The Rabbit Girls(30)

He brought a hand to her face, she flinched back.

‘Are you scared of me, Miriam?’ he asked, touching her cheek.

A silver thread wound its way into her bones. She shivered and shook her head.

‘I would never hurt you.’ He pulled her hair loose and wrapped it around his fingers. It was long and weaved across his pale skin. ‘I would never hurt you.’ He leant in and kissed her tenderly at the same time she heard the unmistakable slice of scissors. ‘You won’t ever leave me, will you? You can’t leave me when I need you so much.’

She stepped back, alarmed. The hair that had been woven through his fingertips was still there. Scissors glinted in his other hand.

‘I couldn’t understand why,’ she says to her father, getting up to turn him. ‘I still don’t.’ That was the first time he had ever . . . she can’t think of the right word as she mulls it over, straightening the sheets and smoothing Dad’s hair.

Axel didn’t hurt her, he didn’t hit her, but . . . he had frightened her, taking scissors to her hair was nothing in the scheme of things, but it had only got worse. Unable to face the interrogation about her day, every day, Miriam left her job, leaving her friends and her freedom behind.

She picks up the letter and continues, unsure she wants to know what was done.

The journey from prisoner to inmate took place in the time it took to cut my hair. It wasn’t the hair itself, it was the person cutting it.

Another prisoner, newly arrived, had protested, she lay comatose and bleeding on the ground while a further prisoner shaved her head too. My blonde hair falling into a sea of dark.

The woman cutting my hair was dead behind the eyes. I wanted to ask her how long she had been here, yet I could not bear to know the answer.

The gypsy, the one from the wagon that I refused to share my bread with. She and I have stuck together.

Her name is Hani.

Hani thought that her hair was being cut before she was hanged or killed, maybe. She didn’t understand and some terror or story had invaded her senses that they were preparing her for death. She would not sit, she thrashed and screamed and cried and bit and scratched. A big guard hit her across the face so hard Hani flew across the room, hitting her head on a chair. Everyone was silent. I got up to help her as she wobbled to her feet.

The guard slapped me across the back of my newly shaved head. The noise reverberated across the room, across my skin, and shook me a little.

You do not help.

You feel it. Each woman looks down, avoiding eye contact, but Hani was up and ready to fight.

The guard walked over, so calmly, raised her baton and struck Hani clean across the jaw, blood and teeth spewed from her mouth like vomit as she hit the ground hard. The guard looked at me. She was challenging me. Will you go to her? she seemed to be asking me.

I did not.

I watched as the prisoners, doing the guard’s work, stripped Hani of her clothes, each item removed efficiently, as another cut her long hair off, roughly.

It took the time for my body hair to be shaved and a ‘uniform’ allocated to me, before Hani came around. We were not allowed to put our uniforms on, just carry them. The room chattered with shivering, naked women.

‘Photos,’ she said, but it was hard to understand with her missing teeth. ‘Where are my photos?’ Bringing her hand to her mouth she found her face had changed shape.

‘Mama, family, God, my photos?’

She looked around her, pulling on the guard’s clothing, begging, searching. The guard called a dog to heel. The German shepherd, whom the guards fondly called ‘Daisy’, was a large, drooling dog with teeth bared, and had been called to bite and growl and menace us since we walked in. The guard looked ready to let the dog at Hani.

At that moment, another ‘political’ prisoner had got hold of a pair of scissors and threatened a guard, her arm around the guard’s neck, scissors pointing into his skin. It was a last attempt and she knew it, you could see it in her eyes. The guard towering over Hani turned to watch the scene unfolding.

Without thinking I said, ‘Up. Quick now.’

Hani looked so shocked to hear words in a language she could understand, she stood straight up.

She’s a head shorter than me, she looked up with oversized eyes as a puppy would at its master. A broken puppy.

As the guard, so confident in her own authority, had turned her back, she didn’t see Hani try to attack her, and she did not see me step in the way.

‘They are cutting our hair to stuff pillows and mattresses,’ I said. I spoke fast, in beautiful Dutch, enjoying the nourishment of a language across my tongue again. The words melted like butter. ‘They are not killing us. They are using us to help the war. You hurt her she will kill you.’

Hani was seething, but the language had captured her. She was listening.

‘The photos are gone,’ I said with a lump in my throat. ‘You love your mama?’ She bobbed her head, captivated by my mouth creating the words that she could understand.

‘Then she lives here.’ I touched her chest, suddenly aware how naked we were, avoiding her tiny breasts. I had never seen another woman naked, it is strange how insignificant this was.

‘Not in a photo,’ I said as I pulled us away from the crowd that had formed around the guard and the woman’s attempt to take control. The dog was set free and attacked. I did not look as the dog snarled, tore and bit. The screams echoed for days after.