Annexed (3 page)

I don't know how I am to wash the sheets. I don't know how I am to hide my shame. I don't know how I am to live anymore.

Yes, I am Peter—but will somebody tell me how?

"Petel! Petel!" Mother's voice wakes me. "Get up. Everybody is wondering where you are!"

But I can't. It's always so dark in here, it's like the day never really begins. I wake up so tired.

"I'm tired," I say. I turn over.

"You've got five minutes!" she hisses. She's embarrassed by me. I should be awake and not asleep. I should feel lucky and not worried that I might be dying. But all I want to do is sleep.

The kitchen is right next door to my room. Everyone has breakfast there. I can hear everything. Father's telling everyone how cleverly he fooled people into thinking that the Franks had fled to Maastricht. I stumble into the room. Nobody greets me they just glance at me, at my slept-in clothes and my filthy hair. I sit down. They nod at me and carry on.

I wonder if I'm really here.

The story is "What Happened When the Franks Left." I've heard it a million times already, we all have, but they still go on and on. I try to listen to the words, but the sound of their voices comes at me from a long way away. The words all
make sense in my head, but I keep on getting the feelings wrong. I shiver, when everyone else is laughing.

Anne looks at me—a harsh, questioning look. A slow blush crawls over my cheeks. She looks away, scornful.

"...and old Mrs. Siedle told me herself that she had seen you all loaded into a military vehicle!" says Mutti.

I remember the feel of my foot hitting Liese's garden wall. I hear the military engine coming down the street.

"Yes!" laughs Papi, taking over. "I heard it myself, too! And here we are, sitting right in the middle of the same city! Who would believe it?"

They all laugh. Anne glances at me again, sharp: "Peter doesn't think it's funny," she says.

I stand up too quickly and the chair falls over. Slowly their eyes land on me. I try to stand up straight and be polite. I don't know what's happening to me. My head's full of shavings—leftover pieces with no shape or meaning. "Excuse me," I say, and feel my face blush. I leave the room. Behind me I hear Anne clap her hands like a child with a new present.

"Now no one will
ever
guess. Ever!" The laughter goes on.

I don't lie down on my bed, I drop down. I fall away from the thoughts that won't stop churning inside me.

Where are you, Liese?

How can this be funny?

Am I the only person in the world not laughing?

Falling asleep feels wrong—it feels like drowning.

***

I can't get up. The days go by—half-light, half-dark. I sleep. I eat, but the food doesn't taste of anything. I blush and stumble when the Franks talk to me.

I dream of Liese. And sometimes I wake with my sheets wet and my heart wild. I'm not sure what's real anymore. I think Anne came and stood in my doorway. "Do you like your room, Peter?"

"It's not a room, it's a corridor." She raises her eyes to the ceiling. She's so thin, a child really, not like Liese.

Liese.

Liese.

Liese.

Where are you? What's happening to you?
I shiver. When I look up, Anne's gone. I'm not sure she was ever there.

***

If I close my eyes I can feel Liese's hands landing on me. Light. Soft, like butterflies. I nearly groan aloud. Stifle it. I feel a pain like longing, an ache in my side. I can't breathe. Am I dying? I think I must be.

"I'm dying!" I can't believe I've really said the words aloud, but I must have, because everyone's looking at me.

I blush.

"Honestly, Peter!" Mrs. Frank says as she flicks out a clean tea towel.

"Have you ever heard of the word
hypochondria
?" asks Anne.

"I can't breathe!" I whisper.

"Perhaps if you did a bit more and slept a bit less?" Mr. Frank says gently.

Mutti and Papi look furiously at each other.

No one believes I'm ill.

I go back to bed.

The Westertoren church bells strike midnight. I creep up the attic steps. One of the windows is very slightly open. I lie down and breathe in the fresh, outside air. Gulp it.

"Can you hear the bells, Liese?"

I look at the moon, the way we always promised each other we would. We never said goodbye, just:

"At ten."

"At ten."

I whisper the words—is she doing the same somewhere?

Where are you?

I fall asleep in the wisp of air from the window. I don't
dream. I sleep wondering if the moon is shining down on us both. All through the night I hear the church bells striking through my dreams.

Can you hear them, Liese?

When I wake up, it's light. Birds are singing in the big chestnut tree outside. My neck is stiff and my head hangs sideways off my neck like it's cocked and listening. Or broken. Listening for something no longer there.

The clock chimes five times. I hear it again, beneath the bells, the click of wheels against the track, the trains that carry us all away. Where to? There are whispers like wheels. Rumors like dark tunnels. But we know really, don't we? We all know, but we can't say it.

Camps.

Death camps.

Suddenly I know it, feel it. She's gone. She was here in Amsterdam, where she could hear the clock, but now she's gone—into that river of people.

I crawl, stiff and slow, down the attic steps.

"Peter!"

Mutti stands at the bottom of the steps, staring up at me. How long has she been there?

"What?" I begin, and then I see my filthy sheet rolled up in her hand. On my bed is a clean, white flat sheet. We glance at each other, look away.

"I..."

"Shh!" she smiles at me. "Don't worry. I can wash it before the Franks are even up, and we can replace their sheet. They won't notice."

"Thanks," I mutter, but she's already gone.

The bed feels good. Cool and clean. I sleep without dreams.

When I wake up again, breakfast is over.

When I dream of Mutti, that's how I see her, standing at the bottom of the stairs. The way she did when I was a child, her legs braced and arms raised, waiting for me to leap into her arms.

I dream I'm in clean sheets on a real mattress, and that I'll wake with the sun on my face. Best of all, I'll turn, and go back to sleep in the sunlight.

But it's only a dream.

When I wake, I crawl over all the dead and dying bodies to piss in the pot. I listen. Good the pot is not too full. To piss when it's full can mean death. You have to go out into the freezing night and empty it. After that all sleep is over.

All hope of rest is gone.

I crawl back and wait for the word that drags us from our bunks:

W
YSTAWACH.

Wake up.

But it doesn't come.

"Peter! Peter! Peter!"

I didn't know I was asleep. My name comes at me, hissing and angry.

"Peter! Peter! Peter!" It's Father, calling me. I sit bolt upright.

"What?" I'm about to shout, but his hand covers my mouth quickly, forcing my head back down onto the pillow.

"It's only me: Papi," he hisses. "It's OK, don't make a sound."

I force my body to go limp. I close my eyes. I feel my heart beating.

"Get up," he hisses. "Get up and help. Right now. Do you hear me?"

I don't answer. I try to take his hand away without opening my eyes, but he keeps it there.

"You could at least try to be a man!" he says. I turn over. I want to go back to sleep, to be anywhere but here.

"How dare you shame us all like this!" he hisses. "You're nearly sixteen years old. Get up. Stand up. Start helping. Those two girls do more than you." He takes his hand away. "If I can't fight, what point is there?" I don't know where
the words come from; they are just there, between us. The shock of them makes me open my eyes. We stare at each other.

"Fight!" he says, and he sits back and shakes his head at me. "You think you can fight this? Get up and make yourself useful, that's how we fight."

I don't move. I try not to blink. I stare at him.

"Show me you can get out of bed and do a day's work before you talk of fighting!" he says.

"You're in my way," I hiss back. He stands up. I run my hands through my hair, it's stiff with dirt. I get up slowly, partly because I'm still shaking, partly just to annoy him. He stands by the attic steps. There's not enough room to change with him there. I can't get up without having to touch him.

"I'll see you in the kitchen," he says. "Two minutes."

I don't say anything. I wait for him to leave, and then I dress.

I go downstairs. Mr. Kugler is trying to make the entrance to the Annex secret.

"Hello," he says. He has a nice face. "Can you give me a hand?"

I try. I collect wood shavings and put them in a pillowcase. I make a pad for the door to stop everyone from banging their heads on the frame. It's awkward and useless work, ugly, not like the things I used to make for Aunt Henny:
mending the pieces she loved, fixing her sofa. I need to forget about all that. We've disguised the door as a bookcase, and the lintel is hidden, so you have to duck down.
Great,
I think,
a bookcase. As though it isn't bad enough already being locked up with the book-crazy Franks.

"Oh!" says Anne. "So you've graced us with your presence, have you?" I don't answer. I'd like to. I'd like to ask her why she's always breaking things, dropping them, and banging into things? Why isn't she more careful? Why does she always behave as though this is a house party?

But I don't say anything.

"Thank you, Peter," says Margot.

"That's all right." I blush. Margot turns away, trying not to see, but Anne stares at me as though she is trying to decide exactly what shade of red I'm going. I turn away and stumble back upstairs.

"What an idiot!" says Anne, and then she drops her cup and they both start laughing.

Mutti's at the door to my room, smiling at me like I've just wiped out a whole platoon of Nazis all by myself, not simply nailed up a bag full of wood shavings!

"Better?" she asks.

"Better," I say, even though it isn't.

"Unlike your hair!" And she smiles. I smile back. It feels strange, muscles creaking into a new shape.

"Let me wash it for you," she says, and I'm about to say no, but then I think of her stealing an extra sheet out of the communal cupboard. I think of the clean white sheet on my bed. I think of how she washes away my sins and dries them—all without saying a word. I think of the insults she takes from Mrs. Frank because of me.

"If you think you can use all of our sheets and none of your own you are very much mistaken!" says Mrs. Frank. Mutti says nothing, nothing of how they use our bowls and hide their own. Of how Anne has broken nearly all of ours and never said sorry. So I say yes. I let her wash my filthy hair.

She scrubs and digs and rubs at my scalp as though she could chase all the evil away with her fingers. It hurts. At last she is done.

"Ah!" she says. "Now you are my Petel."

"Thanks," I mutter.

"Margot!" We both hear Anne's voice outside the bathroom door. "His mother's in there washing his hair! I'm only thirteen and I even dye my own mustache!"

"Shhh!" says Margot quickly, but the damage is done. Mutti's smile falls off her face and all the way to the floor. Poor old Mutti; never as good as the Franks, never as clever, or funny—or wise. If Anne were a boy I'd punch her. I'd spit on my palms, draw a line straight between those brown superior eyes and land my fist right in the middle of all that confidence.

I hate her.

"Much better," I say out loud. "Thank you, Mutti, I feel wonderful."

And as soon as I say it, I realize it's true.

I do feel better.

A bit.

Anne and Margot have discovered the attic. It's a pain. The way they just walk right through my "room" to get to it. I know. I know. The world is ending outside the Annex (as Anne calls it) or at least it is for the Jews and gypsies and anyone else who doesn't measure up to the Nazi standard! Mr. Frank said they think they know we're Jewish by measuring our noses, or our skulls! Mutti snorted and said, "Well, I know an easier way to tell if a man's a Jew!" But she didn't say it in front of the Franks; she waited until it was just the three of us alone, upstairs.

All that happening outside, and I'm stupid enough to be angry with two of the most annoying girls in the world. At least Margot looks a bit apologetic, but Anne! She just flounces through my room.

"Any ailments today, Petel-pie?" she laughs.

They spend ages up there, taking it for themselves, the only place where we can see the sky.

Mrs. Frank does try to cut Anne down to size: "Hanneli's mother was right about you, Anne," she says. "Do you remember what she said?"

Anne glares at her mother, then turns to her father who looks away. I think he might be smiling.

"She said, 'God knows everything, but Anne Frank always knows it better.' Well, you don't know it better, young lady!" says Mrs. Frank.

Anne goes white with rage and her lips tremble. She storms off, saying nothing.

We all pretend to be busy. After a while Margot follows her.

"Well!" says Mrs. Frank. "No doubt that's another episode for Kitty to enjoy." Mr. Frank glances at her—a warning glance. I wonder who Kitty is, and how Anne keeps in touch with her.

"Every child needs privacy. What she writes in her diary is her business," remarks her father in his normal voice, quiet and calm. No one has heard Mr. Frank raise his voice. Ever.

"But why call her diary Kitty?" asks Mrs. Frank. But Mr. Frank doesn't answer, just shakes his paper.

Ah! So Anne keeps a diary. I bet I know what she writes in it—how wonderful she is!