Rabbit, Soldier, Angel, Thief - by Katrina Nannestad

frazzled grey hair that looks like it’s never been brushed and your bony shoulders that jiggle and dance in time with your chicken-clucking chuckles.’ But I can’t. I don’t know how to make the words run from my head to my lips and out into the air. So I just stare. ‘I know,’ whispers Doctor Orlova, as though she has heard my thoughts. She reaches out and pats my knee through the blankets. ‘I know, Sasha … I know …’ I stare. ‘Ah! I almost forgot!’ The doctor leans sideways and feels about on the floor beneath her chair. When she straightens, she’s holding a small bouquet of flowers – yellow marigolds, pink and white daisies and blue, blue cornflowers. I stare and she waves the bouquet around, carelessly. ‘I went for a walk this morning. Through the rubble in the street outside the hospital. Ugh! What a mess we have made of Berlin! It had to be done, of course. Hitler had to be stopped. But the ruins! The dust! The rubble! It’s almost as bad as Stalingrad.’ She stops after mentioning Stalingrad, as though she expects me to say something. But I don’t. I never speak. She knows that. And all I can think about is the flowers. ‘Anyway,’ Doctor Orlova continues, still waving the bouquet about in front of her, ‘I walked, ankle-deep in dust, then climbed over broken walls and kicked through bricks and, all of a sudden, I found myself standing in a garden. There, in the middle of the ruins! Can you imagine such a thing, Sasha?’

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