Annelies полностью

It does hurt. Her knee, that is. There’s a slow ache in the joint. The iodine stings under the bandage, and the brandy burns, pooling in her belly. She is planted beside Miep in the back of a bicycle taxi, bumping along the street, following the noise of the gulls. The taxi man is a large fellow, with dusty gray hair bristling from under his cap and a metal livery badge hung from his coat. The air smells of motor traffic, and the morning sun has been clouded as it drags toward midday. “How worried should I be?” Anne asks.

“About your knee?” Miep says.

“About the bureau men collecting the office files.”

Miep expels a weary breath. “I don’t know, exactly.”

“You don’t like her, do you?” Anne asks.

“Who?”

“You know who. Mrs. Zuckert.”

Miep looks directly at Anne and almost smiles. “No, I do not.”

“Neither do I,” says Anne. “So what does Pim see in her?” she complains to the air. “I shouldn’t tell you this probably, but he’s asked her to marry him.”

Miep stiffens visibly. “Yes,” is all she says.

“You know, too?”

“Yes.”

“So Pim told everyone but me?”

“No. Your father said nothing about it.”

“Ah. Then she told you. She must have taken great satisfaction in that moment. Don’t you find it all too disgusting?”

Miep lifts her sharply tweezed eyebrows. Her eyes are blue oceans. “Your father is a very good man, Anne. One of the best men I’ve ever known. He’s not perfect, as I’m sure he would be the first to admit. But he has sacrificed a great deal for the good of others. More than you know. We should not begrudge him a little happiness for a change. And if it’s Mrs. Zuckert who makes him happy, then it’s not for me or for you to criticize him. So I would advise you to bridle your anger. He deserves respect.”

“As does my mother’s memory,” Anne points out.

“Then why don’t you grant your mother’s memory respect and stop insulting her husband? Do you honestly believe that she would have wanted your father to live in misery and loneliness for her sake?”

Anne, however, is not willing to answer this question. The taxi man shouts impatiently at a cyclist, and an auto horn sounds. A swift patter of rain peppers the taxi’s canopy. Anne turns away to hide her face, pretending that it is the pain in her knee causing her eyes to well. Why should he be miserable or lonely? He has, after all, a living daughter.

•   •   •

It’s late when her father returns to the flat. Miep and Jan have long since retired, leaving Anne sitting on the sofa, one stocking foot extended onto one of Miep’s batik pillows, the open notebook on her lap. When the key grates in the lock and the front door opens, she can see, even in the room’s waxy lamplight, that her father is slumped with exhaustion.

“Anne,” he says with a kind of apologetic dread. A tone that matches the expression installed in his eyes. “You were injured.”

“Injured.” Anne repeats the word as if it has many sides to examine. “Yes,” she answers, then shuts her composition book and stands with an overtly discreet grimace of pain. “My bicycle went off the curb. But that’s unimportant.” Tucking the notebook under her arm, she informs him with lifeless formality, “What’s important is that Mrs. Zuckert has informed me of your plans. So let me be the first,” she says, adding the absurdity of a half curtsy on her stiff knee, “to wish you every happiness in your new life.”

“Anne,” Pim repeats, more urgently, “Anne, please. Permit me a moment to speak with you.” But Anne is making her exit with a small hobble, and shuts the door of her room behind her. Inside, she sits on the edge of her bed gripping the notebook, listening to her father’s earnestly distressed knocking and the sound of her name on his lips. But she does not move.

So you’re just going to shut him out like this? Margot asks. She is wearing the dirty pullover displaying the Lager star fashioned from yellow triangles. Her face is shrunken against her cheekbones, her glasses long gone, and her eyes popping like a starved animal’s.

“He’s shutting me out. He’s shutting us both out.”

“Please, Anne,” her father keeps saying, “please open the door.”

“I’m sorry, Pim,” Anne calls back. “I’m undressed.”

She hears him huff dryly. Disappointed in her resistance, disappointed in his inability to overcome it. “I see,” he finally breathes. “Very well. Tomorrow, then, we can talk tomorrow. Good night, my darling.”

“Good night,” Anne calls back. And then to Margot she says, “She’s got him now.”

Got him?

“Do you really imagine that a woman like Hadassah Zuckert is going to permit his memory of either you or of Mummy to intrude upon her agenda?”

So you think she has an agenda, do you?

“Are you stupid as well as dead?” Anne demands to know. “She intends to claim him as her own, Margot. She wants to wash away any trace of his former life.”