Annexed (20 page)

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.

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 the 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.

"You!" he says to Mr. Frank. "Show me where you keep your jewelry and money!"

Mr. Frank points. One man rifles through the drawers. Another man returns from the Franks' bedroom with Mr. Frank's briefcase and empties it. Anne's eyes are wide. Her loose papers and diary fall out all over the floor. She breathes in. I want to hold her. Mr. Frank moves.

"Keep still!" The man stuffs our money (not much) and jewelry (not much) into the briefcase. My heart is beating very hard. Very fast. I don't know how Mr. Frank can look so calm. I think of what Mutti said: "If the liberation comes close, they'll find us. They'll shoot us. Is that what's going to happen?"

I wish it had. I wish I had died then, with Mutti beside me, but that would have been too easy. To end it then, to kill me when I still had a body and thoughts that were my own. When my hope was newly dead and still might rise.

They search through the Annex. They open cupboards and drawers. I think of the empty rooms of our old apartment, of the furniture being loaded and taken away. I know that is what will happen to us if they don't shoot us. I don't think they'll do it here. We are all sweating. It is hard to hold your hands up for very long. We look at each other and away again. We hold a conversation with our eyes. Our eyes say we are shocked. Our eyes say,
What next?

"You may pack some clothes," the man shouts. "Quick! Quick!" We put our arms down. We go to our rooms. We don't know what to pack.

We go back downstairs. Anne is on the floor, kneeling, putting her papers into a neat pile.

"Leave them!" snaps the man. She stands up. Not quickly and not slowly. She stands up with dignity and she nods at him, as though he were worth the respect of every human being. I wish I could clap. I feel proud of her. I hope he can't see that she is shaking.

The time goes very slowly, and very fast. The leader of the police is still searching through the room.

"Is this yours?" he asks Mr. Frank, kicking a wooden chest, and suddenly his voice is different. We all look up.

"Yes, I was a reserve lieutenant in the Great War," says Mr. Frank. He sounds exactly as he always does, his voice is soft and reasonable and we all cling to it. The man stands up very straight then, and he looks at Mr. Frank differently.

"Don't hurry them!" he snaps at the other policeman.

"You should have reported that," he says to Mr. Frank, and he sounds sorry. "We could perhaps have had you sent to Theresienstadt labor camp."

"Well," says Mutti very quietly. "Perhaps we might be allowed to open a window now that everyone knows we're here?"

I look at her. She is very brave. I don't know if it has worked. I don't know if her interruption and the man's sharp "No window!" has stopped Anne and Margot noticing what's been said. Because if we're not going to a labor camp, then where are we going? We all know the words. Death camp.

"May we tidy up a little?" asks Anne, and when he nods, she kneels down again. I kneel down too. Together we gather up her diary and her papers.

"Don't worry," I whisper. "Miep'll find them, she'll save them for you, don't make them too interested in it."

"I can't leave Kitty!" she whispers.

I hold her wrist, hard. "You must," I say. "You know it has a better chance without you." The tears fill her eyes, but don't spill over. We hide the diary, under the papers, in a neat pile.

We stand up together. I can see how hard it is for her to leave the papers. I hold her hand. It's sweating. She's shaking. The wait is awful. We sit down. We can't speak. We can't believe this is happening, but we know that it is. We are allowed to have some water.

"Well," says Mutti at twelve-thirty. "Lunchtime." No one answers, there is a silence from everyone. It is such a normal thing to say. She is crying silent tears. I could fight them, I think. I want to. I can feel my heart beating hard with it. I can feel it in Papi too. But they wouldn't just shoot
us.
They would kill all of us. Finally, at one o'clock, the van they are waiting for arrives.

"Up! Quickly!"

As we leave, one of the men kicks the papers and they scatter across the floor. Mr. Frank holds Anne close and whispers something.

We walk down the stairs. It is happening. But it's hard to believe it is happening. Mr. Kugler and Mr. Kleiman are with us. We are sorry about that. The police are in front and behind.

Outside.

We step through the door.

We are outside.

It is so bright. So bright and sharp; the daylight after the dark. It burns my eyes. We look at each other. We all look different. We look so white in the light. All of us stop for a moment in front of the truck. I hold my face up to the light and feel it on my skin. It is so warm, the air. So soft and so wonderful.

"Get in!"

I open my eyes. We are all doing the same thing, standing in the air of the outside with our faces turned up to the sun. It is just a moment, less than a second. And then it's over.

"I said, get in!"

The truck has no windows. Inside it is hot and dark and we begin to fear where we are going.

So we have arrived—the moment is here, it is now.

I am lying in a bunk in Mauthausen.

There is word I must remember. A word that stains all it touches—a word that can never mean just a place, or be just a word. It is a word without hope or desire—Auschwitz.

I think I must be alive. But I'm not sure.

Am I alive or am I dead? How can I know—because they are the same thing for a Jew in Auschwitz.

It was there they sent us to first.

In Auschwitz we had dreams, and when we woke the dream went on—and it was a nightmare.

I'm dying. I must be.

Everyone who has been there is dead—even when they are still walking.

And now it's my turn.

How can I speak of this—are there words?

And will you listen now the time has come?

Will you go on, as I am forced to, turning the pages of each day—one after the other—and surviving?

Because this is not a story. This is the truth. These things really happened.

This is what all of us here long for you, outside, to know.

That we went gently, most of us. We walked into the night of the camps in long lines not knowing where we were going. We went in trains, wearing all of our possessions like hope. Once, we were legion, now we are few.

Now our naked bodies lie in piles. Our bones are ground to dust and we are ... ashes.

That is the truth.

***

I am so sorry to have to ask again, but is anybody there?

Is anybody listening?

Are there any of us left?

Or is it just me still breathing?

Am I the last—alone—in this river of dead and putrid bodies lying all around me?

I want to shout, to ask if anyone else is lying here like me, still breathing. But they might hear me, might come, might shoot me.

And someone must survive.

"
Survive, be brave," whispers Papi.

"
Tell," whispers Mr. Frank, "tell our story...
"

The bodies around me are beginning to smell.

Is it really happening? The dream we all had, over and over
and over. Is everyone dead? Are there no Jews left except me? Outside, there are no shouts, no guards, no music. I close my eyes.

"
Survive, be brave," whispers Papi.

But I am not brave. And I am tired.

"
Tell, tell, tell, tell, tell," the voices beat at my body, so many voices, so many bodies, so many stories ended, I cannot tell them all. I am the wrong person. It should be Anne here, Anne with her shining eyes standing in the doorway of my bedroom. Anne smiling. Anne laughing. Anne crying: "I have so much to say, so many stories inside of me, Peter!
"