Annexed (11 page)

Pfeffer is driving me mad. He can't sit still. We should have made it clear: Please do not come and live in such a small space if you are incapable of not moving. We're trying to listen to the radio, he's up and down and fiddling with the reception, pretending to make it better until I can't bear it.

"Please, can't you just stop?" I mutter.

"I'll be the judge of when I stop!" he says.

"A poor judge!" The words come out before I know it. I blush.

"Yes, Fritz, sit down and allow us all to listen in peace!" says Father. Mutti sends him a glance of approval. I look at the floor.

I'm lying in a patch of sunlight in the attic. It's cold; cold and dusty all around me. On my left the clothes are drying. Sometimes I swap them around, just for fun. I put Mutti's big knickers next to Mr. Frank's underwear. It makes me smile. It makes Mutti so cross when the washing gets mixed up.

I concentrate on the sun on my face. I try to forget that it's not really summer. I pretend we still live on Zuider-Amstellaan near Merwedeplein and that I'm on a day trip to the beach. I can hear the waves beside me; feel the sand beneath me. The open sky and air are all around me. Soon, I'll sit up and we'll have a picnic, and when I get back we'll all go to Oasis, the ice cream parlor where all us kids used to go. Anne was always there; she could have been bought ice creams every day for a year! Everybody loved her. Other times I'm on the beach at Zaandvoort and sometimes I'm just floating in the sea.

Weightless.

Anne and Margot sometimes pretend they're on the flat roof at Merwedeplein. Anne says she's with her grandmother. Margot, as usual, says nothing, but thinks a lot. I look at them both sometimes, with their heads so close together that their hair tangles. But today it's just me.

"Peter?"

I didn't notice Anne in the corner, searching through a box of books.

She's so quiet I didn't hear a thing. Anne isn't so clumsy these days. There was a time when she couldn't make it through a room without banging into something or knocking it over.

"Mmm?" I say.

I open my eyes. Just a bit. Above me the chestnut tree is golden in the light. The sun's a halo around its brown branches. In autumn the leaves are as gold as coins. Or brown—and sometimes, but not often—there's a red leaf. They fall off the tree in shoals.

"I wish I could do that," I whisper.

"What?" Anne says.

"Float away, like leaves."

I feel her head arrive on the floor next to mine. She has to put it there. The patch of sunlight's only small.

"But then they all die, silly!" she says. I close my eyes. I don't answer. The sunlight's so glorious after winter. Wonderful. We just lie there—it's nice. I wish we could float away like this in the sun. Like leaves. But we can't—and it's only February, and so even with each other's body warmth it's too cold to lie still for long. We sit up.

"I hate Pfeffer sometimes," I hear myself say. She smiles at me.

"He's not that bad, just irritating." She smiles.

"I didn't mean to be so rude yesterday, I just ... Sometimes the wrong words come out and I just..."

"I know."

"You don't, you're never at a loss for what to say."

"Which is why I sometimes say too much."

"Sometimes I wish I could punch him! Why don't you tell him, Anne, at least he might listen then?" But Anne just laughs.

"Peter," she begins, "do you really think..." But I don't want any more questions. I'm sick of them. I just want a moment without them. I just want the sky and the tree and the feel of the sunlight on my face. So I raise my hand to her lips, and touch her mouth with the tip of my finger. Her eyes widen. Her lips feel soft, but dry—flaky beneath my fingers. Her eyes go very still. I take my finger away and she smiles.

And for once she doesn't say a word.

We watch the patch of sunlight crawl up the wall and disappear. She puts her head on my shoulder. And I put my arm around her. She is thin, like cat bones. We sit together for a while.

And it's nice.

It's not good to remember such things here in the camp. We're sometimes five in a bunk. But there's no warmth. We are alone. Each alone. Each in a fight against chance to last one more hour. One more day. One more night. One more life. We do it by standing on others. We do it by standing together. But in the end, each man does it alone.

What else is possible when death waits?

In the morning I go and give Margot her present. It's a doorstop. It's meant to be a joke. I mean, we never need to keep doors open, we need more time with them closed. She closes her eyes and smiles.

"Thanks, Peter!"

"That's all right, I hope ... well, I mean..."

"That I'll need it one day?" she says gently.

"Yes!" I say with relief. Margot always seems to know what I mean.

Anne is in and out of my room all day, needing to go up to the attic. First it's for coffee and then it's for potatoes.

"I'm spoiling Margot!" she says. "What else have I to give her but my labor?" I get up quickly and move my papers from the attic steps. Hide the drawings. It's taken me a while to get it, but now I'm sure. Anne's decided to fall in love with me. It was Margot who gave me the clue.

"Anne keeps coming into my room," I told her.

"Oh!" said Margot. "She's probably being Deanna Durbin in a sports car desperately hoping yet another man won't fall in love with her!" And she held her hand over her mouth. "That was unkind," she said. "Sorry."

"No," I tell her. "That explains it." And it does. Poor Anne, sitting in a cramped room with Peter van Pels wishing she was a film star!

I have no illusions. If we weren't stuck in the Annex, Anne Frank wouldn't look twice at me. I remember her eleventh birthday. I was thirteen. I gave her some chocolate, and even as she said thank you she was looking over my shoulder to see who was coming through the door. I don't know what to do about it.

It was nice that time in the attic, holding each other ... and it's nice to have someone to chat to. But ... there's only one problem. Me. I'm not sure I want to be Anne's substitute lover!

"Shall I close the trap door?" she asks on her way up the steps.

I shake my head. "I'll do it. Just knock when you want to come down."

I think she's hoping I might offer to go up there with her, but I can't.

I don't know what to do.

She spends a good ten minutes up in the attic. She must be freezing.

Is she hoping I'll go up there?

I don't know.

I sit and wait for her to come down.

"Oh," she says airily, "it took me ages. I couldn't find any small ones." I take the pan off her and look. The potatoes are all the size of eggs. They're tiny! I smile at her. She's shivering. I don't know what to say.

"They all look fine to me," I manage, but for the look of hope in her eyes I don't have any words at all.

I wish I could say, "It's all right. Don't worry. I know how it feels to want someone to love. I know what it's like to long for it." But I don't say anything. I just look at her, and then she's gone.

When she comes back again I can't bear it. I try to stop her. I offer to go up to the attic and get the potatoes for her. We argue. She wins. I let her go. I sit down at my desk and put my head in my hands. I look at the steep steps, knowing she's up there waiting.

I won't go up. I can't. I don't want to.

"Can I look at your work?" she asks when she finally comes down. She flicks her hair back, tilts her head on one side and gives me a film-star smile. I smile back. She sits on the bed. I stay by the desk.

I talk. I talk to her about nothing at all: about the way things were at home, the garden, Mutti's meals. It's strange. She draws the words out of me. They grow. I talk about the war. I even tell her how I think Russia and England will end up enemies one day—they have to, they're so different.

"And us Jews, everyone thinks we're different, and we are," she says.

The words come out before I think: "But we don't have to be."

"But, what do you mean?" She sounds so horrified I blush again. I talk about how hopeless I am, how useless with words—and then somehow I try again.

"But we could be anything, couldn't we? I mean I could have been born a Christian," I say.

"Would you want to be?" she asks.

"No! It's not that. I don't mean that. It's more that, well, why be anything?"

She looks horrified. "Then where would you belong?" she asks. "What are we fighting for if we're all the same?"

"We wouldn't all be the same! We're both Jews and we're not the same, are we? Anyway, I don't see that it's important that anyone knows whether I'm Jewish or not, at least not after the war."

"But why would you lie?" she cries.

"It's not lying it's..." But it's not like thinking out things for myself, or talking to Mouschi. I can't explain. I run out of words.

"Oh, the Jews will always be the
chosen
people," I say, angry.

"Well, it would be nice if for once we were chosen for something good!"

She laughs, and the moment is over. She goes on talking and it's nice, listening to her voice. Like listening to the sea, whispering over the sand at Zaandvoort.

"Are you afraid, Peter?" she asks suddenly. I think about it. Am I? Am I afraid? Sometimes I am. I was afraid at the break-in. But mostly I'm not afraid. Not of that. I'm more afraid I won't ever understand how this happened—or why. Mostly I'm afraid of me. Of the thoughts I have and not knowing what to do with them. And so that's what I say.

But what do I know?

I was right to be afraid. I was right. We should all fear knowing ourselves.

Lovers know; they learn it the easy way. We learned it the hard way—the knowledge that our bodies are stronger than our minds. That our bodies will fight to the death for the life within them, whatever we like to think of ourselves.

Anne is always up in our rooms now. I can hear her next door, reading to Mutti. I can hear the hum of her voice, but not the words. I like the sound of her voice when she reads.

"Amazing!" says Mutti when she's finished. "And you really thought all that up yourself? Or was it a real dream you had?"

"Well," says Anne, "you see, it's what's called a personification. In Greek tales they make trees and rivers and all things into gods, but I've just made them into ideas! So in 'Eve's Dream' the rose is arrogance and the bluebell is modesty!"

"And what have you done with us, Miss Minx?" asks Mutti. Anne starts to read again. This time Mutti laughs out loud and Anne stops too and giggles. I wonder what it's about. "So in this story we van Pelses are the stomachs and you Franks are brains!" says Mutti.

"Oh!" says Anne. "I didn't mean..." I go into the room.

"I like hearing you read," I say.

This time it's her blushing. "Hang on!" she says and runs downstairs. Mutti raises her eyebrows at me. Anne's up again in a second. We go into my room.

"Listen to this!" She begins to read. She reads the words so gently and clearly that somehow I can tell they're her words. That it's her making the story happen. I rest my head on the desk and listen. She's talking of a girl, a girl like her, who is sitting on a bench in a garden. A boy comes past. Slowly I feel my face redden beneath my arms. I'm glad my head is hidden. The boy is seventeen. The boy and the girl begin to talk. The words ring in my head:

"Do I look as though people would be afraid to talk to me?" says the girl.

"Well, not now that I see you better!" says the boy.

She's writing about us. The boy in the story is me—or at least I think he is. She goes on reading. Actions, words, things I've said—things she's said, things we've done. They're all jumbled, mixed up together and turned into the words she's reading. I don't know what to do, or what to say. I keep my head down. I go on listening. The boy and girl are talking about God. The questions, the doubts, they're mine. The answers and the conviction, they're Anne's. It's all there written down. Thank God I didn't tell her my real doubts. About God himself.

"Peter?" she asks, and I realize she's stopped reading, that she's waiting for me to say something. I raise my head. What can I say? Can I tell her the truth—that I feel stolen?

"Perhaps God is a personification, too," I suggest, but she isn't listening. Her eyes are wide and shining, waiting for something more. We stare at each other. There's nowhere else to look. I don't know what she wants or what to say, except: "I wish you hadn't done that. I wish you hadn't put me in a story and made me feel like nothing I say is safe with you anymore." I can't say that, not when she's looking at me with such hope in her eyes, waiting to hear how good it is.

Mutti appears in the doorway. "So many ideas!" she says. "I'm surprised your hair doesn't all fall out! No wonder it's so curly!" I look at her, grateful, and she winks at me.

"I just wanted you to see," says Anne, her eyes never leaving mine, "that I don't just write to be funny. I can be serious too!"

I nod. But I don't like how it's made me feel, like anyone could flick a page and pull me out. Anyone could know what she thinks about me without ever guessing what I really think at all. I can't say anything. Anne doesn't notice, or does she? I'm not sure. All I know is that she smiles and leaves.

Which is a relief.

The sun's shining. Every morning I go up the stairs to the attic and sit in it. Most mornings Anne comes too. We sit in a patch of sunshine. I like it like this best. Quiet. Silent. Just enjoying what's here. Perhaps if I hadn't been stuck in the Annex I would never have noticed how wonderful a tree, just one tree, can be. Or a patch of sunshine. Or the glitter of raindrops on a branch. But that doesn't change the fact that when I get out of here I'm going to paint whole landscapes, wide seas, horizons that go on forever!