The Rabbit Girls(31)

Avoid the dogs.

I grabbed Hani’s hand and pulled her body in front of mine. Blue welts grew red across her back from where she had hit the chair, they shone from the swelling, a fountain of blood poured from her face.

We passed through the showers with no issue. Hani was allocated two shoes, both for the left foot. I managed to keep my boots.

Once this ordeal was over we covered our heads and bodies again. The clothes are full of lice, the fabric scratchy, ill-fitting; it looks like we are all wearing our mothers’ clothes.

I found Hani’s hand in my own. It stayed like that as we were shoved and pushed into rows of five, marched and counted and marched some more and then thrown into a ‘holding’ tent. The number of women in this small space must be in the high hundreds. There was no space for us yet we were pushed in by the volume of others behind.

I do not know if she held me or I held her, what I do know is that neither one of us let go.

We have been starved, attacked, shaved, beaten, humiliated and only when we are treated worse than livestock do we realise that we have survived thus far. We realise we have names, and it seems that we have each other too.

The crumbs of bread from the cattle wagon were long gone, but they weighed heavy on my mind as I rested head to head with Hani, both leaning back against the side of the tent, a small space where we could sit. We were so tired we rested together and as I did so, letting my head lie heavy, I prayed for a miracle.

Shocked and untethered. The letter, raw, unfiltered and devastating. Miriam waits to comprehend the horrors she has just read, on paper that has survived all this time.

And time, for Miriam, rushes ahead so that her vision is blurry, and slows so that the flicker of an outside light feels like one long, slow blink.

Praying for a miracle.

A tick of time.

Axel kneeling on a towel next to her while she was in the bath, smoothing bubbles over her skin.

A beat of absence.

Axel wringing the sponge in his hands. The bubbles frozen. The water cooled.

A drum of loneliness.

A cold so deep her bones ache.

As she dried, like a dog, naked on a blanket. On the floor.





13





HENRYK


It was almost two years to the day, from our first kiss, when everything changed. I was leaving to meet Frieda when Emilie returned from work early.

‘I can’t do this anymore,’ she said, resting her back against the closed door. ‘They found me today, they asked about you, where you were, when I would be expecting you to return.’ She breathed heavily and her legs gave way. She tucked her feet in, her arms wrapped around her knees, and rested her head back into the door. ‘I can’t do this anymore. I can’t pretend that you and Frieda . . . that it’s . . . that I—’ She stopped suddenly and I sat next to her and pulled her into my arms.

‘Who found you?’ I asked.

‘That’s what you heard? From what I just said?’ She took an exhausted breath then continued, ‘It was them. The SS. They came to my work. They came to find you,’ she said.

‘What did you tell them?’

‘Nothing. I said I hadn’t seen you since you left the university. They asked where I thought you would be, who you were staying with, friends you may have.’ She paused.

‘Did you mention Frieda?’ I panicked.

She bristled and pushed me so I was thrown off balance and toppled over on to my elbow.

‘No. No. I did not mention the fact that my husband has a lover.’ She pulled knotted hands through her cropped hair. ‘That he chooses to gallivant off with her rather than stay here. With me. That you are more concerned about her safety than you are for your own wife! Henryk, it is you who is putting everyone in danger. Leave the girl alone.’ Then she asked, more gently, as though it was an enormous effort, ‘What are you doing?’

I said nothing, resting my head on the door as she had a moment before.

‘Please, you have to end this thing with Frieda. She’s young, she’ll forgive you. But we must leave. Now. I don’t think we will get another chance. My friend Margot, she can help us. Please, Henryk, see sense. If they can find me at work, they can find us here. Then what?’

‘They aren’t after you,’ I said slowly, watching her pacing her thoughts out, step by step. ‘They are after me.’

‘And in being after you, they will also want me. Can’t you see, I am your wife! I am harbouring a wanted man.’ She took a shaky breath. ‘Take back your political ideals, say you have converted – join the Nazi party. For heaven’s sake, what does it matter?’

‘What? Never. You know I would never. Ever.’

‘Then leave with me, now,’ she said, bending down. ‘We can be a family again. We can forget all this happened. We can have a baby. Come away with me now. Let’s start over.’

I saw the desperation. Her tears flowed down the beautiful channels of her face, but behind her tears, she knew. No matter how much I should leave, how my head was saying that if I stayed, death was the only option, Emilie knew I wouldn’t leave Frieda.

‘I can’t,’ I said.

And Emilie, my beautiful wife, let out a frightful yell, a howl. A screech that would befit a cat. ‘Then leave me,’ she bawled. ‘Leave me alone. Make your choice, Henryk . . . because this’ – and she motioned around with her hands – ‘is all I have. I’m not her and I never will be. So go—’ She launched her arms at the stack of books next to the chair, and they toppled to the ground. Grabbing one, she was about to throw it at me, but hurled it to the floor instead. Then stormed into the kitchen.