Annexed by Sharon Dogar Read Free Book Online Page B

IS SIXTEEN
    Today is the eighth of November. I'm sixteen.
    I hear Anne's footsteps running up the stairs. "Wake up! Wake up, Peter, aren't you excited?"
    I smile.
    Mutti and Papi have tried so hard. There is a board game, a razor, even though I haven't got much to shave, a cigarette lighter, and two cigarettes. I think of the piles of presents I used to have on my birthday and going out to tea in any place I chose. Now there are only these few things, and they are a miracle of effort.
    I smile at Mutti. "Thank you!"
    Last night she came into my room. She didn't say anything. She sat on the bed and held my hand. After a while she left. Sometimes there's nothing that can be said.
    Now it's my birthday, and Anne's standing in our kitchen as though it's the most exciting day of the year, and so something has to be said, however we feel.
    "Hey, cigarettes!" I lift one to my mouth and pretend to smoke it. I strut with my hand behind my back and say in German, "Ach, so, you are in hiding, yah? You say you are German? German? Can a Jew be German?"
    "No!" says Anne passionately. "We'll never be German again. We're Dutch now!"
    "No!" I say in German. "You are not Dutch or German. You are only Jewish!" Everybody laughs except me. I don't know why I said it. It's not even funny. It's sad.
    I stand by the window and wish I could look out.
    "Ah," I say. "Nothing like a good smoke first thing in the morning!" And then I turn back. "Thanks, Papi."
    Mutti has the beginning of tears in her eyes. "I am..." she says. "I am so..."
    "I know," I say quickly, hoping she'll stop, hoping that she won't say it. But she goes on anyway, as I know she will, as I know she has to, however much I wish she wouldn't. "I'm so
grateful
you are here," she says. I nod, and make myself smile and look at her.
    "I know," I answer. And I do. I do know. I know that sometimes love is as hard to bear as hate, that it can hurt as much.
    I wonder what Mr. Frank would say about that!
    Anne follows me around all day.
    "So, Peter van Pels, what's it like to be sixteen?" She holds an imaginary microphone to my face. "Don't worry, I can make you incognito in my diary. So you can say whatever you like, and no one will ever know it was you!" She gives me that last bit of information when I'm right at the top of the
attic steps, with a sack full of beans on my back. I turn and the whole sack splits, beans pour out, bouncing everywhere. The noise is terrifying! Anne drops her imaginary microphone and covers her head as they shower down around her. At last, I've finally found a way of shutting her up! When the noise stops she lifts her head and looks up, shocked. She reminds me of a newly born chick poking its head out of its shell. We wait, the way we always do after a loud noise.
    "Goodness!" says Mutti, popping her head around the door. "Lucky that wasn't heard by a passing policeman! Pick them all up, both of you, birthday or no birthday."
    We start to pick up the beans.
    "You looked just like a chick!" I say.
    "Well you looked like a convict!"
    "What? I did not!"
    "You did!" She starts to laugh. "You looked just like someone who's been caught doing something bad!"
    We laugh together. Quietly. We laugh so hard that we have to sit down.
    So! She writes about me in her diary, does she? I wonder what she says.
    Later we all go and listen to the radio.
    "Peter," Father whispers. "The best birthday present! The Allies have landed in North Africa! Listen!"
    I listen to Mr. Churchill's voice.
    "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning!" I look over at Anne and smile. Her lips are moving, trying out the words. Over the next few days she says them over and over again. She takes the words apart and puts them back together again, and when she's finished she announces that they are perfect.
    "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. Do you get it, Peter?" she