Annelies полностью

Margot liquefies into nothing, but with that last bubble of air in her lungs, Anne is pushing herself upward, fighting the drag of the darkness. Propelling herself toward a skim of light. A heave of desire, unbidden, but now shooting through her, animating her limbs, upward, upward, until she bursts into the air, and her eyes smart as the rain stings her face.

Her eyelids lift stiffly. She feels something cold, metallic, pressing here, pressing there. She can smell the scent of rubbing alcohol. There is a man bent over her. Thickly jowled, removing the tips of a stethoscope from his large ears that bristle with hair.

“I see you’ve returned to the land of the living,” the doctor observes.

A dull ache creaks through Anne’s body as she tries to move, so she stops and simply lies still.

“You have reached a verdict, Doctor?” Dassah inquires from the threshold.

The doctor replaces the stethoscope into his battered leather satchel. “The patient will live,” he decides. “What you require, young lady, is rest.” Grunting as he stands. “I’ll give you a prescription,” he says, and then, to Dassah, “Something to help her sleep.”

When Dassah returns to the room after seeing the doctor to the door, Anne has rolled onto her side facing the wall. She has been dressed in her pajamas and feels now wholly exhausted, as if she has been running a race for days without an end in sight. But the cold shivers have finally vacated her body. “Where’s Pim?”

“He’ll be here soon,” is all Dassah tells her dimly, stepping farther into her room. Her voice takes on a hard edge of interest. “This is where you want to go?”

Lifting her eyes to the photos of skyscrapers tacked on the wall, Anne observes the Kingdom of Manhattan. “Yes,” is all she says.

Dassah nods, still gazing at the towers and concrete canyons. “You know I was born and reared in Berlin. A very large city. A very modern city. But this,” she says, “this is a city from another world. . . .”

“Hello?” Anne hears Pim calling urgently, and he appears, wearing his old raincoat and fedora. The skin of his face is bleached. Kneeling at the side of her bed, he takes Anne’s hand in his bony grip. “My dear child,” he says, as if beginning a prayer. “My dear, dear daughter.”

“Pim,” she whispers, raising her arms for an embrace. “I’m sorry.” Her cheek dampens.

“Annelein. There’s utterly no reason for apologies.”

“Yes. Yes, there is.” She swallows. “I’m not the daughter you think I am, Pim. I’m not the person you think I am.”

“Anne.” He says her name and shakes his head softly. “You shall always be my darling daughter. No matter what. No matter how old you grow or what distance may come between us, you shall always be my child.”

“No, you don’t understand.”

“I understand perfectly, Anne,” he says.

“I’ll leave the two of you alone,” Dassah informs them.

“Thank you, Hadasma. Thank you,” he says. And then he repeats himself, as if perhaps he is revealing a secret. “I understand perfectly. Perfectly, Anneke. I’m only grateful to God that I had the good sense to send you to swimming lessons when you were little. Those medals you earned have come in quite handy, I would say.”

“No, Pim. Maybe you should let them send me back to Germany. Let the mof finish the job he started.”

A dark breath exhaled. “Anne, it grieves me. It grieves me deeply when you say things like that.”

Anne does not respond to this, but she guesses Pim might prefer her silence at this moment.

“Now, please . . .” He squeezes her hand. “Let’s speak no more about such things,” he tells her, as if tamping down the embers in a fireplace. “You should rest. It’s what you need most. Shall I read to you? I would enjoy that, I think. Let me just put my coat and hat away.”

He is gone for a few moments. Mouschi slips into the room, pushing through the gap in the door, and mews impertinently before leaping up onto the bed. Anne captures him in her arms, burying her nose in plush fur. She can hear the whisper of words between Pim and her stepmother. But then Pim returns, carrying a dog-eared volume. “I was just beginning again with Great Expectations,” he announces with a cautious joviality, and sinks down into the chair by the bed. “Dickens was a genius, I think, at portraying the essence of people. I’ve always admired this in his writing.” He opens the book and places his eyes on the page. But then he says, “You possess some of that genius, too, Anne,” he tells her, “when you write.”

Anne’s brow wrinkles.

“God has given you quite a talent. Perhaps I’ve never told you that,” he says, musing aloud.

Anne can only reply with silence.

“Well, if I haven’t, it was wrong of me. I should have told you. I should have, because it’s true.”