The Rabbit Girls(11)

She reads and the words dance around the alcoves of the room like a child’s hanging mobile. Knights with spears, dragons and the lady she imagines with a tall hat and veil.

After the first stanza, she looks up.

‘I remember this one, do you?’ She reads on, gently touches the golden sheets of paper as the book bends in her hands. A muscle memory for her fingers of when she had held the pages before.

‘Get yourself to school, Miriam,’ Mum had said, leaving the apartment. ‘I’m on a twilight, I’ll see you in the morning.’

‘What about Dad?’ Miriam picked up toast from the table.

‘He’ll sort himself out.’

She went to his room. Curtains closed and air clotted with sleep. He was in bed.

‘Morning,’ she said, and bounced on the bed next to him, kissing his head. He smelled over-warm, his soft skin unwashed.

It was an episode.

She kicked off her shoes and shimmied up the bed to sit on the pillows and put her feet under the duvet.

‘What shall it be today?’ she asked, but saw the Yeats on the table. ‘Oh, this is my favourite.’ Picking up the book she said, ‘If you are sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin . . .’

And she had, she read to him, always during his episodes, she would skip school and spend the day by his side, making him better. She had never thought why he had episodes of inertia, he just did. She thinks back to the childhood version of herself. She hadn’t questioned it. It was just as it was. She read poetry to him. And it worked.

Her mother never knew.

‘They say such different things at school,’ she finishes the poem.

Tears wet her face and the words on the page swim around. If this helps, then this is what she will do: read to him to help him come back.

She has never thought to ask him about his life before her. Hitler killed Jews and her parents weren’t Jewish. She has never thought about it any more than that. History, as horrific as it was, has never been this close to home.





HENRYK

Frieda and I stood not far enough away from the university building on what was my last day. Her hair was floating towards me, over her neck and shoulders, on the air of early spring. It wasn’t cold yet she was in a heavy cotton dress, beads of perspiration threaded through her hairline.

‘Haven’t you done enough?’ I said.

‘Actually, I haven’t done nearly enough.’ She squeezed my arm. The same place Herr Wager had gripped, she warmed. ‘Here.’ From the satchel heavy on her shoulder she drew out book after book, launching them into my arms. All the covers and first few pages had been ripped off long before they had come into my possession. But I knew them as well as my own hands.

‘How did you get these?’

‘I stole them back for you; you’d have been arrested if they’d found them.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Returning them. I wasn’t sure which ones, so I got as many as I could and all the papers from the locked drawer in your desk.’ She paused. And like a parent who finds their lost child, I felt both infuriated and yet relieved beyond measure.

‘Here, you may as well have the bag.’ She took the bag off her shoulder and passed it to me, but with my briefcase and the books stacked in my hands I couldn’t take it. She laughed, a deep rumble, which I mirrored in an instant smile. As she smiled back at me, her face changed. Her eyes, unframed against pale lashes, were large and emerald.

‘Let me help,’ she said, and placed the books back into the satchel before handing it to me. I was surprised by its weight. ‘I couldn’t get everything,’ she continued. ‘I only found out this morning and it took me ages to get into your office.’

‘I thought the burning of books was over. I should never have kept them in my office,’ I said, placing the satchel over my shoulder.

‘If they burn books, it’s not long before they burn people too,’ she said with an emptiness in her voice. She looked to the ground and I followed her gaze the full length of her dress to her brown shoes. And before I knew what I was doing I placed my fingertips to her chin, palm up, and raised her head to draw her eyes back to mine.

I jolted in shock at the charge of the connection beneath my fingertips. And like forked lightning, flames of electric heat stunned me and I took a step back, dropped my hand but not my gaze.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘Why are you helping me?’

She beamed. ‘I also have a leaving gift.’ She blushed scarlet, which only made me want to touch her skin again, to radiate in its heat. She pulled out a desperately weathered book from her backpack. Michael Robartes and the Dancer. ‘Do you have it already?’ I looked around, aware of my surroundings now. Uncertainty made me pause, but she placed the book into my hands.

‘Yeats? No, I haven’t,’ I said, admiring the slim volume. ‘Thank you.’

‘See you again, professor,’ she said, looking relieved, and walked away.

But she was walking my way. I held back, aware of the contraband I was carrying. Now they were in my possession again I wanted to get them home, not past the university, nor further into the belly of the beast. When she obviously wasn’t going back into the building I had no choice but to follow her path.

‘Excuse me, Fr?ulein Hasek,’ I called over-formally. ‘We are heading the same way and it looks like I am following you. Perhaps you could slow a bit and I can escort you instead?’