Annelies полностью

“And Peter?” she asks him with a lifeless voice. “What became of Peter?” For a moment she remembers the two of them curled up together on the divan here in the attic. She remembers the athletic beat of the boy’s heart as she rested her head against his chest, his arm hooked around her shoulder as the leaves of the horse chestnut tree gently trembled.

Mauthausen-Gusen. According to Pim that is the name of the camp in Germany where Peter died after the mof evacuated Auschwitz. “I begged him to stay with me,” Pim says. “Begged him to stick it out in the infirmary barracks until the Red Army came. The Russians were so close. We could hear the boom of their artillery.” But Peter was headstrong. Even Auschwitz hadn’t cured him of that. He wouldn’t stay. “Of course, it was very easy to believe that the SS would simply murder everyone they didn’t evacuate.” Pim shrugs dimly. “Very easy to believe. Just as it was very easy to believe that compared to where we were, anything was preferable.”

Anne stares. “He never liked to sit still for too long in one place,” she says.

Pim nods. “I’m sorry, Anneke.”

“Sorry?”

“I know that you had feelings for the boy in a special way,” he says.

But Anne only shakes her head dully. “I thought for a while that I loved him,” she says. “But that’s a feeling that’s hard for me to imagine now, Pim.”

Her father leans against a wooden post, tall and lanky. The daylight is as soft as ashes, a spongy light that absorbs all brightness. Vast, full-bellied clouds scud across the sky. “Your mother was so worried,” he says, “that something improper would happen between you and Peter up here. Unsupervised.”

Anne narrows her eyes. “Nothing did happen. Not really.” She wipes tears from her cheek thoughtlessly. “It’s so strange, Pim. I think that’s why I—” she starts to say but then shakes her head. “It’s hard to explain. I think that’s why I feel such grief over the loss of my diary.”

“Grief?” Pim’s posture stiffens at the shoulders, and his eyes narrow with a quizzical distress. “You feel grief?”

Anne shrugs, embarrassed. “It may sound ridiculous. It was scribbling on paper. I know that, and I know it sounds terribly absurd, and perhaps even terribly selfish. But ‘grief’ is still the word for what I feel. Maybe it’s because if my diary had not been destroyed, they would all still be alive to me in some way. Not just in my memory but on the page.”

Pim does not interrupt his gaze but expels a heavy breath. “Anne. There’s something I must tell you,” he says. “But I don’t know how to begin. So I suppose the only way forward is to simply say it.”

But before he can speak another word, there are footsteps below. Mr. Kugler calling Pim’s name with an urgent tone. Pim crosses over and peers down the attic’s ladder. “Mr. Kugler?”

“My apologies for interrupting, but . . . but there’s a gentleman for you on the telephone.”

“A gentleman?” Pim sounds puzzled and a bit irritated.

“Concerning the issue we were just discussing. I’m afraid it’s rather essential that you speak with him.”

Pim’s sigh ends with a frown. “Ah. Yes. Yes, you’re correct. Thank you, Mr. Kugler.” Returning to Anne, he says, “I’m sorry. I must take this call.”

“But what were you about to say, Pim? What were you about to tell me?”

Pim’s expression turns circumspect. “We’ll talk about it later, Anne,” he assures her, his voice now gaining a velvety disinclination to say more. “I’m sorry, but I must go.” He pauses. “Please, don’t stay up here too long. The dust,” he insists. “It’s not healthy.”

Jan is working late again, past supper. The demands of the Social Service Bureau in a chaotic time, Miep explains, so it’s just them—Miep, Pim, and Anne—as Miep serves a tureen of thick beet soup. Pim is holding forth on an article he’s run across in newspapers. As the First Canadian Army liberated the western Netherlands, young women would try to communicate with friends and relatives in towns still under occupation by chalking messages on the sides of Canadian tanks. Pim finds this not only ingenious but very heartening, apparently. “That these girls should have such faith in the future,” he says with satisfaction. Anne doesn’t seem to notice the bowl of beet soup in front of her; instead she stares at Pim. Her father’s desire to leave behind the horrors they suffered is overwhelming. He is bent on returning to what he likes to call “ordinary life” and has no time to “belabor” the past. Anne finds this maddening.

“Anne, you’re not eating,” Miep observes.