Annelies полностью

“Nope,” Anne replies, closing her notebook and leaning forward on her knees. Sometime it’s so pleasurable to be frivolous. To pretend that she’s a young Dutch girl like any other. “Never even come close,” she says, thinking of Peter up in the attic. His damp lips, their clumsy touching, all very tame. But the memory stings her so strongly that she dismisses it. She knows there is a boy named Henk whom Griet has taken up with. She’s seen the two of them necking. “Have you ever?”

Griet frowns sheepishly. “Only sort of,” she confesses. “I’ve let Henk do some things. Touch me places. But that’s all.” Henk’s given her cigarettes and chewing gum and has even promised her a lipstick, since he claims that his older brother is in the black market. Also, he’s a goy! Maybe Griet’s become so accustomed to playing the role of a gentile that it’s hard to go back to being a Jew in this world.

“And have you ever,” Anne wonders, “touched him places?”

“Oh, you mean his lul? No, though he showed it to me once.”

“Really?”

Griet snorts a small laugh into her hand and then drops her voice. “It looked like a sausage,” she confides. “Like a weisswurst, only kind of purplish, and it stood up at attention. He wanted me to rub it, but I wouldn’t.”

Anne smiles. “Like Aladdin’s lamp,” she says, and laughs, delighted at the little crudity.

Griet grins back, devilish. “Until out comes the genie!”

Prinsengracht 263

Offices of Opekta and Pectacon

Amsterdam-Centrum

Pim has found her a bicycle, her first since hers was stolen during the occupation. It’s an old black tweewieler with a worn brown leather seat and actual rubber tires, while much of Amsterdam is still riding on metal rims. After pedaling through a damp afternoon to the Prinsengracht office, Anne wheels her bicycle into the warehouse, because fingers are still generally too sticky for her to risk leaving it on the street. The noise of the milling machinery is loud, and the smell of the spices seasons the air. Cloves, pepper, and ginger. Monsieur le Félin Mouschi darts in a blur across the dusty floor, pursuing a rodent snack no doubt, leaving a trail of clover-shaped paw prints in the dust. Before the war Anne had looked forward to visiting the warehouse with Pim, especially when they were grinding nutmeg or cinnamon. The aroma made her feel giddy. And the older workers, softened up by the thought of their own kids, often gave her sweets. Licorice or sometimes honey drops. Mr. Travis showed her a magic trick with a coin that made her laugh, and she marveled at the mysterious warehouse slang the men barked at one another over the hum of the grinders. But all that changed once the Germans came. Mr. Travis had to take a job closer to the hospital when his son was badly wounded in the army. Mr. Jansen moved his sick wife to the country, where his brother had a farm. New men were hired. Unfamiliar names were written on the strips of tape above the coat hooks by the warehouse doors. “NSBers,” she remembers Bep claiming in a dark whisper. Dutch Nazi Party men.

Anne squinted. “Really?”

“Some of them,” Bep confirmed.

“And my father knows?” Anne had asked.

“It was your papa who told my papa they must be hired.”

Shortly after they went into hiding, Bep’s father, who was a chief participant in their secret, was struck by cancer and had to be replaced as workshop foreman. So with the family in hiding, the warehouse workers on the ground floor became a source of daily danger. If one of them heard something. If one of them saw something. If one of them suspected. They became the enemy in a sense, just as much as the moffen.

But now those men are gone. It’s a new crew, free of traitors, but they keep themselves to themselves and have no interest in Anne Frank. Except maybe one of them. It’s a Wednesday. Always a heavy day of milling to fulfill shipments for the end of the week. Propping her bike in the corner, Anne inhales the warm, nutty aroma of mace but can’t help but notice that one of the workers gives her a direct look as he hefts a second barrel of spice onto a pull cart. He is a lean, sinewy youth with a hard, pale glare, and he muscles the large barrel into place as if he’s showing off his strength. As if maybe he has something to prove to the dark-headed Joods meisje who’s the owner’s daughter. Anne peers back at him. The boy’s hair is straw blond and uncombed. His clothes are patches sewn together. His jaw is square, and there’s a heaviness to his eyes, as if something terrible and unalterable has settled in his gaze, turning his eyes the color of ashes. His name? She’s never heard it, nor has she ever heard him speak. Something about the boy does not invite conversation. A second later the youth grunts and looks away like she doesn’t exist, but he leaves Anne with a lift that starts just below her belly and spreads out into a breathy lightness that reaches all points of her realm.