Annexed (8 page)

"And maybe some cigarettes!" says Papi.

"Honestly!" says Mrs. Frank. "They're not fighting the war for us alone, you know!"

A silence.

"No, they're not," says Mr. Frank. "But perhaps it's hard to remember that, when we're locked up in here, waiting."

"Why do they call it cleansing?" Anne asks suddenly. She doesn't notice the silence, the sadness that lands on us all whenever she mentions things so suddenly, without warning. Mr. Frank sighs.

"Why do you think, Anne?" he asks, but she doesn't answer, just asks abruptly, "Would they really cleanse children?"

"We don't know exactly what's happening, Anne, only that it's bad."

He doesn't want to say it, I'm thinking. He doesn't want to say that yes, of course they would cleanse children. And precious, clever, know-it-all Anne can't see it.

"But we do know!" She says it too loudly. Even though it's
suppertime and all the workers have gone home, she should still be quiet. "We know that they want to get rid of us, and so what are they doing with us when they round us up?"

Everyone's silent. Even Anne notices it, but maybe she thinks it's that we disagree with her. Maybe she can't see that questions are something we ask ourselves alone, and at night. We ask them when all we can hear is the wind at the window and the church bells striking the hours. We don't ask them out loud. Only Anne does that—and then she feels bad about it, and so suddenly it's everyone else's fault.

She leaps up and flounces down the stairs.

"Anne!" says her father.

"Be careful on those stairs!" hisses Mrs. Frank. Anne stops and turns to her.

"You don't care about me hurting myself," she hisses. "You're just worried about us being found!"

"Anne!" Mr. Frank loud-whispers.

"You've raised a very spoiled child," mutters Mutti.

Margot stares at her plate very hard; she breathes in through her nose and out through her mouth. I stand up and ask to be excused.

"Now, there's a polite boy," smiles Mutti.

"Good Lord, come down and give me a cigarette for my trials!" mutters Papi. I think Margot grins beneath her hair.

I'm blushing again. I hate it when Mutti praises me in front of the others—especially for something so stupid.

***

Bad news, Turkey hasn't joined the war; instead it's just having a think about not being neutral. It might not have to think so hard if it was Jewish.

Sometimes I can't stand the atmosphere in the Annex. Margot feels the same, I know. She deals with it by doing chores and reading. If it's the evening or the weekend I go and find Boche down in the storeroom, or even all the way down to the warehouse on the ground floor.

I can only go downstairs on weekends, or evenings, of course. At other times the office and warehouse workers are around. I like slipping silently in my socks all the way down the secret staircase. I like getting further and further away from the Annex. I have to come down at night, though, to bolt the door, and back again in the morning to unbolt it so Mr. Kugler can use his key.

It's dark in the storeroom, just like it is everywhere in the Annex—only darker, in fact, because the windows are completely blacked out. And it smells. "It smells of the world, Peter!" Mr. Frank says—and he's right. I can identify the smells now. Pepper especially. It makes the cats sneeze.

Anne and Margot hate it down here, they think it's creepy. That's good because it means I get it all to myself. It takes a while for your eyes to adjust in the dark, but then it's fine. And it's quiet. Just me and Boche, purring, I like it.

I'm playing with Boche, kneeling down in the nearly dark and holding a bean in one of the hands behind my back.

"Guess?" I whisper, and show Boche both hands. He leans forward, sniffs at my hands. His whiskers tickle. He sits back and stares and then delicately lifts a paw and taps my left hand. I turn it over. Open it. The bean is there. "Clever Boche!" I whisper and we nod at each other and begin again. I hide the bean behind my back, bring my hands around, but suddenly Boche doesn't want to play—he turns his face away.

"Hey!" I whisper. "Mouse?" But he doesn't answer, just stalks toward the warehouse door and then back again—pushing his head hard against my knees.

"What?" I rub his head. His skull feels so small beneath his fur. I don't like that. He pushes and pushes against my hands. I kneel down and look into his eyes: "What is it?" But he twists his head away from me and stalks toward the door again ... the sound crashes through the air.

I jump. I leap up and stand in the dark, staring, with my heart beating hard. What was that? I'm not used to loud sounds. For a split second I can't make any sense of what's happening. Then my brain begins turning, fast. A barrel's fallen over in the warehouse. Someone must be in there. Boche was trying to tell me someone was there. Did they hear me? Do they know I'm here? Was I quiet enough? Boche stares at me. I stare back.

I keep very, very still. I watch as the handle of the door turns. It turns all the way around, and then the door's rattled, hard.

I step back.

Who is it? If they were Nazi sympathizers or the green police they would just come in, wouldn't they? They must be thieves. We can negotiate with thieves. Or can we? People are starving. What price eight Jews? I don't know. I don't know much at all.

I watch as Boche strolls to the door, scratches at it, and lets out a loud meow.

I turn and run.

I slip silently and fast up the stairs. It feels like it takes forever.

The Franks are in their sitting room/bedroom. I whisper to Mr. Frank. Anne realizes what's happening straightaway, she starts to shake. She turns white and Margot wraps an arm around her quickly. Mr. Frank rises swiftly and we go downstairs. He stops in the front office and warns Mutti to turn off the radio and go upstairs. She glances at me, is about to reach out and hug me until she sees the warning in my eyes—her hand drops back to her side.

"Ready?" whispers Mr. Frank. I nod, proud that he hasn't sent me away, hasn't looked for Father. We creep down the
stairs and wait at the bottom, listening. I realize we have no weapons, nothing except our fists. I raise them. The dark is complete. We stand and listen to each other breathing. There's no other sound, nothing.

And then a door bangs.

Bang! And another—bang! Like a gunshot. And Mr. Frank whispers, "I'm going to warn them upstairs!" He disappears. I'm alone.

I step forward, fists raised, but nothing happens, so I follow Mr. Frank. Dr. Pfeffer is in his room. The one he shares with Anne. "Get upstairs!" I say. It comes out terse and rude.

"How dare you talk to me like that, you young..." I walk up to him, my heart beating fast with fear. I hold him by his shirt under his throat. I hold him too tight. Maybe it's because I'm scared. Maybe not.

"There are people in the warehouse! Get upstairs, now!" I hiss at him. He signals with his hands. I realize he can't move until I let him go. He runs up the stairs. Noisily. Idiot.

I follow him.

Silently.

Everyone except Father is in the Franks' sitting room. One by one we creep up to the kitchen—and we wait.
Listening. Father coughs. Margot gets him some medicine. She's swift and quiet and brave. We wait. Anne is still shaking. White and quiet for once.

"Are you all right?" I whisper.

"When I heard you coming back up the stairs," she says, "I ... I ... didn't know that ... I mean I wasn't sure it was you and Father ... I thought it might be..."

"Shhh!" whispers Margot. "Not now, Anne." We all know what she thought. That it was them, coming for us. Papi coughs again. Then apologizes. Then coughs. Then goes red with the effort of trying not to cough. Then apologizes. And then coughs again—until I want to strangle him.

"Did you turn off the radio?" I whisper to Mutti. She nods, but Anne hears me.

"The radio's still there!" she cries. "What if the air-raid warden comes around and searches the building?" she whispers in horror. "He'll see eight chairs around an illegal radio tuned in to Britain ... and they'll..."

"Anne! Shhh. We can't do anything about it right now," Margot whispers. I look up at her. She's so quiet normally, but now things are desperate she's brave and calm, and it's Anne who's falling apart.

Mr. Frank stands up. "I'm going to see if anything's happening down there." I stand up with him. Father too.

We wait to see if Pfeffer will come with us, but he stays sit
ting with the women. I reach for a hammer. Father puts his coat on and picks out a chisel. Mr. Frank takes nothing. We go down into the dark and wait. Nothing. Not a sound.

"They must have gone," whispers Father.

We creep back to the front office and replace the chairs, hide the radio, and hope a warden doesn't notice the break-in and come searching. We go back upstairs and wait.

It's all we ever do.

Wait.

I hide the hammer under my bed, just in case.

As soon as I fall asleep the dreams begin. Men in shiny helmets, like insects, crawl from the walls. All through the night I wake, listen, wait. Dream.

At breakfast we're all so tired we can barely speak—except for Anne, of course.

"Did you listen for the bells last night?" she asks. "I listened all night but they didn't come. I wonder where they are?"

"Ah, so that's why I was so disturbed!" says Mutti, slapping her thigh.

"Ach!" says Father. "Like children, those church bells—at first they plague you, and then you get so used to them that you can't live without them!"

Everyone smiles.

"Mmm, and there I was thinking I couldn't sleep because
we'd had a break-in," says Mr. Frank drily, hiding behind yesterday's newspaper.

"Bells, what bells?" asks Mutti. "I've never heard any bells."

Mrs. Frank laughs. "Honestly, Auguste, we all know you are only teasing!"

"It's called a carillon," says Margot suddenly. "You know, when there's a peal of bells, in English, from the French, I mean. It's called a carillon of bells. Isn't that lovely?" She stops, and blushes.

"That's beautiful," I say. I whisper the word to myself. "Carillon."

"Well," says Anne, "they've stopped ringing. I wonder why." Then she makes up a story, right then, about how the bells have had enough and are refusing to ring for the Nazis.

"They'll only ring on the day all Jews are liberated," she says, and takes another mouthful of what we call food these days.

"What are you looking at?" she asks me.

"How do you do that?" I ask back.

"Do what?"

"Make things up like that?"

She shrugs. "How do you go downstairs when you think a burglar might be down there? I couldn't!"

"Mmm," smiles Mr. Frank. "Thank goodness we're all different."

"Except if we weren't, there wouldn't be a war," says Mutti.

We're all silent for a minute thinking about that—and then for some reason we all start laughing.

I like it when that happens.

Why do I have to learn English? Will the British or Americans kill me if I thank them in Dutch? And French, what for—I mean, I like the sound of it. I like saying the words, but I don't really care what they mean. I already speak Dutch and German, isn't that enough?

Répondez, s'il vous plaît.
That's how you say RSVP in longhand—it means send a reply, please. Margot and Anne have learned shorthand. They pass each other notes written in it, read them, and giggle. It is
so annoying.

"At least they're learning something!" says Mrs. Frank, giving me a look as sharp as her needles.

"To be rude, it seems!" snaps Mutti. "I wonder where they get that from?"

I stand up.

"What do you think, Peter?" asks Anne. "Does it bother you, us writing notes?
RSVP, tout de suite.
"

"Please, may I be excused?" I say, and leave.

"
Il répond, ça c'est vrai,
" laughs Anne.

"
Oui, avec son pieds.
" Margot smiles.

I don't answer. I don't know what they're talking about. Perhaps my feet smell
—pieds
—that's feet, isn't it?

I stand in the attic. I make myself breathe long and slow and try not to feel angry. I look up into the tree, it's full of buds. I wish I could reach out and touch them. I wish I had a handful of them. I wish I were sitting in the branches of the tree swinging my legs in the air, with Liese.

I wish a lot of things.

But none of them will happen.

Sometimes I wish Anne would disappear in a puff of smoke.

And then I feel bad for wishing that, because we
are
disappearing. All the time. We've just heard that all Jews must be cleansed from German-occupied territories. We are to be "cleansed in north and south Holland" between the first of May and the first of June.

"We are to be routed out by Herr Rauter!" says Mr. Frank in English. Anne laughs as though she understands the joke. Perhaps she does, perhaps she's so clever that she'll be able to save herself.

But how will they cleanse us? That's what Anne asked and what I want to know. Cleansing makes me think of anthills and poison. It makes me feel like I want to put on boots and crush each Nazi like a beetle beneath my feet. Is this what Mr. Frank means when he says I shouldn't be filled with their hate? Does it make me as bad as they are?

I reach behind the rafters and pull out one of Papi's cigarettes. I light it. The smoke makes me cough.

"All right?" asks Margot. She appears so silently I jump. I didn't hear her.

"Cleansed," I whisper. It's like that with Margot. She's so quiet you can just go on thinking. "They're cleansing us, like cockroaches."

"We
are
cockroaches—to them," she says. But she even says that quietly, like it's a fact, not anything to get especially upset about. She sits next to me and leans forward, breathes in the smoke.

"Want some?" I ask. "Just make sure you don't breathe it in—it makes you cough!"