Annelies by David R. Gillham

Author:David R. Gillham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Viking
Published: 2019-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

• • •

Later, after the supper dishes are cleared and washed and Miep and Jan have gone out for their evening walk, Anne finds Pim sitting in a chair in the Jekerstraat flat with a book open. She watches him from the room’s threshold. His body reedy and his face thin, but with a touch of color returning to his cheeks. His eyes look gentle and unhurried as he gazes down at the page, lost in words. It’s Goethe he’s reading this time instead of Dickens. The smoke from his cigarette curls softly upward.

He raises his eyes suddenly when he realizes that his daughter is watching him. “Anne?”

“So you know she’s divorced?” Anne asks him.

His expression does not change, but the light recedes immediately from his eyes.

“Mrs. Zuckert,” Anne says thickly. “Your favorite—” She begins to say, Your favorite in the office, but Pim’s voice is level when he cuts her off.

“I know who you mean, Anne. And the answer is yes. I am aware that Mrs. Zuckert has been divorced. There is no need to stigmatize her over it. So she left a bad marriage. That does not make her a bad person.”

“This is not about her,” Anne lies, “it’s about you, Pim. Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what, daughter? I’m not doing anything.”

“Yes you are,” she insists. “Yes, you are. It’s obvious to everyone. She calls you by your given name, for God’s sake.”

And now her father expels a breath. He cheats a drag from his cigarette before tamping it out in Miep’s Bakelite ashtray, which he’s dirtied like a fireplace grate. “Anne,” he says. Her name as a preamble. The beginning of a lecture or a sermon: Anne, you have no idea what you’re saying. Anne, you have no business interfering with adults. Anne, you are still only a child. But what he says is, “Anne, I won’t deny that I may have certain feelings in regard to Mrs. Zuckert. And I won’t deny that she may, and I said may, harbor certain feelings for me.” He pauses. Allows these words to sink in. “Now, of course I can understand that you might find it difficult to accept such a . . .” Such a what? “A situation,” he decides to call it.

“You understand?” All at once the fury in her breaks free. “You understand, do you? No, Pim. No, I don’t think you understand a thing.”

Her father shifts uncomfortably in the chair and huffs a breath. “Really, it’s always this, isn’t it?” he says. “Always this anger. It’s all you offer me, Anneke.”

“Well, perhaps”—and her eyes are hot as she says it—“perhaps I’m angry because you’re betraying my mother’s memory.”

“No,” Pim replies adamantly.

“Yes. You are. How long has your wife been dead, Pim? Fourteen months? Fifteen? No time to waste. Better get a replacement in the works!”

“Stop it,” he demands, running his fingers over the vein suddenly popping at his temple. “Just stop it.”

“Kugler says she used to do bookkeeping for the company. Is that when you first noticed her, when Mummy wasn’t around?”

Her father leaps to his feet.

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