The Rabbit Girls(12)

‘My name is Frieda,’ she said.

‘I know.’

‘Then don’t call me by my family’s name when you know mine.’

‘I . . .’

‘We all have a family,’ she continued, ‘but that doesn’t mean I want to be associated with mine, does it?’ And although her words were hostile her eyes shimmered.

‘Apparently not,’ I started. ‘So, Frieda?’

‘Yes.’

‘May I escort you for as long as our paths remain the same? I’m Henryk,’ I said.

‘Nice to meet you, Henryk.’ Her voice became lower, deeper and more sensual than anything I had ever heard as she said my name.

We walked in silence. I didn’t know what to say to her, nor what I would say when I returned home, but what was really playing on my mind was how I could get her to say my name again.

‘You went to a lot of risk getting these.’ I tapped on the bag.

‘Not really. I do some filing for Herr Wager and I overheard his conversation before class this morning, so I slipped into your office and took everything I could.’

‘Still, you could have been caught,’ I said.

‘One small act of defiance.’

‘Stealing my books was political then?’

‘No, it was judicious,’ she said.

I couldn’t reply as I followed the well-trodden path home. I turned on to my street as she continued walking.

‘Thank you, Frieda,’ I said.

‘See you again, Henryk.’ And she smiled before walking away.

I wanted to shout back, But when?

I walked up the path to the front door, knowing I had just experienced a life-changing moment. The thought fleeting, yet the apparent cliché didn’t make it any less true. I watched the main road, hoping to see her silhouette, hoping she would return and hoping to delay the inevitable truth. That I was now under suspicion, that Emilie and I were in danger and I would now have to make it real, by speaking it out loud.

Feeling my feet centred on the concrete step, the key felt heavier in the lock as it turned and the door hushed open. The smell of wood polish and orange blossom, Emilie, drifted through the door.

The road was empty as I looked back for the second time, and I knew that to taste heaven would lead me to hell. Heaven and hell? I shook my head, trying to shift the fog that had gripped me.

A fog by the name of Frieda.





5





MIRIAM


She comes to a line of poetry that he uttered last night.

‘The ceremony of innocence is drowned.’ It is in this collection, and all the other copies he has from the library. There is something more to this poem, but she doesn’t know what. Maybe this is the way to Frieda, to find out what happened to her father, maybe this will help him to move on.

‘Move on,’ they say. But what they mean is die. But maybe, just maybe, there is a way to get him back?

She shakes the notion away.

‘Hope doesn’t belong at a deathbed,’ Mum had said in her matter-of-fact way after difficult shifts, and she was right, of course. ‘All we can do is offer a peaceful, unburdened passing.’

He will die. But perhaps he’s holding on for something? She looks at what he has become and as she turns and offers him water, she thinks of what Hilda said. There were records. Maybe her father was searching for something within the library itself, and if not, maybe she can understand a bit more about his past. After all, it is one that is shared by millions, although few as lucky as her father to have survived.

She looks at her father’s sleeping form before collecting her coat and boots. She stares at the front door. ‘I won’t be long,’ she reassures herself. ‘Just a few bits, and the library. I can do this.’

He knew where she was, but she had left him. That was the hard part and now . . . now, she was going out.

She replaces the white feather between the frame and door, its plume thick and missing in parts, the quill bent at the end. She draws her finger enticingly over the surface, feeling the internal snap, made without creating a sharp edge.

The key turns in the lock. It crunches and clunks. She moves away, feeling the comfort and pull of home even as she walks through the empty hall, down the stairs. Lionel is at his desk.

‘Afternoon,’ he says, looking up. ‘Christmas shopping, Fr?ulein?’

Miriam nods.

‘How’s your father?’ he asks.

‘Stable,’ she says, pushing the main doors.

The rain of yesterday has eased. A carpet of autumn cushions the road as she walks through the landscape of her childhood.

Nothing has changed, structurally, yet the feelings it evokes have altered. No longer safe, every corner is a risk, an unknown. When she gets to the main square, the shops and cafés are loud: voices, music and lights. Kids playing on the street, carrying portable machines that boom at her, and cyclists splash water up near the curb.

They all blur into one thing. Not him.

Once on Neufertstraβe she is treading in unfamiliar territory, her eyes searching not for landmarks, but for recognition. She allows her feet to walk while she scans all who pass her from shoes to face. She is looking at everyone. Behind every hood, under every hat, she searches for his eyes, his face.

Him.