Annelies

by David R. Gillham

  “He’ll be here soon,” is all Dassah tells her dimly, stepping farther into her room. Her voice takes on a hard edge of interest. “This is where you want to go?”

  Lifting her eyes to the photos of skyscrapers tacked on the wall, Anne observes the Kingdom of Manhattan. “Yes,” is all she says.

  Dassah nods, still gazing at the towers and concrete canyons. “You know I was born and reared in Berlin. A very large city. A very modern city. But this,” she says, “this is a city from another world. . . .”

  “Hello?” Anne hears Pim calling urgently, and he appears, wearing his old raincoat and fedora. The skin of his face is bleached. Kneeling at the side of her bed, he takes Anne’s hand in his bony grip. “My dear child,” he says, as if beginning a prayer. “My dear, dear daughter.”

  “Pim,” she whispers, raising her arms for an embrace. “I’m sorry.” Her cheek dampens.

  “Annelein. There’s utterly no reason for apologies.”

  “Yes. Yes, there is.” She swallows. “I’m not the daughter you think I am, Pim. I’m not the person you think I am.”

  “Anne.” He says her name and shakes his head softly. “You shall always be my darling daughter. No matter what. No matter how old you grow or what distance may come between us, you shall always be my child.”

  “No, you don’t understand.”

  “I understand perfectly, Anne,” he says.

  “I’ll leave the two of you alone,” Dassah informs them.

  “Thank you, Hadasma. Thank you,” he says. And then he repeats himself, as if perhaps he is revealing a secret. “I understand perfectly. Perfectly, Anneke. I’m only grateful to God that I had the good sense to send you to swimming lessons when you were little. Those medals you earned have come in quite handy, I would say.”

  “No, Pim. Maybe you should let them send me back to Germany. Let the mof finish the job he started.”

  A dark breath exhaled. “Anne, it grieves me. It grieves me deeply when you say things like that.”

  Anne does not respond to this, but she guesses Pim might prefer her silence at this moment.

  “Now, please . . .” He squeezes her hand. “Let’s speak no more about such things,” he tells her, as if tamping down the embers in a fireplace. “You should rest. It’s what you need most. Shall I read to you? I would enjoy that, I think. Let me just put my coat and hat away.”

  He is gone for a few moments. Mouschi slips into the room, pushing through the gap in the door, and mews impertinently before leaping up onto the bed. Anne captures him in her arms, burying her nose in plush fur. She can hear the whisper of words between Pim and her stepmother. But then Pim returns, carrying a dog-eared volume. “I was just beginning again with Great Expectations,” he announces with a cautious joviality, and sinks down into the chair by the bed. “Dickens was a genius, I think, at portraying the essence of people. I’ve always admired this in his writing.” He opens the book and places his eyes on the page. But then he says, “You possess some of that genius, too, Anne,” he tells her, “when you write.”

  Anne’s brow wrinkles.

  “God has given you quite a talent. Perhaps I’ve never told you that,” he says, musing aloud.

  Anne can only reply with silence.

  “Well, if I haven’t, it was wrong of me. I should have told you. I should have, because it’s true.”

  She does not know how to find gratitude in herself right now. But Pim does not appear to expect it in any case. He gives a sniff and clears his throat before beginning to read aloud. Anne leans back against the headboard, as if she is leaning back into the past, the father and his daughter at bedtime. Holding her purring cat against her breast, she presses her nose into the fur of his head as Pim ignites a cigarette and opens the book. She listens to the words but also to the drowse of his voice. Her eyes return to the magazine pages tacked to the wall. A city from another world.

  29

  MIEP’S TYPEWRITER

  A few of my stories are good, my descriptions of the Secret Annex are humorous, much of my diary is vivid and alive, but . . . it remains to be seen whether I really have talent.

  —Anne Frank, from her diary, 5 April 1944

  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”

  30

  GOD’S COMEDY

  Sometimes I think that God is trying to test me, both now and in the future.

  —Anne Frank, from her diary, 30 October 1943

  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.”