by Anna Ellory
Confused as to where the conversation is heading Miriam interrupts. ‘But there is nothing wrong with the current arrangement.’
‘Frau Voight. I am aware you are not taking your medication,’ Dr Baum addresses her in what she knows is his sympathetic tone. ‘I can understand you may well be feeling . . . well, you might naturally find yourself in an unnatural state.’ He sighs and looks to Axel who nods conspiratorially, then continues, ‘A state of mind that cannot manage the nature of the discussion that is taking place.’
‘Why can things not be as they are?’
‘The meeting here, today, is testament to the fact Herr Winter’s current situation, or environmental care, if you prefer, is not appropriate.’
‘Isn’t it?’ she challenges. ‘He is safe, yes he’s dying, but he’s doing so in his own room, in his own home, with his daughter by his side. This isn’t forever, it may not even be for tomorrow. Let me care for him, please. Besides, I have Hilda.’ Confidence she does not feel comes out strong in her voice, but once she has finished, her breathing is ragged and her blouse is stuck to her skin.
Dr Baum takes a deep breath and looks to Hilda. ‘Okay, nurse, what is your position?’
Hilda leans forward as Miriam rests back in her chair.
‘I think Miriam is doing an amazing job, but I’m sorry, I have to agree. I think as Herr Winter is stabilising he may need more long-term care and the pressure put on Miriam is high. I would suggest the hospice is a suitable alternative.’
‘Hilda?’
Hilda turns in her chair. ‘I’m sorry, Mim, you did an excellent job when your father had the seizure, but,’ she lowers her voice and Miriam becomes aware that everyone is watching her, Axel just across the table, ‘it looked like you had drunk an entire bottle of wine, and you’ve missed two appointments with the doctor, one I escorted you to.’
Betrayal, harsh and brittle, snaps Miriam into speech.
‘I am caring for my father, that is what I should be doing. Not taking medication that makes me numb or dribble or sleep.’
‘I have to say, that alcohol is in itself a substance which some may define as numbing,’ Dr Baum interrupts. ‘And I cannot think that any medication that would lessen the paranoia or psychotic episodes is any worse than being inebriated.’
Miriam recalls the snakes in her stomach; only a dream, but the scissors . . . the scissors were not.
‘You say you care for your father,’ he continues. ‘But being drunk does not show any of us that you can put his needs before your own.’
And like a runaway train, the meeting continues. Miriam has nothing to say. Eventually Dr Baum draws this unique form of torture to a close.
‘The matter is decided, Miriam. I am sorry you do not like the decision, but Herr Winter will transfer to Ruhwald Hospice at the earliest opportunity.’
Axel shakes Dr Baum’s hand before holding the door for the note-taker and disappearing behind it.
‘Can I go now?’ she asks Hilda.
‘Yes, Mim, you can leave. I’m sorry, the transfer to the hospice will probably be tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’
Axel meets her in the corridor and places his arm around her shoulders.
‘Not what you wanted, eh?’
She doesn’t speak and they walk out of the medical centre together. Her hands seem to swell and sting as the cold air hits them. Rain patters lightly on the cars.
She walks on. Axel follows.
‘Go away.’
‘Not until you are safely at home.’ He pushes open the door an older man is waiting to enter, Miriam skips past the old man and out into the car park. The man drops a bag as he walks past which stops Axel from leaving.
‘Let me help you with that,’ Axel says, bending to pick up the bag.
While Axel is helping the old man, Miriam backs away. She moves behind one car and then another. The gated car park has a pedestrian exit. She sees it. She takes one look at Axel, shaking hands with the man who thanks him for being such a ‘gentleman’.
She turns for the gate and runs.
Her breath runs hot in big gasps through her body. She sees the bus, its green outline means a way out. It’s about to pull away from the stop, she just makes it and bangs on the door. Miriam tries to calm her impatience as the door wheezes open. Not looking back, just focusing on the bus, she steps on as soon as the gap of the door is big enough for her to slip through.
Her fingers trip and fall to find the change. The driver rattles out a ticket for her and she sits on the lower seats back to the window and sinks low.
19
MIRIAM
Pushing the heavy main door open, the familiar smell of polish, carpet and air freshener greet her. She is home. She checks behind her again; he is not here.
She heads to the carpeted stairs. Feeling the weight of tears promising to fall, needing to escape. Miriam rushes up the steps, desperate to lock herself safely away.
Up the stairs, key in hand, she sees Eva sitting on the floor opposite her door. Miriam exhales a breath that judders.
‘Hi, I hope it’s okay, I thought you might want company today.’ Eva has two shopping bags of food in front of her. ‘As Jeff told you, I have nothing to do,’ she says with a smile, ‘so, I bought some food.’ Miriam folds herself to the floor. Her legs too heavy to move another step.
‘How did the meeting go?’ Eva asks.
‘Not good.’ Her voice fatigued. ‘I’m done. I can’t do this anymore.’ Miriam stares at the front door, her father waiting inside, but cannot move herself to him.
‘Do what?’
‘Life. This.’ She gestures to the door.
‘You don’t have a choice. You have your father.’ She holds Miriam’s hand. ‘He needs you.’
‘He does,’ she says remotely. ‘Will you help me find out what happened to Frieda? It’s all he’s living for now, I’m sure of it.’
‘And you?’ Eva asks, standing and helping Miriam to her feet too. ‘What are you living for?’
She doesn’t answer.
‘I’m living for him,’ she says finally, looking up. ‘My father. That’s it. I have no one else.’
Eva places a hand gently on her shoulder. ‘You are not alone,’ she says, swallowing hard, and hugs Miriam.
‘I don’t know what I would have done without you. These letters, knowing you are reading them too . . . they are just so awful, but I couldn’t have worked it all out without your help.’
‘I have a few more,’ she says, tapping her bag. ‘Let’s go in.’
After checking on her father, Miriam leaves his door open. She finds Eva in the living room, placing a selection of pastries out and pouring golden breakfast tea from a pot.
‘Have you eaten?’ Eva asks.
‘You didn’t need to do this,’ she says and Eva looks wary. ‘I mean . . .’
‘I can go if you would prefer?’
‘Oh no, it’s just . . .’
‘I don’t want to intrude, but if I’m honest, it’s nice for me. Jeff said he spoke to you the other day, at the library.’
‘He said you came over from the East, but you told me that yourself, he said you needed time to settle.’
‘In the East, the Holocaust never happened. It was never talked about. The communists believed that East Germans were in no way to blame, even in part, for the Holocaust. Every citizen was completely exonerated from blame, thought or examination. And the victims left without any support. Communism was peace-loving. We had to believe these fictions as fact.’
Miriam listens, it’s the most Eva has said. Only the other side of the Wall and the world was such a different place.
‘Reading these letters, they feel fresh and yet incredibly long ago. A time forgotten.’
‘The letters are awful, just terrible what people do to each other.’ She picks absently at her fingernails until Eva starts watching her. She tries to keep her hands still, but focuses on weaving the tie of her blouse over and around her fing
ers instead.
‘She was just twenty-one, in the letters,’ Miriam says, swallowing. ‘But still she was going to expose the rabbit girls. How do you live with yourself after doing something like that?’
After a long pause Eva asks, ‘Can you remember what it was like being twenty-one?’
‘No, it was a lifetime ago.’
‘Only just a woman and responsible for yourself and the opportunity to leave there? We like to think we wouldn’t, but all of us would. It’s about survival, and that is why so many people don’t share their stories, because they don’t want to be judged by those who cannot possibly know.’
‘Do you know? From personal experience?’ Miriam asks cautiously.
Eva picks up her cup with a tremor in her hand and spills tea on her trousers.
‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have pried. It’s not my business,’ Miriam says, rushing to take the cup.
‘I wanted to ask you, if I can,’ Eva says, drying her trousers with her handkerchief. ‘I’ve been thinking about the dress and you cut away all the seams. Can I sew them back together?’
Miriam looks at the woman, her legs crossed at the ankle. Her back straight, her face serious, worn by the sun but still full; her smile brightens.
‘It just feels wrong to leave it empty and cut open like that. After all, it has been preserved so well,’ Eva says, a little bashful.
‘Yes of course. I’ll read and you can sew?’ Miriam fetches the dress from her father’s room.
Eva says nothing more and takes up the dress.
Miriam watches her as she folds the dress in her lap, then threads a needle that she finds in her bag and bites the end of the thread with her back teeth.
‘I married Axel at twenty-one,’ Miriam says slowly. ‘I was naïve and very young.’
‘It is easy to judge with older eyes.’
Miriam would scream at her younger self, ‘Don’t do it. Don’t marry that man!’ But she knows she wouldn’t listen. At all.
‘They were so young,’ Miriam says and finds the next letters from the table where they are scattered like snowflakes. ‘It plays on my mind about Dad. I have no idea what he saw, but I’m sure now that Mum wasn’t there, she just couldn’t have been. It makes me think about what they must have gone through as a couple, with these letters to Dad. Frieda really loved him, I think.’
‘The best relationships endure the hardships to test strength. Your mother and father prove this? All the challenges will make the relationship, or break it if it isn’t strong enough.’
‘I understand,’ she says. ‘If you don’t have hardships until later, it is more difficult to break the ties.’
‘Exactly. The honeymoon ends, sometimes it never starts.’
‘This is so sad.’
‘It’s life.’
The silence vibrates around them.
‘I need to know what happened to Frieda,’ Miriam says, picking up the next letter. ‘He deserves to know.’
She reads as Eva sews. The next, written over the top and back of another letter which consists of two scrawled lines in different handwriting, in German, is dated the 31st of May 1944. The paper is yellowed and very creased.
I stood in front of the Kommandant, and my hands, black with dirt, wrapped themselves around the kerchief.
‘I wrote to your family. The Haseks from Charlottenburg. They were prompt in their reply.’
She picked up a piece of paper and handed it to me. It was my father’s handwriting. It was short:
Dear —
Thank you for your letter regarding the heritage of a prisoner of yours. I am sorry to say that I have no daughter. My wife and I were not blessed with a child.
Yours truly,
Otto Hasek
I went to hand the letter back to her but she dismissed me with her hand. I looked at the brevity, and I saw the fear in his scrawl. He doesn’t recognise his daughter; he won’t help me, he worries about a reprisal. I wondered if he did this to Aunt Maya too, turned his back when his words could save his family, and my hands shook as I swayed. Then I read the last line. ‘My wife and I were not blessed with a child.’ He didn’t recognise Louisa too? How hard is it to speak of the daughter he lost? My sister. I crumpled the letter in my fist.
‘Coward,’ I said.
The Kommandant looked up.
It was over. I had wasted her time and worse.
She charged me with twenty-five lashes and the bunker. She said it in one breath, her shoulders softened and although pointing to the door, she dropped her head looking back at her desk. Next order of business.
I held the letter tight in my hand, as if clutching it might save me. A guard stood from where she had been sitting, unseen by me, and walked to me, swinging her baton.
My mind had to process so much so quickly the world slowed. I wanted to run.
I kept reading the words that sealed my fate.
No one has returned from the bunker and stayed the same. Most die soon after their release from the tiny cramped cell. Twenty-five lashes.
The guard smiled. Lipstick perfect, hair curled just so. I wanted to retreat but my feet froze. I was going to the bunker. Would I see daylight again? Or would I die there? Her shoes squeaked as they moved across the wooden floorboards. The leather rolling over wood.
The door opened behind me and I was prepared for a pair of hands to grab me.
The Kommandant looked up and I fell to my knees.
‘Please . . .’ I said.
‘What is this?’ She was looking behind me and standing up.
Two children around eight or nine years old, filthy dirty, ran into the room. They moved straight past me to the desk where the Kommandant stood and started talking about missing their grandmother.
‘Where is she? We need food, we are starving much and there is no food for us. Grandmother . . .’
‘What are they saying?’ the Kommandant asked the guard whose journey towards me had stopped.
I looked behind me, the door was open, the attention was on the orphans, maybe I could leave? I backed away.
The children noticed the quizzical look on the Kommandant’s face and moved further towards her. There was a glass of water on the table, half full. Beads of condensation rolled down it on to the desk. I hadn’t noticed it, but when I did, I couldn’t stop looking. One of the children darted for it. Splashing most in her haste, she gulped, then offered it to her sibling, who drank greedily, giving the glass back for the smallest drops at the bottom. The Kommandant had small dark circles on her uniform where she had been splashed by the water and the papers on the desk also succumbed to a light sprinkle.
‘What is this? How did you get in here?’
The children just looked at her.
‘Out. Now. Throw them in the bunker too.’
The children must have understood ‘bunker’ as they grabbed on to her.
‘I don’t understand them. Get these children off me.’ The guard plucked the children off the Kommandant.
‘Wait,’ the Kommandant said, wiping down her skirt. ‘You,’ she said, pointing to me.
There was silence as everyone turned and noticed that I was still present. I thought perhaps I should have left when I had the chance.
‘You can choose who goes to the bunker and you can choose who gets the lashes. Considering you are such a supporter of the regime, you can decide how the punishments are divided.’
A panic so strong it swished around my stomach. ‘Kommandant,’ I said, thinking, trying to find my voice. Their small faces, grubby and pink, eyes wide, watching the guard with the baton and me. ‘They are just asking after their grandmother. They lost her and are hungry,’ I said.
The guard picked up her baton and looked to me. The children cowered on the floor.
‘You understand them?’
‘Yes, they are speaking Dutch. They are looking for their grandmother.’ And to the children I said, ‘Hush, little ones.’
‘You speak other languages too?’<
br />
‘Yes, ma’am. Many.’
‘Why, a little linguist!’ She laughed with the guard and made a tiny motion with her head. The guard swung her baton at the back of the bigger child. He fell to the ground with a howl. The younger jumped on top to protect the fallen one. The Kommandant looked on as the guard tried to drag the younger away from the boy lying prone.
‘Stop,’ the Kommandant said. ‘Tell the children to go back to their block.’
I did and said that they would find their grandmother there. I lied because it appeased them and they were both looking at me. The boy sitting, the girl squatting beside him. I lied because it made them listen. I lied because doing so may not take me to the bunker. I lied to delay my punishment.
‘Shall I take them back to their block?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Yes.’
‘Come here,’ I said to the children, taking their small hands inside my own. We turned to leave.
‘Wait . . .’
I turned back, thinking the guard was coming for me.
‘There are women arriving from all over Europe. It would help to have someone tell them how we work here.’
‘Of course, anything to help,’ I said quickly.
‘Report back here tomorrow. We shall find some use for you. Six a.m.’
‘Thank you, ma’am.’
And what possessed me to do it I do not know. But I lost the grip on the little hand in mine, brought my hand out and up, palm down, I stamped my foot and shouted:
‘Heil Hitler.’
The children looked at me like I was a monster and I lost the other hand in mine. The guard smiled, a knowing, pitying smile. I turned and left. The children followed me, but as soon as the sun, white and hot, bore down on us, they ran.
I watched as their small frames wearing only rags ran off. My heart sank.
After the children were out of sight, I walked back towards our block. The sun was hot on my head and neck, but had never felt so good. A few minutes earlier I was looking at the bunker and what was sure to be my death.