Annexed (9 page)

But she shakes her head. "I just wanted to know what it's like. I hate it. It smells."

We're silent for a while.

"At least the Dutch are still on our side," she whispers. I nod. A few days ago the Dutch resistance dressed up as German officers and blew up the labor exchange! Even better, when the firemen came they kept the hoses going and deliberately drenched everything as well as putting the fire out. So all the records are ruined. We both look at each other and smile.

"We're not cockroaches, are we, Margot?" I don't know why I ask her, the words just come out.

"No, Peter," she says, "but they try to make us feel like we are, and if they succeed, then they've won." I stare at her. I don't think I've ever heard her say so many words, or sound so passionate. She blushes. "At least that's what Father says," she adds quickly, and then she turns away.

"Peter, where do you think they send us?" she asks suddenly. She doesn't look at me, and she doesn't wait for an answer either before she asks the next question. "And what do you think they do with us?"

I don't answer. I glance at her, a quick glance. Her glasses glint in the light. I look away. It's like walking on hot coals, asking questions. I look up at the buds on the tree. I don't look at Margot.

"I don't know," I whisper, "but I suppose ... I think, cleanse means, clean out, get rid of ... it means kill. I suppose."

"But why?" she whispers.

I shake my head. "Your father says they're so full of hate for themselves they have to get rid of it somehow."

"Peter!" she whisper-yells and I realize my fingers are burning. I drop the cigarette. I'd forgotten it was still in my hand.

"Quick!" she says. We crush it, over and over until every single spark has gone.

"Imagine!" is all Margot says. And we do. We both know
if the building caught fire we'd be flushed out like animals—or burned to death. We both know how trapped we are. How helpless.

Margot tries to smile and then turns to go. I haven't answered her question. The question we all ask ourselves, over and over, but never speak out loud, except Anne.

"Margot?" She looks up.

"I ... I don't know why us," I say.

She shakes her head. "Neither do I, but sometimes..." She stops.

"What, Margot?"

She sits on the top of the stairs and puts her chin in her hands. I wait.

"Sometimes I'm actually glad it's not just us," she says. "I mean that it's others too. That they hate anyone who isn't exactly like them, it ... oh, I don't know!"

"Neither do I."

"Do you think that makes me bad?" she asks. "I mean, being glad that other people suffer?"

I laugh. "You, Margot? Bad? You're the sweetest person anywhere, ever."

"Oh!" she says. "I ... you...?"

"Margot, you couldn't be bad if you tried."

"I think I could," she says slowly, thoughtfully, as though it was something she should try.

I start to laugh. "Not if you have to think about it that hard!"

She smiles suddenly. "Perhaps you're right," she says.

"I am."

"Oh well, time to do my reading." And she goes down the steep stairs. I watch her. She goes slowly. She goes carefully, so as not to make a noise. She does it like that to keep herself safe. She does it like that not to put herself, or any of us, in danger. That's the way we live—and sometimes it makes us want to scream. Sometimes it makes me want to crush people beneath my boots.

I grind the rest of the cigarette butt to dust under my heel. I grind it till there's nothing left. I pick up the dust and blow it away. And then I turn and follow her down the stairs.

***

That night I dream I'm a foot—a great big foot, stepping on soldiers. I feel their helmets crush like beetle shells beneath my boots. The ground is slippery and red. I jump in blood—1 ike puddles. And with each step a word rises: Hate ... Hate ... Hate ... Hate, in a puff of smoke that moves and changes, and however hard I try to stamp it out, it eludes me.

I wake up suddenly in the dark. I open my eyes wide and wait for a speck of light to reach them.

Nothing.

I listen for the bells to help me measure out the hours of darkness left.

They're gone.

The world is silent.

And I'm angry.

Are we to be left with anything, anything at all? Is this all I am?

A hole in the silence.

You knew, boy. You always knew. Somehow, even then, you sensed it.

The fear.

That they might succeed and wipe us off the face of the earth.

Our history gone as easily as our homes were cleared.

But still, its hard to believe that I lived your life once.

Were you really once me?

And I you?

I've been here too long. Sometimes it feels as though my life before now was a dream. Sometimes it feels as though the thought of any future can only ever be a dream, although I don't say so.

Outside, the sky is blue and cold. The branches of the chestnut tree are bare again, except for high up on the left-hand side, where some brown, curled leaves cling to a branch. I take bets with Anne. She says they will hang on all winter and still be there to be pushed off by the new leaves in spring. I say the wind will blow them away before February.

I hope she's right.

I'm trying to find the menorah. I pull it out of a box. It's a whole year since I made it. Some days were sunny, some were warm, some cold. Some happy, some sad, some angry, and some bored.

Slowly I brush away the dust on the candlesticks, and stare at the symbols I carved.

A whole year.

I am seventeen now. Seventeen. I've never made love to a girl—or only in my dreams. In my dreams I remember every inch of Liese: the curve of her waist, the imagined weight
of her breasts, the apricot feel of her skin, and the light in her eyes.

In reality I know nothing.

I hold the menorah in my hand. I wonder what happened to my prayers. Where did they go?

So many of us have disappeared. We try not to think of it, to talk of it. We live. We go on. We cling like the brown leaves to the tree.

A whole year gone. I never thought I'd still be here in 1944.

I've stood in the attic and watched a dogfight, seen bombs fall and fires start. In autumn, I watched the geese leave. I heard them each morning, flying over the attic. They flew past the windows, calling, flying into the sun.

Outside.

Margot came and we watched together. Most mornings we could only hear them—but one day, one day they flew straight overhead, right above us. Twelve of them flying in formation like a long open wing—a dark line against the sky, disappearing.

"It feels like a miracle," Margot said.

"What does?" I asked.

"That they can still do that. That they can still fly away."

And it does. I know what she means. When you're trapped
like we are, it
is
a miracle that the world goes on outside. It feels strange that flowers still grow, or that Miep can walk outside and then return. Because our world has stopped spinning. It's stuck. There is being alive and there is living. We are alive. Perhaps one day we'll live again.

"Ah, living!" says Papi. "Maybe one day that will come."

We're all still here, all eight of us. Like the fact that the geese still fly—that's a miracle too.

It's hard to believe in miracles. It's easier just to get on with the day-to-day things, things that I know can be done. I've tried so hard to have faith, but I think for someone like me, it needs real outside air to keep it going.

I can't believe in a God that lets this happen. I won't believe in a God who says Jews are his chosen people.

I don't want to cause hurt and I don't want to be persuaded. I can't believe that to be Jewish is better or worse than to be any other thing, and if God does choose, then how can he be any better than us? Because that's what
they
do, isn't it? Only
they
choose to hate us best, just like God chooses to love us best.

Both are right, or both are wrong.

And we're only people—that's what I keep thinking. We're only people, just like all the people who walk past the Annex, never looking up, never knowing we're here waiting for our world to begin again.

I don't know.

I still love the candles. I'll still say the words of the prayer. I don't want anyone to know how I feel. I don't want to talk about it.

This year I will think of each of us, and what we have left.

Of Margot whom I sometimes think I could love.

Of Anne and her eyes that can still sparkle.

Of Mutti: silly and wonderful and annoying and kind.

Of Papi with his jokes and his temper and his trying to let me be a man.

I'll try to remember all the things I've forgotten I once knew, like how it feels to laugh out loud without fear.

Or how legs can ache after a long walk.

Or choosing what to eat!

Or the right to hate school rather than long for it.

Sometimes, even now, I wake up and turn over, expecting Mutti's voice to call up the stairs and tell me to get ready for school. Then I open my eyes and see the walls and remember.

That I'm here.

That's what I would pray for, if I believed it would make any difference. To get up in the morning and walk down Zuider-Amstellaan on my way to the Lyceum. In my mind it would be autumn. Leaves would be floating on the canals. The sun would shine. The world would be golden, and a
friend would shout: "Hey! Van Pels!" I'd raise my hand and wave.

"See you at Oasis later!" And I'd nod and walk on.

That's it! That's my dream. My dream of an outside where I can live every day like that's all it is—just another day.

"Peter!" I turn around. Papi is standing there.

"If you don't come down with that menorah it's
you
your mutti will set alight!" He comes to stand before me. Together we look out the window. It will be dark soon. We are halfway through a winter. It is always dark in the Annex, but it's worse somehow in winter—cold and damp. Even Anne stops trying to be so bright and cheerful.

Papi smiles and runs his fingers over the washing drying there. The clothes are old and worn. Mrs. Frank is ruining her eyes with sewing in this light, but still the holes grow. We all have our jobs: Mr. Frank holds our minds together and Mrs. Frank keeps our clothes together. Mutti keeps our bodies together and Papi mends things and makes us groan out loud and smile at his jokes.

Still, I wish they didn't all argue so much.

"Do you remember Anne hanging out all her papers to dry?" he says. I nod. "Catholic Maria de Medici next to Protestant William of Orange, such
rassenschande
," he says. "Hitler would never approve." I smile, it's one of his better jokes, as jokes go, but they all wear off after a while.

"Ach," he says, and he holds a holey vest between his fingers. "Look at this. A disgrace! Your mother used to wear such beautiful things. So beautiful, Petel. Pink silk, you should have seen..." and he turns quickly and stares out of window. In the silence a bird flies white across the sky. Father's back is very straight, and then he smiles. I can't see the smile but I can feel it. He begins to whisper to himself.

I don't move.

I listen.

"Ah, Gusti, you looked so beautiful. So beautiful I can't tell you." And then he speaks aloud, "Layers, Peter! That's what they wrapped brides in then. Layers, like a present for us to unwrap. And everything the best! She wore silk. Pink like her young cheeks. She keeps it, even here. Ach, so tiny, a handkerchief of silk. You know, the night she heard our house was emptied she held it in her hands all night. A thin piece of silk. Ach, what madness is this, eh? That I'm talking to my own son about his mother!"

I don't move. I don't smile. I want him to go on, and I want to say: "Don't you know, Papi? Don't you think I can hear you both at night?"

Especially the night our house was emptied.

He turns from the window; the vest is shredded in his hands. Does he think I can't see it? His sorrow—his longing for the past?

Well, at least you've had a past,
I think.
I haven't, or not much of one!

"Bring down the menorah then," he says.

And he turns and is gone.

Sometimes the way Anne looks at me unnerves me. It reminds me of measuring things, like sizing up a piece of wood, ready to make the first cut. I'm not sure if I like it, or maybe I do. I don't know.

She's in my room. She holds her cheek in her hand and tips her head sideways. I don't know who she is being today but it's obvious she's here to stay. I sigh and get off my bed (the most comfortable place to sit), and go and sit by the desk. I try to carry on with the crossword, but she keeps bouncing up off the bed and staring over my shoulder, telling me the answers. I write them in.

"What does Margot do in here?" she asks.

"Margot doesn't come in here, she goes up to the attic."

"Oh!"

Every time I look up, she stares straight into my eyes. It's odd. I'm getting a squint from trying to stare around her. I sigh. I wish it was Liese sitting there.

Anne is talking. The words go on and on. She's lecturing me about my blushing. Telling me I'll stop one day, that she's read an article, so she knows. She tells me all about it. I nod. I can't speak. I can't really hear the words. I can only see Liese's face. The way her eyes used to light up when they landed on me. I never blushed with Liese.

I look hard at the crossword, concentrate, try to find meanings. After a while Anne finally stands up. I stand up too, and say goodbye. Can she tell how desperate I am for her to leave?

I fall onto the bed. I curl up. I hold my head in my hands. But the picture of Liese won't come. Instead I keep seeing Anne: her odd hair, her strange look. I feel angry—angry that she came into my room, angry that I'm too polite to ask her to leave, angry that she's gotten in between me and my memories of Liese.