The Rabbit Girls(67)

Her father squeezes her hand, turns his head to her voice, he says, ‘Thank you.’ His Christmas present to her. The sound of his voice, he is there . . . somewhere. She reads poetry again, just like she used to when he had episodes. She reads just to hear his voice. He only says two words, ‘Thank you,’ but they are enough to give Miriam some cheer.

When the nurses give her father medication and his snores are rhythmic, Miriam picks up the next of Frieda’s letters written on sheet music.

Hani has returned, sterilised.

Skin slick with sweat, frozen to the touch. She has been gone for two weeks. She bleeds heavily.

Hani doesn’t say what happened. She climbs into the bunk and moves into my body, as always. We stay that way all night. My body heat warming her back, then when she moves, warming her front. She is never warm all over.

We try to feed her up, we try to keep her warm. Stella sings to her and smooths her growing hair. There is something magical about Stella and for a while, she joined us in our bunk, telling Bunny she was on holiday with Hani at the seaside, telling of waves and seagulls.

‘Everyone look. It’s a rainbow. Do you see?’

We all had to say we saw the rainbow before she continued.

‘We have rainbows on my holiday, Bunny. Hani, tell me the colours of the rainbow.’

‘Rood,’ said Hani.

‘Red,’ I interpreted.

‘I know, pretty lady – I speak Hani now.’

I laughed, Eugenia laughed, Wanda dried her eyes, for we could all see the rainbow now.

‘Red makes us cry when it leaks out,’ said Stella and she rattles along without breath. ‘The whip, the dogs, they make everything red. Orange is the sun, it no longer shines bright. The sun is sad, because the people are sad. Yellow is the sand, in my eyes, between my fingers, between my toes. Sand bites all over. Green is very rare, like smiles and photographs. Pretty lady, your eyes are green, they sparkle. Bunny’s eyes are brown. Hani’s eyes leak a lot of love.’

And they do.

‘They say my eyes are blue. I cannot see my eyes.’

‘Your eyes are blue, Stella,’ said Eugenia. ‘Blue like the deepest sapphires, the most brilliant blue of the sky.’

‘Blue air tastes like salt if the wind blows. We are by the sea, a deep, blue, wet sea. Hani, what colour is next?’

‘Purper.’

Stella laughed, repeating her again and again. Hani laughed too and the air suddenly lightened.

‘Purple. The colour of bruises when the red doesn’t come out of the skin, but weeps underneath. Bunny is like a bruise, she cries on the inside.’

Bunny nodded her head, yes.

‘Where is grey in the rainbow, Aunty Wanda?’

‘There is no grey, Stella.’

‘Yes, there is. The rainbow holds all the colours of the world.’ Then to Eugenia, ‘Genia – where is the grey?’

‘The grey is at the bottom, the smallest colour before it blends into white.’

‘Here there is more grey,’ said Stella. ‘The sky, the concrete, the wire, the uniform. The dead.’

‘But we are not here Stella, we are on holiday, on the beach,’ Hani said.

‘Miriam Winter?’ a kindly nurse in a navy uniform asks her as she is about to leave. ‘Can I have a quick word?’ She escorts her into a side room and sits on one side of a sofa and offers Miriam the other.

‘I have some good news,’ she starts. ‘We can transfer your father to the hospice Wednesday or Thursday probably. He’s responding to the antibiotics and I’m sure you saw the tube in his nose, he is on enteral feeding, and the physiotherapy can be done in the hospice too, to help clear his lungs. He’s doing okay.’ She smiles. ‘If you ask me, I think he has something to live for.’

‘He does,’ she says. ‘Yes, he does.’

Two days later Miriam leaves the hospital at the shift change. She walks out of the ward mingled with the nurses and up the silent streets for home. No one around. Not one person. She notices a purple sign illuminated by the street lights. Purper.

‘Abbott, Abbott and Co.’ The white lettering by the door to the left in the window lists:

Residential property

Wills and Probate

Family, Marital, Divorce.

Miriam walks in to a chime and three male faces rise to her entrance. She leaves hours later with a stack of brilliant-white paperwork, which she puts down carefully, like a bomb, on the end of the table.

Maybe she has something to live for after all.





27





HENRYK


The job offered at the school motivated me to look for something. Miriam’s school was the best Berlin had to offer, but Emilie encouraged me to find something at the university. I was, after all, a professor.

A French book in my hand, my new briefcase at my feet, it was my first day. A group of exceedingly smart-looking young men and women sat looking at me and I crumbled. I broke down without saying a word. I didn’t return.

A few months later I caught Herr Blundell in the courtyard after walking Miriam to school.

‘Herr Blundell, is it?’ I called.

‘Herr Winter,’ he said formally.

‘I apologise about how I left your office, you must think me terribly rude. I’m afraid you startled me and I didn’t know what to say.’