The Rabbit Girls

by Anna Ellory

  ‘In another lifetime,’ she sighed. ‘You know the line in that Yeats poem that sticks with me most?’

  I shook my head to bury further into her hair.

  ‘The ceremony of innocence is lost.’

  ‘Drowned,’ I corrected and kissed the skin on the back of her neck I’d uncovered.

  ‘The ceremony of innocence is drowned,’ she said.

  I nodded as I blew on the damp skin my kiss left behind.

  ‘The ceremony of innocence is drowned,’ she said again. ‘That is so true.’

  ‘I have to go.’

  ‘You have to go.’ She turned her head so I could kiss her mouth again.

  MIRIAM

  The smell of the dress hangs in the air as night falls around them and, although defeated, she checks each corner of the pocket for anything, anything at all that would make sense of why her mother had a uniform dress with a single letter that means nothing to Miriam and, as far as she knows, is nothing that her parents ever mentioned. And as despondency takes hold, her fingers uncover a flap of fabric inside the pocket itself, and she can feel another piece of paper.

  Sitting up in the chair, she tries to grasp the paper hidden in the pocket with her fore and middle finger, but it doesn’t budge.

  ‘There is something else here,’ she says to her father. She returns to her mother’s sewing box and takes the scissors again. This time she grasps the handle and takes them back to her father.

  With shaking hands she leans over the dress, cuts each stitch and follows the seam to open the pocket up to a flap. She uncovers three more tiny, folded, matchbox-shaped papers.

  ‘There is more,’ she says and holds down the flap of the pocket with the scissors. She carefully unfolds the paper.

  It is paperback-book sized with a corner missing, tiny script written in pencil over both sides of the thin paper.

  It appears to be written completely in French.

  Unfolding another, the writing is on the thinnest paper she has ever seen.

  ‘Did you write these?’ she asks, but he shows no sign that he can hear her. Miriam cannot skim-read it, the writing is too small, but the flicker of hope turns into a flame; they are in French.

  Mum. Who neither read nor spoke anything other than German. These are not to her and, she thinks with relief, they cannot be from her.

  But who?

  She turns on the main light and moves closer to the lamp beside his bed, switching on its glare. The third one is as tiny as a wallet, both sides are written on. She studies it closely, it is written in German.

  Henryk,

  I am alive. At least I think I am alive. This is the worst kind of hell if I am dead. I saw you – I know it was you – as I was pushed on to the wagon at the platform. There were over twenty of us in that little space, six dead bodies before we even pulled away. But I saw the prominence of your jaw as your head turned, the tension betraying your fear.

  I remember resting my head on your shoulder, my nose touching the sensitive skin just under your earlobe. The smell of you here – this small spot – hidden away from the rest of the world, was mine and mine alone. Its memory fragranced by your cigarette and the music of the words as you read to me. You looked left and right – I’d like to think looking for me, but maybe you were too scared to look for me.

  Icicles have formed over my heart and cannot be melted until I see you again. I feel you are alive, for I know you are strong and can withstand so much.

  I can taste salt on the air, I imagine the waves, the sand. There is no space here. There are people literally under my feet, or by my side or on top of me if I cannot keep my footing. I breathe recycled air.

  I can barely describe what I see. My only thought is that you are somewhere better, that you are not suffering. To think of you in these conditions is worse.

  I will try to find out what has happened. No one seems to understand or hear me. Everyone is milling around with no purpose in their own worlds of pain and loss, trying to adjust to the unfamiliar rules.

  Once I know where I am I will try to send word for you.

  I am sorry.

  Miriam places the letter down. She had just been to the platform, Dad had been there too.

  ‘The letter is to you,’ she says.

  He says nothing.

  ‘Maybe this one is from Mum?’

  But the handwriting looks the same as the first letter. She puts the two together and picks up the next letter, but she cannot make out any of it. French, again. The same handwriting.

  ‘Or Frieda?’ she says, trying the name cautiously. He makes no response.

  She knows she shouldn’t hope, but maybe, just maybe, he’ll come back, if she can find something for him to live for.

  Her head is full of questions but her hands go to the scissors. She lifts the dress and the bag with the sheet inside and takes it to the dining room table. Removing the placemats, candlesticks and table runner, Miriam places the sheet down first and the dress on top. Turning on all the lights she touches the collar and the cuffs.

  Excitement flows through her, like a small child.

  She traces her fingers along the seams and tries not to notice her battered and scabbed hands. She opens the buttons and moves a hand inside the dress to flatten it between palms, but the seams of the dress stand apart, raised as though something were in them.

  ‘There’s more.’

  She looks at the dress exposed, laid out; a cadaver waiting to be cut open. She slices through the stitches along the seam of the collar and finds another piece of paper, she sets it to the side, and another and another. The entire collar is stuffed with paper.

  Cutting into every seam, she places each sheet she finds to one side and continues snipping at the threads to reveal letter after letter. As the next hour passes she finds many hidden in the main bodice, the waistband, the sleeves and every hem.

  She works to uncover the past.

  Unpicks old words. Old wounds.

  The stale smell of the dress permeates, and makes her head feel as thick as the cotton.

  She looks at the stash of loose paper discovered. There are so many. Some are large, others just a scrap the size of her thumb. Some have printing on them, either letters or typed print, others written in the margins of a page ripped from a book. One written on the back of sheet music. Most are folded small. Some are rolled up to the size of a finger.

  When she is sure that she has found everything hidden in the dress, she starts to flatten and count them. She picks up each one in turn. Many are written in French, so many that she makes two piles of French letters. Finding one in German that she can read, she lifts it up into the light.

  Henryk,

  I write to you, but I write also for myself. For I know that if I do not I will be lost amongst the crowd.

  My heart is breaking – I do not know if you are being treated better, but I fear for the worst. You do not deserve this. I do not know if you are alive, if you are suffering. The thought of you suffering makes my skin crawl worse than the lice that torment me.

  Maybe you didn’t get on the train, maybe it wasn’t you I saw, maybe you escaped and are with Emilie and happy together. Maybe you got over the border, maybe you are . . .

  The sentence is left unfinished.

  Emilie. The letter mentions Mum. Miriam’s heart sprints and soars. She couldn’t have been there. Escaped. Happy together . . . The world feels like it is spinning on an axis, about to career off on its own. But Dad has a tattoo. He couldn’t have escaped. She reads on. The words now written in pen, faded grey.

  This thought of you together fills me with hope, yet it tears me apart that you do not think of me, or want me. That I am here and you are happy. I am torturing myself with thoughts while the camp is torturing my body, my spirit.

  I knew going home was a bad idea. I ran to you that day. I knew to help you and Emilie escape you’d need something to barter with. I feared for the future. As soon as you had the ring and the diamonds I had ta
ken from my mother, you and Emilie would be free to leave.

  Once you left I would not see you, you would not need me. You would be gone, safe, but not with me. I would be left behind and as every footstep moved me to you, fearing the stomp of marching boots at my back, I knew whatever happened we would be apart.

  I do not know if I stalled, I like to think I didn’t, but maybe I did. Stayed at my mother’s, imprisoned by glass whereas now I am imprisoned by a brick wall, electric fences and barbed wire.

  I wonder if we would have been, had there not been a war.

  Did the war create us or ruin us?

  When you didn’t open on my knock, I feared I was too late, I had led the wolves to your door. But Emilie answered. She opened the door and told me to leave. I was so jealous, fuelled by sadness and loss, at her beauty, her simplicity and more than anything, how she had you first. I barged my shoulder into the door and knocked her into the room.

  We all stood there breathing fast and shallow. It’s amazing how quiet fury can be.

  I placed the diamonds in Emilie’s hand. I tried to convey so much to her, but she looked at me as if I was going to rob her.

  ‘Leave.’ That was all I could say, so out of breath, so emblazoned with emotion it was all I had. I fear she took this the wrong way. But she saw me looking at you and took the diamonds and vanished. She knew what this meant. I am sure she was as relieved as I was devastated.

  Then the knock came at the door.

  This isn’t Mum’s, and the relief is buoyant in Miriam. Maybe Mum did escape? But the fact these letters and the dress itself exist means that someone else loved Dad when he was with Mum, and somehow Mum had the dress. The headiness makes her legs shake.

  What has she found? And did Mum know?

  Her eye is drawn to the mantelpiece and the large, silver-framed photograph of her parents on their wedding day standing outside the Church of the Redeemer, arm in arm, looking happy. The church must be derelict now, having stood in the death strip between East and West. When she had planned her wedding, she had wanted it there, the same church as her parents. But with a river on one side and the death strip the other, it was inaccessible. She chose a smaller church nearer the outskirts of town instead.

  With pillars and arched doors, the Church of the Redeemer was beautiful and sat on the riverbank like a stranded ship.

  Was anything she knew true?

  She takes the framed photograph and piles of letters back to his room. His breathing is ragged and his hands and arms tremor slightly.

  ‘Don’t leave me, Dad. I’ve found letters. They are to you, but . . .’ With no other information than that to tell him she hastily picks up another letter, written on a triangle slip of yellowing paper ripped from a larger pad.

  Henryk, I am in Ravensbrück –

  ‘Ravensbrück,’ she says aloud. She says it a few times, seeing if he has any reaction at all. She then looks back at the paper and continues.

  The salt in the air is from the lake, not the sea as I had supposed. I am sure I lived close by in Fürstenburg during the holidays when I was a child. Louisa’s grave is up on the hill overlooking it. I feel better in some way that I have found my bearings – I do know where I am, but there is no escape from here. I cannot shake the feeling that I am so far away from everything. The women are cold and hard. They close off, shut down to survive. I know this, yet I cannot do the same; if I lose heart then I lose everything.

  I have a red triangle on my dress, it depicts ‘Political Prisoner’. I even have a red cross striped in paint on the back of the old coat they have allocated me. None of the clothes fit. I have no idea why I could not have kept my clothes.

  I feel like a walking target. They are free to kill without cause or warning.

  A young woman, older than me yet not old, was attacked by the Blockova’s dog so badly, the Blockova shot her. In the head, just like that. The woman did nothing I did not do.

  I cannot understand it.

  I do not even know her name, nobody will.

  ‘The brutality,’ she says to her father’s sleeping form and reads the last two lines again. ‘Who are these from?’

  She places the letters together with the four she has been able to read. She paces the room, comes back to them time and time again, as though the movement of her body will help her mind focus. ‘This is by a woman . . . is this Frieda?’ Now instead of relief, she cannot understand who and why and how and the thoughts rattle around, more confused and with more questions than before.

  ‘A walking target,’ she says aloud. ‘A political prisoner.’ And she recalls the television showing the pictures of the East Berliners shot at for trying to scale the Wall. East Germany killing their own.

  The cost of freedom.

  She thinks of her freedom. What will it cost her?

  After looking through the piles of letters until her fingers ache and her head thunders, she rests back in the chair, the letters in her lap.

  The letters in French sit unread all night and she watches them, as if she can somehow transform them into German, or that she may be able to read them by the morning. Are the ones written in French from the same person?

  The thoughts of the letters and their content swirl in her head, so that past and present have fused into one mass of something indecipherable.

  11

  MIRIAM

  She dreams of Mum, growing older and fragile. Until, like tissue, her skin flakes and starts to shed. Pages first fly around her like a storm, peeling off, until Mum dissolves. Pages turning into words and finally single letters fly. She tries to grab them and put Mum back together again but can’t.

  Awake and unwilling to close her eyes lest the images have free rein, she watches the December morning slice through the window. When she can hear traffic and a bin lorry crash and wheeze along the streets, she gets up to begin her day.

  Answers.

  Miriam needs answers, before it’s too late. He knows where to find her. It’s a matter of time, and there’s no way back. She collects a pile of the French letters into a handkerchief and places them carefully in her bag.

  ‘I love you, Dad,’ she says, a ball of emotion holds firm in her throat. ‘I will be back soon. I promise.’

  Miriam takes a taxi rather than the bus and arrives before the library has opened. She is one of the first admitted through the double doors and her initial thought is that she needs a French dictionary.

  As she sits with an enormous French–German dictionary in front of her she unwraps the handkerchief and takes out one of the many letters, wrapping the rest back up. She starts at the beginning. She writes a word, checks and scratches it out, before trying again. One sentence seems to take an age to decipher. And time is not on her side.

  The library is almost empty, there are a few people talking, but no students, no pages turning or pencils scribbling.

  She puts the dictionary back on the shelf and walks, letter in hand, to the desk. A young librarian with glasses perched on his nose and another pair around his neck busily shifts paper.

  ‘Hello, I was wondering, can you help me?’

  ‘Probably,’ he says, not looking up. ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘I am looking for someone who can translate some French letters for me?’

  He looks up. ‘The French dictionaries are over there.’ He points where she has just been.

  ‘I’ve been there, but what I am after is someone who knows the language and can help me.’

  ‘This is a library. I deal in books, not people.’ And with that he turns away and rustles paper on the other side of the desk, his back to her.

  A hand rests gently on her shoulder. She flies around and the letter falls to the floor.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says a man, bending to pick up the paper as she backs into the desk. ‘Here.’ He hands the letter back.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I saw you with the dictionary over there?’ He points. ‘Are you having problems that Schmutz he
re cannot help you with?’

  The librarian huffs, but continues with his filing.

  ‘No – yes, I mean . . .’ she says.

  The man has large eyes and thick lips. He is being kind, Miriam thinks. She’s not sure what to say. Sometimes there are no words, but she tries a few to see what happens. When she does, the words come out in a rush.

  ‘I have a letter that is to my father. He is dying and my mother has . . . already and this . . .’ She motions to the letter. ‘I just don’t understand and I don’t read French. My father did, but . . . I don’t have time to work out each word . . .’

  He smiles gently. ‘I am sorry to hear of your father?’ he asks, and she sees two large hearing aids pushing his ears forward slightly. ‘Bit deaf, you see.’ He points to an offending ear. ‘So I didn’t catch all you said.’

  Miriam brings her hand to her mouth in apology, then realises he would probably need to see her mouth to hear.

  ‘From what I heard, you are looking for a French person, or someone who can help you with your letter?’

  She nods.

  ‘My nonna speaks French.’

  ‘That’s very kind, but . . .’ she starts, but her protestations aren’t heard.

  ‘Nonna and Opa were born in Strasbourg, you know, on the Rhine? Stunning there. We went there a long time ago, when I was a boy, but Nonna . . . It’s very sad.’ The man takes her by the elbow. ‘She stayed with him in the East, he was unwell when the Wall was built so she stayed.’ He leads her around the circling stairs and up two levels, talking the entire time. ‘Likes the area called the “reading room”, does Nonna, but you need to be quiet here.’ Miriam smiles as he says it loudly. ‘Be good for her to do something, after the Wall, you know, well . . . it’s been hard on her, I think. Mum and I help out, but she’s been on her own too long. She’s started harassing the librarians about trying to return the stolen books back to their owners, believes the library has been built on the back of fascism and the books do not belong to them. It’s a lost cause, to be honest . . . the owners of the books are probably long dead. I think Opa’s death hit her hard . . .’