Annelies полностью

Mrs. Zuckert crushes out her cigarette in the red ashtray. “There are some customers who placed orders, Anne,” she says. “They should be contacted about the delays this matter will cause. Perhaps you can help me make the telephone calls? We’ll say that we’re experiencing a temporary disruption of supply from our wholesalers. They probably won’t believe us—news travels fast, especially when it involves the bureaus. At best they’ll think we can’t pay our bills, but then who among us can? In any case I’ve found that the Dutch are far too polite to ask embarrassing questions. So leave your father in peace and concentrate on work. It’ll be better for you in the long run,” she says. “Besides, you can always excoriate him at a later date.”

“You don’t feel guilty?” Anne demands.

“Guilty?” Mrs. Zuckert lifts her eyebrows again.

“Guilty at forcing my father to be disloyal to his wife’s memory?”

“Oh, so now it’s me who forces him, is it? Fine. The answer, I can assure you, is no. I feel no guilt over my feelings for your father. I feel no guilt, period. The dead are gone and lost to us now. And guilt is the worst kind of poison. That much, Anne, you should learn.”

Suddenly Anne pushes herself up from the chair and bolts away from the desk. Away from Mrs. Zuckert, away from the office, down the stairs, and into the warehouse, where she mounts her bicycle and shoves off into the street. A squat little automobile scolds her with a toot, but she ignores it and pedals away, up the street and across the shaded Leidsegracht. Her heart is thrumming in her chest. Her muscles clammy. She is following the strongest of her urges, the urge to flee. To escape. Why she loses control is hard to say. Maybe it’s because of a bump in the sidewalk, or maybe because her bike tires have lost too much tread, or because she has pedaled too close to the curb. Or maybe it’s simply her own panicked anguish that derails her. The screech of a lorry’s rubber tire is deafening, and then she is falling, nothing but a vivid helplessness between her and the pavement, until the impact of the fall slams the breath from her body. She sees a wheel wobbling above her and hears a voice swimming dizzily in her head. She can tell it’s the driver of the lorry, who’s out from behind the wheel, demanding to know if she’s hurt as he’s lifting her bicycle. She feels an uncomfortable throb in her leg, when suddenly Margot is there, trying to help her up, dressed in her school clothes, reporting on the accident. Your knee. You’ve scraped up your knee.

“I can see that,” Anne answers flatly. But suddenly something’s off. Through the dizziness she sees that it’s not Margot helping her stand, it’s the boy with the straw-blond hair. “Can you walk?” he asks her.

“I don’t know. Yes, I think. Is my bicycle damaged?”

The lorry driver is a middle-aged Dutchman in a frayed cap, with callused hands and thick jowls. He lifts her bicycle to perform an examination. “Looks like the tire burst. And—I don’t know—fender’s a little bent. But it’s not hard to fix. If you’re not too bad off, I can put the bike in the rear of the lorry and take you to your house,” he volunteers. “Where do you live?”

“In the Jekerstraat,” says Anne. “But my father’s office is just around the corner in the Prinsengracht.”

“That’ll do. Hold on.” And as the driver makes room in the back of his lorry for the bicycle, Anne cannot help but be aware of the strength of the blond boy’s arms and the salty aroma of his sweat.

“I saw you standing by the canal,” she tells him.

“Did you? I saw you fall off your bicycle.”

“I’m sure I can walk,” she declares, though she’s not sure that she wants to. Not just yet. Her leg does hurt, that’s true. And maybe she’s not quite ready to give up the weightless feeling of her body hung in the boy’s half embrace.

“You smell nice,” the boy offers, and Anne looks up at him, surprised. There’s a kind of pale statement of fact in his eyes. The driver returns, yanking open the passenger door with a creak of hinges, and he and the boy load her into the passenger seat. The boy shuts the door behind her and steps away, hands stuffed back into his pockets.

The window is rolled down. Anne hooks her elbow over the door and leans her head out. “Your name is Raaf,” she tells him.

“And yours is Anne,” the boy answers.

“Why did you vanish?”

“I didn’t vanish. I’m standing right here.”

“But at the warehouse. You stopped showing up. Was it because of what I did?”

The boy almost grins. “Well. Usually when I wanna get bit, I steal a bone from a dog.”

“I’m sorry.”

The driver hops into the seat beside her and slams his door shut before revving the engine.

“Will you come back to work?” she asks the boy.

He shakes his head. “Nah. I got another job at a brewery house in the Lindengracht.”

“But don’t you miss the smell of the spices?”

“Never thought about it,” the boy replies.