The Rabbit Girls(72)

If we survive this, can WE survive this?

Because I want you, all of you. War or not, do we exist in anything concrete at all? Or do we just exist on a metaphysical level where souls collide but fingertips remain separate?

Henryk, I wish so much to talk to you. Because we have made something, I am sure. It flutters within me, and after the lashes, to have survived is beyond a miracle. But we have made a baby.

A baby. There was a baby?

Miriam reads and rereads the last letter and spends the entire night sitting up in bed.

Thinking.

Of her own baby.

Of how she grew and expanded, how everything changed. The small flutters to the almighty kicks. The tiny hiccups in the middle of the night. She thinks of all those things, and then she thinks of them in a place like Ravensbrück.

Wrapped in blankets, she cannot feel warm.





29





MIRIAM


The next day she takes the letters to her father, and as she reads further, her mind is on Frieda, pregnant, in Ravensbrück. She recalls all the worries, all the tensions, and how her own body changed. She places those worries in Ravensbrück and, though she cannot fathom why, she cries as she reads, every letter seems to have changed.

Now she reads as a woman who must have known pregnancy and death in the same breath. Every word transforms her into a human, alive. She cries, but reads.

Her father interrupts her. ‘Miriam,’ he says, and she jumps out of the chair shifting the letters from her skirts. He squeezes her hand tighter.

‘My second coming,’ he says slowly, ‘is at hand.’

‘Don’t be afraid, Dad. I’m right here.’

He wheezes as she sits by his side, and as she listens to him breathe she thinks of second comings, of second chances, and she picks up a clean piece of paper and writes the address of the editor at B.Z., found on the day’s newspaper that flitters around the ward. Miriam writes a letter asking for information about Frieda. She lists Frieda’s age at incarceration in Ravensbrück, Frieda’s father’s name and all the personal details she can recall from the letters. She asks for anyone who knows her, or knew her, to come forward. She encloses her address and telephone number and twenty Westmarks to place the advert. Miriam posts it just outside the hospital.

Finally, she drags herself home, full of words and worries and the past. Heavy on her feet, she walks into the building. She feels darkness seeping in. Two questions, like ivy twisting and curling:

What did happen to Frieda? And where is she now?

The end of the letters, she presumes, is also her father’s end too. This is what he is holding on for. She wonders if the advert might yield more answers before she gets to the end, but with some of them still in French and many still with Eva, maybe she will never know.

She shuts the main door behind her and checks it holds fast when she pushes against it. Locked. Lionel must have gone home for the evening. Moving up the stairs at a steady pace, she feels prickles of fear rising with every step. She shakes them away. Although not as mentally unstable as they all would have her believe, she thinks, maybe her father is better off being cared for by someone else.

She cannot shake the sensations of fear and tries to calm her breathing. She thinks she can smell him. That smell of him. Soap and something else. But she knows it’s her mind, it plays tricks. She has made the step towards divorce, this will be over soon. She thinks back to the solicitor.

Six months, they said, unless there are financial difficulties, which there won’t be. He has his money and she has hers now, well, Dad’s.

Six months until freedom. She almost loses her footing on the stairs and grabs the handrail.

‘Six months,’ she says aloud. Maybe, just maybe, she can manage this. Maybe there is something to hope for.

She grips the handrail harder, seeing her knuckles protruding out of her skin, white. ‘Six months.’ She pulls herself up the stairs. Opening the door, the feather floats past her vision and she collects its soft, downy plume in her hand. Rubbing it gently in her palm, she relaxes, shuts and locks the door and replaces the feather.

Removing her shoes, she allows her toes time to luxuriate into the thick, soft carpet.

The hospice, like the hospital, has a way of getting into everywhere, and her feet feel swollen and tired. She removes her coat and hangs up her jumper, gathering her handbag close to her she walks into the lounge, switches on the lights to place the letters on the table. She is over halfway into the room before she looks up.

She cannot place what she sees. Her brain scrambles, trying to make sense of the person sitting at her parents’ dining-room table. A person who shouldn’t be there.

Her bag falls from her shoulder and she grabs it with both hands.

‘Like what I did with the feather?’ he asks.

She backs away, nudges into her father’s chair and sits abruptly.

‘Leaving so soon? Aren’t you going to ask me why I’m here?’

‘Axel?’ Her mind is racing to work out how he got in and how she can get out. ‘Do what you like, Axel, I don’t care.’ He looks at her, unmoving. ‘It is time to leave.’ She steps aside so that he can walk past her to the door.

‘Oh, come on. Don’t be like that. I bought you flowers and chocolates.’ He points to the table where an over-large bunch of lilies lie in their wrapping with a small box of chocolates beside them. ‘For the misunderstanding,’ he says, and runs his thumb down her cheek, tilting her chin up to him. ‘You still feel me, don’t you? My imprint inside of you? When you walk, when you sit down?’ He laughs and she tries to look away but he is holding her chin.