Annelies

by David R. Gillham

  Anne does not answer.

  “In any case, I didn’t really understand my Tova’s suffering. I didn’t understand what it was like to be lonely, not yet. Not in the way Tova was lonely.”

  Anne stays frozen as the woman gazes at her snifter of brandy, then takes another swallow. “When the Boche came rolling in with their tanks and troop lorries,” she says, “they were billeted in several of the houses up the street. All those strapping, fair-headed farm boys with their big black boots. They would jeer at my Tova on her way to school. A homely Jewish girl with the star pinned to her coat. They would jeer at me, too, of course, but not in the same way. It was harder for Tova. She took their insults inside her. That’s when she began to have nightmares. Terrible nightmares. I told her to keep her chin up. I told her that she had to be strong, but she didn’t know how. She didn’t know how to be strong, not like you, Anne. In any case. One night she was late coming home. Very late. I was frantic. The razzias had started. Hundreds of Jews had already been rounded up in the public squares. I went to the police station, where they laughed at me. A missing Jewess? Who cared? There must be plenty by now. But when I came home, Tova was back.”

  She falls silent for a moment, Dassah, scowling into the pocket of a private shadow. “I knew immediately that something had happened, but Tova wouldn’t tell me what it was. I kept asking her, ‘Are you hurt? Did someone hurt you?’” The woman shakes her head and then looks bleakly in Anne’s direction. “It was a German. A soldier, she said, but that she wasn’t hurt. I’ll never know exactly how it happened. Did he force her? She wouldn’t say a word. But as the days passed, I knew. . . .” For a moment she breathes in and out. “I knew that it was still going on. I could tell by the look on her face. I was so angry. So enraged. My own daughter—a moffenhoer. But she said to me, ‘Mama, don’t worry. We’ll be safe now.’ At first I didn’t know what she meant. I just couldn’t fathom it. And then I realized: Tova was protecting us. She said that the SS would never harm the mother of a German soldier’s child.” A pause as Dassah swallows bitterly. A smear of tears glosses her eyes. “I struck her when she said that,” Dassah admits simply. “As hard as I could. I think in that instant I wanted to . . .” she starts to say, but cannot finish the sentence. “The truth is,” she croaks, “the truth is that I wanted to believe her. Underneath all my fury, I wanted to believe that my Tova had actually made the right decision by whoring herself to a Nazi. Of course”—she shrugs in a small way and stares out into the air—“of course, that was a fantasy. When she was four months pregnant, there was a massive razzia in the Jordaan. The biggest yet. I wasn’t there. I was in Amstelveen making arrangements with a man I knew, a Dutch Christian, who was willing to hide us for the right price. When I came back to our flat, I was told by the only neighbor who still deigned to speak to Jews that the Grüne Polizei had swept the neighborhood, street by street, house by house.” She breathes out, as if she is finally ousting a breath that has been caught in her ribs for a very long time. “Tova was gone, and I never saw her again. As far as I have ever been able to determine, she was gassed during her first hour at Sobibor, as were all the pregnant women in her transport. She hadn’t protected anyone by defiling herself. Just the opposite. Her childish scheme was her death sentence.” She shrugs, but when she turns to Anne, a kind of dead fury is buried in her eyes.

  “So now, my dear Annelies”—she glares—“you can imagine my concern when I hear that you are whoring yourself in a similar manner.”

  Anne’s jaw tightens. “That’s a lie.”

  “Is it? I know what you’re doing, and I know with whom you’re doing it.”

  Anne blanches.

  “Oh, don’t worry. I’m the only one who knows—for the moment. Your father still assumes you are pure, and I have no desire to create more pain for him. There’s no reason for him to know that his daughter is desecrating herself.”

  “If that’s what your spy Lueders is telling you, he’s wrong.” Anne swallows heavily. “I see a boy, yes. But I’m not doing anything with him,” she declares. “At least not what you think.”

  “No? Well, then maybe I should test you. Shall I, Anne? Shall I ask you if he’s touched you here or touched you there?”

  “I’ve let him kiss me. That’s all.”

  “Don’t lie!” Dassah bursts out. “Don’t lie, Anne. I hate lies. Lies are worse than the crime!”

  “I’m not lying, and I haven’t committed any crime!” Anne shouts back. “I’m not Tova, and he’s not a Nazi!”

  “Oh, really? Are you actually trying to tell me that you don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “His father was NSB.”

  “No, that’s not true.”

  “It is true.”

  “No. I know that his father was beastly and brutal, but that doesn’t mean he was a Nazi.”

  “You must know that your father was forced to hire party men by the local NSB office?” Dassah informs her bluntly. “Well, he was one of them. A Nazi, Anne. For all you know, he could have been the one who betrayed you and your family to the Gestapo. The man who sent your mother and sister to their deaths!”

  “No! No,” she repeats to Dassah. “You’re the one who’s lying!”

  “If you think so, Anne, then ask the boy,” Dassah suggests, “the next time he’s got you on your back.”

  Anne seizes the nearest thing to her, a book that Pim has left on a shelf, and hurls it. Not really aimed at anything, but the crash of the porcelain vase bursts inside her head. She is sobbing with such wild anger as she charges out the door, not even seeing her father hurrying through the drizzle until she collides with him on the sidewalk.

  “Anne! My, God, Anne, what’s happened?! Where have you been? What’s happened?”

  But she has no explanations to offer. All she can do is try to swallow her tears without choking on them. “Let me go, Pim,” she cries. “Let me go!”

  “I will not. Not till you tell me what’s happened.”

  “She’s a monster!” Anne shrieks at him. “You’ve married a monster!”

  * * *

  • • •

  “She insulted me, Pim.” Smearing the tears from her eyes. “In a very hurtful way.”

  They are camped together in her tiny room. Pim’s stooped figure folded onto the chair. A blanket around his shoulders. She has retreated to her bed, curled up against the wall, a fortress, refusing to look in her father’s direction unless it’s to offer him a volcanic glare. Rain dribbles down the window glass.

  “If she said something harsh,” Pim tells her, “I’m sure that she was simply speaking out of fear.”

  “You’re defending her?”

  “People often say regrettable things when they’re afraid. They hide their fear with anger. You should understand that by now.”

  “Because I’m so well known for my cowardice?”

  “Because you often let your fears get the better of you. Because you often speak without thinking things through. You can be quite hurtful at times.”

  “I can be quite hurtful?” she says. “Again, am I understanding this correctly? That according to my father, I am the one at fault?”

  “So tell me, then, what did she say that was so evil?”

  Anne starts to speak but then stops. Perhaps she does not exactly wish to explain it to Pim. “It was insulting,” she repeats. “Terribly so. That’s all I’ll say.”

  “I’m not trying to assign fault to anyone, Anne,” Pim insists.

  Anne wipes at her eyes. “What else is new?”

  “You think that’s so bad?”

  “I hate having to call her ‘Dassah.’”

  “What would you prefer to call her, then?”

  “I would prefer not to speak to her at all.”

  “All right. That may be your preference. But it’s going to make life quite dif
ficult. Because the fact of the matter is this, Anne: Hadassah and I are married. Like it or not, she is your stepmother. I’m not saying she doesn’t have her faults. Of course she does. We all do. But we have an opportunity here. An opportunity to become a family. To repair some of the ruin inflicted upon us. I cannot bring anyone back. Death has taken them, and that is all there is to say. I will always feel a terrible hole in my heart after losing your mother. And Margot, God rest her. My poor, poor Mutz,” he says. “That hole will never be filled. My marriage to Hadas won’t fill it. I know that. Even the return of my beautiful daughter Anne could not fill it. But I must try to find happiness again, and so must you. Otherwise what is the point of having survived? What is the point of living if we are to be poisoned by our own sorrow?”

  Anne glares blindly at the windmill pattern on her bedspread. For a moment she feels her old love for Pim take hold. “You make it sound so very simple, Pim,” she says.

  “Oh, no. No, it is not simple, as tonight has proved. It will take work. Very dedicated work. But then what is our motto?” he asks.

  “Oh, God, Pim.”

  “Come now, Süsse, say it for me, please. What has always been our motto?”

  Anne frowns, rolling her eyes at the wall with a kind of flattened anger. “‘Work, love, courage, and hope,’” she answers unwillingly.

  “Exactly.” Her father nods, his voice settling into a kind of imposed certainty. “Exactly. Now let us all try to make a new start, shall we?”

  Silence. And then a knock at the door, which Pim opens, allowing Dassah to step into the threshold.

  “I apologize,” she says to Anne, “if I lost my temper tonight and spoke in anger.”

  “You see,” Pim injects. Proof.

  “I really should stay away from brandy when I’m tense.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t the brandy, Hadasma,” Pim informs her. “I have no doubt that my own anxiety contributed greatly to the situation. When you didn’t come home, Anne, I simply went off my head. Which reminds me, daughter,” he says pointedly, “you haven’t offered a single explanation. Exactly where were you?”

  “Apparently,” Dassah answers for her, “she went cycling with a friend from school. What was her name again, Anne?” she asks.

  Anne blinks. “Griet,” she answers blankly.

  “Yes. Griet. That’s it. They went cycling to the Vondelpark and stopped to rest but must have dozed off until the rain woke them. You remember how it can be, Otto. To stretch out on the grass in the late afternoon? It’s better than a feather bed.”

  Pim draws a breath and slowly expels it as he nods. “I do remember,” he claims. And it’s obvious from his expression that he thinks this is a fine explanation, which he’s quite willing to accept.

  Dassah turns to Anne, cementing the falsehood between them. “So I hope you can forgive me,” she says, “for speaking so roughly to you.”

  Anne stares.

  Pim leans forward as a prompt. “Anneke?”

  “Yes,” says Anne thickly. “I forgive you,” she lies.

  “Wonderful,” Pim breathes. “Thank you, Anne. Now you should change out of those damp clothes. You don’t want to catch your death.”

  When Hadassah leaves, Pim huffs a breath of relief. “You have no idea, Anne,” he says, “how much your approval means to her. Her only wish is for the two of you to become friends.”

  Anne glances over to the corner of the room, where Pim’s poor Mutz is standing in her Kazet stripes, the filthy yellow star sagging on her pullover. She gazes back at Anne coolly.

  At least, Anne, you will have some kind of mother again, she points out. Isn’t that better than none at all?

  * * *

  Prinsengracht 263

  Offices of Opekta and Pectacon

  Anne is due at Pim’s office after classes and dreading it. She spoke no more than two words to Pim this morning before stealing out the door for school and now feels the covert shame and anger from the night before pressing on her chest. When she arrives at the warehouse and stows her bike, she spots the foreman, Mr. Groot, stepping out to the edge of the street to roll a smoke. So instead of heading up the steps, she slips the strap of her book satchel over her shoulder and approaches him.

  “Excuse me. Mr. Groot? Can I ask you something?” Groot looks a little undecided about that question, but Anne doesn’t wait for him to say no. “That boy. Raaf Hoekstra, who worked here. You said he didn’t have a good name.”

  “Did I say that?” Groot wonders.

  “Does that mean he was NSB?”

  “The boy? No. Not so much as I know.”

  “But the father, then. He was?”

  Groot tends to his shag closely, glancing out at the canal.

  “I know there were party men working here, Mr. Groot,” Anne assures him. “I know it was my father who said they must be hired. It’s not a secret, if you’re worried that you’ll be spilling the beans.”

  The man shrugs. Then nods his head. “Sure, old Hoekstra had a party number, all right. But it wasn’t just that.”

  Another blockage.

  “No?”

  The man smokes.

  “Mr. Groot?”

  A glance in her direction, as if he’s calculating odds. “Maybe you ought to ask your papa about this, miss.”

  “He doesn’t like to talk about any of it. All that happened during the war,” Anne says. “He thinks it’s too painful. But I think it’s important to know the truth.”

  “Maybe,” Groot is willing to allow. “I just don’t like spreading stories.”

  “Please. I won’t say a word to anyone. I just want to know.”

  Groot puffs out an elongated breath. “We had a problem with thievery,” he says heavily. “This was back when van Maaren was still running things. Somebody was stealing from the spice inventory. To tell the truth, I always wondered if it wasn’t van Maaren himself—but he said he had his eye on this other fellow we had. Dreeson was the name. Not the worst sort, Dreeson, when he was sober, but a boozer like Hoekstra. And Hoekstra and he had some kind of falling-out on the floor of the shop, over what I’ve got no idea. I think Dreeson had sneaked a few shots of kopstoot on his lunch break, and he said something that got Hoekstra angry. It came to blows, until I separated them and sent ’em both home. Then, the next day, Hoekstra showed, but Dreeson didn’t. Not that day or the day after. It took a while for us to get the news, but it turned out Dreeson and his wife’d been hiding their boy from the Huns to keep him out of the labor conscription. Until the Grüne Polizei paid them a late-night call, and that was that. The whole family got hauled away.”

  Anne feels her throat thicken. “And you think . . . you think it was Hoekstra who betrayed them?”

  “I don’t think anything,” Groot assures her. “But the truth is, Hoekstra liked to brag about his connections. He flashed around a pass he said he got from some Gestapo man in the Euterpestraat.” A shrug. “Who knows if it was real? Who knows if any of it was real? He was a drunkard. It could’ve all been nothing more than big talk. But I do remember that fracas he had with Dreeson. And that Hoekstra could have the devil’s own temper if you riled him.”

  “And what happened to him?” Anne wants to know. “To Hoekstra. After liberation?”

  “Can’t say. It was the last winter of the war. He started coming in for his shift drunk as a badger, so van Maaren finally gave him the boot.”

  “Still, you hired his son in his place.”

  “I didn’t think it was fair to condemn the boy just because his father was a pox,” says Mr. Groot. “So when he showed up looking for work, I gave him a chance.” He tells her this, then yells over to one of the other workers and then turns back to Anne and stamps out the butt of his cigarette. “Excuse me, miss. Back to the job.”

  * * *

  • • •

  She
has a difficult time forcing herself up the steps to the office. Halfway up, she stops, feeling herself teeter on the edge of a cliff. Panic swells inside her. She tries to focus on something, a crack in the wood of one of the steps. Counting backward from a hundred, she pinches her wrist, monitoring the surge of her pulse. Margot is there in her death rags. So it’s true, she points out. His father was a Quisling. A collaborator.

  * * *

  The Transvaal

  Oost-Watergraafsmeer

  Amsterdam-Oost

  The air is thick with humidity. She ducks out of school and bikes to the secret den in the Transvaal. Bumping across the Skinny Bridge. Sweaty by the time she turns onto the Louis Bothastraat. It’s shocking to see the ruined buildings so overgrown, life insisting on life even in a graveyard.

  When she enters Raaf’s castle, she finds that the king is not in residence. Seized by an urge, she begins to search through the blankets, then raises the mattress, searching for some bit of evidence. Some connection to the Grüne Polizei. To betrayal.

  Keep looking, Margot prods, appearing in her lice-ridden rags. Her skin ruddy with sores. Keep looking. There must be something here to find. Some evidence.

  But Anne’s afraid suddenly. Afraid that she will find something. Some evidence of guilt. Yet she can’t stop searching. If the truth is ugly, then she must know it. She remembers the death’s-head on the SD man’s cap the day they were arrested. Is it still following her? Still watching her? Some nights she dreams it is. The Totenkopf keeping an eye on her. She feels her heart banging away in her chest.

  “If you’re digging for treasure, you’re gonna be outta luck,” she hears, and swings around with guilty alarm. Raaf is standing in the threshold, hands stuffed into his pockets.