The Rabbit Girls

by Anna Ellory

  The apartment is full of noise as she sits, pulling out the scarf Eva gave her, weaving the fabric over and across her fingers, in and out. Over and over again. Her entire body exhausted, spent and sated. She feels heaviness in her limbs, as if part of the furniture itself. Her bones turning into the wood of the olive chairs. She guides the scarf over her forearm.

  She thinks of Eva.

  Eva caring for and bandaging her fingers. The fingers healing, scabs rising and not being picked apart. The fabric is kind on her skin, she misses her.

  When sleep evades her, she gathers the feather from the hallway and places it in the envelope with her scissors. She tries to quell the discord within her. Apathy, yet the desire to place the beautiful gold metal against her skin again. Knowing the scissors exist, their exquisite point tucked away alongside her flightless feather . . . she gathers the next letter, content to be swallowed up in Frieda’s story, to forget the power of her own hand.

  Henryk, I’m scared.

  You exist within me, literally, now. I cannot tell you in person that I am carrying a child. Your child. I felt it stirring in the dark, it was my only light. Each flutter of movement bringing me closer to the world, bringing me back from the depths of my own hell.

  Yet our love made something. How long I can keep it growing I do not know. Whether we survive this is doubtful.

  My future is bleak. I have no idea what to do. I cannot tell anyone either, I would endanger all around me. And Hani, whose womb was blackened and removed with steel, having mine ripe and growing life?

  I cannot do that to her. I need her, I need her so much right now, because she KNOWS that I am selfish and cruel and she sticks beside me anyway.

  I hold on to her body, alive and holding mine, and I hope you have someone to hold you.

  Miriam feels the familiar sensation growing from behind her eyes. She can smell hospital, she can smell Axel and she can feel the baby inside her. The weight, the tiny hiccups, and the kicks that made her feel whole, somehow.

  She stands and walks the room. I hope you have someone to hold you, and he did. He always did. Her father had Mum. They were together.

  They visited her, just after it happened. Both together, hand in hand. Her father held her tight. Mum dealt with the baby.

  They left hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder. Both crying the tears Miriam could not. She sat with Axel’s arm around her. A coldness held her, and she felt emptiness so entirely she was almost transparent. The absence seemed to slither then boom, its weight heavier than any noise. And Miriam stuck under it.

  30

  MIRIAM

  She turns up the heating and puts her father’s cardigan over her shoulders. His smell brings her back to the present, the letters and Frieda.

  Henryk,

  We have created something. More than either of us combined.

  The child grows strong within me. I forget it exists in moments of the day. I have joined Hani at work at the Siemenslager. The factory is warm and we sit in chairs with backs and arm rests, and wind thin wire over spools. It is good work and the manager oversees us, not the guards, so there are fewer beatings, and above the noise of the factory we can talk in whispers and not be heard.

  The baby is quiet in the day, but as soon as I lie down or when I eat – it kicks out and wriggles. I am fascinated by it. I can even see the movements through my skin now. My muscles and fat reduced to bone, however my belly protrudes. It grows. In a place of death there is life. It is strong. I imagine its dark hair and brilliant eyes. Holding my hand, looking up at me, looking like you.

  My memories are broken. For surviving now is my only aim, for both of us. I listen to Eugenia and the talk of Allies, the talk of rescue or release, and I believe. I believe that it is possible for us, because I have to survive to bring this child into the world. I have to survive to bring it back to you. For we deserve an ending better than this one.

  I hold on to our memories, but they are sand slipping through my fingertips. I hope we can create new ones together.

  ‘But she never did,’ Miriam says, placing the letter down.

  In the early hours of the morning she gets some sleep and wakes from a heavy slumber. She showers, allowing the water to rinse her skin. The blood still pours from the wound, working its way down her arm like a vein. She sits uncomfortably on the top of the toilet and places four Steri-Strips along the wound which hold it closed, then covers her guilt with a large, white, gauze plaster.

  She opens the windows to a bright, freezing-cold morning. Allowing the pungent smell of Axel and the rose-pink lilies to leave through the windows, she places the feather and the gold scissors, wrapped in their envelope, in the bin liner. The plaster pulls at her blouse. A reminder.

  She makes two phone calls. The first to check on her father. She is told he slept well and is doing better. The second, a gruff voice answers and tells her he’ll be over to the apartment at some point today, he cannot give her a time.

  Hanging up, she takes the bag outside, cumbersome and heavy, she places it in the bin and instantly wants to clamber in and retrieve the scissors.

  ‘Morning, pet.’

  ‘Morning, Lionel, how are you?’ His big bulk is moving towards her, she has the bin lid open, on tiptoes, undecided. He stands beside her and lowers the lid for her, despite being able to do so herself, but she is grateful.

  Gone.

  ‘I’m good, thank you. How is your father?’

  ‘He’s holding up,’ she says, turning her back to the bin. Turning her back on the past.

  ‘Give him me best when you see him.’ He squeezes her shoulder and turns to walk away.

  ‘Oh Lionel, before I forget.’ She gathers herself, present. ‘I’m having a locksmith stop by today to change the locks. Hopefully I’ll be back in time, but can you show them up if not?’

  ‘Sure thing. Your husband mentioned he’d lost his key. Better to be safe than sorry these days, right?’ He turns back and she walks beside him into the main foyer. ‘When I was a lad, we always had our doors open, anyone could have just walked in. Mind, we didn’t have much to steal in them days.’

  ‘You let my husband in?’

  ‘Yes, just before I was getting off home. Was lucky really, five minutes later I’d have been halfway home myself. He had such beautiful flowers, I thought you’d be pleased to see him. He said it was a surprise.’

  ‘Surprise indeed,’ Miriam murmurs. ‘Lionel, my husband and I are separated. Please do not let anyone into my’ – then thinking about what she is saying – ‘my father’s apartment without checking with me first. Not ever.’

  He opens and then closes his mouth and Miriam shakes her head as she walks back up the stairs.

  Back to the letters. The next two are written on the inside of an envelope, the waxy strips burnt amber, and covered in writing on both sides.

  Henryk,

  There is a pressure in my chest. I imagine this is how a lion feels before it releases a roar which shakes the ground. I do not roar, nor do I cry. I cannot relieve this pressure. It builds and builds, then falls away only to grow again but from deeper, stronger, bigger.

  Wanda has found a new vocation. There is a block opened for babies, a nursery, where the mums can be with their newborns and still work.

  Block 22 holds infant babies, mothers can work and return to feed their babies in their break. They are cared for by the prisoners. Wanda is one of them. This fills me with dread. Parting with our child? I cannot imagine. While it grows within me it is safe. As safe as I am.

  I cannot survive what is to come. The death of our child. For here there is only death. No child is born and lives, even most in the nursery die. I listen to talk of liberation and think about walking back to you. Then I see the shadow of Emilie and I know that my happily ever after does not exist.

  All outcomes are impossible.

  I try to survive the day, every day. For it is my hope that I see you again. A small foot nudges me from within and I am reminded
that you exist, that we exist.

  Until tomorrow.

  She picks up the next letter without pause.

  Wanda looks at me as if she knows. She talks of bowels, bowls and bread. She bores us with detailed descriptions of them all. The value of a bowel movement entrances her as if we were babies again.

  But every now and again she looks at me, maybe it’s just my perception of her look, how I am interpreting it, but it’s different, as if she knows.

  She has changed in the past weeks while I have been recovering from the bunker. Since starting the job she has told stories, stories that had they come from anyone else I wouldn’t have believed.

  A three-kilogram baby born. A mother given a glass of milk at birth. A mother washed and cared for during her delivery.

  Eugenia covers her eyes and pretends to sleep. She cannot believe that things are changing, that there is some humanity in this place. She cannot believe it to be true. She cannot let herself have hope. Block 22 disproves her belief that all Nazis are monsters.

  Eugenia and Wanda are at war over Block 22. Some days no peaceful words are passed between them, yet under the words and tensions there is utter devotion.

  Wanda talks of nurses and caring for babies. She talks of the cloth they are swaddled in, paper as nappies. Mothers queuing up to see their babies in their breaks. She talks of holding them, soothing them, she talks of chubby hands, rosy lips, healthy newborns. Every word like nectar to my soul, soothing my worries away. I pray she is right.

  Three kilos?

  Miriam’s baby had been measured in grams. Held, soothed, but not chubby, not rosy and not alive.

  Unable to keep reading the letters, unable to walk down the path that leads to that day, the day she lost him, Miriam goes out to meet her new solicitor, David Abbott. She doesn’t check the streets; she doesn’t care anymore. David Abbott accepts the hefty cheque she has written and says that Axel should have received notification.

  He is stuffy and old and in every respect a typical solicitor; she feels grubby just being around so much handled paper. The floor, the table, the chairs, everything covered in yellowing paper. His fingers, his eyes, his not-so-white hair, all tainted yellow.

  She walks home contemplating her name, she had changed it to marry and she will change it to divorce too. There feels some symmetry to it. Like going full circle, back to the beginning again.

  In the hospice, she reads more letters to her father, in her own hand the letters are easier to read and she gets to the end of them quickly. She makes conversation with the nurses, she helps to care for her father and he talks, very quietly. Words she cannot understand, but he is talking. She takes that as a good sign; she sees her advert in the paper and holds on to some hope that someone might know something of Frieda.

  Finally, back at home she finds a new key on the desk with Lionel and a bright, shiny new lock on her door. Inside, on her dining room table, the invoice is folded over. Beside it is a note in Hilda’s large handwriting:

  Sorry to have missed you. Please call me, Hilda x

  The next day follows peacefully. Miriam walks to the hospice, she tends to her father’s needs, then takes a bus to the library to find Eva, to apologise, to understand, but mainly to feel like she doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

  The library is closed.

  To distract her hands from pulling the tiny line of new skin apart on the underside of her arm, she walks into shops with garments and bags showcased in the window. Long, oblong bags with tassels and bright dresses in the latest fashions. Miriam smiles as she purchases some gloves, silk gloves, unaware of fashion choices; what she does know is that she is missing colour. She buys a pink scarf, the identical colour to the deepest shade of the lilies. A reminder that she made a choice and she did it alone. And returns to the till with a purple scarf too, thinking of Stella’s rainbow.

  Her taste for freedom slightly satisfied, she returns home, pours a glass of wine and reads more letters, each one taking her further and further into something that feels inescapable.

  Stella.

  Her blonde hair was dark with dirt, twisted and knotted. In her skinny arms, she held something. I couldn’t see what it was. She was singing it a lullaby, the tune to ‘Silent Night’, but the childish lyrics unrecognisable.

  Slowly she lifted her head as I watched her. She saw me and smiled. She held out her bundle, covered in a blanket, towards me. She looked elated, her eyes shone. Bright as buttons.

  ‘Dolly,’ she said.

  It wasn’t a dolly.

  It was a baby’s dead body.

  Miriam folds the paper back into its creases and places it down on the table.

  She remembers the eyelashes, so long and dark. The fingernails, a deep purple, but long, the tiny mop of dark hair. The weight of him heavy, but not enough. Not enough to breathe his first breath, or for her to see his mouth open. Or to see his eyes.

  It takes a long time for the words to make sense in the next letter. Her mind flits and flutters back to that night, then draws her back just as fast.

  Henryk,

  I want to write about Wanda, but I don’t know how. After I found Stella with the dead baby, Wanda became lost. Hani helped Stella, she led her by the hand and they dug a small hole to lay the baby to rest.

  Wanda started muttering, she mumbled, she lost her bowl. She did not talk to us anymore. She went to Block 22 each day and she cared for the babies.

  Wanda smuggled out babies, almost dead babies. Shallow breathing, glassy eyes, floppy, skull fusions visible through paper-thin skin. She tried to mash bread in her mouth and mix it with water to give to them. This did not work. Every morning we had another dead baby to bury.

  Eugenia and Wanda had an enormous row. We tried to stop it, the women in the block tried to stop it, the Blockova failed to stop them. The guard hit them both with the butt of a rifle. They were both dazed, but even that didn’t stop them.

  Wanda kept bringing the babies home. She placed them on her naked chest and covered them with her clothes. She explained to us that the warmth from her heart would help them. It was no good. By morning they were gone.

  Eugenia gave Wanda an ultimatum, stop or she would tell the Kommandant. ‘The mothers of the babies have a right to see them for the last time, to say goodbye,’ Eugenia said. ‘By stealing them you are denying them this right.’

  Wanda stopped bringing the babies home.

  Wanda stopped returning to the block at all.

  Wanda was lost.

  I tried to speak with her, to help her see sense.

  The guards designed Block 22 as a death block for the newborns. The conditions enforced by them would kill the babies. Wanda now knew this, as Eugenia had all along. No access to their mothers, only feeding from famished women twice a day, cold and alone at night.

  Wanda spoke of rats and vermin on the babies when they opened the block in the morning. The newborns freezing without blankets or clothes. Dead in their beds. Ten in a row like sardines. Wanda and another prisoner would go through each one of them in the morning, looking for life.

  Half of them died, but by noon more babies had arrived, pink and chubby, fresh from their mothers’ wombs.

  The mothers leaving their newborns in a postpartum fog. A miracle to survive the birth and deliver a healthy child, yet immediate separation caused despair as nothing I have ever heard.

  This separation was as good as death for the infants. Yet Wanda continued to go, to hold the babies. Hani is the only one she lets near her. They walk together.

  The next letter rolls up and Miriam struggles to keep it flat.

  I had a dream that all was lost. I was strapped to a bed, the baby pulled from me. Dead or alive I do not know, just gone. Whisked away. Never to see its face. Never to see your face.

  Wanda died yesterday.

  She threw herself into the electric fence. We found her there in the morning. The guards were taking pot shots at her back. Her lifeless body hanging by the threads of her unifo
rm.

  We couldn’t retrieve her for fear of electrocution ourselves. At evening roll call she was still there. We shielded Stella’s eyes and walked on. But this morning she was gone. Eugenia is silent, Bunny is silent. Hani and I sit in silence. Stella cries into Bunny and will not eat.

  What will become of us?

  We sang for Wanda. That is all we can do.

  All her family lost before her, all the memories she has of them, dead. And now she has gone and taken her memories with her. With Wanda’s death comes the end of any legacy her family had. Wiped clean away.

  A chosen death here is an all too painful reminder of where we are all heading.

  31

  MIRIAM

  She writes out the German letters long into the next day and collects them beside the French ones. Knowing she can read them to her father, so he can know. Really know what happened to Frieda.

  When she arrives, the hospice is quiet and calm, her father pale.

  ‘He had a visitor today,’ Sue comes up behind her.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your husband.’

  ‘What?’ Miriam is shocked and she leans back against the wall as Sue speaks.

  ‘Yes, your father was not very happy, he had a partial seizure. His left side, arm and leg, shook for a few minutes. We got in quite quickly with the midazolam and it’s wearing off now. He’s okay, but I suggested to your husband . . . Axel, was it?’

  Miriam nods.

  ‘I suggested he not come back unless you are here too.’

  ‘Sue, can you not let him in if he does. Axel, he has a bit of a vendetta.’

  ‘Against your father?’

  ‘Against me. He’s belligerent, he won’t give up.’

  HENRYK

  ‘He’s belligerent, he won’t give up.’ I can hear Miriam’s voice. He was here, I want to say. That man. He told me what he was going to do to my little girl. But the confines of my inert body cannot let me move.

  I want to battle, to shout, to scream, to move in any way to stop him. I could feel the pressure moving through my chest and into my head, a scuttle of beetles. I wanted to explode just so I could stop hearing his voice. His words. So I could get to Miriam.