Annelies полностью

Anne feels her face blaze, but a terrible blackness overcomes her, so that she must look away. She must glare blindly at the small button keys of Miep’s typewriter. Pim hands Mrs. Zuckert the file he carried in from the private office, along with a set of petty instructions, then strolls out in a businesslike manner as Anne seethes. To break up the concrete silence, Kugler begins to whistle. He’s good, actually, and is whipping through a wireless hit from the Dutch Swing College Band. Anne’s eyes rise and are caught by the pincer of Mrs. Zuckert’s gaze. The message there is clear: Don’t like me? Too bad. It’s not your opinion that counts. Then, as a kind of counterpoint to Kugler’s whistling, Mrs. Zuckert begins to rattle across the keys of the Herr Typewriter, spitting out her own impenetrable staccato rhythm.

•   •   •

“Have you talked to Bep, Miep?” Anne hears herself asking later in the afternoon, finding Miep in the kitchen fixing a cup of tea for Pim.

“A few days ago, yes,” Miep tells her, turning off the fire under the steaming kettle. “She telephoned. Her father is back in the hospital.”

“Did she say anything about me?”

“About you?”

“Yes. Anything, good or bad.”

“Anne.” Miep pronounces her name firmly and then takes a breath. Obviously to compose her words. “I’m not sure what you’re thinking. But Bep was overjoyed when you came home. Just as we all were.”

Anne says nothing more on the subject. Instead she says, “I’ll take Pim his tea.”

She knocks but doesn’t wait for permission to enter, popping open the door to Pim’s office. Pim glances up from the telephone with a wary expression. Anne brings in the tea and sets it on his desk but then doesn’t leave. Instead she sits and waits, causing Pim to excuse himself from his call long enough to press a hand over the mouthpiece.

“Yes, Anneke?”

“I brought your tea,” she tells him.

“I can see that, meisje, but I’m on a call.”

“Yes, I can see that, too,” Anne replies, but she does not budge.

Returning to the telephone with a half frown, he asks if he might ring the caller back. Setting the receiver on its hook carefully, he turns his frown on his daughter. “Is there something wrong?”

“Who were you talking to?” Her voice is neutral.

“When?”

“Just now on the telephone.”

“Mr. Rosenzweig. My attorney.”

“Why do you need an attorney?”

“Anne. Darling. I’m really rather busy.”

“Why didn’t we go to America?” she asks bluntly.

Pim blinks. Appears mildly stricken. “I beg your pardon?”

“Mummy’s brothers were already there. You knew people in New York City. Mr. Straus,” she says. “Why didn’t we go there when we left Germany?”

“Why?” Pim lifts his eyebrows. “Well, it didn’t seem necessary at the time. You must understand, Anne, when we emigrated, Hitler had only just been appointed Reichskanzler. It was years before any danger of war. And my first responsibility was to make a living and support the family. You and Margot were still so young. You were just a toddler then. So when your uncle Erich had an opportunity for me here in Amsterdam with Opekta, I took it.” He curls his lower lip, staring for an instant at nothing. “We actually did consider the States, your mother and I, but it was so far away, an ocean away. Also, the Americans,” he says. “They had very strict immigration quotas.”

“For Jews,” she says.

“Yes. For Jews.” He doesn’t deny it.

She swallows. Feels a rise of heat in her breast. “Do you ever hate the world, Pim?” It’s a simple question to her, but it appears to shock her father. He shifts back in his chair as if to distance himself from it.

“The world? Of course not. How could I?”

“I do,” Anne tells him. “Sometimes I do.”

Pim looks back at her, pained. “Anneke,” he whispers. “Please, it would break my heart if I thought that were true.”

Biking over the Singel Canal bridge to the Rozengracht, Anne remembers the vulgarities once slopped in paint across the bridge wall. DOWN WITH THE JEWS! THE JEWS ARE OUR PLAGUE! They’ve since been whitewashed over, like many things, but they’re still visible in her mind. However, she concentrates on other things. The stretch of her muscles as she pedals. The cool breeze ruffling her hair. The boy with the straw-blond hair. The touch of his fingers on her face. The salty taste of his mouth before she bit him. Another cyclist dings his bell as he passes her, breaking her reverie, and in the next instant she is skidding to a halt, gripping the handlebars, her knuckles bleaching white.

It’s as if she has accidentally bicycled backward in time.

There’s a man, rather scrawny, hatless, with a balding head and untrimmed chin whiskers, hard at work scraping yellow paint from a door, colored chips dusting his shoes, but the obscenity he’s attempting to eradicate is still quite legible: KIKES PERISH!