Anne continues to laugh and crack jokes as the day passes. Whispering to her friends in class and passing notes. Showing off her hopping skills on the playground in games of hinkelen. Playing Monopoly at Hanneli’s flat. At supper she discusses the newest developments: that her favorite flower is now the rose instead of the daisy and that her friend Jacqueline has invited her to sleep over. She pleads with her parents to allow her to go, and, as usual, Margot is of no help. She wouldn’t dream of leaving home overnight, says Margot, not with thousands of German troops billeted in Dutch houses.
Dutch houses but not Jewish houses, Anne corrects.
Still. Margot shivers at the thought of it.
Anne makes light. She says the moffen are too busy swilling all the good Dutch beer to cause any trouble after supper. Finally her parents concede, at which point she gushes with affection, hugging them both so tightly, even Mummy.
But at night Anne lies awake, tossing about until her covers are hanging all askew. “Margot?”
A drowsy reply. “Yes?”
“Are you awake?” Anne whispers.
“No,” Margot whispers back.
“I can’t go to sleep.”
“Try harder. Think of the subjects that bore you in school. Think of algebra.”
“That won’t help.”
“Did you take your valerian drops like Mummy told you?”
“Yes, I took them,” Anne answers with a pinch of frustration.
“Then call Mummy and ask for a cup of chamomile tea.”
“Margot, will you stop offering silly remedies, please?”
“Keep your voice down, Anne.”
“This isn’t something that chamomile tea or valerian drops can cure.”
“Then you’ll have to come out and tell me what’s actually bothering you, because I obviously can’t read your mind.” She has adopted her favorite tone of sisterly impatience, but perhaps she actually sounds a bit interested to know, too.
“My friend Lucia joined the Youth Storm.”
“Ah,” says Margot.
“At least she used to be my friend. Now she’s been infected by this Nazi disease.”
“Did she say something nasty?”
“Her mother did, and she repeated it. It just made me realize what can happen now that the Germans have taken over.”
“I thought you said they drank too much beer to be of any trouble.”
“Oh, that was only so I could get what I wanted,” she says. “The truth is, they could kick in our door right now if it suited them.”
“And why would it suit them?”
“Because they’re Germans,” Anne answers with exasperation.
Margot props herself up on one elbow. Moonlight has sneaked in through the window, casting bars across the rug from the window lattice. “Well, we were Germans once,” she points out rather distantly.
“Maybe you were, but not me.”
“You were born in Frankfurt, Anne.”
“That means nothing. That was the past, before the whole country became populated by the enemy.”
“So you think of all of them as the enemy?”
“We’re just Jews to them now,” Anne says, her voice oddly matter-of-fact about it. “Dirty yids, no better than rats.”
Margot takes a breath and then exhales it lightly as she lies down. “I can’t believe all Germans think that.”
“No? I can believe it. I agree with Mummy.”
“Well, that’s a miracle in itself.”
“They’re criminals. Just look at the faces of the soldiers when they see the star on our clothes.”
“I think you’re being unreasonable, Anne,” Margot decides. “And quite honestly, you’re too young to know what you’re talking about. An entire nation of people can’t simply become criminals. Besides, there are plenty of Dutch who look at us that way, too.”
Anne sees Lucia’s round face under the black cap and relives the furious sting she felt. It makes her mad at Margot. “Is there some reason,” she wants to know, sitting up straight, “is there some reason that you will never agree with me? Is there some reason that you must always argue for the opposite view?”
“I don’t.”
“You do. You even defend the Nazis.”
“I do not defend the Nazis, Anne,” and suddenly Margot’s whisper is indignant, and she has shoved herself up firmly. “Take that back.”
“It certainly sounded like you were defending them.”
“I said take it back.”
Anne feels a hard pinch of regret. Margot sounds suddenly so angry. Margot, whose temper is so famously under control at all times. Yes, it was just one of Anne’s stupid, silly accusations, born out of her own fear, but the ferocity of her sister’s reaction has shaken her. Though she tries to hide this, of course. Blowing a sigh of surrender toward the ceiling, she drops down on the davenport. “All right, all right. I take it back.”
But Margot is not yet satisfied. “Say it,” she demands.
Anne swallows. “I don’t think you are defending the Nazis,” she admits. “Margot Frank does not, under any circumstances, defend Nazis.”
“Words have power, Anne,” Margot instructs her sharply. “You should be more careful how you use them.” And with that she flounces back down under the covers, socking her pillow into shape.
A certain quiet descends as the hushed burble of conversation from the next room settles between them. Anne concentrates on calming the beating of her heart. Once she found the sound of their parents’ conversation at the end of the day comforting, but now it’s not helping at all. She can tell that their words are purposely muted, though it’s still easy enough to make out what they’re talking about. The scale of the razzias is increasing. Massive raids in the Jodenbuurt. Hundreds of Jews hauled away by the SS and black-clad Dutch bullies of the Schalkhaar police. Pim says it’s all a matter of making the right decisions. All a matter of staying together as a family, come what may.
And then Margot coughs sharply. A tickle in her throat, perhaps, but it brings conversation in the living room to a halt. Their door is open a crack. A moment later Pim pokes his head in just long enough to decide that his daughters may still be awake, and quietly closes their bedroom door completely. A gentle darkness wraps up the room. Margot clears her throat, and silence separates them as Anne stares up at the crack in the ceiling plaster. She can no longer see it in the dark, but she knows it’s there. She lets her thoughts flow freely. Away from the war and the horrific events in the streets. She tries to think about herself. That’s not usually something that’s so hard for Anne Frank to do, but she finds herself thinking instead of Mummy. Of Mummy and the fretful debate at the supper table over the treatment of the Jews. Of how terribly bitter and anxious the war has made her mother and how bleakly Mummy seems to view the future now. Not like Pim. Not like Pim, whose hope is unyielding. “Do you think Mummy and Pim love each other?” she hears herself ask. Maybe she didn’t really mean to speak the question aloud, but now she has.
Margot sounds indignant again. And maybe a tiny bit panicked. “What? That’s a ridiculous question.”
“I’m not so sure. I mean, if you were a man, would you love Mummy?”
“No wonder,” Margot huffs. “No wonder people can hardly stand to be around you sometimes, Anne. You can be such a terrible, terrible pain.”
But Anne only shrugs to herself. “I’m not sure I would want to love her if I were a man. Mummy’s always so disappointed with everyone.”
“I’m going to sleep, Anne. You should as well, before you say something too awful to forgive.”
This gets Anne’s attention. It’s been one of her fears, but also one of her curiosities—that it might be possible. That it might be possible to push beyond the boundaries of forgiveness. Mummy says God forgives everything, but Anne must wonder. Is
God forgiving the Nazis? Even as she lies in her bedroom staring at the crack in the ceiling plaster, even as Margot is fuming under her covers, is God forgiving their enemy?
* * *
On the morning of the twelfth of June, Anne’s thirteenth birthday dawns, and the bright business of daylight begins above the good Dutch pantile roofs. Anne is awake at six but must lie there for another three-quarters of an hour till she can reasonably wake her parents. So while Margot slumbers, Anne is already off to the races, living the day in her head. There’ll be presents in the living room. Then she’ll take the cookies she baked with Mummy to school and pass them out to her classmates at recess. She loves doing this. She loves to be generous. Being generous makes it so easy to bask at the center of everyone’s attention.
Her party is scheduled for Sunday, and there are simply gangs of people expected to attend. There will be games and songs directed by Pim. There will be pastries, cookies, and bonbons served on porcelain platters with doilies provided by Mummy. Lemonade in the punch bowl and coffee in a silver service for the grown-ups. Small gifts wrapped in colored tissue for all the children attending. And, of course, always a surprise. This year Pim has rented a film projector and a reel of the canine adventures of Rin Tin Tin. Her own birthday matinee! And if you think that happens at Ilana Riemann’s house or Giselle Zeigler’s house on their birthdays, then think again. Anne Frank, as everybody knows, as everybody must realize, is special.
* * *
• • •
Morning rises. Even though she knows what it is, even though she has picked it out herself, it is the first gift she opens among all the presents filling the coffee table, the bouquets of roses and peonies, the lovely plant, the Variété board game, the bottle of sweet grape juice that she can pretend is wine when she drinks it, the strawberry tart, specially baked by her mother—such a wonderful array, but they all will wait.
She unties the ribbon of blue silk and carefully tugs open the wrapping until it emerges. The red tartan daybook. She smiles as she opens it and runs her fingers across the creamy vellum pages. A confidante. That is what she intends her diary to become. Her one true confidante, from whom she will hide nothing. Alone in her room, before leaving for school, she sits at Mummy’s French secretaire and uncaps her favorite fountain pen. Quietly she smooths her hand over the empty page and then watches the paper absorb the ink of the very first line she writes.
I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.
3
DIVING UNDER
Hiding . . . where would we hide? In the city? In the country? In a house? In a shack? When, where, how . . . ?
—Anne Frank, from her diary, 8 July 1942
1942
Merwedeplein 37
Residential Housing Estate
Amsterdam-Zuid
OCCUPIED NETHERLANDS
On a Thursday afternoon before supper, Margot is studying for an exam at a friend’s and Anne is alone in the flat with her mother, busily snapping snow peas into a bowl, when her father comes home early from the office. Instead of removing his hat, he invites Anne out for a walk.
“But.” A glance to her mother. “I’m helping Mummy.”
“So I see, but a short walk won’t hurt, will it, Edith?”
Her mother frowns nervously. “Go. Do as your father asks,” is all she says.
It has been raining for most of the week, but today is dry, the afternoon warm and balmy, and the caretakers have taken the opportunity to mow the grass. Anne breathes in deeply as they stroll the edges of the Merry’s central lawn. “I love the smell of freshly mown grass,” she says, expecting her father to agree. But Pim’s expression is grave.
“Anne,” he says, “you should know that soon we will be leaving here.”
Anne feels a jolt in her belly. Leaving?
“For some weeks now,” Pim begins, but he must take a deeper breath to continue. “For some weeks now, we have been storing our more important possessions with friends. Your mother’s silver, for example, about which you were so curious. The point has been to prevent our belongings from falling into the clutches of our enemy. And now,” he says, “the time has come when we ourselves must act to avoid falling into his clutches.”
Anne stops in place and looks directly into her father’s face.
“We won’t be waiting for the Nazi to haul us off at his convenience, Annelein,” he tells her. “We are going into hiding.”
Anne blinks. Honestly, she is surprised at how exhilarated she feels. Suddenly she is stumbling over her own questions. Where are they going? Is there a place in the country? A farmhouse with chickens and fresh eggs? A secret hideaway where cows low in the pastures above the river, where windmills creak and the mof has left not a single boot print? Or maybe a barge where they can drive to safety down the canals and rivers. But Pim will not say. His face has turned deadly ashen. His expression so somber that Anne begins to feel her excitement tremble toward fear.
“Does Margot know?”
“Yes. But outside the family you must keep this secret,” her father tells her. “Not a word to a soul. Not even your closest friend. You must promise me, Anneke.”
“I promise, Pim. I promise. But will it happen soon?”
“Soon enough. You let your papa fret over the details.”
Suddenly she seizes Pim in an embrace. It makes her feel secretly proud to have such information in her possession. And she loves Pim all the more for trusting her with it. Pim, the man who has everything under control.
“For now stay cheerful,” he instructs her, stroking the back of her head, “and try not to worry. Treasure these carefree days for as long as you may.”
* * *
• • •
That night at bedtime, Anne sits at the narrow vanity table to perform her nightly routine. Before the curlers are fastened into place, she dons her combing shawl. A fringed cape of pale beige satin decorated with roses over her shoulders. But instead of picking up her hairbrush, she stares at her face in the mirror. Is this the soon-to-be face of an onderduiker? She’s trying to be brave. All through supper she smiled and courteously passed dishes. And maybe she can be brave. So they are going into hiding? So what? Other Jews have it much worse. Herded into a ghetto in the Jodenbuurt and cut off from the rest of the town by barbed wire. Transported into Germany like slaves or arrested and shipped to some terrible camp. She should be grateful and courageous. And anyway, isn’t there an element of adventure to consider? It will be an exploit of sorts. She can write about it, put it all down in her diary. Quietly, picking up the brush, she begins the ritual of nightly brushing, but when Margot appears in her nightgown, she slips the brush from Anne’s hand. “Let me do this for you,” she says.
Anne does not resist. “Pim told me,” she whispers.
“Yes,” is all Margot says. Stroke after stroke after stroke, Anne gazes at herself in the oval mirror. It’s so soothing. She feels that Margot can brush away her fears, her anxieties, all the problems of the world hammering at their door. Her sister’s hand stroking the length of her hair with the soft bristles. Suddenly she loves Margot. Not just abstractly but fiercely, with a full and merciful heart. “I adore you, you know, Margot,” she whispers.
“Of course you do,” Margot replies. “I’m adorable.”
“No. I mean . . . I mean I love you. Whatever happens to us, I want you to know that.”
Margot continues with her brushstrokes but then bends over and kisses her little sister on the head. “I love you, too, silly.”
Anne closes her eyes. When they were little, Pim used to tell them the story of the Two Paulas. A pair of invisible twins who lived secretly in their home. Good Paula was always courteous, thoughtful, and obedient, and she never complained. But Bad Paula was full of mischief, oft
en selfish, and easily angered. When Anne opens her eyes, she is caught by her own gaze. Sometimes she dreams that she is the flimsy mirror image and that the face reflected in the glass is the real Anne. The real Anne, who only she knows to be the true Anne. Not the difficult Anne. Not the fearful Anne. Not the know-it-all Anne. Not the Bad Paula, but the good Anne. The brave Anne. The Anne Favored by God.
* * *
At first Mummy tells her that it was Pim who has received the call-up notice, but her sister confesses the truth. An order from Die Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung, under the stamp of the mof security police, arrived in the morning post. A form letter from an SS-Hauptsturmführer, bearing the official rubber stamp, demanding that the Jewess Margot Betti Frank report for labor deployment inside the German Reich. By the time Pim comes home, he has already decided that they must move into their hiding place weeks earlier than planned. It’s hard to resist the urge to panic as the process accelerates into a fluster of preparation. Anne packs her curlers, her favorite books, her tortoiseshell comb, clean handkerchiefs, and a few crazy things, too. Old tickets from a skating party at the Apollohal in the Stadionweg, a painted dreidel her omi Alice had sent her for Hanukkah, her poetry album from school with all her friends’ handwritten poems, her film-star photos and collection of postcards, her set of table-tennis paddles. Memories are more important to her than dresses, she insists. Of course, she also carefully packs her diary. The tartan plaid album that, as she hoped, has indeed become her favorite and most intimate confidante, to which she has confessed all the turmoil of the last few days. The letter they leave on the dining-room table is for their upstairs tenant to find. It implies that they have fled Holland to join Pim’s family in Switzerland. By the next afternoon, the entire family has slipped off the map of Amsterdam and into the hiding place: the rear annex of Pim’s office building in the Prinsengracht. “Het Achterhuis” is what Anne will call it in her diary. The House Behind.
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