads poetry again, just like she used to when he had episodes. She reads just to hear his voice. He only says two words, ‘Thank you,’ but they are enough to give Miriam some cheer.
When the nurses give her father medication and his snores are rhythmic, Miriam picks up the next of Frieda’s letters written on sheet music.
Hani has returned, sterilised.
Skin slick with sweat, frozen to the touch. She has been gone for two weeks. She bleeds heavily.
Hani doesn’t say what happened. She climbs into the bunk and moves into my body, as always. We stay that way all night. My body heat warming her back, then when she moves, warming her front. She is never warm all over.
We try to feed her up, we try to keep her warm. Stella sings to her and smooths her growing hair. There is something magical about Stella and for a while, she joined us in our bunk, telling Bunny she was on holiday with Hani at the seaside, telling of waves and seagulls.
