Annelies полностью

Anne’s heartbeat swells. The subtitles are blurry, but who needs them? The sprawl of images is mesmerizing; Griet must nudge her twice in order to get her cigarette back. “The dazzling marquees. A glittering extravaganza,” the narrator intones. “Crossroads of the world. Bright lights, the theaters, good food, and dancing to the music of the world’s most famous orchestras.” Something in Anne starts to expand. She can feel it rising from the pit of her belly. The Waldorf Astoria, the Starlight Roof, the Empire Room, Peacock Alley, Radio City Music Hall! Fifth Avenue from Washington Square to 110th Street. “The sidewalk cafés and towering apartment houses.” People stream from banks of crowded elevators. The Empire State Building! “The tallest structure on the face of the earth.” Sixty thousand tons of steel, ten million bricks, seven miles of elevator shafts going straight up. The never-ending view. “The turreted heights.” The Statue of Liberty, a beacon of freedom! Anne’s stare is steady. The force invading her feels like some kind of . . . what? Some kind of destiny, nothing less. Like a message for her alone from the future, or from fate, or maybe even from God himself. Could it be?

A hot dog with everything on it! On the screen a girl takes a huge bite in front of a street vendor. Grand Central Terminal! People streaming across a cavernous concourse, in sunlight pouring from massive cathedral windows. “This is New York,” the narrator reminds with zest. “Where everyone’s wish comes true. Where dreams come to life. Where the lights outshine the stars in the heavens!”

Squinting into the sunlight after the film, Anne feels as if the image of those towers has been singed onto the insides of her eyes.

This is New York. Where everyone’s wish comes true.

Prinsengracht 263

Offices of Opekta and Pectacon

Two additions have been made to the office over the past few weeks. The first is a new typewriter. An Olympia Model 8. It’s German-made war booty with a sleek military shape, a roll of vulcanized rubber, and a grin of punishing type bars. It boasts an assertive array of slate-gray keys, including a key for umlauts. It is a ruthless machine manufactured to type out arrest lists. To type out execution lists. Not so long ago, it was used to hail the führer’s name at the close of every decree, in a clatter of steely type. Now it types out memos and correspondence advancing the sale of gelatin products to Dutch housewives. How humiliating for the Herr Typewriter. Such a demotion in rank.

Then there’s the second addition. She is a well-built machine, too. A woman, with carefully managed hair, capable hands, and a profile as regally featured as the queen’s head on a fiver. This is Mrs. Zuckert. Ostensibly it was Mr. Kugler who hired her as both a typist and a part-time bookkeeper, but Anne knows that nothing happens in the office without Pim’s approval, and Pim certainly seems to approve. She’s attractive for a woman of a certain age, handsome, with thick reddish curls, and a gaze as strong as hot coffee. And then there’s the matter of her forearm, or rather what’s tattooed upon it. Anne has only seen it once, as the woman stretched for a box of powdered milk surrogate on a shelf in the office kitchen. She’s not very tall, and her sleeve was tugged away from her forearm, revealing a string of purple numbers.

In the kitchen, where the women address one another by their given names, Mrs. Zuckert explains that her mother named her Hadassah but directs everyone to call her Dassah. That is the name she answers to, she says. Everyone is polite, but there’s a sense that Dassah is a creature that should be given a wide berth. There is something in her gaze that reveals the lioness at her core.

On the other hand, Pim appears quite eager in his approach toward the lady. Suddenly he is spending time in the front rooms, just to look out the windows, he says, and absorb some good Dutch sunshine. Or he happens to remember a joke as he delivers a file to Mrs. Zuckert’s possession. Mrs. Zuckert smiles appreciatively, regardless of the fact that it’s a repeat of the joke from two days before. “Ah, yes.” She nods, eyebrows arched. “Very clever, Mr. Frank,” she responds in her good Germanic Dutch. “Very funny.”

“Yes, Pim,” Anne cannot help but cut in, “even more funny than it was the first time you told it.”

“Anne,” Miep scolds her mildly. “Decorum, please. We’re in a business office.”

Tell him that, she almost answers, but buttons her lip. Pim, however, chuckles and takes his daughter’s rudeness in stride. “Never mind, Miep,” he says. “Anne has always had a talent for rudeness. God knows her mother, may she rest, tried to cure her of it, but . . .” He shrugs and allows the sentence to finish itself.