Annelies полностью

Miep lifts her eyebrows. “We all made it through, one way or another,” she answers, as if advising Anne about the survivors of a shipwreck. “Bep and I did our best to maintain the office. There were still contracts to fulfill, and we felt we should do what we could to keep the wheels turning. But Mr. Kugler and Mr. Kleiman had the hardest time. After that awful day when the Grüne Polizei arrived, they were sent to the labor camps. Terrible places, yet they both managed to return in one piece. So now we’re all back at the office along with your father. Amazing, really,” Miep can only admit.

“He still goes to the office?” Anne’s brow knits. She hears a certain petulance enter her voice, unbidden.

Miep either doesn’t notice or pretends not to. “Every morning,” she answers. “Though it hasn’t been easy. Business is not so good, and there are certain problems that require sorting. It was quite difficult to keep fooling the Germans during the occupation, to convince them that the businesses were no longer Jewish owned. Things became knotty, and now they must be unknotted.”

“So Pim sits at his desk shuffling papers?” says Anne. “He sits there using the telephone and giving dictation, just as if nothing has happened?” Why does she sound so incensed by this?

Miep only shrugs again. “What else would you have him do, Anne?”

“What would I have him do?” Anne frowns, her eyes rounding. “I would have him shout, I would have him pound his fist, I would have him rattle the windows till they shatter. I would have him, Miep, demonstrate his outrage.”

Miep exhales a breath. “Well,” she says, “outrage. You know, Anne, that has never been your father’s way.”

•   •   •

Anne’s eyes fly open. “Margot!” she calls aloud, her heart thumping against her ribs and her flesh chilled. Blinking at the silver of morning, she shakes her head back into the present. She must have fallen asleep on Miep’s sofa. Her clothes feel rough against her skin. A blanket, which has been draped over her, sags onto the floor. Pim is slumped in a chair a few steps away, dozing, his head lolling with a rhythmic snore. For an instant he stirs, and his expression contracts as if he’s been pinched. His face is paled by the daylight glazing the windows. Only the ruddy patches under his eyes retain color. He is dressed in overlaundered pajamas with faded blue and white stripes and a too-large flannel robe, his feet hooked into a pair of worn leather slippers. She blinks again. Around her the flat is as hushed as an empty room. “Pim,” she says with more intention, and watches him shudder into consciousness, blinking back at her with a hint of the same brand of empty panic she feels in her chest.

“Ah.” He whisks a breath into his lungs. “So you’re awake.”

Anne sits up further, plants her feet on the floor, and sifts her fingers through her hair. “Shouldn’t you be in bed? The doctor,” she says.

“The doctor said rest, so I’m resting. But really there’s no need to worry. I’m fine. Just a bit of excess excitement, that’s all.”

Anne looks at him, and he takes this opportunity to beam back at her in a fractured sort of way. “Ah, my Annelein. How wonderful it is simply to gaze upon your face. Thank God that you have been returned.”

But Anne shakes her head. Lets her hair fall back across her face. “Miep said you just showed up at her door one day after the liberation.”

Pim nods at this as if it is only too true. “I did. It was a long journey back from Poland. The Russians liberated Auschwitz in winter, but it wasn’t till May that I could begin the journey home. I had to travel to Odessa and then board a boat for Marseille. And there was the matter of the French documents required. A Repatriation Card and other such nonsense,” he says, and bats away the memory with his hand. “All in all, I didn’t return to Amsterdam till June. Of course, others had long since occupied our flat in the Merwedeplein, and even if they hadn’t, I could never have gone back there. Not to live. So what choice did I have but to show up like a beggar at Miep’s door? She and Jan have been very kind to take me in. We owe them quite a lot, Anne.”

“How did you do it, Pim?” she asks. “How did you manage to . . .” But the words won’t form. Her father, however, can sense the question.

“How did I manage to stay alive in Auschwitz?” His expression drifts into a hollow spot. “How? It’s a question I’ve asked myself again and again. And again and again, I come to the same answer,” he says, and his eyebrows lift. “It was love.”

Anne glares.

“Love and hope. Love of my family and hope that I would see them all again. That’s what kept me alive, I believe.” A shrug. “That is my only explanation.”