The Rabbit Girls(14)

The woman continues: ‘It’s hidden away, forgotten. All of it. As Stalin said, one death is a tragedy, one hundred thousand a statistic and six million . . .’

‘Six million,’ Miriam says to fill the silence.

‘Indeed. Anyway, I’m sorry, I will leave you to it.’ And before Miriam can say anything else the woman walks away.

Miriam looks at the shelves and shelves and shelves, wondering how many books were in this library. She drags her fingers across the spines; how many homes must these books have had before landing here?

She walks down aisle after aisle, past students studying at tables that run along the width of the room in rows. As she passes, many look up. Their glasses bigger than their faces, they resemble baby owls blinking in the daylight. Others remain bent double, their focus on their notebooks. Their studious faces remind her of her father at his desk.

She thinks back to the images in the book and a curl of anger balls in her stomach. He must have been rounded up, put in a cattle wagon and then . . . As she looks around she thinks if every book was a person . . . But the sheer volume is incomprehensible.

The library is too big, and now, all she wants is to go home.





6





MIRIAM


The stale smell of wet coats and damp people rises in a condensing fog. She wipes the window with her sleeve and contemplates removing her coat, but her entire body is fatigued. She allows herself to be rocked as the bus moves along. Her thoughts lost on the faces and the stripes and something intangibly hollow about the way they looked into the camera, almost begging, but angry, looking for . . . something: recognition, or maybe just a record.

Dad has a number. He was there too. But he survived. And in her mind, she sees him twisted up and on the floor. Calling out for her. Shouting her name. Needing her. Sweat trickles down her back, and she shifts impatiently in her seat as the bus struggles its way through traffic.

She starts chewing the skin along her fingernail and picking at it. The shopping bag twisted and twisted in her hands. As the bus chatters, Miriam counts the stops for home. She has five stops to go, when the same woman from the library gets on. Miriam shifts to make space for her and smiles. ‘Hello again.’

‘Hi,’ the woman says and Miriam returns to looking out the window as the traffic stalls around the main junction to Brandenburg Gate. There are so many people milling around she can hardly see the Wall. She watches people with their cameras taking pictures. Once a concrete wall, now a tourist attraction, and the thought makes her sad. History made into show.

Miriam puts all her concentration on keeping her hands still in her lap. On breathing in and out. And not thinking about her father.

Four stops until home.

‘Did you find what you were looking for?’ the woman asks.

Miriam shakes her head. ‘I don’t really know where to begin.’

‘Something in particular?’

‘Sort of, but not really. I just . . .’ Miriam shifts her weight closer to the window under the scrutiny of the woman next to her.

‘I’m Eva.’

‘Miriam,’ she says, shaking Eva’s warm hand.

The bus jerks to a halt and the driver swears loudly. A giggle runs through the bus and both Miriam and Eva smile.

‘To be honest, I’m not sure what I am looking for. I feel really stupid that I don’t know what they went through.’

‘The victims of the Holocaust?’

A feeling drifts over Miriam like a haze that won’t lift. Victims? How could her father have been a victim? Tears fall unbidden and, as Eva sits and gives her the space to cry, a calm comes over Miriam, her hands relax and she says, ‘I found a number on my father. I think he was in a concentration camp. I suppose I wanted to find out more, but . . .’

There’s a very long pause in which the bus stops and people exit and enter in a jumble of bodies.

Three stops.

When the bus rattles on again, Eva says gently, ‘Only Auschwitz tattooed.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Your father would have been in Auschwitz at some point if he has a tattoo,’ she says.

‘Oh God.’

‘No, no God.’

The bus is full, yet more people mill on to it, despite the lack of seats. They stand and sway as the bus heaves along.

Two stops.

‘Auschwitz,’ Miriam repeats.

‘The books in the library will have some details about Auschwitz for you, if that’s really what you want to know.’

Miriam looks up.

‘I don’t know. It’s just so horrific,’ Miriam says, and feels Eva’s hand on her shoulder. Tears fall from worn-out eyes. They keep falling and Miriam cannot find a way to make them stop. Eva rustles in her coat pocket and hands Miriam her handkerchief. It is grey with lace along the outside, folded neatly into a square with a blue flower on its front.

Auschwitz.

‘Eva?’ she asks as the bus slows. ‘How could my father have been in Auschwitz? I mean . . . he isn’t Jewish, nor was our family.’

‘Not all prisoners were Jewish.’ She perches on the end of the chair, her feet in the aisle. ‘In fact, the camps were homes for asocials, criminals, political activists, gypsies. You name it. If they didn’t agree to Hitler’s regime, they went in a camp.’