The Rabbit Girls(19)

Sweating and with a thirst that smothered the rising bile of hate in the pit of my stomach, Frieda and I found a small place to sit, but we could not rest. Moved and jostled and moved once more.

It wasn’t until late on the night we were arrested, after being marched through streets for hours, that we leant our backs against the red brick of the station bridge. Looking out at the wooden cattle wagons lined up on the tracks, I felt able to look at Frieda. Her eyes were wet with tears, but none fell.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

We were in the eye of the storm. Waiting. Gleis 17 held hundreds of people, all like us. Keeping out the night chill the best we could. The hushed tones of uncertainty were punctured with leather boots on cobbles, shouts and shots. Hundreds of people together, some with luggage, most, like us, with nothing but each other. She was shrouded in my coat, its navy collar turned up around her ears and her hair falling loose over it. I felt her heart beat as though connected by an invisible thread, each pulse charging my own. A conversation of hearts.

With Frieda, my words never allowed me to articulate freely in the manner I was accustomed to. I hid behind the words of great poets, the best artists time had offered us. I could not rely upon my own words, for they cracked my lips and coarsened my tongue. I should have spoken words that were my own to her, but often, I did not need to. I would mumble and falter to tell her how raw and new my feelings were. She would challenge me with her eyes, drawing my gaze away from my own fingers, busy knotting themselves up, and see me. Right into the depths of me.

For a professor of literature, a man proficient in three languages, I found myself devoid of any skill. As frustrating as using water for ink, I jabbered senselessly. She, however, led me to understand the language of silence and the poetry of eye contact.

I closed my eyes to the world around me and just listened to the beat of her heart, like rain pounding on the open road.

She smelled of a warmth that was home.

I couldn’t sleep waiting at the platform, so I laid my fingers on the rough collar of my old coat. I held Frieda close to me as I cocooned myself in memories, because to live in the past meant I could survive the night.





MIRIAM

The phone rings.

She stares at the paper lying on top of the dress, the uniform, at the end of his bed until the haze of morning casts it in shadow.

‘Both of you?’ A tear falls, but she doesn’t wipe it away. She allows it to drop and become swallowed up in the fabric of her skirt.

The phone rings again, but this time it doesn’t stop. Miriam leaves the dress, the letter and her father to answer it.

‘Hello?’

There is only static on the other end.

‘Hello?’

Nothing. Her heart hammers in her ears. ‘Who is this?’

Goose pimples rise at the nape of her neck. As the silence grows louder, it seems to shake the walls around her and she drags the phone from her ear and rests it on the hook. Her hand clutches the plastic.

She runs a bath in the early morning light and shivers as the steam rises. She is entombed. Frozen. Deep in the bath water her goose pimples are scalded away. Like single drops of water, her thoughts accumulate until they flood.

Dressed in a lined cotton skirt and a pullover, she returns to the room. The phone rings again. She picks it up slowly and places it to her ear.

‘Hello?’

‘Miriam,’ a voice answers. A familiar voice. His voice.

Axel.

Miriam quickly replaces the receiver. She stares at it, at the perspiration made by her palm. She unplugs the cord and stands over the table: the lamp with its oversized shade, the box of tissues, a pad of paper and now the phone.

Silenced.

She sits in the old chair, reupholstered more than once, now covered with a corduroy fabric. Her small, thin fingers run across it and then back, changing the texture of the surface from a deep maroon to a wine red.

Back and forward.

Over the years, she has laughed and cried in this chair, talking to her father’s back, or to his face.

Back and forward her fingers move, faster and faster, over the ridges of fabric, digging her nails to create a satisfying crump. Her thoughts circle to the letter and the person who wrote it as her hands transform into paws to claw at the chair.

Her wedding ring is the only blemish, its thick, gold band sucks her finger into it and then spits it back out again, making her knuckle look deformed. She stops pulling at the chair and starts pulling at the ring instead. Having never taken it off, not once, just the idea makes her look around the room.

Dad looks peaceful, fast asleep, on his side.

She nudges the ring up and over the knuckle. It pings off and lands heavily in her lap. Her finger now pale and open to the elements seems to shine a brilliant white. She smooths the new skin across her lips.

Unsure what to do with the ring in her lap, she picks it up between thumb and forefinger and draws up her feet, her arms around her knees, the ring perched on top. She stares at the empty circle, its unending band.

The intercom buzzes and as she jumps up, the ring skitters along the floor. She collects it from the corner of the room, where it glints at her, and places it in the silk lining of her navy skirt pocket for now.

‘Frieda,’ her father mutters; his feet twitch like a dog in sleep.

The intercom is followed by a knock at the door and a voice calls through the letter box. She cannot hear it over the noise of the bed and she doesn’t care.