Annelies полностью

That night in her room, she stares at herself naked in the wardrobe mirror and inventories her parts. Unlike Griet, with her voluptuous silhouette, Anne has remained quite petite in that department, and it makes her wonder what she would have looked like at this point if Christians had hid her as well. If she hadn’t been starved to a cat’s weight at Belsen. Would she have a woman’s full body by now? Would the Canadian liberators call to her in the street in the same way they do to Griet?

In bed she pulls up the covers. Griet has tried to advise her on how to touch herself in a way that feels good, but it’s a feat she has not yet managed to accomplish. She follows the instructions in her head, attempting to coax some kind of tingling reaction from herself. She imagines what it would feel like to have a boy’s hand where her clothes hide her body. She thinks of the boy from the warehouse with the mop of blond hair. But then she’s ambushed by a memory of Peter. Sitting with him up in the attic of the hiding place, sharing a bit of privacy while Mouschi purred in his lap, sprawled in a ridiculous paws-up position. Peter was three years older than Anne and spoke with an air of casual, clinical understanding as they discussed it all: Genitalia, both male and female. Sexual procedure. Preventive measures. Somewhat embarrassing at the time, but all highly informative. Her textbook understanding of the male organ had been confirmed—verbally, of course—as had her hunch that boys knew nothing whatsoever about the apparatus of the female. So she had explained. She had already educated herself on the various pipes and functions of a woman’s plumbing and could give Peter a detailed lesson. He was impressed by her composure and comprehensive knowledge. But as she had confided to her diary, she had been a little perplexed when she’d explored herself in the privacy of her bath. She had been a little alarmed. How could a man ever penetrate such a tiny opening? Even more alarming, how could a baby ever be expelled through it?

What are you doing? Margot suddenly demands, as if thoughts of Peter have summoned her instead, and Anne practically jumps out of her skin, clutching the blankets up around her chin. “Damn it, Margot, what do you want?”

I want to know what you’re doing, her sister replies, seated on the edge of the bed in her blue-and-white-striped rags and a lice-matted pullover. Her head shaved down to the scabs, her face colorless with death.

Anne frowns. “You know what I was doing,” she insists. “You know very well.”

And you think it’s appropriate to do that with Miep and Jan in their bed right next door?

“Well, what do you think Miep and Jan do in their bed, dumbbell? Play tiddlywinks?”

Don’t be crude, Margot instructs. They’re a married couple. You’re just a girl with roaming thoughts. It’s not healthy, Anne.

“Oh, what? What’s not healthy?”

You know, Margot assures her. Just what you were doing. Touching yourself in that manner, she says.

“How can that be so? How can it possibly be unhealthy?”

Because it . . . it unnaturally accelerates your development, Margot decides.

“Well, if that’s so, then how come you were doing it?”

What? Margot squawks. I was not. She frowns.

“You were, I heard you. I heard you when we were in the same room before that old bag Pfeffer arrived. And it was Mummy and Pim in the room right next door,” she adds with malicious relish. “You can’t deny it, Margot. I heard what I heard. Maybe I was a few years younger than you, but I could still tell what was going on under your covers.”

Don’t make up lies, Anne, her sister warns, and Anne feels the anger surge freakishly through her body.

“I’m not lying. I’m not lying!”

Suddenly there is someone rapping fearfully at her door. “Anne?” Miep’s voice calling. “Anne, are you all right? Anne?”

She is breathing frantically, sitting bolt upright with the blankets clutched to her chest, white-knuckled. But Margot is gone, leaving only empty space in her wake.

Anne assures Miep that there is nothing to worry about, using as few words as possible. She is oké. A word they have all adopted from their Canadian liberators. Oké.

But when she lies back down in her bed, she doesn’t feel oké. She feels robbed. She feels frustrated. She feels shamed. It makes her think that desire can be a trap. A trap that once it snaps shut on you, keeps you trapped. Never to be completely free. That, she thinks, is the truth about desire.

15 JEALOUSY

I’m not jealous of Margot; I never have been. I’m not envious of her brains or her beauty.