Annelies полностью

“Oh, please. You don’t have to.”

Anne swallows a breath of panic. Is it that obvious? “All I wanted to know—all I asked—is do you think he’s peculiar?”

“Yes, a bit. But so are you.” Margot grins.

“Ha, ha,” says Anne. “My sister is so humorous.”

“And I do think he’s handsome. In a peculiar way.”

Silence for a moment. Anne turns several of the invoices over in her hand. “So you’re not interested, are you?”

“Interested in what?”

“You know what.” She grabs the stapler and ka-thunks it down onto the corner of a stack. “In Peter,” she says.

At this, Margot adjusts her glasses, pressing her fingers against the sides of the frames as she considers her options. “Well . . . now that you mention it. I suppose he is the only boy available. . . .”

Anne’s voice drops. “Are you teasing me?”

“Pfftt. Of course I’m teasing you. How could I possibly be interested in Peter van Pels? I’m a year older than him.”

“So?”

“So the girl can’t be older than the boy. It doesn’t work.”

“But the girl can be younger than the boy. That’s what you’re saying?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Anne. Yes, that’s what I’m saying. You have my permission.”

“I didn’t ask for your permission. Your permission to do what?”

“To pursue Peter if that’s what you want.”

Anne pretends some small interest in the carbon copies of customer orders. “Mummy says it’s unladylike for a girl to pursue a boy.”

Margot is frowning over her work. “And since when have you cared about what Mummy says? Since when have you cared about anybody and their opinions, other than yourself and your own?”

Anne frowns, too. She keeps her faux attention glued to the pile of papers, but her eyes have gone damp. “That hurt my feelings,” she says.

Margot looks up, distracted.

“I do have feelings, you know, Margot. I know that everyone likes to think the opposite, but I do have feelings.”

Margot’s face clears. “I’m sorry,” she tells Anne in a simple tone. “You’re right. That was a hurtful thing to say.”

Anne shrugs and wipes her eyes. “Anyway. May we change the subject?”

“Up to you,” Margot replies, getting up to address the filing cabinet.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s going to happen once the war’s over,” Anne announces. “And I’ve decided what I’m going to do.”

Margot does not look up from her work at the filing cabinet. “Have you, now?”

“Yes,” Anne confirms.

“And?” Margot pauses to examine the paper in her hand before slotting it into place. “What’s the big surprise going to be?”

“I’m going to be a famous writer.”

Now a glance. “A famous writer?” her sister repeats.

“You think I’m being ludicrous?”

“No. I think you’re being you.” Silence. And then Margot closes the file drawer. “So what kind?”

“What kind of what?”

“What kind of famous writer?”

“Oh, you know. The kind the world adores.”

“Oh. That kind.”

“Maybe a novelist,” Anne says with a more thoughtful tone. “Or a journalist. Who knows?”

“An international success.”

“That’s right. An international success, with flats in Paris, London, and New York, all three.”

“Famous writers can’t live in the Netherlands?”

“Not me. I intend to see some of the world.”

“Mm-hm. Hand me that file folder, would you?”

“Hand you?”

“The file folder, Anne. You have the stapler on top of it.”

“Oh,” says Anne. She removes the stapler and hands over the file.

“Thank you.”

A beat before Anne asks, “So what about you?”

“Me?”

“What are you going to do?” Anne doesn’t really expect her sister to answer this. Normally Margot is not one to pursue these what-if types of games. But to Anne’s surprise, Margot pauses in her work, at least long enough to give it a thought.

“I think,” says Margot, “I think I would like to go to Palestine and study to become a maternity nurse.”

Anne stops short. “Really?”

“I haven’t said that before?”

“If you have, I didn’t think you were serious. You want to go to the desert?”

“Not all of Palestine is a desert, Anne.”

“More of a desert than New York or London.”

“So? Maybe I’m more interested in doing something for the good of our people.”

Silence. Anne frowns at a stack of wrinkled invoices.

“What?” says Margot.

“Nothing,” Anne tells her. “It’s only, as usual, you’re the selfless one. Delivering babies in Zion for the good of the Jews.”

“I’m not always the ‘selfless’ one.”

“Compared to me you are.”

“Well, maybe you can be a writer for the good of the Jews,” Margot suggests.

Anne blinks, frowns slightly at the paperwork. A writer for the good of the Jews. To lift the Jews from the depth of their suffering and show them in the light that God has always intended them to be seen, as examples of goodness. Is that too grand a thing for a girl to imagine? “Maybe I can be,” is all she says.

•   •   •

At supper she tests out her desires on the assembled onderduikers. That is, to live in a far-flung capital. To become a famous writer of some sort, adored by the world.

“Oh, my,” Mrs. van Pels comments wryly. “Doubt she’ll be finding a husband anytime soon.”