The Rabbit Girls by Anna Ellory
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
W. B. Yeats, ‘The Second Coming’
January 1945
It couldn’t be rushed.
Crouched on the end of the bed, focused only on the uniform in her lap, she unpicked an inch from the hem with fingers fat and numb. Very, very carefully she pushed the slip of paper into the pocket.
It needed to lie flat. Completely hidden within the folds.
She fed another all the way along the seam as far as it would reach, checked the front, the back and the fold. Then another and, finally, the last one.
The final one.
Time was slipping away, rushing by. It was the end.
Her fingers raced to thread the needle but the eye was small and the thread thin. The calls and screams thundered closer, louder, each one more urgent than the last. Her hands shook, a tremble mirrored in her chin, her lips and her heart.
They were hidden.
Safe.
She rolled the thread nimbly around her fingers and placed it into the seam. She wove the needle through the hem, locking it in.
There was nothing left to do, except . . .
1
MIRIAM
December 1989
The Wall between East and West is open. The door between her and the rest of the world is closed. Locked and checked, twice. She runs her finger along the gap between door and frame to find the tiny, soft feather in place. Her fingers trace the grain of the worn wood down to the handle. To check for a third time. Locked.
She lifts the intercom phone and listens.
Silence.
Thick carpet lines the hallway to his room. Without glancing at him she smooths the velvet curtains before opening them to a lavender sky. The rain has washed the air clean and she welcomes the breeze.
‘It’s a beautiful day,’ she whispers, wanting it to be true. The building opposite looms in all its classical primacy, facades stark, windows shut. Light seeps out through cracks, barred from reaching across the street by old twisted railings. Berlin is Berlin again. And Miriam is home.
The cobbled pavements of Klausenerplatz glisten from night rain. When the rasp of the pressure mattress fades to white noise she withers away from the window to the man in the bed. Arranged flat on his back, white sheets tucked around his body.
She pauses.
The circuits connect and with relief her body follows the familiar pattern.
‘Did you sleep well?’ She does not let her mouth run quiet for fear that in the silence, her thoughts will ignite.
From the bedside table she unfolds B.Z., the newspaper is dated 10th November, she hasn’t purchased another. The smell of words creates a sharp nostalgia.
She reads the bold headline ‘We all thank God’ and turns the page. Faces smiling, laughing, crying, people hugging each other, bottles of beer raised, and in the background: the Wall.
‘What do you think, Dad? Do you think this,’ the paper crinkles in her hands, ‘is an act of God?’ She smiles, for she knows what he would have said. Or she thinks she does.
‘They are calling them wallpeckers, the people battling through with a hammer and chisel. It’ll take them a decade to reach the other side this way, but look . . .’ She turns the paper so that if he were to open his eyes he could see the picture, black and white, of a small boy and an even smaller hammer. She imagines the tink-tink as the wallpeckers young and old chip into the wall. ‘You should see this,’ she murmurs.
There is no response, not even a flicker of recognition.
He had always been busy; never still. Until now. He had a quick mind, but regularly knocked into things, his body betraying his age, while his mind was vibrant.
Miriam folds and replaces the newspaper, suspended in time. The world continues to turn around her; the magnitude of the news is so big, it’s incomprehensible. The euphoria, the joy . . . The Berlin Wall is down, but the news is of little consequence, the emotion out of reach for her, because she is cleaning, caring and changing.
A cycle which will end, and soon.
‘I’m lifting you.’ She leans on the bed and holds him under both arms, avoids looking at his face. She can lift and nudge with her body weight into his chest to hoist him a few inches up the bed. She fluffs his pillows and shuffles him up. Guided by her small hands, he rests, semi-reclined.
‘There we go,’ she continues and pours the water from a plastic jug into the cup. ‘Small sips,’ she says. She positions a clean hand towel under his chin.
According to the medical staff, the slanted rim and two handles of the cup make it easier for him to drink, but the water bypasses closed lips and trickles down his beard. The doctors also say words like ‘Fluid Balance’, ‘Hydration’, ‘Comfort’. Their faces show boredom. Disinterest. Repetition. They look, they do not see. They talk, but cannot hear. He should remain comfortable, hydrated, and all input and output should be measured. Yet he was not meant to live longer than a few days. Weeks later he still breathes, but the prognosis is death. Attempting to make this a ‘comfortable’ experience feels as futile as sticking on a plaster.