Annelies полностью

“I want so much, Margot,” Anne whispers. “I want so much. Enough for ten lifetimes. How can I stay here? How can I possibly make this my life? I want to mean something. To be someone other than just a girl who did not die. I want to be a writer!” It’s the first time she’s actually spoken the words aloud since her return, even if she is only speaking to the dead. She glares into Margot’s eyes, but the dead do not comprehend urgency. Her sister’s eyes blacken into a pair of holes. Mummy would want you to stay, Margot tells her. Think how she cared for us in Birkenau. Think how she sacrificed for us. Are you saying, she asks, that you can’t now sacrifice a little for Pim?

“Sacrifice . . .” Anne speaks the word as if it tastes of a burnt offering.

24 ENEMY NATIONALS

I love Holland. Once I hoped it would become a fatherland to me, since I had lost my own.

—Anne Frank, from her diary, 22 May 1944

1946

Prinsengracht 263

Offices of Opekta and Pectacon

Amsterdam-Centrum

LIBERATED NETHERLANDS

“So I hear Bep is going to be married,” Anne says.

Miep turns to her from across her desk, where’s she’s sorting through the morning post. “Yes,” is all she says. “That’s right.”

“You’re probably wondering how I found out.”

“No, not really.”

“I wasn’t eavesdropping or anything,” Anne lies. “But Mr. Kleiman isn’t very quiet on the telephone.”

“I see.”

“I mean, it’s not as if Bep actually writes to me. Did she tell you directly?”

“She sent a note,” Miep answers. “I’m sorry, Anne, perhaps I should have mentioned it to you. But I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want your feelings hurt.”

“Because I’m not invited to the wedding.”

A small shrug. “I don’t think they’re doing much. Just a magistrate,” Miep tells her mildly, with a certain insouciance, as if the matter really has no great weight outside an office chat. “She’s marrying a fellow named Niemen. An electrician, I think, from Maastricht. They’re having the ceremony there, so it’s not actually close. I doubt any of us will make it.”

Anne is silent, glaring at the stack of invoices she’s been charged with ordering. She wants to be happy for Bep. She wants to forgive her for being so distant when Anne returned from Belsen. She wants to think of Bep as a sister again, but the awful question still nags at her. “Do you think it’s possible, Miep?”

“Do I think what is possible, Anne?”

“Do you think it’s possible,” she repeats, “that Bep could have played a part in our betrayal?”

Miep does not react directly. She continues sorting the post.

“Miep?”

“Why would you ask this, Anne?” Miep wants to know. Her eyes have gone sharp. “Did someone put that into your head?”

“No.” How does she explain that if it was anybody, it was Bep herself who put the idea into Anne’s head when Bep was so panicked by the thought that the police had arrived to interrogate her. “No,” she repeats.

“Good. Because anyone saying such a thing would be telling a lie,” Miep informs her. “A grotesque lie. Bep,” she begins, but then shakes her head as if mentioning the name is suddenly painful. “Bep would never have done anything to hurt you or your family. You especially, Anne. Above all people, you. You must know that. Bep is a loyal person. Right down to the bone.”

“Mr. Kugler told me that it was my fault she left. That she couldn’t stand to be around me any longer.”

Miep huffs. Shakes her head. “I won’t blame him for saying that. Mr. Kugler has faced more than his share of suffering, but he doesn’t always know when to keep quiet.”

“Are you saying that he was wrong?”

“I’m saying, Anne,” Miep tells her, “I’m saying that he doesn’t know the full story, and neither do you. Bep, after the war, she had a kind of nervous collapse. And it wasn’t just because of what happened to you. It was because of what happened to everyone. To her. Her father’s illness. The end of her romance with Maurits. There were many troubles. She couldn’t hold up under it all. It was a tragedy,” says Miep. “One of many. But it was no one’s fault, Anne. No one’s.”

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