The Rabbit Girls(24)

‘There is something else here,’ she says to her father. She returns to her mother’s sewing box and takes the scissors again. This time she grasps the handle and takes them back to her father.

With shaking hands she leans over the dress, cuts each stitch and follows the seam to open the pocket up to a flap. She uncovers three more tiny, folded, matchbox-shaped papers.

‘There is more,’ she says and holds down the flap of the pocket with the scissors. She carefully unfolds the paper.

It is paperback-book sized with a corner missing, tiny script written in pencil over both sides of the thin paper.

It appears to be written completely in French.

Unfolding another, the writing is on the thinnest paper she has ever seen.

‘Did you write these?’ she asks, but he shows no sign that he can hear her. Miriam cannot skim-read it, the writing is too small, but the flicker of hope turns into a flame; they are in French.

Mum. Who neither read nor spoke anything other than German. These are not to her and, she thinks with relief, they cannot be from her.

But who?

She turns on the main light and moves closer to the lamp beside his bed, switching on its glare. The third one is as tiny as a wallet, both sides are written on. She studies it closely, it is written in German.

Henryk,

I am alive. At least I think I am alive. This is the worst kind of hell if I am dead. I saw you – I know it was you – as I was pushed on to the wagon at the platform. There were over twenty of us in that little space, six dead bodies before we even pulled away. But I saw the prominence of your jaw as your head turned, the tension betraying your fear.

I remember resting my head on your shoulder, my nose touching the sensitive skin just under your earlobe. The smell of you here – this small spot – hidden away from the rest of the world, was mine and mine alone. Its memory fragranced by your cigarette and the music of the words as you read to me. You looked left and right – I’d like to think looking for me, but maybe you were too scared to look for me.

Icicles have formed over my heart and cannot be melted until I see you again. I feel you are alive, for I know you are strong and can withstand so much.

I can taste salt on the air, I imagine the waves, the sand. There is no space here. There are people literally under my feet, or by my side or on top of me if I cannot keep my footing. I breathe recycled air.

I can barely describe what I see. My only thought is that you are somewhere better, that you are not suffering. To think of you in these conditions is worse.

I will try to find out what has happened. No one seems to understand or hear me. Everyone is milling around with no purpose in their own worlds of pain and loss, trying to adjust to the unfamiliar rules.

Once I know where I am I will try to send word for you.

I am sorry.

Miriam places the letter down. She had just been to the platform, Dad had been there too.

‘The letter is to you,’ she says.

He says nothing.

‘Maybe this one is from Mum?’

But the handwriting looks the same as the first letter. She puts the two together and picks up the next letter, but she cannot make out any of it. French, again. The same handwriting.

‘Or Frieda?’ she says, trying the name cautiously. He makes no response.

She knows she shouldn’t hope, but maybe, just maybe, he’ll come back, if she can find something for him to live for.

Her head is full of questions but her hands go to the scissors. She lifts the dress and the bag with the sheet inside and takes it to the dining room table. Removing the placemats, candlesticks and table runner, Miriam places the sheet down first and the dress on top. Turning on all the lights she touches the collar and the cuffs.

Excitement flows through her, like a small child.

She traces her fingers along the seams and tries not to notice her battered and scabbed hands. She opens the buttons and moves a hand inside the dress to flatten it between palms, but the seams of the dress stand apart, raised as though something were in them.

‘There’s more.’

She looks at the dress exposed, laid out; a cadaver waiting to be cut open. She slices through the stitches along the seam of the collar and finds another piece of paper, she sets it to the side, and another and another. The entire collar is stuffed with paper.

Cutting into every seam, she places each sheet she finds to one side and continues snipping at the threads to reveal letter after letter. As the next hour passes she finds many hidden in the main bodice, the waistband, the sleeves and every hem.

She works to uncover the past.

Unpicks old words. Old wounds.

The stale smell of the dress permeates, and makes her head feel as thick as the cotton.

She looks at the stash of loose paper discovered. There are so many. Some are large, others just a scrap the size of her thumb. Some have printing on them, either letters or typed print, others written in the margins of a page ripped from a book. One written on the back of sheet music. Most are folded small. Some are rolled up to the size of a finger.

When she is sure that she has found everything hidden in the dress, she starts to flatten and count them. She picks up each one in turn. Many are written in French, so many that she makes two piles of French letters. Finding one in German that she can read, she lifts it up into the light.

Henryk,

I write to you, but I write also for myself. For I know that if I do not I will be lost amongst the crowd.