Annelies полностью

Anne Frank was nothing but a Kazetnik, she writes. A creature of the camps. And if she is now a displaced person, it is not because her life has been displaced, it’s because her heart has been displaced. Her soul and all that once constituted Anne Frank have been displaced.

The conductor pushes through the crowded corridor calling out the stop in a harried voice: “Centraal Station Amsterdam.” Swallowing heavily, Anne joins the dreary bustle of passengers about to depart. Her heart is thrumming heavily in her breast. There were postcards printed in Belsen for the DPs. She wrote a note to Miep on one of them before piling into the rear of a British army lorry, but who knows if it was ever received? Words on paper, like people, are so easily erased. People are so insubstantial, too. Who knows what has become of Miep? Of Bep or Kugler or Kleiman? Who knows what has become of anyone?

•   •   •

The train lumbers past the carriage sheds and warehouses of the freight yard. Toward the tall, single-span glass canopy of the station. Then slots in between the concrete platforms and slows to a halt. The stink of the track grease and the coal smoke follows her down the steps of the platform and into the half dark of the drafty concourse as she grips the handle of her suitcase. The noise ringing in the station rafters is both overwhelming and comforting. People muddling about, lugging their bags. Porters pushing carts loaded with steamer trunks. Women with trailing children struggling to keep up. Off-duty Canadian soldiers, the Liberators of Holland, smoking their cigarettes and whistling after Dutch girls in their patched-up dresses.

Rows of tables are assembled in the booking hall, and glum lines of ragged people are assembled in front of them. Typewriters are clacking. It’s the Dutch Social Service Bureau trying to bring order to the chaos of returnees. Trying to manage the confusion of desperate stories by filling out forms.

A squat little clerk, seated behind his typewriter, glowers at an old man’s papers and issues a burdened sigh. “Ah, another Jew. Wonderful. And how did they forget to gas you, Uncle?” he inquires, to be polite, in an amplified voice just in case the old man is hard of hearing. Anne feels her heart shiver and fights a fierce craving to shove forward and rap the clerk across the face with her knuckles. And she may have done so, but for the fact that she is hearing her name. Someone is calling her with frantic excitement. “Anne, Anne! Anne Frank!”

Turning about, she stares, blinking, at the woman hurrying toward her. The woman with ginger hair swept back from her brow, with thinned cheeks, a heart-shaped chin, a hooded gaze. Anne forces her mouth to form around a name. “Miep,” she whispers. And feels something crack open inside of her.

“Jan, it’s Anne!” Miep exclaims in disbelief. Hearing her name shouted in public panics Anne, and she must resist the urge to run. “Jan! Jan, it’s Anne!” Miep exclaims again, as if it’s just too impossible to believe. “It’s Anne Frank!” she calls, and seizes Anne in an embrace. “Oh, Anne. To have you return. To have you return. What a miracle,” she whispers, like saying a prayer. It’s a frightening thing, Miep’s embrace. Anne has not been touched with affection for a very long time, and this embrace is so murderously joyful. Many prisoners of Belsen were killed after liberation, not by bullets but by the richness of the food the Tommies handed out. They died with their faces smeared with chocolate, Spam, and condensed milk. This is how Anne feels about the wrap of Miep’s arms. It’s so rich that it might kill her on the spot, so she forces herself free.

“Oh, my heavens, I cannot believe this.” Miep is still grinning as if the expression has been stamped onto her face permanently. “We’ve come to the station every day since your postcard arrived. And now, here you are. Jan!” she sings out again.

In answer to his wife’s call, a tall, gangly fellow with a high coxcomb of hair and glasses as round as a pair of ten-guilder queens comes trotting from the tables wearing a stunned expression. His white armband reads SOCIALE DIENST. “Anne?” he questions the air.

“Jan, can you believe it? It’s a miracle,” Miep declares again, and then she whispers with naked relief, “We thought we’d lost you.” But then she is turning away, raising her hand and waving. “She’s over here! Anne is here!” she is shouting.

At once Anne feels as if she is trying to contain an explosion. As if she is a bomb that will rip shingles from rooftops and blast bricks to powder if she is allowed to detonate. Her heart thunders at the sight of the tall, threadbare figure stepping into a stripe of sunlight from the concourse windows. With a thump the suitcase falls from her hand, and she is rushing toward him, calling out, “Pim!”