The Rabbit Girls(49)

‘I understand,’ she says. ‘If you don’t have hardships until later, it is more difficult to break the ties.’

‘Exactly. The honeymoon ends, sometimes it never starts.’

‘This is so sad.’

‘It’s life.’

The silence vibrates around them.

‘I need to know what happened to Frieda,’ Miriam says, picking up the next letter. ‘He deserves to know.’

She reads as Eva sews. The next, written over the top and back of another letter which consists of two scrawled lines in different handwriting, in German, is dated the 31st of May 1944. The paper is yellowed and very creased.

I stood in front of the Kommandant, and my hands, black with dirt, wrapped themselves around the kerchief.

‘I wrote to your family. The Haseks from Charlottenburg. They were prompt in their reply.’

She picked up a piece of paper and handed it to me. It was my father’s handwriting. It was short:

Dear —

Thank you for your letter regarding the heritage of a prisoner of yours. I am sorry to say that I have no daughter. My wife and I were not blessed with a child.

Yours truly,

Otto Hasek

I went to hand the letter back to her but she dismissed me with her hand. I looked at the brevity, and I saw the fear in his scrawl. He doesn’t recognise his daughter; he won’t help me, he worries about a reprisal. I wondered if he did this to Aunt Maya too, turned his back when his words could save his family, and my hands shook as I swayed. Then I read the last line. ‘My wife and I were not blessed with a child.’ He didn’t recognise Louisa too? How hard is it to speak of the daughter he lost? My sister. I crumpled the letter in my fist.

‘Coward,’ I said.

The Kommandant looked up.

It was over. I had wasted her time and worse.

She charged me with twenty-five lashes and the bunker. She said it in one breath, her shoulders softened and although pointing to the door, she dropped her head looking back at her desk. Next order of business.

I held the letter tight in my hand, as if clutching it might save me. A guard stood from where she had been sitting, unseen by me, and walked to me, swinging her baton.

My mind had to process so much so quickly the world slowed. I wanted to run.

I kept reading the words that sealed my fate.

No one has returned from the bunker and stayed the same. Most die soon after their release from the tiny cramped cell. Twenty-five lashes.

The guard smiled. Lipstick perfect, hair curled just so. I wanted to retreat but my feet froze. I was going to the bunker. Would I see daylight again? Or would I die there? Her shoes squeaked as they moved across the wooden floorboards. The leather rolling over wood.

The door opened behind me and I was prepared for a pair of hands to grab me.

The Kommandant looked up and I fell to my knees.

‘Please . . .’ I said.

‘What is this?’ She was looking behind me and standing up.

Two children around eight or nine years old, filthy dirty, ran into the room. They moved straight past me to the desk where the Kommandant stood and started talking about missing their grandmother.

‘Where is she? We need food, we are starving much and there is no food for us. Grandmother . . .’

‘What are they saying?’ the Kommandant asked the guard whose journey towards me had stopped.

I looked behind me, the door was open, the attention was on the orphans, maybe I could leave? I backed away.

The children noticed the quizzical look on the Kommandant’s face and moved further towards her. There was a glass of water on the table, half full. Beads of condensation rolled down it on to the desk. I hadn’t noticed it, but when I did, I couldn’t stop looking. One of the children darted for it. Splashing most in her haste, she gulped, then offered it to her sibling, who drank greedily, giving the glass back for the smallest drops at the bottom. The Kommandant had small dark circles on her uniform where she had been splashed by the water and the papers on the desk also succumbed to a light sprinkle.

‘What is this? How did you get in here?’

The children just looked at her.

‘Out. Now. Throw them in the bunker too.’

The children must have understood ‘bunker’ as they grabbed on to her.

‘I don’t understand them. Get these children off me.’ The guard plucked the children off the Kommandant.

‘Wait,’ the Kommandant said, wiping down her skirt. ‘You,’ she said, pointing to me.

There was silence as everyone turned and noticed that I was still present. I thought perhaps I should have left when I had the chance.

‘You can choose who goes to the bunker and you can choose who gets the lashes. Considering you are such a supporter of the regime, you can decide how the punishments are divided.’

A panic so strong it swished around my stomach. ‘Kommandant,’ I said, thinking, trying to find my voice. Their small faces, grubby and pink, eyes wide, watching the guard with the baton and me. ‘They are just asking after their grandmother. They lost her and are hungry,’ I said.

The guard picked up her baton and looked to me. The children cowered on the floor.

‘You understand them?’

‘Yes, they are speaking Dutch. They are looking for their grandmother.’ And to the children I said, ‘Hush, little ones.’