Annelies полностью

Coming down the steps, she spots Pim by the door to his private office with Mrs. Zuckert. His hand is on her arm. And though Anne cannot discern what they are saying, she cannot miss the intimate tone of their murmur. She decides to make a noise. Scuffs a step loudly and watches how swiftly her father’s hand disconnects from the lady’s limb. His forehead prunes lightly as he calls upward, “Anne?”

“Yes, Pim. It’s me.”

“Your eyes are reddened. Are you all right, meisje?”

“I’m fine.”

“You were up in the rooms again?” This is how he refers to the Achterhuis now: up in the rooms.

“Only for a few minutes.”

“Anne, darling, I worry that you spend too much time up there.”

“And I worry that you don’t spend enough time, Pim.”

An edge of silence like a knife, but Mrs. Zuckert ignores it. “Thank you, Otto,” she says, her voice pleasantly relaxed. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” And then she smiles—“Good night, Anne”—but doesn’t stick around for Anne to reply.

“You know, I can take dictation, too,” she says to her father. “Don’t you recall the mail-order courses?” Line-height parts, quarter-height parts, half-height consonants, the System Groote. “Margot and I completed them. Don’t you remember?”

Another blink. Often the mere mention of Margot’s name dampens Pim’s expression. His poor Mutz, he always calls her.

“I could take dictation from you,” Anne says, plowing ahead. “It would be good practice for me,” she tells him with earnest intention. “So, really, you don’t always have to rely on your dear Mrs. Zuckert.”

For an instant Pim appears distressed. But then he quickly regains control and offers Anne his particular brand of pleasantly frowning agreement. “Hmm. Well,” he says, matching Anne’s earnest tone, “that sounds like a very compelling proposition.” But during the fraction of a heartbeat in which he meets his daughter’s eyes, she can spot the jolt of inflexible resolve behind the façade. The same resolve that must have enabled Otto Heinrich Frank to survive five months of KL Auschwitz.

•   •   •

Later, after the supper dishes are cleared and washed and Miep and Jan have gone out for their evening walk, Anne finds Pim sitting in a chair in the Jekerstraat flat with a book open. She watches him from the room’s threshold. His body reedy and his face thin, but with a touch of color returning to his cheeks. His eyes look gentle and unhurried as he gazes down at the page, lost in words. It’s Goethe he’s reading this time instead of Dickens. The smoke from his cigarette curls softly upward.

He raises his eyes suddenly when he realizes that his daughter is watching him. “Anne?”

“So you know she’s divorced?” Anne asks him.

His expression does not change, but the light recedes immediately from his eyes.

“Mrs. Zuckert,” Anne says thickly. “Your favorite—” She begins to say, Your favorite in the office, but Pim’s voice is level when he cuts her off.

“I know who you mean, Anne. And the answer is yes. I am aware that Mrs. Zuckert has been divorced. There is no need to stigmatize her over it. So she left a bad marriage. That does not make her a bad person.”

“This is not about her,” Anne lies, “it’s about you, Pim. Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what, daughter? I’m not doing anything.”

“Yes you are,” she insists. “Yes, you are. It’s obvious to everyone. She calls you by your given name, for God’s sake.”

And now her father expels a breath. He cheats a drag from his cigarette before tamping it out in Miep’s Bakelite ashtray, which he’s dirtied like a fireplace grate. “Anne,” he says. Her name as a preamble. The beginning of a lecture or a sermon: Anne, you have no idea what you’re saying. Anne, you have no business interfering with adults. Anne, you are still only a child. But what he says is, “Anne, I won’t deny that I may have certain feelings in regard to Mrs. Zuckert. And I won’t deny that she may, and I said may, harbor certain feelings for me.” He pauses. Allows these words to sink in. “Now, of course I can understand that you might find it difficult to accept such a . . .” Such a what? “A situation,” he decides to call it.

“You understand?” All at once the fury in her breaks free. “You understand, do you? No, Pim. No, I don’t think you understand a thing.”

Her father shifts uncomfortably in the chair and huffs a breath. “Really, it’s always this, isn’t it?” he says. “Always this anger. It’s all you offer me, Anneke.”

“Well, perhaps”—and her eyes are hot as she says it—“perhaps I’m angry because you’re betraying my mother’s memory.”

“No,” Pim replies adamantly.

“Yes. You are. How long has your wife been dead, Pim? Fourteen months? Fifteen? No time to waste. Better get a replacement in the works!”

“Stop it,” he demands, running his fingers over the vein suddenly popping at his temple. “Just stop it.”

“Kugler says she used to do bookkeeping for the company. Is that when you first noticed her, when Mummy wasn’t around?”