The Rabbit Girls(66)

‘I can imagine.’

‘We blame hormones, a lot.’

‘Women have it rough.’

‘So, you don’t have a job now?’

‘No, I’m at home with Miriam.’ I felt I needed to qualify that somehow and added, ‘I used to teach at the university.’ His expression changed and I regretted my words.

‘Impressive. Were you published?’ Herr Blundell moved all the magazines and books to the floor and revealed a chair that didn’t seem to be there before, on which he sat.

‘Yes, for a while, anyway.’

‘Would you be interested in a job?’ he asked sincerely.

‘No, not really. If I’m honest, I don’t think I’d be up for it.’

‘Health problems?’

‘Something like that,’ I mumbled, placing my undrunk drink on a stack of magazines. ‘I have to go now.’

‘If it helps, I was there.’

‘Where?’ I struggled to remove myself from the chair and the question invited time to try to get up without sinking back into it again.

‘Buchenwald, first,’ he said, and it was like a fist into the gut. I deflated back into the chair, winded. ‘Then Auschwitz-Birkenau.’ He unbuttoned his collar. Three buttons down, he pulled his tie to one side and his shirt the other way, revealing one letter followed by five numbers. Just like the one I had on my wrist.

‘The bastards decided to brand me here.’ He pointed to his chest.

‘Why?’

‘I fought back,’ he said. Then he buttoned his shirt back up and replaced his tie, so that it was once again straight. ‘This school is a family, and if you wanted a teaching job, you would be very welcome.’

‘Does Miriam, I mean, do the students know you were . . . there,’ I said, pointing to his chest.

‘No. I teach history, but not my own history. The way I see it, I am a lynchpin to help the next generation understand and prevent this happening again.’

‘Most people don’t talk about this,’ I said, finally pulling myself out of the chair and standing up to my full height.

‘I know, but I see no shame in sharing this with anyone. You know why?’

I shook my head.

‘Because it wasn’t my fault, nor, if I am correct, was it yours.’

‘I think you have been mistaken,’ I said, and left the room with my heart running so fast my feet were numb after only a few steps. The smell of the teacher’s office lingered on me, as did his words: ‘I fought back.’





MIRIAM

Back at home she goes straight to the pile of German letters. Picking up a tiny scrap, she switches on the lights and reads. She doesn’t know what the difference is between the German and French letters. If Eva stops translating, what will Miriam miss?

I asked Wanda if she wanted a piece of paper to write to her family, but she had no one to write to. Her family were all separated by the time the war started. She had four children and six grandchildren. She speaks of an idyllic life. She is fifty-six.

We are her only family now.

She is a mother to us all. I imagine her wearing an apron in front of a stove, smelling of warm dough. Her children and grandchildren must have that image of her, milling around, waiting for whatever she had baked to cool enough to eat. She has lost them all. She sits in her bunk and she cares for us.

Wanda wraps her wings around us all, and still has the girth to offer a hug that feels like home. A home I had with you. She is the glue and right now she holds me, and paints a future that is not so bleak.

Miriam rereads the last letter. If Wanda died, would anyone know she had gone? Would anyone tell her stories, could anyone name her children? Eradicating the whole family is like removing the roots of a tree, if you remove the roots everything is destroyed.

At least I have lived. Miriam places the paper back on the table. Lived. She cannot think of a way in which her life can be defined that way. How has she lived? She doesn’t know. She knows that when she dies, no one will remember her either. She has done nothing at all, except be a ‘wife’ to Axel and a daughter to soon-to-be-dead parents. Orphaned. And now, without a friend. She understands why Eva left her at the church, she would walk away from herself too. She is pathetic, just as Axel has always said she is.

Christmas is as lifeless as a plastic flower, drooping in the condensed hospital heat, and the ward is full of limp spirit. The decade-old tinsel wilts on the walls.

She arrives early on Christmas morning. Her father has a yellow paper hat from a cracker perched on his head, which she swiftly removes. There is subdued cheer as Miriam sits next to her father, and all the visiting hours are consumed with her reading to him. She reads to him from the letters and starts to see a pattern. The French letters in Eva’s handwriting are personal: love letters; the German ones are more about the camp and the women within it.

Miriam feels a rush of affection for Frieda, who must have known her father so well, and then thinks that if Eva has been translating the love letters it must have been difficult after recently losing her husband.

Miriam hadn’t thought of Eva in any other way than as the translator of the letters. She was present in Miriam’s life and Miriam hadn’t even thought to check Eva was okay with what she was doing. Or to understand anything about her. The letters are so sad. Miriam loathes that she didn’t check on the woman who has been her only friend.