Annexed (16 page)

I think my eyes close, but I don't think I sleep.

In the end I creep out to my room. Anne stands up as pale as a ghost in the dawn light, and follows me. We sit by my window and wait for the sun to come up. We don't say anything, but I think we're thinking the same thing. Is this it? Is this our last day? We sit very close together. So close I can feel her tremble. I have words in my mind. Words I can't say. Simple words.

Lie down and make love with me.

We are so cold. So tired. Lie down with me so we can sleep in each others arms.

But we stay upright and silent at the window.

Like sentries.

Until, behind us, the others begin to whisper and wake. To make plans. And in the end I lie down on my bed alone. And fall asleep.

When I wake, Miep and her husband, Jan, are at the door.

I get up and stand in the kitchen doorway. Everyone's crying and talking. The place still smells terrible. I get the bleach and begin to tidy the smell away. The bin is full and leaking. I find a bucket. Mr. Frank helps me. It's heavy, but not as heavy as the feeling of fear inside me.

"Well done, Peter," he says, but the words slip off me. I nod anyway. It's hard to get all that fear to flush away down the toilet. We only have half an hour before the office staff arrive. We manage it in the end. When we come back, everyone has tidied the place as though nothing's happened. I stand and stare at the kitchen, at everybody talking. I remember the day I arrived. I feel the heat and remember how small and dark it felt. I feel dizzy with the lack of sleep. I imagine the rooms empty—everything gone, including us.
But we're already gone,
my mind whispers. There's no sign of us anywhere outside of these Annex walls.

Nothing for anyone except the office staff to miss if we're taken away.

I shake my head and try to focus.

Jan tells us the couple who saw us in the warehouse were Mr. van Hoeven and his wife, who deliver the potatoes. They didn't tell the police. They guessed someone was in hiding. Everyone starts talking and laughing with relief.

"But who broke in in the first place, and why?"

"How much longer can we hold on?"

We all sleep after lunch. I lie on my bed and stare at the cracks in the yellow ceiling. My eyes feel dry and gritty. Like there's salt in them. After a while I go down to the bathroom to wash them. Anne's there. She looks at me with her wide eyes.

"Do you still want to go to the attic?" I ask, and she nods. We go up. I put my arm around her shoulders and rest my head in her hair. I touch it with my fingers. She puts her arms around me. She does it shyly. She hugs me to her, or tries to. She's very small.

"Thank you," she whispers.

"What for?"

"Being so brave," she says.

"I'm not," I whisper.

"You fought for us," she says, "and then you cleared up the mess."

"We all did," I answer. The look of admiration in her eyes, and the feel of her arms around me are nice.

"Peter?"

"Yes?"

"I've been thinking, about what you said, and after last night I..."

Margot appears at the top of the steps.

"Come and sit down, Margot," I say, realizing how much we've left her out. "We're just sitting in the sun."

Margot smiles. "Ironic, isn't it?" she says. "Bad things happen and the sun shines. Tea's ready." And she disappears. We get up.

Downstairs everyone's happy with relief. They've made us real lemonade.

I wonder why we're celebrating.

I'm exhausted.

After a while I go to my room. I hope Anne might come. I hope the look of admiration might finally turn into a touch, a kiss, a ... I fall asleep.

Anne talks and talks and talks. She doesn't even stop when my fingers run across her face, or touch her hair. I love the feel of her curls in my fingers. I love everything around me. I'm seeing it all differently since the break-in. I notice everything.

The world feels special and wonderful. A miracle: the sound of birds in the chestnut tree outside the window, the sun in a blue sky, the leaves. One day soon I'll come up here and the buds will be open. Wide open, and I won't have seen it happen.

I feel the sun on my face; watch it light up the skin on Anne's face. The light falls in a bar across her eyes as she reads me her poem about love and hope.

Work, love, courage and hope.
Make me good and help me cope!

"It's wonderful!" I say.

"Well," she smiles, "that's how you make me feel."

"Really?" I say. "I think that's how the
writing
makes you feel." And she stares at me. Gives me that sharp look.

"No," she says slowly. "Just sometimes, Peter, you know, the words come
after
the feeling."

Sometimes, in the camp, her words came to me. Appeared in my head out of nowhere. They came like a taunt.
A
curse.
A
dream from another world that has no meaning here.

They made me hope she died quickly. Quickly. That she walked into the chambers full of love, courage, and hope—and went out like a light.
A
bright light.

Not like this.

This living death.

I lie with my eyes wide open knowing that sleep won't come. That fear will instead. It happens sometimes, and there's nothing I can do to stop it.

I close my eyes tight. Squeeze them. I curl up into a ball and try to make myself small, hoping the fear will pass over me. But it's inside me. I can't escape it.

The house is hot. Airless. I can't open the window. There's something I need to remember.

I don't fall asleep; I just am asleep. Even in my dreams I'm naked and shivering and trying to remember something. In the dream everyone is naked. Everyone shivers. Everyone is Jewish, or broken or homosexual, or mad. We're all stumbling around, looking for a key. There are thousands of us—and yet somehow I'm alone.

I think I can hear the Westertoren bells again. I open my eyes—joyous, but it's not real, they're not here.

I don't fall asleep. I am asleep.

Anne's voice is calling me.

"Peter, Peter!" I feel her take my hand. I open my eyes, see her—and then I remember.

"I didn't unbolt the door!" I say, and sit bolt upright. She doesn't answer, just squeezes my hand.

"Come to breakfast," she says. My heart is beating so fast. I didn't unbolt the door. Every night I bolt the door so that no one can get in from the outside. Every morning I have to unbolt it, so that Mr. Kugler can use his key to get in. I can't speak. How did he get in? What's happened?

"Come on," says Anne, and she strokes my hand. "We should have reminded you," she says.

I get dressed. I can hear them in the kitchen, low voices muttering. When I go in they look at me. Not with anger, but with pity.

"Come, sit down, Peter," says Mr. Frank.

"Eat, darling," says Mutti. "Try and eat."

Papi just smiles at me. I try. I put the food on my plate. I can chew it but I can't swallow. Anne reaches across the table and touches my hand. Mr. Frank squeezes my shoulder.

"It's Peter I feel most sorry for in all this," says Mrs. Frank. I swallow. I try not to cry.

"What happened?" I ask. I have to know. They all look at Mr. Frank.

"Well," he says, "as you can imagine, Mr. Kugler couldn't open the door because it was bolted from the inside."

For a moment I think that's all he'll say. Everyone looks at him. Except Anne, who winks at me.

"He went to Keg's next door," he says.

Oh no,
I think,
not Keg's.
They've already noticed things. Now they must know that the door was bolted and so there must be someone inside. I swallow. No one says anything, but I hear them all breathe in. This is disastrous. It's bad. Very bad. No one has to tell me, or accuse me. I know it.

"He smashed the office window and got in that way" Silence. "Unfortunately the Keg's people noticed an open window in the attic. We've been careless. All of us," he says. I hang my head. Me most of all, I think.

"I'm so sorry," I say Mutti smiles at me.

"It was me who opened the attic window," she says. "I wanted air-dried washing for once, and the day was so glorious."

"We should have reminded you, anyway," says Margot.

"Yes," says Anne, "it's your job to actually do it, but it's all of ours to remember."

"Yes," says Mr. Frank, "we're all responsible."

Dr. Pfeffer says nothing.

I stand up. "Thank you," I say. I go to my room. I want to be downstairs. I want to find Mouschi. I want to sit in the dark of the storeroom where no one can see me. But I can't face walking back through the kitchen to get there. I stand in the attic. The sun is shining. It's a beautiful day. The sky is blue. How could I forget? How could I put us all in so much danger? What's wrong with me?

Anne Franks what's wrong with you.

"That's kind," I hear Mutti say, "but not now, Anne, later maybe. Leave him be for a while."

I sit in the sun on the floor. I don't know for how long. After a while I get up. I can't stay here forever. I can't change what has happened. If wishing worked, the war would be over. That's what Mutti says. So I get up. I go down the stairs. The Franks have gone, which is a relief.

Mutti hugs me. She doesn't need to say anything. I nod at Papi. "Bad luck, old chap," he says. "Could've happened to anyone."

But it didn't,
I think.
It didn't happen to anyone. It happened to me.

I go downstairs. To Mr. Frank.

"I put us in danger," I say. He doesn't disagree; he just nods—and then he smiles. "You made a mistake," he says, "but it's not you we're really in danger from, is it, Peter?"

"No," I say, "but..."

"What's done is done," he says quickly. "Don't dwell on it. Learn and move forward." I nod again.

"Could we do some French now?" I ask, because I want to be near him. I want to think about verbs and endings and all the things that create order and make sense.

"Of course," he says. He puts his book down. We practice spoken French. I'm not very good.

"
Bonjour!
" he starts.

"Ça
va
?" I say.

"Ça
va bien, merci. Et toi
?"

"
Ça va.
"

"
Qu'est que tu voudrais acheter ce matin?
" says Mr. Frank.

And the words come out of my mouth, in Dutch, not French. "Some freedom."

I blush. Mr. Frank smiles.

"Sadly, that's not something we can buy, Peter," he says. I don't say anything.

We start on irregular verbs.

***

Mr. Kugler's angry with us. We have to make changes: I have to patrol the building each night between eight-thirty and nine. We can't use the lavatory after nine-thirty. Pfeffer is complaining because he has to work in the bathroom, not the office.

But the worst thing of all is that I can't open my window at night. I understand why—the office next door have noticed it—but to lose my last bit of air from outside. It feels like a coffin lid banging shut.

Every time I think of what I've done, my stomach turns over and my heart beats fast. Anne says nothing, but whenever she can, she catches my eye and smiles at me.

At supper I can't eat—nobody mentions it, not even Pfeffer, which is kind. Everyone talks about something else. When she thinks no one's looking, Anne winks at me. At first I think it's a mistake, a twitch. But then just as her father is talking about the Allies and how they're certain to be here soon, she does it again. I look around. No one's noticed. She waits. And then she does it again. It makes me smile. I can't help myself. She blows me a kiss. After supper she sits on my bed with me.

"Hey! Move up a bit," she says, and then she tries to hold me. She reaches up to put her arms around me, but she's too small, so she gets a pillow and sits on it to make herself taller.

"Come here," she says, and she puts my head on her shoulder. She holds me so close that I don't feel alone anymore. She moves back and looks at me, questioning, but I can't speak. I hold her face in the palm of my hands and her name is all through me.

An-na, An-na, An-na.

Everywhere except on my lips.

I put her head on my shoulder. I can see my watch. I look at the minutes passing and know I must stand up soon because it will be eight-thirty, time to start my patrol. Life must start again. But I wish it didn't have to. Any of it.

I wish we could sit here, her head on my shoulder, my fingers in her hair. I stand up. So does she. I don't know what to say or how to thank her.

"I..." I begin, and she smiles, but I can't find the words. She puts her hand on my arm and turns to go.

"Anne?" I don't know whether I mean to kiss her mouth, her eyes, or her forehead. But I do mean to kiss her. I know that. She turns back and somehow I'm kissing her cheek, her hair, and the soft warmth of her ear. And then before I know it, she's gone.

I stand by the window. I take a breath. I touch my lips. A strand of hair's still caught between my fingers. "Anne?" I whisper her name. "Anne?" I shake my head and walk into the kitchen.

"All set?" asks Papi. I nod. "Good boy," he says.

But Mutti just stares at me. She doesn't say anything, not for a while, and then she touches my shoulder.

"Take care, Peter," she whispers, and I feel her eyes follow me out of the small room and all the way down the stairs.

I don't answer.

I stand by the door and listen. Papi is putting the bed down. Mutti is standing next to the sink, right by the door.

"Peter's not himself, Hermann, not himself at all—and we both know why, don't we? Did you see the look on that little minx's face as she came through his door! And it's not as though Edith Frank will do anything about it! Oh no! Her daughter's far too perfect to be the cause of anything. Well! What will she say when things have gone too far?"