Annelies полностью

She leaves her desk to find Monsieur Mouschi a saucer of milk in the kitchen to coax him back to her, but instead she finds an unusual sight. Bep with a lit cigarette in her hand. “Bep?”

Bep reacts as if she’s been caught in mid-crime, and there’s a dash to extinguish the cigarette by tossing it into the sink and twisting open the tap.

“Bep, I’m sorry,” says Anne. “I didn’t mean to surprise you. Really, you don’t have to hide a cigarette.”

“Mr. Kugler doesn’t like smoking in the kitchen. And I really have no taste for tobacco. It’s just that sometimes it calms my nerves.” She clears her throat. Once Bep’s hair was a stylishly fluffy affair, which required extensive treatment by a hairdresser on the Keizersgracht. But now her hair is flat and lackluster. Her complexion is like clay. But more than her appearance has been altered. Where once there was warmth, there is now only this cold distance between them.

Anne says nothing at first, wondering what has changed. She can summon up only one possibility. “Bep,” she asks, “do you hate me now?”

Bep responds as if she has been singed by a spark from the stove. “Hate you? Of course not, Anne. How could you think . . .” she starts to say, “how could you possibly think . . .” But her words fray to nothing.

“It’s only that you’ve barely spoken to me all morning. Hardly a word.”

Bep shivers. Shakes her head at the air. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry if I seem distant,” she whispers. “But the truth is, it’s all too much. I simply can’t bear any more. I prayed to God for such a long time to make things right, but look what happened. Look what you went through in those terrible places,” she says. “Your mother and sister. The van Pelses. Mr. Pfeffer. All gone. I have such horrible nightmares about it. It’s too much, Anne. I know that sounds cowardly and unfeeling. But it’s just all too much.”

“It’s not cowardly,” Anne tells her, grateful for a glimpse of the old intimacy between them. “I can’t bear it either. I try to tell myself to accept it. That I’m nothing special. That so many people lost everyone. Lost everything. Yet . . . I can’t think . . .” She shakes her head. “I don’t know how to proceed. The sun comes up, and I fill the day, but it means nothing to me, and I want so desperately for that to change,” she hears herself saying. “I want so desperately to have a purpose. A real purpose.”

She swallows. When she thinks of purpose, she can’t help but think of her diary. Even if it was nothing but embarrassingly adolescent scribblings, it gave her purpose. It was the last innocent purpose that Anne had. “When we were in hiding, you remember, I had my diary,” she says. “I know everybody thought it was a silly thing. Just childish doodling. But to me it was so important. It was all I had that was truly mine.” And it’s true. When she thinks of her diary now, she still feels the loss of it physically. As if a limb is missing. An arm or a leg. “But it’s gone now, too.” All that work. All those words. She blinks at that reality and drags her fingers through her hair. “At times I feel so guilty. My mother is dead. My sister is dead. So many dead, and yet I mourn a pile of papers. What does that say about me, Bep?” she wants to know. “What does that make me?” And for an instant she is truly hoping for an answer. But all at once the gate is closed. Anne has bared too much of herself. Bep has a very odd expression patched onto her face. Her mouth is closed by a frown, but her eyes are hiding something electric.

“What?” Anne asks her. “What is it, Bep?”

Bep only shakes her head tightly. “I must get back to my filing,” she declares, and abandons the room.

Alone in the kitchen, Anne feels a thunderous wave of loss crash over her. She feels a greasy charge of nausea in her stomach and retches roughly into the sink, spitting bile over the remains of Bep’s cigarette. Anne has lost her ability to be among people. She must learn to protect herself from them better. To protect them from her. Opening the drain, she washes the mess away.

If you’re ill, you should tell Pim, Margot insists.

“Shut up,” Anne replies. “Can’t you just . . . shut up?”