The Rabbit Girls(35)

My boots were stolen today; with no boots, I have no ID, with no ID I am lost.

She hurriedly finds the next letter and reads with as much speed as she can. She collects the magnifying glass from her mother’s sewing kit to try to ease the process. Axel fades, a paintbrush swirled out in water, and she focuses.

She has found Frieda. Now all she needs to do is find what happened to her.

Dear Henryk,

The holding tent knows no peace. Hani and I lean head to head, her shoulder on mine, both leaning back into the fabric that grows warm from our touch.

Hani asked me why I lied in the wagon when I said I was Emilie and it made me think . . .

Isn’t love simultaneously as violent, turbulent and wild as a storm and yet as fresh and calm as the sky in its wake? The kind of love we have makes us feel we can climb mountains or wrestle snakes, even though we cannot. Our love made us think we could take on the Nazis. I think our love has made fools of us. I am here . . .

I looked around at the women, the noise and smell, the flap of the tent hitting an old woman just inside of it.

Flap, whack, flap.

. . . And you are not.

Hani asked about you and I flattered in my portrait. I made you taller, broader, younger, because I could. I told of our love-at-first-sight romance, although it is not ours, it is your story, your history, how you met Emilie.

Miriam swallows hard. The idea that this woman used Mum’s story, her parents’ love, and made it her own fills her with a deep revulsion.

There is nothing else she can do but read on.

Hani is one of nine children; she speaks Roma and her Dutch is basic.

She said that no one was particularly pleased when she was born and since then she has, as she says, ‘Turned up, stayed put, stood up, shouted out and told the world that I am here.’

The Nazis were not particularly pleased about this either.

Her parents tried to marry her to a cousin when she was fourteen and he no older, but she left the family, went to school (hence the Dutch) and got a job. She had money and a room of her own, but never having slept in a bed alone, she found the cotton sheets cool and crisp on her skin. Coming from a family where there was always someone to share a mattress, Hani found living alone hard.

She went home one day and her whole family had gone. Aunts, uncles, grandparents – everyone. She floated around with nowhere to go, got arrested and now she is here.

She says, ‘I rather share my bed and know I am living than be alone and thinking I am always alone. I may as well be dead.’

And I miss you. I miss you and the times we promised each other we would have. I have never woken up to you, nor have we spent the night together. Always snatched moments. I want the tiny things, the things that matter, the things that everyone takes for granted. I want those things, I want to not be alone.

And now it is too late.

I mushed the last of the day’s bread in my mouth and gave Hani the full amount, rather than swallowing a little myself.





HENRYK

A heaviness folded over me as I lay on Frieda’s bed in tangled sheets, she was draped over me like a blanket. Her soft breath tickled my neck, as I made waves with my fingertips over the back of her arm, illuminated in the half-light. She was becoming lean from sharing her rations with me.

‘If there could only be one, I choose you,’ I said.

She opened her eyes, but when I turned to face her, her expression was dark.

‘You can’t choose me. I am not a choice,’ she whispered.

‘You are for me,’ I said, and kissed her on the forehead, clumsily, as she pulled her head away, her body still resting on mine.

‘No. You have Emilie.’

‘And I have you.’

‘Yes, but . . .’

‘There is no “but”, Frieda. I love you.’

‘You can’t choose me, Henryk.’ Her voice went quiet. ‘I am not enough.’

I was about to counter that, but she placed a finger to my lips and then closed them with her own. The kiss was a practical solution to stop me responding, yet her lips shivered as they pressed into mine.

I was covered, yet exposed, as the heaviness of her limbs rested upon me. I looked to the ceiling, pondering my fate, and as tears fell, great sobs joined them, wracking my entire chest open like a cleaver.

Frieda sat up and drew me into her arms, she held me cradled into her naked body.

‘Henryk, what’s going on?’

I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t find any words to explain that what was happening was breaking me. I had placed a sentence on us all. The bombs were getting closer and the weight of my guilt was like a mortar poised to fall over my head.

Yet I couldn’t keep apart from Frieda, and by being there I was putting her at risk too. I didn’t know who I was anymore and the fracture inside me tore open as Frieda kissed my tears and brought her head to mine. I sobbed openly as she held me.

She kissed my lips until our breath was shared and when she straddled her legs around me and drew me into her, I deepened our kiss, not wanting to be a singular being anymore.

Moving on top of me, she didn’t let me go. She lifted my chin so I could see her. Her eyes so deep, I tried to turn away, not able to look into her beautiful face. To know I was causing such hurt, that soon it would all be over and it would be my fault.

They were coming for me, and that meant her and Emilie too.