The Rabbit Girls(38)
‘Come sir, please,’ she said, placing a hand on his back. ‘They will shoot us all.’ She picked up his hat and wedged it on his head.
‘He is fine,’ she said, looking at the officer with the pistol still pointing at us. ‘Please lower your aim, this man just needs help.’ At her words, I lifted the man to his feet. Placing both arms over my shoulders and all his weight on my back. Frieda picked up his suitcase.
‘Nein,’ he said so close to my ear that it startled me. He pulled free of my arms and slouched back to the ground.
‘Nein!’ he shouted, grabbing his case back from Frieda and holding it to his chest like a shield. The officer repositioned his pistol and aimed it at the man.
‘Die Juden,’ the officer said, shrugging his shoulders as if it couldn’t be helped. I pulled Frieda to me and we turned away as a shot rang out. We shrank from the noise and hurried ahead, getting lost in the crowd. The buzzing in my ears did nothing to dull the mocking bell of laughter from the officers.
We raced along, keeping pace. I held her into my body, our combined heat amplified as we ran from what we had seen. Eventually we slowed with the crowd, she placed her arm around my own and walking became less cumbersome.
Once our hands had cooled together Frieda spoke, reverting to French to allow our words a whisper of privacy.
‘What do we do now?’
‘What can we do?’ I said, shaking my head in defeat. She looked at me quizzically then dropped her hand from mine.
She watched the people mill around us and for the rest of our long walk I was just as disconnected from her as they were.
MIRIAM
She moves on to the next letter. They hold answers, but as Miriam reads she becomes lost in a sea of words, in a world so removed from her own that she easily forgets the questions.
Henryk,
The first day waking in Block 15 was blissful. The sun shone and we were greeted with ‘hellos’ and ‘sweet dreams?’ Rather than shoves and shouts. The roll call was long but the sky was blue and optimism filled Hani and me. Now that we have been allocated a block we can work and this lifts our spirits more. Women work, they get on, it is what we do and Hani and I have become part of the ‘sand team’.
The others in the block are not part of a work detail. They are known fondly as ‘the Rabbit Girls’. From what I can gather they are human guinea pigs, women experimented upon. There is an aura of protection around them from the women. Hani and I look quizzically at each other, not really understanding.
Bunny does not leave her bunk at all. Bunny, Wanda and Eugenia sew and knit for the war effort while Stella plays outside with the other orphans.
But, I am keen to move and feel blood pumping through my body. Sedentary and stiff over the past weeks, moving will be a blessing. It will be good to feel part of something.
HENRYK
We woke together under the bridge of Gleis 17, numb, into a cacophony of fear. Roused with one command. Men to the right, women to the left. There were no children here. We were a flowing tide about to hit a jagged cliff edge that would send us in two different directions.
No individual wanted to move, yet we were all forced forward. It wasn’t until the doors of the wagons slid open and I saw there were already people in there, I knew it was over. They must have been locked in the wagon overnight, shut away like cattle, but they didn’t run or try to leave their wooden cells. When daylight seeped in, their faces peered out at us, afraid, curious, bleak.
I should have held her tighter. I should not have let her go. I should have found a way to prevent what happened next. But to hold her would be to break her. The ribbon of terror unravelled in me. I knew it would slink into her, and she had to remain strong, for we were both going on.
Alone.
Shakespeare said that for those who love, time is eternal, and he is right. There is an endless sense that wherever she goes I go too. As long as I live she lives within me. I wish I’d said that to her.
But I didn’t.
What I said was, ‘Your hands are cold.’
Those were my parting words.
She smiled. Her hands slipped from mine as fingertips reached, finding only air. I stumbled and was forced to look away as I knocked into someone. I turned and when I turned back she was gone.
MIRIAM
‘Rabbits? Experiments?’ She looks at the next letters, on tiny scraps of paper as thin as tissue, they have rolled over themselves and she struggles to keep them flat. ‘What did they do to them?’
Henryk,
We work, we eat the tiniest food, enough to keep us alive, but only just, not enough to satisfy any hunger. Wanda has found us another bowl so Hani and I no longer share. This means we get to eat more now. I still mush Hani’s bread, it is getting harder to stop before I swallow the full amount.
The sand eats at my skin. It is senseless work to break the spirit. We move sand and it moves straight back. My hands hurt too much to write and I have run out of paper.
Dad grunts, shivers and then shakes. Tremors grow like a wave through the entire left side of his body, becoming more violent as Miriam stands. But just as she is about to get the midazolam, the tremors slow and he shivers again, teeth chattering.
‘Hold on, Dad,’ she says, adding blankets and smoothing his cool hands.
‘So cold,’ he mutters, and she lies on the bed with him.