Annelies

by David R. Gillham

  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 i
s 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.

  31

  THE QUESTION OF FORGIVENESS

  We are not so arrogant as to say before you, “We are righteous and have not sinned.” Surely, we have sinned.

  —Yom Kippur liturgy

  1946

  Joodse Begraafplaats Diemen

  Ouddiemerlaan 146

  Diemen

  LIBERATED NETHERLANDS

  The gravestones are spread across the dark green meadowland. Some are chipped and cracked with age or vandalism. Broken slabs of slate lie abandoned on the ground, lost in the untrimmed grass. There are no avelim attending Mr. Nussbaum’s burial. The rabbi has had to conscript men from his community just to assemble a full minyan of ten for prayers. Pim seems to know some of them. His comrades. He is not the only pallbearer whose tattoo is showing as they ferry the plain pine coffin over the cemetery’s terrain. Anne stands with Dassah behind her, watching the coffin as it’s lowered into the earth. The tears are hot on her skin as the kaddish is recited.

  Perhaps she should be cross with him for taking his own life. Perhaps she should shed tears of anger as well as loss. But really she feels so drained of tears that all she can do is say good-bye. Good-bye to Mr. Nussbaum. Good-bye to her stalwart ally. Good-bye to the man who understood her as a writer, who wanted to promote her work. Good-bye to all that. Good-bye to the man who said that he depended on her future for hope but could not find hope in his own.

  Another mourner has appeared. Margot stands with the minyan, her head shaven, flaunting the dirty yellow star on her pullover. All eyes are on the casket as it descends, except hers, which are fixed on Anne.

  * * *

  Leased Flat

  The Herengracht

  Amsterdam-Centrum

  The Canal Ring

  At the flat, Anne dips her hands into the basin of water on the sideboard by the door, just as if she really could be cleansed of the dead. Dassah has prepared food and set it out on the table with the snow-white linen. The Meal of Condolence. But Anne has no appetite. She sits smoking on the chesterfield. She hears the crush of leather as someone sits beside her. It is the rabbi. Souza is his name. He wears a dark serge suit and reveals a plain black satin yarmulke when he removes a roll-brimmed fedora. He’s young, maybe in his middle thirties, gaunt, with a clean-shaven face. He looks calm, a man who is comfortable inside his own skin. Anne catches a glance from Dassah as her stepmother dishes out a plate of holishkes for one of the pallbearers.

  “I’m sorry, Rabbi,” Anne tells him firmly.

  The rabbi lifts his eyebrows. “Pardon me? Sorry for what?”

  “I’m sorry, but you’re about to waste your time with me.”

  A small shrug. “Well. Kind of you to say so, Anne, if I may call you by your given name. But I don’t know what you mean.”


  “I know that my stepmother is used to getting her way. I’m sure you think you’re doing her a favor.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I don’t need to be tended to.”

  He pauses for an instant and sets his plate on the mahogany coffee table. “Perhaps your stepmother is worried about you?”

  A short breath escapes her. “That’s a laugh.”

  “You resent her concern?”

  “You could say that,” Anne replies, staring at the ember of her cigarette.

  “I take it that you were close to Mr. Nussbaum, may his name be a blessing.”

  “I don’t want to talk about him.”

  “No?”

  “Maybe you’re not aware, Rabbi. Didn’t anyone tell you the truth about what happened? He jumped into a canal. He committed suicide. Isn’t that a sin?”

  “It is, but who can really know what happened?”

  “He was going to be deported back to Germany. You don’t need to guess what was going through his head.”

  The rabbi shrugs lightly. “One might consider all possibilities, I suppose. You’re feeling hurt, Anne?” he wonders. “Hurt by him?”

  She swallows. “‘Hurt’ is not the word.”

  “Abandoned?”

  She breathes in deeply. “Please. I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “Even though it was you who started the conversation? It might help to talk, don’t you think? I think at heart he was a very good man.”

  But this sets Anne’s teeth on edge. “I thought so, too, Rabbi. He encouraged me to write. He said he wanted to see my work published. And yet he decided to drown himself instead.” She says this and feels a terrible swell of guilt. “I’m sorry, I must sound very selfish. I am very selfish. If you don’t believe me, just ask anyone. Ask my stepmother. Ask my father. Ask them. They’ll tell you.”