Annelies

by David R. Gillham

  What are you doing? Margot suddenly demands, as if thoughts of Peter have summoned her instead, and Anne practically jumps out of her skin, clutching the blankets up around her chin. “Damn it, Margot, what do you want?”

  I want to know what you’re doing, her sister replies, seated on the edge of the bed in her blue-and-white-striped rags and a lice-matted pullover. Her head shaved down to the scabs, her face colorless with death.

  Anne frowns. “You know what I was doing,” she insists. “You know very well.”

  And you think it’s appropriate to do that with Miep and Jan in their bed right next door?

  “Well, what do you think Miep and Jan do in their bed, dumbbell? Play tiddlywinks?”

  Don’t be crude, Margot instructs. They’re a married couple. You’re just a girl with roaming thoughts. It’s not healthy, Anne.

  “Oh, what? What’s not healthy?”

  You know, Margot assures her. Just what you were doing. Touching yourself in that manner, she says.

  “How can that be so? How can it possibly be unhealthy?”

  Because it . . . it unnaturally accelerates your development, Margot decides.

  “Well, if that’s so, then how come you were doing it?”

  What? Margot squawks. I was not. She frowns.

  “You were, I heard you. I heard you when we were in the same room before that old bag Pfeffer arrived. And it was Mummy and Pim in the room right next door,” she adds with malicious relish. “You can’t deny it, Margot. I heard what I heard. Maybe I was a few years younger than you, but I could still tell what was going on under your covers.”

  Don’t make up lies, Anne, her sister warns, and Anne feels the anger surge freakishly through her body.

  “I’m not lying. I’m not lying!”

  Suddenly there is someone rapping fearfully at her door. “Anne?” Miep’s voice calling. “Anne, are you all right? Anne?”

  She is breathing frantically, sitting bolt upright with the blankets clutched to her chest, white-knuckled. But Margot is gone, leaving only empty space in her wake.

  Anne assures Miep that there is nothing to worry about, using as few words as possible. She is oké. A word they have all adopted from their Canadian liberators. Oké.

  But when she lies back down in her bed, she doesn’t feel oké. She feels robbed. She feels frustrated. She feels shamed. It makes her think that desire can be a trap. A trap that once it snaps shut on you, keeps you trapped. Never to be completely free. That, she thinks, is the truth about desire.

  15

  JEALOUSY

  I’m not jealous of Margot; I never have been. I’m not envious of her brains or her beauty.

  —Anne Frank,from her diary, 30 October 1943

  1946

  Amsterdam

  LIBERATED NETHERLANDS

  Sitting on her bed in the light of her lamp, the notebook in her lap, she writes about a day in Birkenau during the last weeks Mummy was with them. There was a woman in their barracks, a Dutch woman, who for a ration of bread might organize something warmer to wear. The woman liked Margot because she was the same age as her daughter, or something like that. Anyway, Mummy traded a bite of their camp bread for a woolen pullover and gave it to Margot. Anne remembers it because she was just so insanely jealous. Wasn’t she the sickly one? Growing up, wasn’t it Anne who caught everything there was to catch?

  The sweater was ugly and ragged along the bottom hem, and Anne had always despised the color brown, but how she wanted it. Wanted it because Mummy had given it to Margot and not to her. It made her feel very ashamed to be so overlooked. Margot got a pullover, and what did Anne get? Scabies.

  Soon after her mother’s trade for the sweater, there was a selection in their section of the Frauenlager, but not for the gas chamber. No, the rumor was it was for a work camp in Liebenau, far away from Auschwitz-Birkenau, and what luck! Margot and Anne and their mother were all three picked for the transport, but that’s when the SS-Lagerarzt saw that Anne had the Itch. It was hard to miss, really; greasy red and black sores had spread over her arms and hands and neck. So instead of the sanctuary of an Arbeitslager, Anne was sent to the Scabies Block. After that her mother and Margot stayed, too. They didn’t have to. They could have gone to Liebenau. There were no smoking chimneys there, just factory work. They could have survived. But because Anne had the Itch, they stayed.

  Sometimes Anne can still feel the cold ground under her. Margot came with her to the Scabies Block just so Anne wouldn’t be alone, which meant it wasn’t long before both sisters were infected. They sat beside each other in the dirt, tucked under a blanket in the murky shadows of the block, not talking. Anne glared into nothing, listening to the groans of the sick and the squeak and patter of the rats. When a small scoop of light crumbled out from the ground beneath the wall, she didn’t understand what was happening. Not at first. And then she heard Mummy’s voice. “Is it working?” Mummy begged to know, and another woman answered, “Yes. It’s working.” Mummy and a lady from their barracks had managed to dig a hole from the outside. Anne heard Mummy calling their names and tried to call back, but she barely had a voice at that point, so she managed to rouse Margot, and they crawled over to the hole, where Mummy stuffed through a piece of bread. Margot tore it in two and gave her sister half. Anne can still taste the bitter roughness of that bread and remembers how desperately she swallowed it down. But even so at that moment, when she should have loved Mummy utterly, she felt a pinch of anger.

  16

  TRUST

  I was born happy, I love people, I have a trusting nature, and I’d like everyone else to be happy too.

  —Anne Frank,from her diary, 25 March 1944

  1946

  Amsterdam

  LIBERATED NETHERLANDS

  By noon a bright sun is bluing the sky, and Anne and Griet find they have had enough of school for the day. They hurry down the stairwell at the rear of the building and steal into the street. Only the circling gulls above the canal squawk with alarm at their truancy. On their bicycles it’s twenty minutes to the movie house. The cobblestones have been lacquered silvery bright by the early rain, but Anne feels free riding her bicycle, darting and weaving in between pedestrians. She feels the thrill of the speed, the rough delight of her tires brisking along the streets. People scold her impertinence, but it only makes her laugh with a keen release, and she calls back to Griet to keep up with a wild brand of joy.

  * * *

  • • •

  Canadian troops are occupying the newly opened pubs, dance halls, and café tables as the city slowly drowses awake. For months Canadian cigarette rations have stood as the standard currency across the town. Shopkeepers display printed signs in their windows written in English: NO CURRENCY ACCEPTED. CIGARETTES ONLY. The English language has invaded the movie houses, too, and Dutch has been relegated to the subtitles.

  Anne and Griet buy their tickets and step into the dim auditorium, which is nothing but a roomful of chairs facing the whitewashed wall where the film will be projected. To advertise their freedom, their brash disregard, both girls have hooked their legs over the empty seats in front of them, causing their skirts to hike, uncovering their knees and showing off their calves.

  The movie is a comedy. A short, fat man and a tall, skinny man are best pals, yet there’s always something the fat one is doing to earn him a slap or a punch. It’s easy to see that the fat one is the funny man and that his antics are driving the show. The skinny man is only there to have jokes bounced off him and to administer hilarious punishment with a seltzer bottle or a bop on the noggin. The fat man is chased by a tiny yapping lapdog. Chased by a Chinese cook wielding a cleaver. Chased by a woman whose skirt has been ripped off. Everyone laughs. Anne laughs. She laughs as if she might never stop, as if she might drown in her own laughter.

  The girls are still laughing when they stagger out into the afte
rnoon. They lean against the casements featuring the advertising placards and huff smilingly at the air.

  “Jezus Christus, that was too much,” Griet moans.

  Anne sighs a laugh and breathes through a smile. “I’ve never heard you say that,” she notices.

  “Heard me say what?”

  “Jezus Christus.”

  Griet only shrugs. “It’s just a saying.”

  They hear a whistle as two of the Canadian soldiers cycle past them. “Hey there, honeypot.” One of them grins at Griet. “You look like you’re gonna bust outta your shirt.” And then he says something else that exceeds Anne’s grasp of English, something that causes the soldiers to chortle together loudly as they pedal off.

  “What did he say, what did he say?” Griet is desperate to know.

  “He said, ‘Hello, you beautiful ladies—please marry us and come live in our castles in Canada.’”

  “Oh, he did not. Did he?”

  “No.”

  “Are there castles in Canada?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe there are.” She expels a breath. “I have to be going.”

  “Aw, don’t tell me you have to work in your father’s dumb old office again.”

  “I do.”

  “It’s not fair. You should come over to my flat. Nobody’s home at this time of day. We could do whatever we want.”

  “Tomorrow, maybe. Today, I promised my father.”

  “Promises.” Griet shrugs. “Well, if you must. But before you go”—she smiles—“I’ve got something for you.”

  Anne smiles back at the tube of lipstick that Griet produces from her pocket. “Where did you get that?”

  “Henk. He got a bunch of them from his brother,” Griet whispers mischievously as she unscrews the tube. Anne answers by shaping her mouth into a bow. She feels the sticky, creamy flow of the lip rouge, watching Griet shape her own mouth into an instructive oval as she applies the color to Anne’s lips. “Perfection.” Griet’s laugh is impish. “Now you’re irresistible.”

  But Anne’s attention has been caught by a figure leaning against the brick balustrade at the end of the canal bridge. It’s the yellow-haired boy from the spice warehouse. A loiterer, dressed in poor, ill-fitting clothes, he gazes at them.

  “Who’s that?” Griet wants to know.

  “I don’t know his name. He works in my father’s warehouse.”

  “Well. He looks very interested in something,” she points out, and gives Anne a nudge. “I wonder what.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Curiosity. That’s all it is. It’s just for curiosity’s sake that Anne walks her bicycle up the Prinsengracht rather than riding it. At first she camouflages her over-the-shoulder glances. Stopping to tie her shoe and sneaking a peek. Another fleeting look as she allows an old man to pass with his cane or to yield to a pair of cyclists dinging their bells as they turn onto the Leidsegracht. Each time, she sees that he’s still behind her, hands stuffed into his trouser pockets, his shoulders hunched with a purposeful stride.

  She’s both excited by this and a little frightened. The gulls are swooping above her, crying. She can smell the diesel stench of boat engines. By the time she passes the fat yellow advertising column at the corner of the Rozenstraat, she quits trying to cover her backward glances. Halfway across the bridge to the Westermarkt, she stops as a canal boat putters beneath and leans her bike against the stonework. The boy hesitates for an instant. But then he walks toward her.

  “You’re following me,” she accuses him blankly.

  “Could be,” he answers.

  “Why?” She feels his eyes penetrating her bravado.

  “Why do you think?”

  “I’m sure I haven’t the slightest,” Anne insists.

  “No?” A smile bends his lip. “I saw you coming out of the movie house. Do you like it when soldiers whistle at you?”

  She feels a sudden heat. “It wasn’t me they were whistling at.”

  “Oh. You mean it was your friend with the big boobies.”

  Anne’s jaw clenches.

  “Well, I like you better,” the boy tells her.

  “Oh, do you? That’s such an honor.” She frowns. Though, honestly, she’s surprised at the bright sting of joy she feels.

  “I like your face. I like watching you look at things.”

  “Things?”

  “Things.” He shrugs. “I liked the way you looked at me. But I wasn’t sure.”

  “Sure of what?”

  The boy gazes at her.

  “Sure of what?”

  Another shrug. “You’re the owner’s daughter. I’m just a broom boy. A piece of canal trash.”

  Anne stares back at him. “You’re a gentile,” she says, “and I’m Jewish.” She says this and waits for his response. Waits to judge his response. But all he gives her is a lazy exhale. “That doesn’t mean something to you?” she must demand.

  “Well. My pap always said Jews are bloodsuckers. But my pap hated everybody. Me? I don’t care if you’re from the moon. I just want to touch your face.”

  Anne breathes in and then breathes out. The boy is so close to her. The maleness of him. She feels tension in the simple proximity of their bodies. She can smell his bitter sweat. Is it guilt that stings her? Margot is never going to stand so close to a rough-edged boy like this, with nothing but a heartbeat between them. Anne feels her attraction as if it’s a type of pain.

  “That’s all you want?” she asks. “Just to touch my face?”

  The boy’s expression bends as he turns his head, unsure if he is being baited. She can see the hurt in his eyes. The uncertainty.

  “Well, then,” Anne prompts. “I’m standing here.”

  And now the boy straightens. His posture perks up, but his eyes are still hunted. “You mean . . . now?”

  The carillon of the Westertoren chimes the quarter hour. The boy glances around, but the bustling Dutch citizenry are more interested in their own business than in how close together the two of them are standing. So he takes another step forward. She watches his hand rise and notices the dirt under his fingernails, but then she looks into his face as, ever so gingerly, his fingertips brush the skin of her cheek. It’s just a whisper of a touch, but she feels it root her to the spot. For an instant the pain in his eyes has lifted. She swallows.

  “Can I do it again?” he asks, but doesn’t really wait for an answer. His fingers rise, and he strokes her cheek with a sudden intimacy that causes her heart to clench. Her lips part and her body moves, and in the next instance she seizes him, smothers her mouth against his. It is not a kiss, it’s an attack. She wants to devour him at a single gulp. She snatches his hair as if she might rip it out. She wants to inhale him. She wants so much more than Peter’s wet mouth could ever have offered her in the attic of the Achterhuis. She wants the boy’s breath. She wants his blood. And when she bites his lip, she tastes it.

  He yelps painfully as he breaks away from her. His eyes blinking with shock, he wipes his lips and glares at the stain of blood and lipstick on his fingers without comprehension. Anne gives him a wild gaze, her eyes flooding with tears, as she mounts her bicycle and launches her frantic escape.

  * * *

  Prinsengracht 263

  Offices of Opekta and Pectacon

  Amsterdam-Centrum

  When she reaches the doors of her father’s building, she is out of breath, still wiping away the tears as she rolls her bicycle into the warehouse. The air is thick with coriander, and a powdery haze hangs in the heavy sunlight. The men ignore her, too busy to bother with hellos, which is a relief. She climbs the steep stairs slowly and then pauses outside the office door, trying to compose herself. Wipes the lipstick onto a handkerchief, trying to compose a face to wear. She was once well known among her friends for her expressions of careless ins
ouciance. But now her heart is a deep drumbeat in her chest, and she feels a terrible thrum of rage and hunger. She breathes in, she breathes out, her eyes shut tight, trying to suppress the painful surge of desire that she tastes in her mouth like the tang of the boy’s blood.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she announces, breezing into the front room, her voice a panic of nonchalance. Miep looks up at her with blank anxiety.

  “Late? Oh,” says Miep, and then she shakes her head dismissively. “I hadn’t even noticed. I think Bep has a stack of correspondence that needs filing.”

  Anne looks up, slips her book sack from her shoulder. Bep is watching her nervously from the opposite desk, then staples a selection of papers together with a quick bang.

  “Where is everybody?” Anne wants to know. She noticed that her father’s office door was closed when she climbed the steps from the warehouse, but it meant nothing. Pim has people in the private office all the time. Salesmen, advertising-agency people, spice distributors, a steady flow of municipal functionaries, all with their own particular rubber stamps that require inking. But now Anne wonders, “Where is Mr. Kugler? Where is Mr. Kleiman?”

  A half glance from Miep. “They’re in your papa’s office.”

  Something about the sound of this is odd. The small intimacy softening Miep’s voice. In the flat they share, Miep calls Pim by his given name, “Otto,” but at the office it is always and only “Mr. Frank.” Now it’s suddenly “in your papa’s office.”

  Bep is harried as she dashes off her explanation of Anne’s assignment, and then she picks up the teacup and saucer from her desk. “I’m going to wash the dishes,” she announces, standing. And before Anne can respond, Bep is bustling away, pausing only to collect an empty cup from Mr. Kleiman’s desk before rattling off to the kitchen beside Pim’s private office.