Annelies

by David R. Gillham

  “What do I mean? I mean when they come to stuff us into the cattle cars and deport us back to Germany.”

  “Anne, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “And how can that be true, Pim? Mr. Nussbaum respects me enough to tell me what’s happening.” And she repeats what she was told in the bookshop. How the government has done something “clever,” as Mr. Nussbaum called it. In denouncing the Nuremberg racial laws, they have converted all German-born Jews back into German citizens—thereby branding them “enemy nationals.” Enemy nationals subject to deportation back to Germany. “Don’t pretend that this is a revelation to you, Pim,” she says.

  And now, to his daughter’s deep chagrin, Pim leans back into his chair with a small laugh of relief. “Ah, Anne. Is that all this is about?”

  The laugh, of course, incenses Anne further. Her hands are fists. “You think this is a joke, Pim? Those men who’ve come here to the office to interrogate you—how long will it be till they come with a lorry waiting outside to carry us away?”

  “Anne,” he says, his voice having regained its standard tone of confident control, “you’re jumping to conclusions. This issue with the authorities. It’s about property. Property and money. No one is coming to deport us.”

  “So you’re saying that Mr. Nussbaum lied to me?”

  “From what I understand, a handful of German factory workers have been expelled from the borderlands, but these were men who came during the war. It’s only a bit of bureaucratic maneuvering on the government’s part. A matter of territory, of business. And like any other business matter, it can be dealt with. That’s all. We are safe, daughter. Let me repeat: No one is coming to deport us. That much I promise you.”

  “Promise? Now that’s a funny word for you to use, Pim, isn’t it? Didn’t you also promise to keep us safe once before, and look how well that turned out.”

  All the light leaves Pim’s face. “Anne . . .”

  But she does not care if she has wounded him. That her words have cut him more deeply than anything she has done or said before. The risk is too great. “I will not be sent back to Germany, Pim,” she bursts out, and bangs the table with the flat of her hand. “I will die first.”

  * * *

  3 August

  The next morning Anne tells her father that she has a sick stomach and should stay home. They have barely spoken since her outburst the day before, but Pim examines her with a hint of sympathy and nods. She waits until he and Dassah have both evacuated the flat, and then she fills up the tub and takes a bath. She washes her hair and puts on the best dress in her wardrobe, a robin’s-egg-blue frock with a white velveteen collar that Miep found for her. She puts on her only pair of cotton stockings without mended holes and her suede shoes with the tiny silver buckles, and then she inspects herself in the mirror. Her final preparation before she leaves the house is to powder over the number on the inside of her forearm.

  She has looked up the address in the newspaper. It’s a hulking, redbrick merchant’s mansion on the corner of the Museumplein. During the occupation it was well known as the office of the Reichskommissar’s man in Amsterdam—a petty mof princeling named Böhmcker, most infamous for segregating the Jewish quarter from the rest of the city. His fiefdom was a fortified Sperrgebiet by the end of the war, but even if the air-raid bunkers remain fat earthen mounds, the hooked-cross banners are long gone, the trenches filled in, and the barbed wire pulled down. She expects there to be a guard at the door, or at least on the inside. A soldier with a rifle, but no. Instead there’s a bustle of people heading this way and that and a slim, middle-aged woman seated at a carefully polished desk that’s flanked by a flag. Red and white stripes, with stars on a field of blue.

  “Good morning,” Anne tells the woman in English. “My name is Anne Frank, and my wish is to emigrate to America.”

  25

  PITY

  Isn’t there some old saying about love being akin to pity?

  —Anne Frank, from her diary, 16 March 1944

  1946

  Museumplein 19

  Consulate General of the United States

  Amsterdam

  LIBERATED NETHERLANDS

  The fireplace in the landing hall is quite majestic. An imposing wooden mantelpiece is mounted above the hearth on stone pillars that are decorated with painted roundels, delft-blue tiles sporting windmills, canals, boats, and the like. The room itself is as spacious as a ballroom, richly appointed in the old mercantile fashion and paneled in elegant hardwood from the East Indies. It’s a princely setting, but now packed with a herd of shabbily clad Dutch volk, all here for the same reason as Mam’selle Anne Frank, no doubt. She has written down her name, her address, the telephone number in the Herengracht for the lady at the desk before being shuffled into this room. No chairs left, so she finds a seat on the floor by the stone hearth. The room has taken on a very distinctively stuffy postwar odor of soap rationing and bad tobacco. Hours pass. She dozes off at some point and wakes in sweaty surprise when she hears her name called. Scrambling to her feet, she is greeted by a silver-haired gentleman wearing wire-rimmed glasses who introduces himself in lightly accented Dutch as Vice-Consul Aylesworth. “And you are Miss Frank?” He wears a fatigued expression as he offers his hand.

  Anne shakes it with a damp palm. “I speak English,” she is quick to mention.

  “Do you? How nice,” he continues in Dutch. “This way, please.”

  The room into which she follows Vice-Consul Aylesworth is quite a bit smaller. Just as elegantly paneled and papered, but the atmosphere is that of a harried functionary’s office. Ashtrays are dirty with pipe litter. An electric fan oscillates gravely in front of an open window, teasing the edges of the papers stacked on the man’s desk. “So,” he begins. “You are here, as I understand it, because you wish to emigrate to the United States.”

  “Yes,” says Anne.

  “And you have a valid Dutch passport, Miss Frank?”

  A swallow. “No.”

  “You have a valid passport of any nationality?”

  “No. My papers . . .” she tells the man, “my papers were lost.”

  “Well, isn’t that a common story,” the vice-consul points out.

  He thinks you’re lying, Margot whispers in her ear, filling the empty chair bedside Anne with her Kazetnik’s corpse.

  “It’s true,” Anne protests. “It’s really true. All I have is this,” she says, and pokes forward the UNRRA pass from the DP camp. Her photo and thumbprint.

  He glances at it but makes no effort to take it from her hand. Instead he frowns as she shifts in her chair, and then he turns the frown on her. “How old are you, Miss Frank? If I may ask?”

  Anne swallows. “Seventeen.”

  “Seventeen. And are your parents aware of your visit here?”

  “My mother is dead,” she answers bluntly.

  “Condolences. And your father?”

  “He is alive.”

  “No, I mean he is aware of your plans?”

  Tell the truth, Margot instructs.

  “He’s aware, yes.”

  “Then where is he?”

  Anne struggles for an instant, deciding between a lie and the truth. “He himself has no plans to emigrate. Not yet,” is what she says.

  “So in the meantime you’re here alone? Without him?”

  Finally she decides on a stunted version of the truth. “He does not approve,” she admits.

  The vice-consul unhooks his wire-rimmed glasses and lets them hang from his fingers. “You understand, Miss Frank, that the application for emigration is quite demanding. The rules are very clear. There are police reports required, references, sponsorships, not to mention the fees involved, which are not insignificant.”

  Anne stares.

  Anne, what are you doing here? her sister suddenly demands. Just apo
logize for wasting this man’s time and go home.

  But Margot’s admonishments only serve to agitate Anne further. They only serve to push Anne to the limits of her desperation. She has no required reports, no references or sponsorships, no money for fees. But she does have this single piece of evidence proving the profundity of her suffering, proving the righteousness of her appeal. She has yanked up the sleeve on her dress and is rubbing furiously at the smudge of powder there on her arm. “Please, look,” she insists as she shoves out her arm to display the indelible number now visible. A-25063. “You must know what this means.”

  The frown crimping the man’s features deepens, but her desperation does not produce any more noticeable effect. The bureaucrat only shakes his head. “Miss Frank,” he says to her in English, “I’ll need some time. Please wait outside.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Back in the crowded hall, Anne waits. She feels rather hollow. Rather emptied. Across the room a skinny Dutch mother is trying to amuse her bored children by singing to them.

  “All the ducklings swim in the water,

  Falderal de riere, Falderal de rare.”

  She has closed her eyes but opens them when she hears the creak of the door leading from the lobby. When the door opens, she feels a sharp whip of both anger and shame. Standing there in his baggy suit and his fedora raked to the side of his head is her father. The look of pity in his eyes is unmistakable as he removes his hat and speaks to her with weary patience. “Come, daughter. Shall we go home?”

  * * *

  • • •

  The tramlijn is crowded. No seats vacant, so they stand as the carriage rattles down the track. Neither of them speaks. She did not toss a fit at the consulate when Pim arrived. What would have been the point? So she had gathered herself together and waited by the door as Pim spoke a few words to the vice-consul. Waited in silence as the two men finished with a handshake, the pair of conspirators in her entrapment. At the Rooseveltlaan stop, the tram creaks to a halt. In the midst of the jostling on and off of passengers, she feels Pim take her arm. Perhaps it’s a fatherly thing to do. Perhaps he’s hooking onto her in case she is tempted to escape. It makes no difference. Pim may think he is keeping her in her cage. But in her mind Anne Frank has already broken free.

  When they return to the flat, Pim stays only long enough to drink a glass of water from the tap and turn Anne over to Dassah’s charge.

  Anne says nothing. She drops her bag and flops down into the Viennese wingback like a sack of rags, glaring. Dassah stands in the threshold to the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, evaluating the scene, her eyes as sharp as a fox’s.

  “I have to go back to the office,” Pim announces numbly. “And I may be late coming home. Please don’t hold supper for me,” he tells the new Mrs. Frank, and gives her a distracted peck on the cheek. When Pim leaves, she turns to Anne and says, “Why don’t you change out of those clothes? I could use some help with the potatoes.”

  Anne glares. But then pushes herself up from the chair.

  * * *

  • • •

  Scrubbing the skin of the potatoes with a brush, she feels herself travel back in time. Standing beside Mummy, cleaning the potatoes for supper, listening as Mummy remembered doing the same thing with her own mother when she was young. The smile on Mummy’s face at the memory. At the continuing thread.

  Anne feels a tear slide slowly down her cheek.

  Dassah does not acknowledge the tear. But as she picks up the paring knife to start peeling, she says, “He loves you. He does. But he’s also terrified of you. Terrified that he’ll lose you again.”

  Anne looks up from the scrub brush in her hand. Wipes the tear away with her wrist. “I’m not his to keep,” she says.

  26

  THE FOURTH OF AUGUST

  I was pointing out to Peter his mistakes in the dictation when someone suddenly came running up the stairs. The steps creaked, and I started to my feet, for it was morning when everyone had to be quiet—but then the door flew open and a man stood before us holding his pistol aimed at my chest.

  —Otto Frank, quoted in Anne Frank: A Portrait in Courage by Ernst Schnabel, 1958

  1946

  The Achterhuis

  LIBERATED NETHERLANDS

  4 August

  The day has come. That date that has been blackened on the calendar. Up in the attic, she remains a prisoner of the Achterhuis, smoking a cigarette. Craven A brand from the Canadians. The smoke is soft in her throat, which she finds disconcerting. She misses the small punishment of bitter shag. To be so comfortable inhaling smoke feels like a sin.

  Mouschi is sulking somewhere belowstairs, so she has tried to capture the second warehouse cat, a brutish, hulking old mouser without a name until she called him Goliath. But Goliath is uninterested in affection. It is not his job to comfort Anne Frank, and he refuses to indulge any notions of cuddling that might interfere with his day. So she sits alone. A swift breeze wrinkles through the thickly leafed branches of the chestnut tree, and she listens to the familiar, untroubled rustle, closing her eyes. There are times when she wishes she could become a breeze. To be carried away into the sky. No memories. No past. No future but the open, endless air.

  A waxy squeak of wood comes from the floorboards below. She recognizes the tread of Pim’s footsteps; each step forward sounds a certain cautious optimism. She watches the leaves brush the window glass as he climbs the ladder and stands behind her.

  “Anne?”

  Anne says nothing, but her father doesn’t seem to notice. “Anne, I’m happy to have found a moment alone with you. I’m happy because there’s something I must tell you. I’m happy,” he repeats, “but also unhappy, because the something I’m about to tell you is both good and bad.” He shrugs, shakes his head at nothing. “I don’t even know how to begin. So I suppose the only way forward is just to say it. Just to say it aloud.” His voice is dense.

  Anne looks at him stiffly, burying a secret and sudden desire to panic.

  Pim turns, his head stooped, his hands hung on his hips, causing his elbows to stick out like wings. His face is a stone. “I have misled you.”

  He says this, but then further words on the subject are caught in a logjam. He must clear his throat roughly. A deep frown furrows his expression, and he blinks at the floor. “That’s the bad part. But the good part is . . .” he tells her, “the good part is that your diary—the diary you kept all those many months while we were in hiding here . . .”

  A chilly anxiety climbs lightly up Anne’s spine.

  “It was not . . .” he manages to say, his posture clenched. Blinking again, he forces his eyes to meet hers. “It was not lost,” her father declares. “I have it.”

  She feels as if she cannot breathe, as if the weight of the silence that separates them is pressing down on her chest. The words make no sense to her, and neither do the dizzying surges she feels of both joy and rage. She feels confused by herself. Her mouth opens. Her heart triples its beat, but all she can say is, “You?”

  Pim draws in a long breath through his nostrils and then releases it. “It was Miep who gave it to me,” he tells her. “She and Bep had salvaged it from the floor the day the Gestapo arrived, and they kept it safe, waiting for you to return. But after . . .” he says thickly, “after we thought that you wouldn’t be coming home . . .” His voice trembles as he yanks out his handkerchief to blot his eyes. “That was the day. That was the day,” he tells her, “that my life ended as well, Anne. It was. But then”—he puffs breath into his chest, his lip quivering—“then comes Miep walking into my office with . . . with her arms filled,” he says, wiping at his eyes and steadying himself. “She comes into my office and sets a stack of books and papers in front of me, saying, ‘Here, Mr. Frank, is the legacy of your daughter Anne.’”

  Silence.

  Pim gazes pleadin
gly at her, begging her to understand as an empty space expands between them. “It saved me, Anne,” her father whispers. “It saved my life. Because it brought you back to me.” He sniffs, stuffs away his handkerchief, shaking his head in wonder. “Such a gift,” he tells her. “That was my thought. My daughter had such a gift. I was stunned by what you wrote. Stunned and humbled. And then, out of thin air it seemed, you appeared. You appeared, alive, and my heart soared.” He laughs, a sudden heave of joy in his voice.

  “But . . .” says Anne, and she bites down on her lip before she can continue, “but you still kept my diary.”

  Once more Pim’s face drops. He must nod his head to this, and he clears his voice of emotion. “I couldn’t help but feel that it was,” he starts to say, “and you may not credit this, but I couldn’t help feeling that it was mine now. Can you make any sense of that?”

  No reply.

  “When you returned to Amsterdam,” says Pim, “having survived such torture, you were so very different. No longer my little kitten. Of course, how could you be the same? How could any of us ever be the same? And yet I felt that the diary . . . it was all I had left of the Annelies I’d known. That child whom I had adored.”

  Anne stares. “So for all this time . . . you kept this secret. Miep kept it,” she says, and swallows the first trace of anger in her voice.

  “Please. Don’t blame her,” Pim begs. “You owe our dear friend Miep a debt of gratitude,” he instructs Anne. “It was she who saved your diary from oblivion—and at great personal risk, I might add. If the Gestapo man had returned, as he had threatened he would, all he would have needed to do was open the wrong drawer and disaster would have followed.”

  “What about your new wife?” Anne asks heavily.

  “Anne.”