Annelies полностью

A breathy warmth floats above the canals, and the sun is thrust high into the sky like the eye of heaven. The brewery’s rickety old lorry rumbles into view and shudders to a halt. A crew of workmen appear hustling out of the warehouse doors and start rolling out hefty ironbound kegs, which they proceed to usher up a ramp and stack onto the lorry’s bed. He is wearing a stained canvas apron like the others, his blond hair bristling, uncombed. When he stops, he stands up straight and stares back at her until he gets a friendly elbow from one of the other workers. The keg in place, he hops down to the pavement and breaks into a trot, coming to a halt where only a meter or so separates them. His face is smudged with a half smile.

“You smell like beer,” she says.

He shrugs. “You got your bike fixed.”

“Yep.”

“And your knee works.”

“Can you take a walk with me?” she asks.

“A walk.”

“Just a walk.”

“Why?”

She swallows. “You know why,” she answers, looking at him.

“I dunno,” he considers, “you’re kinda dangerous.”

She doesn’t disagree. “Does that mean you’re too afraid?”

“No. But I can’t. Not right now.” One of the older workmen is already whistling for him to return to the job of loading the lorry. “I gotta work. But tomorrow,” he says.

“Tomorrow.”

“You’ll be here?”

Anne gazes at him. Sweat makes his shirt stick to his skin. “Possibly,” she says. And then she advances on him. Grabbing a handful of his shirt, she presses her mouth against his, attacking with a kiss, before breaking off with a pop of her lips. She feels her glare shove him onto his heels. “You’d better get back to work,” she informs him as she mounts her bike, stabbing the pedal with her foot and pumping away.

The word she is not thinking, not admitting to thinking, is retaliation.

•   •   •

After supper her father springs his trap for her in the kitchen. She is washing the dishes and Miep is drying and setting them on the shelves when in comes Pim trailing the smell of Heeren-Baai pipe tobacco. “I’ll finish up with Anne,” he informs Miep, and Miep does not resist as she usually might when a man offers assistance in the kitchen.

Anne concentrates on dunking the supper dishes into the tub of soapy water, addressing them with a sponge. She brushes a strand of hair from her face with her wrist. Only after she plunges a soup bowl into the rinsing tub and then lifts it from the greasy rainbow of water does she glance at Pim. “Since when do you do kitchen work?” she wants to know.

“Oh, now, that’s not very fair,” her father responds amiably as he wipes the bowl with a faded cotton rag. “I used to help your mother quite often with the dishes. Don’t you recall?”

Anne only shrugs and sponges another bowl.

“Can we discuss this, Anne?” Pim asks her, his tone dipping but still hopeful.

“Discuss what?” The bowl clinks against the rim of the pot as she rinses it and then hands it over. “Discuss supper dishes?”

“She makes me happy, meisje,” her father tells her.

Anne frowns at the plate she picks up. “You’ve replaced Mummy. In the blink of an eye.”

“No. No,” Pim corrects.“I haven’t. It’s not like that. Hadas . . .” He speaks the name, then hesitates, eyes flickering as he works out the next sentence. “She offers me a different kind of happiness,” he decides. “One that I never believed I could experience again.”

“You mean in bed?” Anne asks ruthlessly.

Pim straightens like a whip crack, blinking over the top of his frown. “Anne. Shame on you for asking such an indecent question.”

But Anne sighs drably over the sink. “I only wondered if that’s what you meant.”

“It certainly was not. What I’m speaking of is genuine happiness. Happiness of the heart.”

Anne hands him a wet dish. “Oké,” she says.

He accepts the dish and blankly runs the rag over it. “You’re angry,” he observes. “You’re still very angry.”

A glance from Anne, but no words.

“And whether or not you’re willing to believe it, it’s an anger I recognize, because I felt it, too. I still feel it. But I refuse to let it rule me. I refuse to, Anne,” he insists forcefully. Then he puffs a breath and shakes his head. “Yet I see how it has you in its grasp. How it makes you suffer. Every day. Isn’t there something I can do to help you be free of it, daughter? I continue to try but continue to fail.”

And really before she knows she’s done it, Anne has smashed the dish in her hand against the rim of the sink, shattering it into shrapnel.

Pim leaps back a step, gripping the bowl clutched in the dishrag.

“Oops,” Anne announces, her eyes heating with tears as Miep comes hurrying into the kitchen to view the current catastrophe. “I’m sorry, Miep,” Anne breathes, and strikes away a tear with her wrist. “Butterfingers.”

Her father swallows deeply, wearing a pained expression, but he hands the bowl and rag over to Miep on his way out.

The Grachtengordel

Amsterdam-Centrum