Annexed

  She looks up. "What then?"

  The silence in the attic stretches. I'm going to say it. I can feel the words rising up in me, about to be spoken.

  And so can Anne. She holds her hand out suddenly, as though she could stop me. "Peter ... I..."

  It's late. The attic's bathed in late spring twilight. Dusk. That's good. That makes the words come more easily.

  "I'm Peter," I say. And my own name echoes inside me. I hear Liese's voice calling me in my dreams. I hear Anne say my name as she slips through my fingers.

  "Peter van Pels," I say, and for some reason my name sounds wonderful to me. "Peter van Pels." I say it again. I am Peter. I am here, and it feels like a miracle to me. Not just that I'm alive, but that anyone is, ever.

  "Well, that's your name, that's true, but it's hardly an identity, is it?" says Anne.

  I laugh. It sounds odd.

  "It's enough for me," I say. "That's all I want to be. Peter van Pels. Not Jewish, not Dutch, not German, just me!"

  It's a strange feeling hearing my thoughts out loud.

  Anne's voice is a hiss in the dark.

  "Yes, Peter van Pels, too cowardly to own up to being a Jew! Too cowardly to want to tell our story!"

  "No!" Because that's not what I mean. I'm not a coward because I didn't stand in the street and fight to the death for Liese, although I wish I had, and I'm not a coward because I wish I could be invisible enough to go outside. I'm a coward because I can't speak. Like right now, in the dark with Anne's voice accusing me. The words have gone. I'm a coward because I don't know how to be me. That's what I want to say.

  "You're wrong!" is all that comes out of me. Her fury is like a fist in the dark.

  "One day," she cries, "everyone will know what they did. Our story, not theirs. And we'll be proud to be Jews!"

  "Good!" I say. And I mean it. "I wish we could all be whatever we wanted, that's all that matters. That we're all human! We can be anything, Anne, as long as it isn't a Nazi. That's all."

  She isn't listening. "We have to survive, Peter. We have to give witness!"

  I sigh.

  "That's your way, Anne," I say quietly.

  "What other way is there?" she asks. "Are you really happy pretending none of this is happening, to spend all our time kissing on the floor?"

  "What?"

  She blushes.

  "Is that how you see it?" I ask.

  "I asked you the question: what other way is there left, except to tell our story?"

  I don't know the answer to her question. I just know it's not the only question. Listening to her makes me feel like the weight of survival's suffocating me. But Anne won't let me lie down. She won't let me sleep. She's like a tram bell going off in my ear. I sit down next to her.

  "Anne," I say, "what if we lived in Holland, but it was just a name?"

  "Well it is a name." She shakes her head, irritated.

  "I know, but..." She laughs at me before I can finish. I go on anyway. "But what if Holland or Amsterdam were just places? I mean, imagine if you only said those words because they were somewhere you wanted to go." I'm not explaining very well. I can feel it.

  "Well, that's obvious," she says. She laughs. I feel like a clown getting the jokes wrong.

  "Is it?" I ask, wondering. Has she really understood so easily what has taken me so long?

  "Of course," she says.

  I nod. "So Holland is just Holland to you? Not Holland the place that saved us; or Amsterdam that is now so dangerous because people are starving and might betray us?"

  "Oh," she says, and she ruffles my hair. "You mean people attach meaning to places. Yes, of course I understand that, Peter!" She's so quick it tires me.

  "Well what if we didn't?"

  Her hand falls away from my hair. "What do you mean?"

  "What if we didn't attach meaning to places, or religions?" I admit I whisper the last bit.

  "That's not possible, you sweet-hearted twit. It's not human," she says.

  "Isn't it?" The words come out too loud. "If there was no Germany, or Holland, or France, or Belgium, there'd be no one to fight, would there?"

  For once she's silent. It gives me courage. "And Anne, if there were no Christians or Jews—if we were allowed to be just people, just Peter and Anne ... No! I mean that is what we are. We're not just Jews. We're us, here in the attic, feeling what we feel." I gulp. "Like me wanting you—and you wanting to save the world. I mean does one of us always have to be the right one? Can't both things be true?"

  I'm shaking. I've never said so much, or meant it so much. I reach out for her hand but she pushes me away. She stands up, a shadow in the faint light from the window. She doesn't say anything for a while. Neither do I. For a moment I hope that she might turn and take me in her arms, that she might be the Anne who knows this might be our only chance, and wants to take it.

  "I'm grateful to you, Peter," she says.

  "Why?"

  "Because you showed me something."

  "What?"

  "That it's my writing I want, really."

  "Oh."

  "And that everything else, even Father and you, have to come second."

  "I know, but I still thought we might be..."

  "I can't, Peter. I can't think about anything else. Except that it's ending and that we have the chance to tell. Nothing else matters, not to me, and I can't believe you don't want to be a Jew anymore."

  "No! I was born Jewish, I can't deny that. I don't even want to, but it's up to me what I do about it. And I'd never not support Jews, or anyone else being treated like we are."

  "Do you believe in anything?" she asks.

  "Yes!" I say. And the word feels good. Even if it means that she walks away, even if it makes no difference to anyone else, because it matters to me. It's what I think.

  "Like what?" she sneers at me. I turn away from the look on her face so I can put the thoughts into words.

  "I believe in people."

  "Right," she says, "and not God?" I can hear her shock. I'm shocked myself. Shocked at finally hearing the things I've been thinking said out loud. They sound final. They sound real. They sound like a door shutting between us. A door that we'd only just opened.

  "I don't know," I say. "It's not the idea of God I don't like, it's the choosing. It's that one religion is meant to be better than the other. I mean, how is God deciding any different from Nazis deciding, I don't see...?"

  She gasps as though I've hit her, knocked the breath out of her.

  "No, you don't see," she says, "but I do! You don't believe in anything at all!"

  "I believe in people, Anne! In you and me and even Dr. Pfeffer. In all of us." I want to say more, like if I have to die, then I don't want to die for being a Jew, I want to die for ... for being me ... for hating Nazis and everything they stand for. I don't want them to choose why I die ... I want to resist ... But the words have stopped. We don't say any more for a long, long time. Anne waits at the window. I want to put my arm around her, but I can't. I want to hold her, but I can't.

  She's somewhere else now.

  Beyond me.

  "You're a coward, Peter," she says at last, "because you're afraid of being a Jew who'll stand up and be counted."

  I can't answer her. Maybe she's right. Maybe it's true. I don't know. I only know this. "I'm not a practicing Jew and we both know that makes no difference, Anne, that they'll still kill me if they find us."

  "It can't be a choice," she hisses. "Maybe later, but not now, Peter! Not in the middle of all this!"

  I wish, more than anything else in the world, that I could fall into her arms and say, "I'm sorry, I know what you mean, none of it matters, let's just hold each other." But I can't. I have to be me, to understand who I am. If Anne's taught me anything, it's this. It doesn't matter what we want, what matters is who we are, and we can't change that, not even if we were the last people left on earth. I sigh. "But that's what I am saying, Anne," I say quietly, "that for me it is a choice."
>
  "You're wrong," she says. "You're deserting us."

  "Anne! I would never leave you!" The pain of her words twist inside me and I can't help it, I reach out for her.

  "You're already gone!" she says as she leaps away from me. My hand falls through the air and she turns quickly and runs down the stairs.

  I sit in the attic.

  "Great!" I whisper to myself. "Well done, Peter!"

  I want her to come back. I want to hold her. I want to make love to a girl. I want so many things, but what I need is to know who I am. Because if I don't know that, I can only ever be what they say I am.

  A Jew.

  In Auschwitz there is only one way to count a Jew.

  Stand us in the freezing cold or rain or heat in groups of five.

  And add us up.

  Do I count?

  No. I am just a number, a body. A cog in the wheel that must be counted.

  JUNE 7, 1944—PETER FEELS HOPE

  The sun has gone. The wind and rain howl around the house all night. I can't sleep. The wind whistles down the pipe by the head of my bed.

  Outside, terrible things are happening: everything is running out. There is no food. There is no money. People are starving. We are too. How will we survive? Will we survive? We don't know.

  Outside, wonderful things are happening too: the invasion has begun and Churchill has said the end is in sight. We are frightened to hope. Mutti and Papi say, "Ach! It's just a trial, not the real thing," but excitement lingers beneath our words like the stink of Mouschi's pee in the attic. You can't see it but you can smell it.

  It's the smell of hope.

  JUNE 11, 1944—THE DAY BEFORE ANNE'S BIRTHDAY

  I want to buy Anne something beautiful for her birthday. I want her to know that we can still be friends, can't we, even if we're different?

  And now we have to find a way back to friendship. The memory of touching her, wanting her, already feels strange somehow—like a violation. Sometimes you don't know until you try.

  It was wrong.

  It was right.

  It was all we had.

  I ask Miep if she'll buy Anne some flowers. She gives us such hope, Miep. Caen has fallen to the British. Hope is in the air. The Annex is alive with it.

  In the end I ask her to buy some peonies. Pink and young and not yet quite opened—but they will be so full and beautiful when they do. She gives me a strange look when I describe it like that—and then she smiles and nods. The bunch she brings is perfect. I put it on my desk and stare at the flowers all evening. I draw them. But I can't get it. I can get a likeness, but not their essence; not the fresh, alive, unopened green smell of them. I see them in my sleep. Shining in the dark. And when I open my eyes they're still there. I can't wait to give them to her.

  She was about to be fifteen. She was clever and contemptuous and funny and thin and sometimes, when she smiled, she was beautiful. As beautiful as the world outside seemed. I don't know if she'll ever be sixteen.

  JUNE 12, 1944—ANNE'S BIRTHDAY

  Anne looks at them. My flowers.

  "Thank you, Peter, they're lovely."

  I don't say anything. Once I would have wanted to explain. I would have felt sad. I would have wanted them to be perfect for her, but now, well, if Anne doesn't like them, there's nothing I can do.

  "I enjoyed looking at them, all evening," I say, and she glances at me and away again. She's unhappy. I know how that feels. To have a birthday in the Annex, an anniversary. A time of thinking about what's past, and worse, what might be about to come. Birthdays aren't joyous for us, despite the news of the invasion.

  And the weather is terrible. Really.

  Anne fiddles with the little gold bracelet on her wrist that Margot gave her. They giggle together, and play "Remember."

  "Remember when we used to sit on the roof at Merwedeplein?" "Remember at the Jewish Lyceum when that couple came to get married?"

  We're all remembering the past, the way you only can when you're hopeful about the future.

  Mr. Frank looks at me, and smiles. I feel proud when he does that, even though I shouldn't, not really. It's not my doing that we're no longer together, it's just the way it's happened.

  Liberation: that's what we're all talking about.

  "Do you remember walking down Zuider-Amstellaan into town?" says Papi.

  "I remember walking the children to school," says Mrs. Frank suddenly.

  Mr. Frank smiles. "A walk home from work!" he says.

  "Running!" laughs Anne.

  Margot just smiles. I wonder what she's thinking.

  All through the day it comes to me. That feeling. That memory. Of walking, just walking along—not particularly going anywhere. And I smile. I can't help it. Hope is in the air. It frightens me. But I can't stop it being there. Anne and Margot smile.

  Outside, the sun begins to shine again.

  "Why are the British taking so long?" rages Mutti. She's strung so tight that if she let go of herself she might fly to the moon.

  "They're fighting for us," I say, and it feels like a miracle again, that there are people from all over the world, fighting. Fighting to allow the differences between us. Living for us. Dying for us. Without even knowing that we're here. Will we ever see them, the British or American soldiers? And how will it happen? Will they come down the street with tanks, with flags? Will they shout, "Come out, come out, wherever you are?" Will we run down the stairs making as much noise as we can (the way Anne does sometimes when there's an air raid)? Will we stand in the sun or rain or wind again, and hold hands? Will we walk down Prinsengracht into town, and feel the air all around us, on us? "Meow!" Mouschi jumps out of my arms. I've been squeezing him.

  I must stop. I must stop. Because it hurts—hoping.

  "What did you do to poor Mouschi?" croons Anne as she strokes him.

  "Nothing!"

  "You did!" she says as she tickles him under the chin. "Didn't he? Nasty Peter." Margot turns her eyes to the ceiling, then closes them and smiles. Anne and Mouschi stare at me. What can I say? I hoped too hard. That's what I did.

  "Sorry," I say.

  What was it like, the liberation, when it came? I had a picture for it once. The sound of our feet running down the stairs. The feel of the air upon our faces and the sound of the bells ringing. A carillon of bells—the words that Margot used. In my picture, the leaves drifted all over us like confetti, and we threw our arms into the air and fell to the floor, or jumped into the canal. We hugged each other and we ran; we ran down the streets, through the alleyways. We screamed aloud.

  Was it like that?

  I don't know.

  We weren't there.

  Our rooms in the Annex were empty and we had gone.

  AUGUST 4, 1944—THE EIGHT IN THE ANNEX ARE BETRAYED

  The moment arrives, but I am still inside and so don't see it coming.

  It's hot and airless and we long to open the windows. We're studying hard. Suddenly there seems a point again. The walls are closing in, only this time it's upon them, not us.

  Outside, the warehouse doors of 263 Prinsengracht are wide open onto the street. But I don't know that. We're all looking forward to it ending. The Allies are winning. We all know it. The hope beats hard inside me, a pulse, like memory returning to life. I try to stop it, but I can't. Any day now, any day, we could be free. I begin to draw the streets again. I draw the route home, all the way from Prinsengracht to Merwedeplein. In the drawings I make it autumn. I don't want to be too greedy, too hopeful.

  I draw the leaves falling upon us, raining down in gold and red to celebrate. We are so close, so close, as close as the heat in the rooms behind the closed windows.

  Outside.

  A military vehicle draws up. A military policeman gets out. He walks toward the warehouse doors. A worker points to him and gestures upstairs, where ... I am in my room with Mr. Frank.

  "Can you see how the sentence works, Peter? In English you use the word 'it.'"

  I brush t
he sweat out of my face and try to think.

  It is about to happen, the thing we have dreaded most for two years. It is not night the way it always was in my imaginings, but morning. It's a beautiful day. The sun is shining. The birds are singing up in the leaves of the chestnut tree. Downstairs Anne is writing her diary. Margot is reading a medical textbook; she has decided she wants to be a doctor. She whispered it to me in the attic two days ago. Her eyes shone behind her glasses. "You'll be a wonderful doctor," I said.

  Dr. Pfeffer is in his room writing to his Charlotte; letters full of plans. Mutti and Papi are in the kitchen, fanning themselves on the sofa. I can hear their voices, quietly talking. Everything in the Annex is calm. The moment is almost upon us now, but none of us see it coming.

  At first I think it's Anne coming up the stairs, a bit too noisily, a bit too heavily. There's a noise next door, in the heat I think I hear someone say, "Raise your hands!"

  There's a smothered exclamation from Mutti and a calming noise from Papi. By now Mr. Frank and I are both standing, and then they appear at the door. A Dutch man in a green uniform. He has a pistol in his hand. There are two others behind him. There was no knock; they are just here, in my room, standing in the doorway. Mr. Frank looks at me. We know immediately. We both know. It's over. The picture of hope falls to pieces inside me.

  "Put your hands up!"

  "Put your books away, Peter," Mr. Frank says. We look at the window, at the attic steps. There is nowhere to hide. There are three other men, all Dutch police. They make us put our hands up and they search us. We have no weapons. They push us next door. In the kitchen Mutti is standing next to Papi. They have their arms in the air.

  "My family!" says Mr. Frank.

  Mutti and Papi stare at us, wide eyed. None of us speak. They make us walk down the stairs.

  The bookcase door that has kept us so safe and hidden is swinging loose and wide open. The sight of it is shocking. There is nowhere left to hide.

  Anne is standing next to Margot, who is weeping. I stare at her. The tears fall down her face, quietly, silently. It seems impossible that Margot is crying, but she is. Anne has her foot wrapped around Margot's ankle, comforting her. She is breathing steadily, staring at the men. Mrs. Frank is on Margot's other side. They all have their hands up. A man is standing pointing a pistol at them.