The Rabbit Girls(53)

Miriam spends the night in the chair by her father, the decisions made earlier in the day circling her. She can hear a tic-tic-tick in the hum of the air mattress that she hadn’t heard before. Tomorrow.

She holds her father’s hand and leans back into the chair. Her eyes close and she longs for the blanket of sleep to envelop her.

‘The ceremony,’ he whispers, and her eyes open to his voice. ‘The ceremony of innocence is drowned,’ he says.

‘Yes, Dad. Yes, it is.’

‘Miriam. Miriam. You. Are . . .’

‘I’m here. I love you, Dad,’ she says and waits, watching his every movement, but he snores and rests, and soon enough she does too.





21





HENRYK


In my first clear memory after Auschwitz, the sunlight reflected on the grass hurt my eyes. It was green. So green that it shone like gold. So sharp my eyes wept. I was bringing a damp handkerchief to my cheeks and praying that someone would move me indoors.

Then a pink hand touched my knee, a tiny, but heavy, little pink hand. It was followed by another and then a little pink person appeared, a face at knee height. Her dark hair and dark eyes set within a moon face gave her a doll-like appearance. She smiled at me, a toothless grin. My face cracked and something came back.

I smiled.

I realised I was sitting in a chair on the grass, gravel surrounding it. The sun was not hot, but a comfortable warmth that reached the bones without stinging the skin. It must have been late autumn. There were voices around me but they were like the birds chirping: slightly irritating, easily ignored.

I leant forward and looked past my knees and down. My shoes were on the wrong feet. I wasn’t wearing socks. Sitting on the grass, one leg underneath her and two hands at my shoelaces, fingers absorbed in the knot, was a little girl.

My little girl.

This was Miriam.





MIRIAM

She watches the flame burn ever closer to her fingers, the bright flame kisses her raw skin. She waits. They would be here any second. The heat licks at her fingers, intoxicating on her open skin, her fingers shake as she strikes another match, then they calm, become steady.

The smell is delicious.

Fire and its ever-powerful ability to destroy and blacken everything. Turn everything to dust. It would be a beautiful way to go. Watching the apartment go up in flames, caressing the old chair, journeying up the walls. Sucking the oxygen from the room. Once ignited, fire will steal everything in its path. She considers how it would be to fall into unconsciousness while watching the work of the flames as they dance in her parents’ home.

The strike of a match stops the tremors of her hands. A task that prevents her from harming herself.

She watches the flame eat through the stick, moving closer and closer to her fingers. A knock makes her jump, she drops the match to the floor and instinctively stomps it out.

They are here.

For him.

They arrive with a stretcher. It’s a reversal of how he came home from the hospital, a fortnight previously when she had agreed to bring him home. The hospital was no place for him. People should be able to die in their beds, surrounded by their things. The medical professionals had said. And now they are taking him away.

Instead of relief when the paramedics leave she feels only loss.

They take him away, safely pack him into the ambulance. She kisses his clammy head, holds his hand desperately, not wanting to let him go.

Miriam fully checks the apartment. It is empty, the kind of empty that fills your ears like water.

Submersion empty.

The white walls, the large furniture, the space. With nothing to do. Alone and pointless. She waits, for what she is unsure, she looks out into the never-changing sea of wet and dark.

By late afternoon, having heard nothing about her father’s transfer, Miriam continues reading the letters, translated large and bold by Eva. There is nothing else for her to do. She picks up the next one. And as she unfolds it, she knows that nothing will end well.

My first day in the new job, translating letters in ‘Canada’, a large storage unit with all prisoner belongings. Some belongings stay, others go back to those ‘in need’ but most are labelled and put away. My job is to read letters in other languages and translate in a few lines the information I can.

After I had finished and the sun pinched at my eyes, I was greeted by Stella.

‘Stella? What’s wrong?’ I asked, looking at her creased face.

‘Your Hani, gone.’ She was breathing fast, ‘Pretty lady, please you help her?’

I bent and kissed Stella on the top of her head. Inhaled the innocence lost, and gathered myself.

‘Let’s go,’ I said with an assurance I did not feel.

But a week has passed and still no Hani.

I am sleeping alone.

The Kommandant sets me to work interpreting letters; I’m looking for addresses and locations of those being sought by the SS.

Canada is full of clothes, jewellery, money. There are medical supplies here as well. Pills with no labels, everything has its place. Yet possessions do not matter in Ravensbrück.

My other job, aside from reading the letters they find, is to write to families telling of the death of their loved ones. The forms are pre-printed, I write the names and addresses on them. I get to sit and read and write. I thank Aunt Maya every single day for teaching me because French, Dutch and Polish have saved my life.