The Rabbit Girls(89)

When the wail that hurt our hearts more than our ears came from Bunny.

Rabbits make no noise. Silent animals. Until they scream. A rabbit in pain will scream. A scream unlike anything I had ever heard before.

We were walking back to the block with the soup, Hani and I, and we saw guards in our block. We were about to drop the soup, but we carried on without spilling a drop.

‘What’s happening?’ We looked to each other. The Noise entered my body, penetrated so deep. It hurt me inside, like a fracture. I heaved on an empty stomach.

The guards came away with Stella. Her arms and legs thrashing about. Stella was calling for Bunny. Hani and I dropped the soup and ran. Ran towards the sight of Stella being taken.

But we were stopped. A shot rang around and around, a spiralling noise that deepened and worsened as it sang out. Stella was crying, slumped, a dead weight, they were struggling to hold her.

I rushed to her, she grabbed my neck with both her arms. A vice-grip.

‘Bunny!’ she called.

Hani went past me into the block. I rocked Stella in my arms and watched the door. The guards were talking amongst themselves.

Hani came out shaking her head and joined us where we sat at the feet of three guards.

‘Bunny,’ Hani said, and wrapped herself in my arms with Stella.

Goose pimples rise over Miriam’s skin and tingle at the nape of her neck. Tears fall silently as she reads. ‘Bunny,’ she says into the darkened room, shaking her head and blowing her nose.

She checks the time, it is late, but the thought of walking in the night no longer bothers her. Miriam places the unread letters in her bag, and goes to the hospice.

The hospice is locked and she waits a long time, listening to the rustle of leaves from Ruhwald Park. Finally, a nurse waddles to open the door.

‘It’s late,’ she says, and Miriam recognises the voice, deeply nasal, as the one she spoke to when she was trying to find her father after his transfer.

‘Sue said I could stay,’ she says and ducks past the woman towards her dad’s room.

‘It’s late,’ the nurse says again, but she has darted in and gently closes his door behind her. With only a small night light above his head, the room is musty with sleep and dark. Miriam unfolds the bed with a creak and a crash of springs.

‘It’s only me, Dad,’ Miriam says. ‘My voice is a bit broken, but it’s only me. I’m fine.’

She takes hold of his hand and kisses her father on the forehead. The nasal tube is large and pokes out from his nose, he has been shaved again and looks younger.

‘I’m sorry about Axel, I’m sorry about a lot of things. But Dad, I can make things right.’

He smiles, an actual smile, and pats the bed with his hand. Miriam perches on it and holds his hand in both of hers, his nails neatly manicured and his skin soft.

Miriam bends to kiss his head and he reaches his hand and places it on her hair.

‘Miriam,’ he says, patting her head very gently. ‘My Miriam.’

She rests her head on his chest for a long time, unable to pull away, not wanting to either. ‘I’ve put a notice in the paper for you, Dad. If she’s alive, she’ll come. I know it. Until then, I’ll read you all her letters, I promise, but please’ – her voice breaks – ‘please, if she is what you are holding on for, please don’t die. I still need you.’

When his arm falls heavy, she wipes her eyes and sits in the comfort of the armchair to read the final letters. Unable to push her voice into sound, she whispers the words, like a promise in the dark warmth of the room.

Henryk,

Stella’s number was called to transport. Bunny was murdered in her bunk. Hani and I had a split-second decision to make. We were sitting in the dust. Eugenia came out to join us. The guards started to try to take Stella from my arms.

Eugenia, Hani and I looked to each other.

Hani and I stepped up with Stella. We held the sobbing girl. She was calling for Bunny. The guard hit her and her tears fell, but her hands were in ours now. We walked with her.

Eugenia stepped back. She would not make the journey with us.

We have been unmanned, disbanded and now, yet again, we are on a journey of unknown destination.

I did not think of our child, or of my life or of you.

Henryk, I am sorry.

Eugenia stepped back? What happened to her?

She can understand why Eugenia stayed behind. Why would she step up to an unknown when she knows the status quo? That’s why she’d stayed with Axel. If you jump out of the frying pan, you may end up in the fire.

But Frieda made the choice and took the risk. She reads the next letter, a tiny, finger-sized piece of paper.

When I stepped on to the train with Stella I thought of her mother, long dead, I am sure, and how I would want someone with my child when they die. I finally understood what Wanda was doing with the babies. She was giving them warmth and love at the very end, something their mothers were not permitted to do.

The original letter curls back over itself. She picks it up and unrolls it. The paper so small and flimsy she doesn’t want to tear it.

We held Stella as she sobbed for Bunny; we sobbed for Bunny too. And for Eugenia left behind, and for Wanda.

We held Stella as she shook in fear. We gave her all that we had, food and stories and songs.

Then she became feverish.

We held her hand when she grew cold. Her wooden carving of a rabbit held tight in her palm. Talking only of her ‘Bunny’.