“You know exactly what. Why was Bep upset?”
“Just a personal matter,” says Anne as blithely as possible. She always savors any opportunity to have one up on Margot. “I really can’t say anything more.”
On the walk home, though, she cannot help but wonder about something. The truth is that she has never drawn the same line as Bep has just done with such rock-hard assurance: husband, family, happiness. Of course, she assumes that regardless of what she might have had to say on the subject to fluster Mummy, she will have all those things someday. But even if she doesn’t, even if she forgoes the first two, the third has always floated freely, independently, in her mind. She will fall in love, doubtless. Of course she will. The war will end—how can it last forever? Eventually the English will arrive and the mof will be kicked back to his dirty little abode across the border. Jews will be free again, to be simply themselves, and she will find the one out there somewhere whose heart beats as hers, that much she assumes. But happiness? She has never planned on happiness coming from marriage or motherhood, but from something else. From something special inside. Mummy said that in Hebrew her name means “Favored by God,” and she believes it. She believes that God is keeping a unique secret for her; keeping it hidden from everyone including herself, until the time is ripe for her to discover it. The essence of Annelies Marie Frank.
* * *
One afternoon after classes, Anne enters the front office of her father’s firm and finds another girl occupying Bep’s desk, lounging on the telephone with a lazy voice, but when the girl spots Anne, she quickly cuts the call short.
“Hello,” says Anne with polite curiosity as she sets down her book satchel and hangs her jacket on the coat tree.
“Hello,” the girl answers with a not-unpleasant expression. “I guess you’re one of the daughters. I know there’s one younger and one older, so you must be the younger.”
“I must be,” Anne says. “My name is Anne.”
“I’m Nelli. One of Bep’s sisters.”
“Ah,” says Anne. And she sees it now. The resemblance. This girl looks to be a few years Bep’s junior but has the same high forehead and the same rounded chin. The same pinkish, bow-shaped lips and fluffy waves in her hair. But her eyes are different. They are larger, bolder, hungrier. Searching through her handbag, she produces a packet of French cigarettes and leans her head to the side as she ignites the tip with a bullet lighter.
“I don’t think Bep likes people to smoke at her desk,” Anne informs her.
“There are plenty of things I do that Bep doesn’t like,” Nelli says. “Just ask her. I’m sure she can give you a list.”
Anne looks around. All the desks are empty. “Where is everybody?”
“In the office down the hall,” Nelli replies without interest, and blows smoke. And then she says, “So it’s true. You’re Jewish.”
Anne feels her spine stiffen as she becomes acutely aware of the star attached to her blouse. “Yes,” she answers calmly. “Why do you bring that up?”
Another shrug from Nelli. “No reason. Only that you’re prettier than I expected. You could really pass, I think.”
Pass? “For what?”
“For Dutch,” says Nelli.
At that moment the office door opens and in steps Margot in a hurry. “Sorry I’m late,” she announces, removing her coat. Anne glares at the star sewn to Margot’s jumper, too, but Nelli now looks uninterested. “I agreed to tutor some of the younger pupils in French after classes. Where is everyone?”
“In Papa’s office, apparently. Margot, this is Nelli, Bep’s sister.”
Only now does Margot seem to notice the girl. “Oh. Hello. I’m Margot.”
“So I heard,” Nelli replies, expelling smoke. “How nice to meet you.”
“You know Bep doesn’t like people smoking at her desk,” Margot points out.
“Hmm.” Nelli nods. “I think I read that in the newspapers.”
Margot blinks, confused. “You what?”
But before Nelli says anything more, there’s some noise down the hall as the door to the private office opens and voices tumble out. Bep is the first one to return to the front office. Immediately her expression purses into a frown. “Nelli! What are you doing? Put that out, please,” she demands.
Nelli huffs sourly but does as she’s commanded, crushing out the cigarette in the saucer of a teacup.
“Don’t make a mess,” Bep scolds. “Take that cup and saucer into the kitchen and clean them, please. What are you up to anyway? You should be working. Have you finished with those invoices I asked you to file? No. I see you haven’t. I suppose, as usual, I must watch every move you make.”
“A pity you haven’t anything better to do,” Nelli tells her sister as she begins to page listlessly through the stack of unfiled invoices.
“Well, if you want to get paid for your work here, then I suggest that you find something better to do than loafing with a cigarette. We have an image to uphold in the front office.” Bep is gathering folders from the filing cabinet, and she slams a drawer shut as if to punctuate her sentence. Only now does she glance over at Anne and Margot. “So you’ve met my sister?”
“Yes,” says Anne blankly.
Bep nods and cradles the file folders. “Miep has left some work on Mr. Kugler’s desk for you two with a note.” And then to Nelli she pleads, “I beg you not to make me regret bringing you in,” before she marches back toward Pim’s private office, her flat heels clomping on the wooden floorboards.
“She’s not very large, but she still sounds like an ox in shoes when she walks, doesn’t she?” says Nelli.
Anne is offended. “That’s a terrible thing to say. Especially about your own sister.”
Nelli only shrugs. “You’re right,” she says wryly. “You’re right. I must be a terrible person.”
“Anne, let’s not dawdle,” Margot intercedes, setting her school satchel down beside Anne’s. “I want to be able to finish the work Miep left for us before we go home.”
Anne blinks away from Nelli. “Well, you’re the one who was late.”
“And you’re the one who likes to dawdle,” Margot counters, heading under the arch toward Kugler’s side of the office.
Nelli expels a breath. “Aren’t big sisters simply an impossible pain in the rump?” she wonders aloud.
Anne can’t disagree with this. But she finds that she doesn’t want to agree with Nelli either. “Excuse me,” she says formally, and follows Margot.
* * *
• • •
“I don’t like her,” Anne announces.
“Who?”
“That girl Nelli.” They are in the kitchen at home, scraping carrots for supper.
“She’s Bep’s sister,” Margot says.
“So?” Anne frowns.
“So make allowances. Why don’t you like her anyway?”
“Why? You heard her. She says awful things about Bep,” Anne complains with some vehemence.
Margot only shrugs. “You say awful things about me.”
“I do not! And even if I do, I would never say them in front of strangers.”
“I am so comforted by that, Anne,” Margot replies, as if there were a sharp tack on her tongue.
Anne is exasperated. “You and I are different,” she protests. “Anyway, that has nothing to do with anything. I just don’t like her. I don’t have to have a reason—I have instincts about people.” A pot cover rattles on the stove as water comes to a rolling boil. “Mother, the potatoes are boiling,” Anne calls out dutifully.
Their mother comes bustling into the kitchen in her starched linen apron, already in the midst of admonishing Anne. “Well, turn down the fire, then, if they’re boiling, silly thing.”
Anne ignores this. “Margot already did it,” she replies, and scrapes another carrot.
> Their mother raises the lid on the pot. “Did you put the salt in, Margot?”
“A pinch,” Margot answers.
“Well, another pinch won’t hurt. Anne, go set the table, please.”
“But I’m scraping the carrots, Mummy.”
“Margot can finish that. Now go do as I say, will you? For once without further resistance.”
Anne huffs to herself. “Yes, Mummy,” she concedes.
“Margot, I’ll need you to check on the lamb in another five minutes, please. I’d like to go get changed before supper. And the two of you should, too. Mr. and Mrs. van Pels will be here at six o’clock.”
“Is their blockheaded son coming, too?” Anne asks.
“Anne,” her mother scolds. “Peter may not be as quick as you and your sister, but Mr. van Pels is a valuable partner in your father’s business dealings. To speak of his son so is out of the question.”
“Sorry, Mummy,” Anne mumbles. “I won’t call him a blockhead when he’s here. At least not when he’s in earshot.”
Their mother sighs with dreadful resignation. “I simply don’t understand you. Why must you be so harsh with people? What are you trying to prove?”
“Sorry, Mummy,” she repeats, but this time she is obviously abashed. She remains silent after their mother leaves, listening to the scrunch of the scraper against the meat of the carrot, and looks over at her sister, who is slipping on a pair of quilted oven mitts. “You know, Margot, even if I do say awful things about you, I never really mean them,” she says.
A glance from those lovely eyes behind the lenses of Margot’s glasses. “I know that, Anne. And when I say awful things about you, I almost never mean them either.”
“Ha,” Anne snorts, though she cannot help but smile.
“Now go and do as Mummy said,” Margot instructs. “And remember, when you’re laying the place settings, the blade of the knife always faces inward.”
* * *
Near the end of the week, they stopped by a shop to pick up provisions for the office kitchen. Surrogate sugar, surrogate coffee, a box of surrogate tea, a box of soap powder. Margot performed the complicated transaction with their rationing coupons, but somehow that made it Anne’s job to carry the sack. When she steps out onto the street, however, her heart thumps thickly at the sight of the GVB electric tram that has bumped to a stop in front of them, its bell dinging. She can feel a pair of eyes stick to her. A girl on the right side of pretty, firmly attached to a well-coiffed, cocky-looking fellow in a German army uniform. The girl drills Anne with a stare that gapes somewhere between unpleasant alarm and utter abhorrence, but in any case there is not a trace of pity in it.
“It’s Nelli,” Anne says aloud.
“Who?”
“Nelli. Bep’s sister Nelli.”
Margot glances up. “Where?”
“On the streetcar with a mof.” Anne tries to point it out, but by now the tram is banging away down its track, casually tossing off sparks.
Margot shrugs it off. “I think you must be seeing things.” But on their walk to the office, Anne is debating with herself. Should she talk to Bep? Will it shock her to know that one of her sisters has been publicly observed hanging on the arm of a mof invader? Anne doesn’t want to embarrass Bep, but what if Bep hasn’t a clue about what’s going on? Maybe if Anne spills the beans, Bep can do something to dissuade her sister from such shameful folly. On the other hand, if Bep already knows and is too ashamed to mention it, then Anne risks humiliating her further.
In the office Anne enters the kitchen to put away the provisions and finds Bep there with her back to her. Anne calls her name, and Bep twists around, her eyes burning behind her glasses. “Anne,” she says, and gulps.
Quickly Anne crosses, sets down her sack, and takes Bep gently by her arm. “Bep, what’s happened?”
For a moment all Bep can do is shake her head.
“What is it? Did you have a fight with Maurits?” Anne guesses.
And at the mention of his name, Bep’s eyes fill. “No. Not a fight,” she says. Bep seems to want to hold in her next words, but she can’t, and they all come tumbling out. “Maurits has been called up for the Arbeitseinsatz,” she confesses in a shaky voice.
The Arbeitseinsatz. This explains everything. The so-called labor deployment of Dutch subjects deported to Germany to keep the mof’s war machine cranking. And now to think Maurits is facing daily life toiling in a German factory or some abominable work camp, it’s horrifying! How can he suffer through such a nightmare? Under the moffen heel like a slave? And not only that, but what about the fleets of Allied planes they hear roaring toward Germany? What if the bombardiers drop their bomb loads on Maurits’s head? Bombs can’t make a distinction between a German and a Good Dutchman, Bep points out tearfully. They only fall and explode.
“There must be something that can be done,” Anne insists adamantly, but Bep only shakes her head harder, yanking off her glasses to clear her eyes with the palms of her hands. “No. Nothing.”
“What about Pim? Have you talked to Pim?” Anne asks. “Surely he can come up with some solution.”
“No, Anne. No. Nothing can be done. Maurits has been called up, and if he resists, he’ll be sent to a concentration camp. Or maybe simply taken to the dunes and shot.” This possibility is too much for Bep, and she breaks into pieces. Immediately Anne claps her in an embrace, gripping tightly and absorbing Bep’s sobs. She can feel the tears soaking into the shoulder of her blouse as she pats Bep’s back sympathetically, cooing her name. If there’s really nothing to be done but hold Bep as she cries, then at least Anne can do that much.
When evening comes, however, she takes her first opportunity to explain Bep’s tragedy at the supper table. Pim pauses with his knife and fork over his plate and shakes his head grimly. “Terrible news,” he can only agree.
Anne presses for something more. This is her father, after all—a man of great competence. He’s kept a family of Jews safe in the middle of the Nazi occupation. Surely he can help save one gentile from labor conscription. “There must be something you can do, Pim. Can’t you?”
But it’s her mother who answers, with a sharpness that causes Anne to wince.
“Do? Don’t be absurd, Anne. What can your father possibly do? Don’t you understand this yet? We are Jews,” she reminds her daughter, eyes filling. “We have no power any longer.”
For an instant no one speaks, until Pim leans forward with an expression of eloquent sympathy. “Edith . . .” he says.
But not even Pim can stop Mummy from leaping up from her chair to make a weepy exit. “Excuse me,” she chokes out before vanishing from the room.
By now Anne feels herself on the brink of tears, too. “I didn’t mean to upset her, Pim. Really I didn’t.”
Her father nods. “Of course not, Anne,” he tells her.
Margot stiffens. “Shall I go after her, Pim?” She’s ready to leap from her chair as well. But Pim tells her no.
“She’ll be all right. It’s just her nerves. Give her a while alone.”
And this seems to be the case. By the end of supper, when it’s time to clear the table and wash the dishes, Mummy is back, dry-eyed and acting her usual self. “Anne, be more careful,” she says when Anne brings in one of the large platters. “I don’t want any chips in my china. It survived the journey from Frankfurt without so much as a nick in a saucer. Is it too much to ask that it survive handling by my younger daughter?”
That night as she’s lying in bed, Anne tries to visualize the reality of a German labor camp. She pictures Maurits hunched in a line of prisoners, clothes filthy, digging ditches as ugly Boche guards in steel helmets and hobnail boots watch over them with guns at the ready. But beyond that she draws a blank. It must be a place of pure horror, no doubt, yet what exactly pure horror looks like, what it consists of, she finds difficult to imagine
.
* * *
Since they invaded the Low Countries two years ago, the Germans are everywhere. Feldgrau uniforms fill the cafés and restaurants. Caravans of Opel Blitz lorries plow through the maze of narrow city streets, crushing the pavement under their tire treads and drowning out all sound, disobeying even the most minor tenets of Dutch law and Dutch courtesy. Had packs of savage wolves been loosed across Amsterdam, it would not feel any less dangerous than after the advent of the mof. “Mof,” that complicated word. It’s a Dutch insult in a way that only the Dutch can be insulting. A sort of old-fashioned derogation with a definition akin to “grumpy and unsophisticated.” Not much of a slight for a murderous army of interlopers, but the Dutch language does not naturally accommodate rudeness, so really it’s the best, or the worst, that can be offered. The Dutch do so enjoy hurling diseases as swear words, calling a person a cancer or a canker sore. But if they wasted their most beloved insults on the Germans, then whatever would they call each other?
There is, though, no shortage of names to call a Jew. Yid, kike, sheeny, assassin of Christ—Anne’s heard them all by now. There may be shortages of coal, meat, milk, and fresh produce, but there’s no shortage of insults in that department. It hurts her because she so loves the Dutch. She loves being Dutch. She would rather take heart at the heroic story of the Dutch transport workers who risked their lives by striking in protest of SS razzias—the brutal roundups in the Jewish Quarter. But then her friend Lucia, whom she’s known since Montessori school, appears dressed on the playground in the getup of the National Youth Storm and tells her that she’s going to miss Anne’s birthday party because her mother won’t allow her to be friends with a Jewess any longer. Anne glares at Lucia’s face after this announcement. The girl looks trapped. In pain. Lucia has always been dominated by her mother, but Anne has no sympathy to spare her. If she despises the Germans, she despises even more the Dutch collaborators and traitors to the queen who’ve joined the Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging. That gang of filthy-hearted fascists whose cohorts parade in the street with their shiny boots and newly adopted swastika banners, as if they are the conquerors instead of the moffen. She glares at the black-and-orange cap atop Lucia’s head, adorned with a seagull badge. Anne adores seagulls, adores watching them reel above the canals, and suddenly she hates Lucia. Despises her for stealing the seagull for her dirty fascist insignia. Anne would enjoy spitting in the girl’s round piglet face, but instead she replies in a lofty manner, “I’m sorry to hear that. You’re going to miss simply the best party that has ever been thrown.”
Annelies Page 5
