It was as if I had stepped inside the book, knowing what happened outside the book and with no way to warn them. All eight were gathered around me and it would soon be too late to escape. A young man who would go on to commit other crimes was about to commit his worst, and there was nothing I could do. A young man was calling the Gestapo even as the eight of them were milling around, planning their futures, for they knew how close the Allies were, how close freedom was. And there it was, the diary of which I had hundreds of copies, preserved under bulletproof glass, under seal as it was when she wrote it.
I got back in line and waited until my turn came again, but I still couldn’t make out what was written on the pages to which it was open. I wished I could visit the house when it was empty. I wished I could spend the night here, have it all to myself and hear the outside world much as she had heard it. I fancied that, while alone in this empty house at night, I might be able to reconcile myself to the mystery of absolute betrayal.
There, in front of me again, was the diary, hermetically sealed in glass as if it was meant to be a symbol of her—pent up, gaped at, suffocating.