Annelies полностью

The night goes, the day comes. In the Prinsengracht, Anne finds herself in the Achterhuis kitchen, where Auguste van Pels has her hair up in pins, drying the dishes that Mummy has just washed. Anne asks them if she can help, but Mummy tells her no. She says Anne is too much of a butterfingers and that soon they’ll have no dishes left. Anne thinks she should be mad at this little jab on Mummy’s part, but she’s not. The two ladies are smiling at her from the sink, and Anne is smiling, too. The patchwork of curtains dulls the light in the room. She should just sit down, Mummy advises her. She must be tired. Isn’t she tired? Mummy wonders. So Anne sits. She tries to tell them what’s happened in the time that’s passed since their arrest, since this place was their home, but neither of the women seems to understand her. They observe her with a comprehensive puzzlement. And then it’s Mr. van Pels appearing in filthy Kazetnik garments. Two yellow triangles forming the Judenstern on his corpse’s tunic. The teeth in the yawning hole of his mouth are rotting. “Anne, you be quiet,” he warns. “Do you want those people down in the warehouse to hear us?”

And then she is suddenly terrified that she has given them away.

She hears a voice call her name from far off, but she doesn’t answer because she must be quiet.

“Quiet? Ha!” Peter enters, his body emaciated in dirty KZ stripes, and laughs out loud at the very idea. “Anne Frank can never be quiet!” he says with a grin. But no one shushes him at all.

“Anne.” She hears again this voice from a far distance, only now it’s closer, and her eyes pop open. It’s Dassah in her pine-green office frock, standing in the threshold of the room, her hand resting on the doorknob as if she’s prepared to slam it shut if required to protect herself.

Anne blinks roughly, bent into a jackknife on her knees; she shakes her head and glares at the floorboards. “Go away.”

“Anne, are you ill?”

“Go away, please,” she half commands, half begs.

“If you’re ill, we should call for the doctor.”

“Just . . . go away.”

Dassah steps forward. She spreads a handkerchief on the dusty floor and carefully kneels down beside Anne. “These are the rooms where you lived, correct?” she asks, but she does not seem to expect an answer. “Incredible,” she says. “This would have been considered a palace by most Jews in hiding.”

But Anne is not interested in her stepmother’s appraisal of the Achterhuis. “If you don’t mind, please go to hell,” she requests, and is surprised by the snort of Dassah’s laugh.

“Well.” The woman sighs. “I think I’ve already been there once, Anne,” she says. “Have you forgotten?” And then she does something even more shocking. Gently, she turns back the cuff of Anne’s sweater, exposing Anne’s tattoo to the ghosts inhabiting the air. A-25063. Dassah lightly brushes her fingertips over the number as if she can feel it raised on Anne’s skin. “This ink,” she says, “is a poison. We have all been poisoned by it. Your father, you, me. But it has failed to kill us.” There is something so lonely in her voice when she says, “You should remember that. We are alive. Not dead.”

Anne gazes. Slowly, she draws her arm away from Dassah’s hand. The woman takes a breath. Blinks a sheepish pain from her eyes. Her face has taken on a shadow of loss, but then she is Dassah again, her eyes shut off from pity. “Yet maybe you know that you’re alive. At least maybe your body knows. Are you having intercourse?”

Anne glares.

“It’s a question, Anne. A question that needs to be asked.” Dassah frowns. “I hope not. I hope you are not so stupid. But if you are, please tell me that you are using the proper precautions. A condom,” Dassah says to be blunt. “If you wish to live as a whore with that boy—” she is saying when Anne cuts her off.

“That’s over.”

A pause. “Is it?” She doesn’t bother to ask why but only says, “So you finally came to your senses. Well, let us thank God for that.”

Anne gazes at her blackly. “Why are you so horrible to me?”

“Oh, is that what I am? Horrible? You’ve already called me a ‘monster,’ so I suppose I shouldn’t expect any charity from you. The truth is, Anne, you were terribly spoiled when you were a child. That much is obvious. It’s made you weak and self-centered and eager to blame others for your shortcomings. Honestly, it’s a wonder you survived at all. But since you have, you think that the world now owes you tribute. You’ve been twisted by your experiences into a kind of morose, self-absorbed little tyrant who demands that everyone worship her pain and loss as much as she does. And if they don’t—if they refuse to give in to your egotism—then they are labeled ‘a monster.’”

Anne smears at her eyes, glaring at the corner of her room where her desk once sat. “I hate you,” she whispers bitterly.