1946
Leased Flat
The Herengracht
Amsterdam-Centrum
The Canal Ring
At breakfast the telephone rings and Dassah answers it, but only to hang up a moment later. “Werner Nussbaum has returned,” she announces to Anne and Pim at the table, pouring Pim a second cup of coffee. “Anne, he’ll be expecting you at the shop this afternoon.”
Anne stares back, above her plate of fried mush. She’s relieved, but also a little miffed. “That’s all? He’s returned and expects me? No further explanation?”
Pim raises his coffee cup to his lips and takes a sip. “Anne, I’m sure you will interrogate the man when you see him,” he says coolly. “For now eat your breakfast, please.”
Nussbaum
Tweedehands-Boekverkoper
The Rozengracht
Mr. Nussbaum is pale. Thinner than he was. His smile looks waxy as Anne rolls her bike into the shop, leaning it against the wall. “And here she is,” he announces with a brittle joviality. “The future of literature.”
Somehow Mr. Nussbaum’s friendly exclamation rubs her wrong. It sounds just too ridiculous. “I was afraid something had happened to you, Mr. Nussbaum,” she tells him with undisguised reproach. “When I came to the shop and it was completely locked up.”
The smile on Mr. Nussbaum’s lips slips a notch. “Yes, well, I’m sorry about that, Anne. I am. I had to travel to the Hague, unexpectedly. Apparently the government has determined that while I was imprisoned in Auschwitz, I was also accruing a substantial sum of unpaid taxes.”
Anne feels her face heat. “That’s obscene.”
A shrug as he sets the kettle on the small hot plate. What else can be said?
“Is the same thing happening to Pim?”
“Isn’t that a question for him to answer?”
A frown. “We’re not exactly talking much these days.”
“I see.” He blows a spot of dust from the bowl of a china cup. “Will you have some coffee? It’s only ersatz, I’m afraid.”
“No, thank you,” Anne replies, her voice subdued, thinking of Pim’s chilly expression at breakfast. “It upsets my stomach.”
Mr. Nussbaum nods. Begins measuring the ersatz blend into the tin coffee press. “I understand that you have a birthday approaching,” he says. “You’ll be seventeen?”
Anne has picked up the broom to sweep the grit from the front entryway. “Yes,” is all she says.
“And there’s a celebration scheduled?”
“Not my idea. But yes.”
Mr. Nussbaum seems puzzled. “You’re not looking forward to it?”
“So I’m seventeen, so what? It’s not exactly an accomplishment. How many girls never lived that long?” she hears herself say. “Why am I owed a celebration?”
“Anne. You must never say that,” he instructs her. “You don’t have the right to say that.”
Anne stops sweeping and looks up at the ghastly emptiness of Mr. Nussbaum’s face.
“All those girls who didn’t live?” he says. “You owe it to them to celebrate. Don’t be so selfish.”
She parts her lips but has no words to speak.
The kettle whistles a low note. Mr. Nussbaum removes it with a rag over the handle and pours the steaming water into the press. “I’m sorry. Perhaps that was uncalled for.”
But Anne shakes her head with a twinge of humility, gripping the broom handle. “No. No, I can be selfish. Pim continues to remind me of that.”
Another small shrug. Mr. Nussbaum sets the kettle back on the hot plate. “Everybody can be selfish, Anne. But if you’re finding it so difficult to communicate with your father,” he suggests, “perhaps you don’t understand his needs very clearly. Perhaps his life has been more difficult than you’re aware of. Can children ever properly comprehend their parents’ hardships? I don’t know. But I do know that regardless of the past he does his best to remain positive and to concentrate on what’s beautiful in life.”
Anne feels herself go still. One beautiful thing, she hears Margot whisper in her ear.
“And what’s the most beautiful aspect of life to Otto Frank? The most important? Family. Being part of a family.” The melancholy in Mr. Nussbaum’s eyes is as dry as dust. “Maybe I shouldn’t say,” he tells her, “but if you want to learn something essential about your father, you should ask him sometime about the boy in our block in Auschwitz who called him ‘Papa.’”
Anne feels an odd sting. “Papa?” How dare he ask someone else to call him that?
“I won’t say more about it, but you should ask him.”
Anne takes this and files it in the back of her brain, trying to swallow her jealousy. Can’t she forgive Pim for finding a way to survive Auschwitz? But then that’s the question, isn’t it? Can she forgive him? Can she forgive anyone, Annelies Marie Frank included?
Wednesday, 12 June
Anne’s birthday arrives, and a small party has been organized. Her chair at the dining table is decorated with crepe-paper streamers and ruby-pink dahlias that Miep brought from her window boxes. Dassah has taken a slagroomtaart from the oven, baked with sugar surrogate and dried fruit, and Mr. Kugler has hung up a handmade banner reading GELUKKIGE VERJAARDAG! Anne smiles, feeling on display, when, God knows why, Mr. Kleiman decides to lead the small assembly in a mortifying exhortation of “Hieperdepiep hoera!” in her honor. Swallowing a bit of panic, she accepts hugs and kisses from Miep and Jan and hearty handshakes from Kleiman and Kugler and three-cheeked kisses from their wives, though Anne and the new Mrs. Frank assiduously avoid any such tactile exchange. Pim, as always, reads a poem to the room, composed of the usual sugary paternal sentiment and daffy, awkward rhymes, all written on a scrap of paper he had to unfold several times and then peer at closely with his reading glasses on his nose. Applause follows. Anne permits Pim a peck on the cheek. But through it all she feels empty. She smiles as required, yet secretly there is nothing to fill her heart. Pim’s pride in her, which had once been a gift in and of itself, has lost its value. It is all a charade.
Anne retreats to the kitchen to help her stepmother make the coffee. As a wedding gift, Miep and Jan have given Pim and his new wife a Kaffeegedeck-Set of good Meissen Zwiebelmuster with a delft-blue floral pattern. Dassah examines a small chip she’s already made in a saucer. “I’m not used to owning such delicate things,” she confesses. “My mother had an iron kettle she used for brewing and serving alike. To pour you had to place a piece of cheesecloth over the cup to filter the grounds.”
Measuring the ersatz coffee makes Anne think of her mother as she fills the stainless-steel percolator from the tap. How particular Mummy was about the proper ritual, insisting the water always be cold. Screwing shut the tap, Anne releases a breath. This snag of memory, she finds, is like smelling a rose while being pricked by the thorny stem. She clutches it even as it wounds her. She watches the new Mrs. Frank slicing the tart into sections with a cake knife. How is this woman her mother now?
For a moment she is transported back into the past.
In the Achterhuis. It’s another birthday celebration, but Mr. Pfeffer is complaining to Miep about the recent decline in the quality of vegetables. “I really don’t mean to find fault. I’m sure it’s very difficult, but really, it’s often barely edible these days,” he declares. The contingent of helpers from down below have been rather quiet throughout the party. Miep, Bep, Mr. Kleiman, and Kugler. It’s as if they are clustered together as a visiting delegation from a foreign land. Miep clears her throat of whatever she would really like to say to old Pfeffer and replies in a well-managed tone, “Yes. It’s barely edible everywhere,” she informs the good dentist. “The Germans are shipping all decent food into the Reich.”
“Everyone, please,” Pim suddenly pipes up with calm authority. “Enough about the unpleasant facts of daily life,” he must insist. “We are all well aware of them. But today is a day for festivities. Our younger daughter has turned fifteen,” he reminds the table, squeezing his wife’s hand. “And,” he announces with a wry smile as he draws a piece of paper from his vest pocket, “I have penned a humble poem in her honor.”
“Yes!” Anne breathes happily. Pleased that she can count on Pim to remind everyone that she, by rights, should be the center of attention this afternoon.
Rising, he unfolds the paper and slips on his reading spectacles. “I must first thank my elder daughter for her work as a translator on this project, since I must still compose in German but prefer to recite in Dutch. Thank you, Mutz,” he says to Margot with a bow of his head. “And now for the poem—and quite the work of art it is, if I do say so myself. Ahem!”
“She does her best to be gracious and kind,
Yet that doesn’t mean she won’t speak her mind.
It is not a habit that’s easy to keep
Without ruffling feathers whenever she speaks.”
General laughter there from all assembled. Anne only bats her eyes comically.
“Yet now that she’s growing to woman from girl,
I know it’s important her truths to unfurl.
And whenever her thoughts may be harsh or be fiery,
She keeps them secret in the pages of her diary.”
A dull moan of agreement at this. “Oh, yes,” Mrs. van Pels half snorts, “Little Miss Scribbler!”
“And even though her days are cramped by small accommodations,
And her actions often judged by grown-up observations,”
“Ha!” Anne tosses out.
“We know that her future will be a beautiful sight,
As her star ascends, burning strong, burning bright!”
The applause is led by Anne, but everyone joins in. It’s so obvious to her that the power of her father’s affection has returned a dependable balance to the room. Even old grumblebelly Pfeffer is nodding with appreciation. Margot blinks at her in a silly way, as if to say, There she is! My sister the star! But when Anne catches her mother’s eyes, there is such a glimpse of emptiness there. Not even sadness. Beyond that. Hopelessness.
Later, after she has set up her bed and changed into her nightclothes, after she has scrubbed her teeth with Margot at the washroom sink and pinned curlers into her hair, she goes to say good night to her parents. She feels the familiar scrub of a day’s stubble on Pim’s cheek as she kisses it. Feels the comfortable wrap of his arms, but when she turns to her mother, she feels suddenly shy. There is an urge to embrace her, but also a barrier. “Thank you for the lovely dinner, Mother,” she says.
Her mother smiles without joy, not at Anne but at a pillow she is stuffing into a pillowcase. “Oh, it wasn’t so much, really. Mr. Pfeffer is right. The quality of our food is worsening every day.” She fluffs the pillow with a flat spank and drops it at the top of Pim’s bed. “But it’s kind of you to pretend otherwise,” she says, now turning away to plump up the pillow on Margot’s cot with the same little spank. “Happy birthday, Anne,” she says.
“I’m sure they’ll be here soon,” Anne feels the need to blurt, just as her sister enters in her nightdress and slippers.
“Who will be here soon?” Margot asks.
“The English. I’m sure it won’t be much longer, Mummy, before they push the Germans out.”
Their mother shrugs. “We’ll hope so. Good night,” she says.
After the lights go out and Anne lies on her bed, too warm for a cover, listening to the heavy barge motor of Mr. Pfeffer’s snoring, she stares up into the darkness above her. It’s a deep thing, this darkness. Like a hole in the night.
“Anne, will you take the coffee service to the table?”
Anne blinks. Looks at Dassah. “Yes, I will,” is all she says.
Carrying the coffee service on a tray, Anne places it on the table draped in worn linen. “Pim, will you ever retrieve Mummy’s silverware?” she wonders aloud.
“Hmm?” Lighting up a cigarette, his forehead wrinkling.
“Mummy’s silver,” says Anne. “Didn’t you say it went to friends for safekeeping?”
“Yes,” Pim confirms.
“Did they turn out to be the kind of friends who are still keeping it safe, but now from you?”
“I’ve written a letter,” Pim tells her, expelling smoke. “We’ll get it back eventually. These things take time. Everyone was so badly displaced by the end of the war.”
“That’s your answer to everything,” Anne points out, but if Pim hears her, he pretends not to. Instead he consults his wristwatch. “Mr. Nussbaum should be arriving soon. He told me he is bringing a special guest.”
Anne is curious. “A special guest?”
“Haven’t the slightest who,” says Pim.
She tries not to show it, but Anne can’t deny a thrill of anticipation. A special guest? Could it be—could it possibly be none other than her idol, Cissy van Marxveldt? What an astonishing birthday gift that would be.
The door knocker sounds. Anne can hear Dassah exchanging greetings with Mr. Nussbaum from the front room and hurries over, but she finds the man standing alone, bearing a gift wrapped poorly in newsprint. “Not very glamorous, I’m afraid,” he confesses. “Just some jam and a bar of French army soap.”
“Very nice. Thank you, Mr. Nussbaum,” she tells him, trying to hide her disappointment by smelling the soap. But then she says, “You’re here by yourself?”
He keeps smiling, but he looks diminished, as if he is slowly being erased, until not much more than his smile and the brightness of his eyes remain. “Yes. Unfortunately, I am.”
“You know, I’m not sure why, but when I heard Pim say you were bringing a ‘special guest . . .’ You’ve talked so much about knowing Cissy van Marxveldt, I hoped it might be—”
“She couldn’t make it, Anne,” Mr. Nussbaum interrupts. “At the last minute. I’m sorry. I did want you to have the chance to meet her, but she lives in Bussum now, and I suppose she wasn’t feeling up to the trip.”