Annexed (13 page)

To look up and see the sky.

I slam the door quickly and lock it. I stand behind it shaking. I lean against it. I hear footsteps go past. How far away were they? If I had done it, if I had stepped outside, would they have seen me? Are they German footsteps? Dutch? Would they have betrayed me, or pitied me? I can't know because they all sound the same—footsteps.

I head back upstairs.

Everyone's standing in the kitchen around the breakfast table. Except it isn't a kitchen yet because Mutti and Papi are still in bed.

"We're holding court!" says Papi, propped up on pillows. "Any questions for the king and queen?"

"Someone's been in the office!" says Anne. "They've stolen Mr. Kugler's briefcase and they might have heard us!"

"And your father has something to say to you, Peter," says Mutti.

"Obviously you did not make the mess downstairs," he says.

"And so?" says Mutti.

"And so I wrongly accused you."

"And you are?" asks Mutti.

"Not a child!" explodes Papi.

"Well then, say sorry and stop behaving like one!"

"It's all right," I say, "but why was the downstairs door still open?"

Everyone falls silent.

"They must have been disturbed by me going down there last night," says Papi.

"They know someone's hiding here then?" asks Anne, quietly. She looks white and scared. Margot puts her arm around her. "It's all right, silly, we're all still here."

"Anne," says Mr. Frank, quietly, "many people know we're here. We rely on them to feed us, to keep us safe."

"But nobody we trust would steal Mr. Kugler's briefcase."

"And how was the door locked last night?" I ask.

"It must be someone with a key," says Mr. Frank. "We
need to wait and find out more when the staff arrive. Until then let's try and eat something, shall we?"

Everyone looks at Mutti. She looks back. "Yes?" she says, smiling.

"Uh ... well..." says Mr. Frank.

"Well, if you all vacate the room, I will get out of bed and make the breakfast everyone wants," she says. We all crowd into my room to wait. Dr. Pfeffer farts. Anne and Margot start to giggle.

"Really!" says Mrs. Frank.

"We're ready," calls Mutti, and we fall back into the room, taking great breaths. Anne's face is red from holding her breath. I catch her eye. We start to smile and then to laugh.

Quietly.

Mr. Frank stares at me. I look away.

"Really, Anne!" snaps Mrs. Frank in a whisper. "You should stop pestering Peter."

Anne stops. She stops dead. It's like her mother's thrown cold water in her face.

"Anne?" I ask, and she turns toward me, her face blank with pain. "Can you help me finish the crossword after breakfast? You know how hopeless I am at getting all the way to the end!"

She smiles again and tosses her hair, gives her mother a hard stare.

"Of course," she says. Mr. Frank raises an eyebrow at me.

"And you too, of course, Margot," I say. "Only please promise to let us
try
and work out the answers for ourselves." I can't see her eyes behind her glasses, but Margot smiles her sweet smile and lowers her head. I'm exhausted. I wish it was the weekend and that I could escape to the warehouse and sit with Boche for a while, but it's a weekday and we haven't even had breakfast yet. If you can call it breakfast: ersatz coffee and bread with a tiny pat of butter—and jam. As much jam as we want. We could shit jam; maybe that's what makes Pfeffer fart so much. Shame it doesn't smell of strawberries.

Outside the Annex there are footsteps, footsteps coming closer and stopping at the door. Outside the Annex someone is curious. Someone wonders. Someone has crept up the stairway and been into the office after hours. Someone has heard Papi muttering about the mess.

Someone thinks we're here.

Someone is going to find out.

It's evening before I can get away to the storeroom. I sit against the wall and close my eyes. I don't want to draw, or dig cork, I just want to be alone and think in the dark.

I nearly went outside.

I saw daylight.

We live in the dark. We've gotten used to it, but in summer going up to the attic is like being blinded. Our eyes are different now. We see more in the dark than we can in the light. Sometimes I think we'll go blind if we ever do get out. I don't know. But I know that we creep around in the dark. And disappear at the sight of light, just like the cockroaches they tell us we really are.

"Don't we, Mouschi?" I can feel Mouschi curling around my legs. He looks up. I hold out my hands and he lifts his head and sniffs, puts his head in my palm.

I'm grateful.

I want to feel something warm in my arms in the dark and have the smell of the barrels and the quiet all around me. You might say that's not manly. I don't mind. Not fighting is not manly. Sitting like a duck waiting to be shot is not manly. Not even having an escape route out of here, that's not manly. Dreaming of Liese and pretending my hands are her hands rather than doing the real thing, I suppose that's not manly. And that's the other thing about being here. All the things that make sense out there—they don't count in here. We're in a different game—our game is survival.

"Isn't it, Mouschi?" I stop walking up and down. I didn't even realize I was doing it. I'm pacing the whole length of the room, backwards and forward as Mouschi weaves in and out of my moving ankles.

I sit down and Mouschi curls up in my lap, begins his machine-like purr.

Survival.

It requires one thing more than any other, and that's your pride. I really think it's true. Mr. Frank stays proud because he believes it will all work out in the end. That we'll survive, somehow. I'm not so sure. At least not when I'm alone in the dark.

"Am I, Mouschi?" Mouschi purrs.

Sometimes I wonder if Mr. Frank ever looks out the window. The herd's getting smaller. There are less and less of us. We're like water swirling down the plughole—soon there'll be none of us left. The bath will be empty.

It makes no difference at all to them whether I
think
I am a Jew or not. Whether I believe, whether I practice or not. All that matters to them is that it's in my blood, even one speck of it is enough to infect all of me.

That's how they see it.

"Eh, Mouschi?" But Mouschi doesn't answer.

There's so much time here. Either you can get depressed and stay in bed forever—or you can get up. You can study. You can draw, or write or read. You can pretend there is a future waiting for you. But if you do that, then you have to face the questions that come with it. It's best to do this alone, believe me. Margot got that straightaway. She always keeps her thoughts to herself. I'm just too slow, so the chance to join in the conversation never comes for me. Everyone else gets there first! Anne wants everyone to listen to her questions, but all it does is stir us all up inside. And when that happens, everyone gets going. Which means we have to listen to the same old arguments. And then Mutti gets upset and goes red. Anne's mother goes cold and speaks like she's the oracle, while telling Anne off. Mr. Frank sighs and looks like he wishes he could knock everyone's heads together and then Papi tries to make it all better with one of his terrible old jokes.

So, really, it's best to keep quiet and keep your questions to yourself. There are so many. Will it ever end, and when it does will there be any of us left? If the Allies get close, will the Nazis kill us all? Are we meant to believe God chose us for this?

Why?

You see. I have no answers. I'm not clever like Anne or Margot or Liese. I'm slow, and I only have questions with no answers. I can't control my thoughts. I'm sure they're wrong somewhere, but that's what happens when you ask too many questions. You just make more and more inside of you.

Will we be imaginary one day? Will we be just like one of Anne's stories? Or worse, will the story that survives be the Nazi one—that we were only ever good enough to be wiped out?

How?

How could anybody do this?

It's been snowing. I stand in the attic, waiting for Anne, and stare at the branches of the chestnut tree all covered in white. There are stars behind it. The night is a clear, strange blue. I know I could paint all my life. But I could never make a blue that dark. That deep. That beautiful. I could never make stars like little holes of light in the night. Even van Gogh couldn't do it. I remember the crunch of snow under my feet. I remember throwing snowballs. Sometimes the snow was so deep there was no school. Gangs of us stretched out around the green on Merwedeplein attacking each other with snowballs. Hiding behind the bushes and trees. Wet hair. Red cheeks. Air so cold it made shapes with our breath. I stare out of the attic window. I wish the bells would ring. Anne's right, how will we ever know we're free if there are no bells to ring? I would like to feel the snow on my face. It buries everything. It buries us. Maybe one day the world will thaw, and we will melt away from here?

Maybe.

Snow.

I will never be able to stand and stare at it and find it beautiful again!

The Auschwitz snow is terrible. It made us dance with cold. Use energy we didn't have. It made my breath burn against the holes in my teeth. We stood in it, in thin pajamas hour after hour, day after day. It never got easier. Each day was as dreadful as yesterday. There is no word for it, Auschwitz-cold.

And at the end of it: a hut, a beating, a thin soup, another day of not knowing if you will live or die.

The dread of a
seleckcja.

Knowing that the command will come. Each morning. Invading your half-dreams, your half-sleep, pulling you back to the nightmare that's your life.

W
YSTAWACH.

Wake up.

"But, Peter!" Anne says. She is happy. Her eyes are shining. "
You
think so? Don't you?"

"Think what?"

"That mother's wrong. I mean, she's always saying that we should manage by thinking about how much
worse
life is for everyone else."

"Sometimes it can help," I say quietly.

"Oh yes?" she says. "Well then, why are you always looking at the sky? Why do you chop wood as though it gives you such joy to do it just right?"

I smile.

"Don't just smile at me! Say something!" She's smiling too, though.

"What?" I say again. She throws a cushion at me.

"What, in case you don't know the fact, does not express an opinion, and why do I have to be locked up with the most irritating boy in the whole of Holland?" But she doesn't look irritated. I catch the cushion easily. No problem. Now we're both smiling.

"You talk too much. What does it matter what your mother does? Is she stopping you from enjoying the sky? She has her way, you have yours."

And I throw the cushion back. She doesn't reach for it. She lets it hit her in the face and falls back onto the attic floor.

"Anne?" She doesn't move. I know I haven't thrown it hard enough to hurt her, but still. "Anne?" I move toward her and gently take it off her face. She's smiling. She smiles a lot now. Most of all when she's with me. I like that. She makes an action like zipping up her smiling mouth. I laugh. Quietly.

I reach out a hand to help her up. She takes it. We sit together and look out the window. The sky is blue and beautiful. The sun is out. There are tiny buds on the chestnut tree, beneath the snow. Anne sighs deeply, and rests her head on my shoulder. I close my eyes. I smell her hair. I notice I haven't let go of her hand. It's small and neat inside mine. It's cold. She is always cold. I put my other hand over it.
I want to make it warm, that's all,
I say to Mr. Frank in my mind.
I just want her to be warm.
We sit there for a while looking out the window.

"But, Anne, you know," I say after a while, "there is suffering out there. No Jews on the street. No food. Death camps. I mean, perhaps your mother is right—things are worse for others."

"But we're here too." She sighs, dreamily, and her body rests deeper against mine. "We're still here, aren't we? Even if only this little piece of attic sky can see us. We are here and..." She stops and looks at me.

And there is so much I wish I could say. I think she's like the gulls we see that flash silver across the sky. And I'm like the chestnut tree that takes a whole six months just to put out a single leaf. I sigh, because she's right, it is wonderful sometimes to be exactly where you are. Like in this moment.

Right now.

And to forget the rest.

But I can't say all my thoughts. I never have been able to. And so I just whisper her name instead. Anne. And she looks at me. We stare at each other, and outside the sky and the tree watch over us. And we are all waiting.

Waiting.

And wondering what will happen.

Anne is hard and bright and honest, but inside she is full of longing—the way I sometimes long for Liese, but have to hold Mouschi instead.

Is it so wrong to want to hold Anne?

Is it wrong to feel so glad that I can make her happy?

Well, is it?

I don't know.

Sometimes I still go up to the attic and listen to the gunfire in the night. There are planes overhead. It doesn't scare me anymore. I don't know why. I think that maybe it's because I know that nothing can stop what will happen. If we are hit we are hit. If the building catches fire, it catches fire and we'll be driven out of it. Exposed. I wonder if I will try to pretend to be German. Pretend? What do I
mean?
I am German, aren't I? That's how crazy everything is. That's how hard it is to work out even the simplest things these days.

***

Bep came up. She coughed as she told us about the airmen. She's thin. We're all thin. We don't get enough to eat. No one does. Everyone is ill. She told us how the Nazis sprayed the airmen with bullets as they floated down from the sky. Mr. Frank shook his head and said it was very different in his day.