The Rabbit Girls(61)

A woman called Jacosta, also on the Lidice transports, was lying on the other side of Wanda and knew of Neta-Lee too. She was not dumb or mute. She married young, childhood sweethearts, they had four children.

When the Nazis came to town, they stood the husband and all the children against the wall of the house, the babies calling for their mummy, small hands reaching out.

She begged the guards to shoot her, to take her instead. To spare the children. The guard laughed. Five shots. The family lost.

When the rabbit girls in Wanda’s group had been bathed, but before their legs were shaved, Wanda tried to talk to Neta-Lee, using her name. But she said nothing.

As Wanda was older she never thought she would make the selection process as all the other girls were young, with thin, long legs. But she was selected and enjoyed the bath full of warm water. They were so amazed, Wanda recalls, they splashed and laughed and for the first time in so very long, felt like women.

Afterwards, in clean beds, clean shirts, a nurse came by with a razor to shave their legs.

The next morning, they were given a tablet and the world became blurry. Wanda remembers the walls moving as if they were liquid. She was taken to a sterile room, strapped to the bed. Unable to move at all.

When she woke, her legs were in a cast up to the groin. She could hear others screaming out, but she felt fine, tired but fine. But when she awoke that evening, her legs felt like they were on fire and she couldn’t move. A woman in the opposite bed had hiccups, continual hiccups, when the hiccups stopped they took her body away.

They all had different number and letter combinations on their casts – no one knew what this meant. It is the thirst she remembers the most. By night her lips were bleeding. One of the women from another bed who had been there for a few weeks came around with a bucket of water. She was hobbling on a cast too, she brought water to all the parched mouths and left a trail of blood and brown pus from the cast in her wake.

This, it turned out, was Eugenia. The next few days were laden with pain and screams; three women died within the week.

The doctors came around by day, checked their numbers on their clipboards, didn’t speak at all. Eugenia came around at night, bringing water.

Bunny also lay in the bed, silent, but had her eyes open, listening. She refused the water offered.

Wanda looked at me. ‘That’s why we protect Bunny. We must. She has been through so much. It’s our duty to help her.’

‘That’s why she needs Stella?’ I asked.

‘Stella keeps Bunny alive, I think. All the love for her own children spills over into Stella.’

When Wanda came back from the bandage change, Bunny lay stagnant, Wanda thought she was dead. Wanda reached out and held her hand, to help her find the ground again and Bunny didn’t let go.

A week later Eugenia was discharged. She continued to bring food from the bunks to Wanda and the other rabbits and delivered items through the window. They all watched as Jacosta died. Her jaw locked shut. The nurse plunged a syringe into her heart so she did not ‘suffer’.

Eugenia said she had heard the guards were planning to destroy evidence of the experiments, she cautioned Wanda to be vigilant. That night the nurse came around again, she had a needle. When Wanda awoke, the nurse was over her. Wanda screamed:

‘I am not a guinea pig. I am not a guinea pig.’ It woke Bunny and by morning they were the only two who had survived.

Eugenia planned their escape. Bunny could not walk.

Wanda was more fortunate and could stand. To be in a place like this and not be able to move. It was a death warrant for sure.

Eugenia came in carrying a chair she had found and they tied Bunny to the chair with a sheet. Eugenia and Wanda, as the guards watched, carried Bunny back to the bunk. The guards saw them and laughed. Two women in casts, barely able to walk, carrying a mute on a chair.

Mutiny was the only power they had left and they were determined to save Bunny. Wanda would not leave her behind.

Soon more and more women came and arms helped to hold Bunny, to get the rabbits to safety.

They made some shelves in the old toilet area and Eugenia sewed the skin back up on Bunny’s leg with her perfect running stitch. Wanda’s legs, it appeared, had been shot: black circles front and back and bruising up to her knee.

Wanda showed me her scars, her legs deformed, the skin still bright red, raw and new.

‘We have to stay alive, for we are the only witnesses.’

Miriam recalls the hatches, the drawings the doctor made in red pen. She too has scars, but these are even less visible, and even less believable.

Does anyone know or remember Wanda? Miriam doubts it and the thought makes her sad.

She gets some pens and paper from her father’s office, replaces many ledgers back into the desk, and piles the books and paper to one side. She has time now, waiting for her father to die, or for Axel to get her again. She tries not to think about which will come first.

She uses her father’s good pen and stares back at the letter. Her hands shake so much the ink drops and splashes, and as she presses the pen on to the paper, the nib bends slightly at her hand. Her fingers stop quaking. They are quiet. She becomes entranced by them as they work. Moving the pen across the page, tracing Wanda’s words.

A deep sense of peace cloaks Miriam, stilling her busy mind.

On second reading and really looking at the finished letter on plain paper, the letters are beautiful. Written as she supposed they were meant to be. As Eva has restored the ones written in French, Miriam will do the same for the rest.