Annelies

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, often 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.