1946
Amsterdam
LIBERATED NETHERLANDS
She sits cross-legged on her bed with the stack of diary pages in her hand and can see the ugly reality of it by the candle’s glow. It’s juvenile. Poorly written. Nothing but adolescent rubbish. Or maybe it’s just that it’s so heartbreakingly personal. Humiliating, really. How stupid she was to be taken in by hopes and silly dreams of goodness.
In the office kitchen, Anne tells Miep the truth. “I wish you had never saved it, Miep,” she says. Miep has just put on the kettle to boil the water for tea, igniting the burner with a match. Anne inhales a whiff of gas. “You should have let it be carted away into oblivion with everything else.”
Miep gazes back at her. “I see,” she says. “Well, if you’re asking for my opinion on that, Anne, I can only say this: The ring that Mrs. van Pels gave me. You remember that I said how I couldn’t touch it for a long time? It was simply too painful. But then I decided,” she says with a breath, “I decided that I must wear it. Painful or not, I must honor the memory of her kindness. Of her gratitude.” She swallows. “Your father was wrong in keeping the diary from you. He was,” she tells Anne. “But it’s no longer missing. You have it. It is in your hands. Isn’t it your responsibility to honor the memory of those who have passed?”
Anne can only stare back at her, silent. Miep is silent, too. Then, suddenly, “Wait here,” she says, and bustles out, only to return a moment later toting her old black portable typewriter, which she places on the countertop.
“So, Anne, here is a late gift for your birthday.”
A blink. “My birthday?”
“This is mine, not the company’s, and we have the new machine now anyway,” Miep tells her. “So I want you to have it.” Slipping open the case, she explains, “I keep it well oiled. There’s a small toolbox attached.”
Anne looks at Miep, confused.
“Writers need to write, don’t they?” Miep asks. “And won’t you benefit from equipment a bit more modern than a pencil?”
Anne can still only stare.
“If not for yourself,” Miep says, “then do it for me. For me, Anne. For all of us who might want to remember those who never returned.”
Anne feels an odd force rising inside her. The kettle on the stove begins to whistle with steam.
She has dragged the old wire table from the garden into her room and organized a board covered with paint stains as a desktop from the warehouse. On it she sets Miep’s typewriter. Removes the case and gazes down at the button alphabet of keys. Pulling up her chair, she sits. Cranks a sheet of thin foolscap into the vulcanized-rubber roll. She’s not much of a typist, but she places her fingers here and there, holds her breath, and taps out a line at the center of the page:
“Stories from the House Behind”