Annelies полностью

Why must you judge people so harshly? Mummy would never have called anybody such names. Didn’t she always try to have a good opinion about people? Didn’t she teach us to keep a good opinion of people, no matter what?

“Maybe. But Mummy has no opinions any longer about anyone,” Anne answers. “She can’t teach us a thing. She’s dead.”

So am I, Margot reminds her. And yet here I am.

“Yes,” Anne must admit. “You’re the only one who hasn’t abandoned me.”

•   •   •

The following day Griet is not at school, leaving Anne sitting beside an empty spot.

The next day she pedals to the bookshop again, hoping this time to find it open, but the door is still locked tight. She raps on the window, cups her hands around her eyes to blot out the glare, and peers through the glass, but there’s nothing to see except shadows. Back at the Prinsengracht, she knocks on the door to the private office and pokes in her head. “Pim?”

Her father is on the telephone, looking harried, but he waves her in anyway. She sits.

She’s hesitant to involve Pim. She feels that the bookshop is her realm now. A small sanctuary, where, surrounded by books, she is insulated and protected by its quiet space. In the shop she can pretend to share the soul of the cat, that old calico rug, who lazes in the sunlight with a headful of cat dreams. Does she really want to open the door of that sanctuary to her father? Yet she’s worried.

“When I arrived at Mr. Nussbaum’s shop yesterday to work, it was completely locked up,” she says. “No note. Nothing. I’m afraid that something’s happened to him.”

Is that a small flicker of caution she spots in Pim’s eyes? “I’m sure he’s fine, Anne. We spoke a few days back on the telephone, he and I. And now that you mention it, I do believe he said he had to do some traveling.”

“So why didn’t he tell me that? Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“It didn’t occur to me, Anne. Perhaps it should have,” he is willing to admit, but meanwhile he’s started slitting open the mail on his desk with a letter opener. Obviously attempting to send her the message that he’s too busy to continue this discussion.

“Where is he traveling to?” Anne wants to know.

“I don’t know, and he didn’t say. Doesn’t he travel for business on occasion? Estate auctions? That sort of thing?”

A spasm of paranoia strikes Anne. Pim and his barracks-block comrade. What else does Pim know that Anne doesn’t? What else has Mr. Nussbaum been discussing with him? What sort of intelligence does he provide her father about the girl who works in his bookshop? “How often do you speak on the phone, the two of you?”

“How often? Not often,” Pim answers.

“He’s not giving you reports on your daughter’s behavior? On her mental state?”

“Anne.” Her father exhales. “You’re being ridiculous.”

“Am I?” She feels willing to believe this.

“Yes,” he informs her in no uncertain terms. “Now, please, I’m busy. Aren’t you? Doesn’t anyone have work for you?”

Anne frowns. Her paranoia suppressed for the moment, her voice becomes lightly petulant. “There is nothing for me to do here. Miep’s out on a sales call with Kugler. Mr. Kleiman went home with a sick belly.”

Browsing through his correspondence. “Well, if you truly have nothing to do, then you can find something to clean. Isn’t that what your mother would always recommend?”

The mention of her mother hardens Anne’s expression. “I’d rather go out and have a bicycle ride,” she says.

“Fine. Then do that if you must,” her father concedes. “Only be sure you’re not late. Remember your promise to help Hadas prepare for Shabbat supper.”

“And since when do we observe the Sabbath anyway?” she asks with faint accusation.

Eyes lift from the letter in his hand. “So now you have an objection to the Shabbat?”

“No, of course not. Just curious. Are you becoming pious, Pim?”

“Please don’t be rude, Anne. All I’m asking is that for once you do as I ask without argument.”

“I’m not arguing. I was just wondering if maybe this is your new wife’s influence.”

“Anne, really,” her father says irritably. “Why must you be so intentionally provocative? Is it so hard to accept that your stepmother should wish to celebrate the Sabbath in our new home?”

Home. Anne thinks about the word. What a weight it suddenly carries. Leaving the private office, she clambers down the steps to the warehouse, making an escape.

“Going out, miss?”

She takes hold of her bicycle. The door to the warehouse stands wide open for ventilation, and the scented air smacks of ground cumin. But old Mr. Nobody Lueders is looking up from one of the milling machines, his face grimy from the work but stretched out in anticipation of her response.