1946
Leased Flat
The Herengracht
Amsterdam-Centrum
At breakfast Anne has announced that she will refuse to return to the school when the new term begins in September. Pim is flummoxed, as she expected. But Anne is surprised, not by Pim’s hangdog expression or his lecturing tone but by the new Mrs. Frank. Instead of raining down condemnation, she simply fixes her stepdaughter with a curious glare. “Well, Otto,” she says. “It’s not the end of the world. When I was sixteen, I already had a job as a stenographer with the Union Soap Company. So perhaps it’s for the best. God must have other plans for Anne’s future.”
Dassah picks up the plates and takes them into the kitchen to scrub before work. Anne does not offer to help. In fact, Anne is still in her pajamas, which she has not bothered to launder, and they’re starting to retain a hint of sweat and cigarette smoke.
Her father sips coffee from his cup and gives her a small look. “I thought you might come into the office today.”
“No, not today,” is all she says.
“And what about our friend Mr. Nussbaum? Doesn’t he need help at the shop?”
She ignites a Craven A and whistles smoke. “What are you getting at, Pim?”
“I’m not getting at anything. I’m simply wondering if you’re ever planning on leaving the house again.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Really.” He sounds skeptical. “Busy pecking at that typewriter Miep lent you?”
“She gave it to me. As a gift.”
“Very well. As a gift, if you say so. But my point is—” he starts to say until Anne cuts him off.
“Your point is what, Pim? What? Why are you still sitting here? What is it you want from me?”
“It’s nothing that I want, Anne,” he assures her. “Only I hear you up half the night banging away.”
“I’m working,” Anne says. “I’m sorry if I’m disturbing your sleep.”
“Not a question of that.” He frowns. “Nothing to do with me. But you need your rest. It’s not healthy. And now you come and declare that you’re done with school.”
“There are things more important than sleep, and there are things more important than school. I want to publish my diary, Pim,” she announces. “I’m typing up a draft, that’s what I’m doing. I want to turn my diary into a book.” Pim’s hands fall into his lap, and he drops a sigh like he’s dropping a stone. “Anne,” he says with a light shake of his head, then repeats her name as if it alone sums up the entirety of the problem. “Daughter, please,” he starts. “You must understand that what I’m about to say comes only from my desire for your welfare. You know,” he tells her, “that I deeply regret having kept your diary from you. It was unfair and thoughtless on my part, I don’t deny it. But,” he says. “But the very idea that you would think of publishing it? As a book?” He shrugs sharply at the incomprehensibility of such a notion. “It’s true, you have a gift for words. But really, Anne. I don’t want to insult you, but . . . a young girl’s diary? Who would publish such a thing? Who would want to?”
“There could be someone,” she answers defensively. “If I put it in order. Work it into a real story.”
“I’m just afraid that you’re going to be hurt. That you’re going to be dreadfully disappointed. Ask Werner Nussbaum, he was in publishing for decades. Ask him about how many would-be authors have their work rejected.”
“Many, I’m sure. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try. There could be someone interested in publishing it. Life in hiding from the mof.”
“You believe that’s what people want to read about now?”
“Everything I wrote happened.”
“Yes, it happened. But consider what you’re suggesting. I’m the first to admit it wasn’t always a rosy picture during those twenty-five months. I don’t imagine any of us would come off too well. You have a capacity for deep insight, Anneke, but also for harsh judgment. Even cruel judgment at times.”
“Oh, so that’s it. The truth comes out. It’s not that you’re afraid that nobody will publish it, you’re afraid that somebody will. You’re afraid I’ll make you look bad.”
“Not just me, Annelies. But may I ask? If you’re so very sure that Jews are still being persecuted, even here in the Netherlands, is it really your intention to expose the most intimate moments of our life in such a public fashion?”
Anne frowns.
“Think of your mother,” Pim tells her. “Consider the picture you drew of her in your pages.” He gazes at her, not unsympathetically. “It was often very unpleasant and unfair. Do you really want the world to remember her as the critical, unsympathetic, and unlovable person you often made her out to be?”
To this, Anne has no answer.
Pim places his napkin from his lap onto the table. “I’m sorry, meisje. I returned your diary for your own private satisfaction, because it was the correct thing to do. But you have no right to expose the pain and suffering of those in hiding, since they are no longer alive to grant you consent. As a result I must be adamant. No publication of your diary.”
Anne is suddenly on her feet, as if a fire has ignited in her belly. “How dare you, Pim?” she seethes. “How dare you act as if my diary was yours to return or not, to publish or not? I know that it frightens you. I know it! If my diary’s published, then you’ll no longer be in charge of what happened to us.”
“I was never in charge of what happened to us, Anne.”
“Really? You certainly pretended otherwise.”
“That’s unfair!” His face flushes pink. “That is completely, completely unfair. Someone had to assume a leadership role. You think it was going to be Hermann van Pels? You think it was going to be Fritz Pfeffer? Eight of us packed together, smothering each other day after day. I had no other choice, daughter. No other choice. And don’t imagine it was easy either! Do you believe I enjoyed being ‘in charge’ as you would have it? The constant bitterness and bickering. The unending squabbling over this stupidity and that one. But someone had to play the peacemaker, so it was me. Yes. I will admit to that crime, Annelies. I took on the burden of that responsibility, and believe me, burden it was. But I tried not to complain. I did my best to stay impartial, to make decisions that were in the best interest of us all. When the toilet clogged”—he frowns—“who fished out excrement with a pole? The only person who volunteered. When Miep or Bep or Mr. Kugler was fed up with our complaints, who soothed their feelings? When you and Mr. Pfeffer locked horns over the use of the desk, who was the broker of compromise? It was hard labor keeping the roof on. Not to mention the fact that I was still trying to run a business to keep us fed and to educate you children—not just my own daughters, mind you, but Peter, too. In that respect I was father to you all,” he declares. “So, my dear daughter, don’t believe that I am frightened now by what you’ve written, because I am not. When I tell you that there will be no publication of your diary writing, it is not for my sake but for the sake of those who have passed before us—and for yours.”
Anne glares at her father’s face, angry, his cheeks inflamed, then storms into her room. She hears him call her name but slams the door behind her.
There Margot is waiting in her typhus rags. So now you’re going to alienate Pim as well? Soon I’ll be the only one you have left, Anne.
“Shut up, will you?” Anne flings herself onto her bed and lights another cigarette, her hands still trembling with anger. “You’re the one who said I had to live. Remember that? All I’m doing is trying to keep our story alive, too.”
A cough rumbles through Margot’s chest. Is that really all?
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
No? You complain that Pim withheld the truth from you. But aren’t you still doing the same to him?
Anne turns, her face hot with tears. “I didn’t mean to do it, Margot,” she whispers desperately. “I didn’t mean to.”
But there is no one there to respond.
The next morning she ignores the knock on her door from Pim. She pretends she cannot hear him speak her name but waits instead until the flat is empty to go bathe in the tub. The water is tepid. She uses the soap Mr. Nussbaum brought her. But then she stops. The tub is so comfortable. So inviting. For a moment she slips beneath the surface, feeling the water envelop her. A few bubbles of oxygen. That’s all that stands between her and the angel of death. But then she rises up, splashing, seizing her next breath of air.
Nussbaum
Tweedehands-Boekverkoper
The Rozengracht
. . . if I’m quiet and serious, everyone thinks I’m putting on a new act and I have to save myself with a joke, and then I’m not even talking about my own family, who assume I must be sick, stuff me with aspirins and sedatives, feel my neck and forehead to see if I have a temperature, ask about my bowel movements and berate me for being in a bad mood, until I just can’t keep it up anymore, because when everybody starts hovering over me, I get cross, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside out, the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside, and keep trying to find a way to become what I’d like to be and what I could be if . . . if only there were no other people in the world.
She stops reading. Presses the pages against her breast. Mr. Nussbaum is seated behind the sales desk in his bookshop, observing her with an unreadable expression. For a moment he simply gazes at her, his arms folded at an angle in front of him, a shadow across his face. Then the chair creaks as he shifts forward, and he speaks quietly. “And how old . . .” he begins, “how old were you when you wrote this?”
“Fifteen,” she says. “I was fifteen. It was the last thing I wrote before the Gestapo came.”
A blink and then a shake of his head.
“I know it probably sounds childish,” she tells him.
“No. No, Anne. Not childish. Innocent, perhaps. A certain innocence. But not childish in the least.”
“So,” she breathes, “you think it’s not so bad?”
He surprises her with a laugh, even though the shadow does not leave his face. “Not so bad? Anne, what you’ve read to me here today,” he says, “it’s been a privilege to hear it. You, Miss Frank, like it or not, are a writer.”
Anne swallows. A flash of joyful terror shoots through her. “Well,” she answers with gratitude, “thank you for saying that. But the truth is, I think, that I’m just some Jewish girl who the Germans forgot to gas.”
“Now, you see. This is what I mean. This is why I told your father that he must allow you to go to America. So that you can be free of that awful stigma.”
“You told him that?”
“I did. I told him exactly that. Unfortunately, he has his own ideas on the subject. But even Otto Frank can change his mind.”
“Not very often,” Anne says. She shakes her head. “And what if he’s right? What if America would simply swallow me up?” She feels a rush of sadness. “The real truth is . . .” she starts to say, but her eyes have gone suddenly hot. “The real truth is, I’m weak. I am weak and frightened. And my so-called writing? All these pages? All the words?” She takes a breath. “I’m not sure I can recognize myself in them any longer.” She blinks. Stares down at the floor. “The me I read about in my diary feels like a stranger. She can be frightened sometimes, and full of anxieties, yes, and childishly dramatic. But she’s also sometimes so confident, so strong, so determined. So full of hope. I’m only a pale reflection of her now. A doppelgänger.”
“Anne.” Mr. Nussbaum has left his chair as if to approach her, but she stiffens.
“No, please, let me finish.” She smears at a tear and sniffs. “I want to be a writer, Mr. Nussbaum. I do. That hasn’t changed. And maybe I do have some talent, but I’m frightened that it’s not enough. I think it must be my duty to tell this story, because why else did I live through it all? But what if I’ve become too weak or too cowardly to face what I must face?” She is crying now, struggling through her tears. “There were eight of us in hiding. Only Pim and I came back. It makes it all so tragic, and I don’t want to write a tragic story. I want to tell the story of our lives, not our deaths.”
Now she allows herself the comfort of Mr. Nussbaum’s embrace. It is a flimsy thing. So little left of him but a wrap of bones, yet she leans into it. “That’s a very profound sentiment, Anne,” he says quietly.
Anne only shakes her head. Swallows her sobs. She feels vulnerable, maybe embarrassed, as if she’s given away too much. Separating herself from the embrace as gently as she can, she glares down at the rug, trying to reassemble herself. Returning her pages to their cheap cardboard portfolio. “No. I’m not profound, Mr. Nussbaum,” she insists. “In fact, most of the time I’m very shallow. Pim may be right. Who would really want to publish any of it?”
“Well,” Mr. Nussbaum says. “Actually, Anne . . .”
Anne raises her head. “Actually?”
“Actually, I have someone who is very interested in reading what you’ve written. Someone with much more substantial connections to publishers than I have any longer. And not simply connections here in the Netherlands, but internationally. France, Britain. Even, I believe, America.”
Anne looks back at him tentatively.
“Can you guess who?”
“Can I?”
“Cissy!” he declares.
Anne draws a deep breath. Cissy van Marxveldt. The inspiration for her diary.
“I didn’t want to say anything, of course,” Mr. Nussbaum tells her, “until I was sure it would turn out. I know you were disappointed that she missed your birthday party, but I wrote to her afterward about you and just received an answer this morning. She’s agreed to my sending her some of your work.”
“Is that true?” Anne feels a little light-headed. She feels dizzied by the good news.
“It is true, Anne,” he is happy to inform her. “No promises, of course. But I think she will be interested. As a writer she appreciates the writer’s struggle, you know? An artist’s life can be isolating. Always up in your own head. But you should know that you are not alone on your journey. I am here to help you. And whatever I can do, I will do.”
A heartrending tenderness stings her, causing her eyes to go damp. “I don’t understand, Mr. Nussbaum,” she whispers. “Why?” Anne wants to know. “Why do you care what happens to me or all my cat scratches on the page?”
Mr. Nussbaum’s smile turns ghostly. “Why? Because, Anne, my dear, you are all the future I have left.”
On Friday night Dassah has prepared a Shabbat supper.
Wearing a shawl, she circles her hands above the lit candles and covers her eyes before reciting the blessing.
“Baruch ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav vitzivanu l’hadlik ner shel Shabbat.”
Anne has closed her eyes as well. Can she still pray?
Blessed are you, God, ruler of the universe, who sanctified us with the commandment of lighting Shabbat candles.
When she opens her eyes, she can see Margot in the flickering candle glow, wearing the pullover and the yellow star.
The next morning there’s a knock on the door early. Anne, still in her pajamas, hears it in her bedroom. She is lying on the bed and staring at the small crack in the ceiling plaster when Pim speaks Mr. Nussbaum’s name.
“I’m so sorry to intrude like this, without any notice,” Mr. Nussbaum is apologizing, his voice tightly stressed. “But when this summons arrived for me in the morning post, honestly, I didn’t know where else to go.”
“What is it?” Anne comes hurrying into the room, throwing on her robe. “Mr. Nussbaum. What’s happened?”
The man blinks in her direction, but his eyes don’t seem to focus properly. Anyway, it’s Pim who answers the question, glaring at the paper in his hands. “Mr. Nussbaum is being deported, Anne,” he replies with muted shock. “Back to Germany.”
An hour passes, and after a few telephone calls, one of Pim’s kameraden is sitting on the chesterfield sofa that Pim had delivered from a furniture maker in Utrecht. It is the lawyer Rosenzweig. He’s a lanky sort of mensch in an ill-fitting suit. Bald head. A straight, narrow face and large, hooded eyes behind round spectacles. The tip of a purpled camp number peeks from the edge of his shirt cuff. He’s holding the coffee cup that Dassah has passed him on his bony knees. Anne has dressed and pinned back her hair with a barrette. She lights a cigarette and watches the smoke trail upward. Mr. Attorney Rosenzweig has come armed with details. According to his story, there is an internment camp in eastern Netherlands outside Nijmegen. A former army barracks now known as Kamp Mariënbosch. There the government has rounded up German refugees, newly branded as enemy nationals, including, as it happens, any number of German-born Jews. Rosenzweig says it’s part of a land grab that the Dutch Committee for Territorial Expansion is advancing under the slogan “Oostland—Ons Land.” East land—Our land. They want to annex their fair portion of German terrain and purge the ethnic Bosch.
“And this,” Pim starts to say, but he must pause to lick the dryness from his lips. “This,” he repeats, “is where Werner is going to be sent? To a camp again?”
Mr. Rosenzweig can only nod. “That would be the current procedure.”
Anne feels a chill on her cheek. Cold tears. “How could this happen?”
But even now Mr. Nussbaum attempts to console her. “Anne. This place. Mariënbosch, if that’s the name. It’s just,” he says, “it’s just a detention camp. It is not a death sentence.”
“No?”
“No,” Dassah agrees more sharply. “So there’s no need to be dramatic.”
Pim turns his head to Mr. Nussbaum, his expression heavy but direct. “When are you due to report, Werner?”
“Report? Uh. In two days.”
“Then, Hadas, you are correct. We still have time to work this matter through. I’m sure that Mr. Rosenzweig knows people he can contact,” Pim says.
A frown says maybe Mr. Rosenzweig is not so sure about that, but he goes along. “There may be,” he’s willing to venture. “I’ll see if there’s anything that can be done.”
“Good. Good.” Pim nods and gives Mr. Nussbaum a soldierly pat on the shoulder. “We’ll make a plan to meet again tomorrow. Until then we can always pray.”
Pray, Anne thinks. Pray. She doesn’t say it, but she thinks it: She prayed at Birkenau. She prayed at Belsen. For deliverance. For forgiveness. And she is still waiting for both.
“It’s all God’s comedy, isn’t it?” Mr. Nussbaum says. But after Mr. Attorney Rosenzweig has taken his leave, Mr. Nussbaum says to Pim, “Otto. May I speak with you briefly? In private?”
Pim looks uncertain but forces a smile. “Of course. Hadas?”
Dassah turns to Anne. “Anne. Come take a walk with me.”
They walk in silence. A lorry whooshes past, sending up a cloud of grit and exhaust. Anne coughs. Stops and leans against the concrete stairwell. The stink of the canal fills her nostrils.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” Dassah is asking her. “Are you sick?”
Her pulse is mounting. She begins counting backward from a hundred in her head, trying to calm herself, but it surprises her when Dassah places a hand on Anne’s forehead and tells her to breathe. Just breathe. In. And out.
For once she follows Dassah’s advice without resistance. Breathing in, then out, until the panic in her heart settles.
“What do you think will happen to Mr. Nussbaum?” Anne asks. “Really.”
“You mean what do I think free of your father’s optimism? I would like to believe that it’s all a mistake. That Rosenzweig can intercede with the right people and set things straight. But I don’t know.”
“What do you think he’s saying to Pim in private?”
“I don’t know that either. But if I were to make a guess, I would say that they’re probably talking about you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean he thinks that Otto should send you to America. An opinion that he’s voiced over and over again until he’s worn out your father’s ear. You have quite a stalwart ally in Werner Nussbaum, Anne.”
Anne swallows. “He told me that he would send some of my writing to Cissy van Marxveldt. The writer. She’s very famous. He says he thinks she’ll like what I’ve done.”
When they return, Mr. Nussbaum is just taking his leave. Anne steps outside the door with him. A gull squawks overhead, circling in the high breeze above the canal. Mr. Nussbaum takes Anne’s hand and pats it with affection. He is smiling, but something slips in his expression. A bright star of pain lights his eyes. “Good-bye, my dear,” he tells her. “Wish me luck.”
“I do, Mr. Nussbaum.”
“Remember what I told you.” But when he bends forward to kiss the side of her cheek, he whispers a single sentence. “You are not alone.”
The day is ripped by a downpour out of the east, drumming on the domes of sprouted umbrellas, peppering the canals, beating wild rhythms against the good Dutch window glass. But by nightfall the windows are open, with only a tepid drizzle remaining. Anne is sitting on her bed, smoking a Canadian cigarette, staring at the sheet of paper cranked into Miep’s typewriter. She has been trying to rework parts of her diary, to put together pages for Mr. Nussbaum to send to Cissy, when the telephone rings. She hears Dassah pick it up and then hears her call Pim’s name with pointed alarm. Quickly, Anne is up from her chair, opening her door. The lamp near the door is lit, and she watches her father accept the telephone. She feels an itch of heat at the back of her neck. With the receiver pressed to his ear, his expression sags, the color draining from his face. “When?” is all he asks. A single word, burdened with the quiet necessity of loss.
Out of her room, Anne is insistent. “What is it? What’s happened?” she’s asking.
Pim only raises his palm for quiet. “Yes, yes, I see. I see. Yes, thank you, Mrs. Kaplan.” Only now does he lift his gaze to Anne, as if eyeing an animal caught in a snare. “I’ll take care of any necessary arrangements.”
“What, Pim? What arrangements?” Anne demands, feeling her voice thicken in her throat as her father rehooks the receiver.
Pim takes a half breath. “Annelein,” he says with a kind of sunken grief. “That was Mr. Nussbaum’s landlady. She was at home when she received a visit from the police.” A small fortifying breath. “I’m sorry,” he tells her, and then his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows the words. His gaze goes bleak. “But Werner Nussbaum is dead.”
A dull thump, like the blow of a mallet. “Dead.” She speaks the word aloud, her eyes going wet. “No . . .” She can’t comprehend this. “No. I just saw him. How? How can he be dead?”
“His body was found afloat in the Brouwersgracht,” Pim informs her. “He must have slipped. The heavy rain. He must have slipped and fallen into the canal.”
But the lie embedded in Pim’s explanation is fooling no one.
Anne feels the room tilt. And then she is falling, too.