Annelies

1946

Amsterdam

LIBERATED NETHERLANDS

There are nights when she cannot sleep. So at supper, and not for the first time, she steals bread from the table. Slips a roll from the bakery into a pocket of her apron dress. In her bedroom she closes the door and hooks the lock. Dropping onto her bed, she removes the roll and stares at it. She touches the rough texture of its yeast-swollen crest, thinly chalky with a residue of flour. Once it would have been impossible to save a bite of this bread. When bread fell into her hands, she could do nothing but devour it. Yet now she secretes it under her mattress.

She finds that she can sleep through the night knowing it’s there.

Nussbaum

Tweedehands-Boekverkoper

The Rozengracht

Kneeling on the floor of Mr. Nussbaum’s bookshop, she has spent an hour or more unpacking boxes. Mr. Nussbaum himself has just returned from a meeting with a dealer and is hanging up his patched-over coat and old felt hat. “So,” he says with a lively curiosity, returning to the sales desk to sort through a bundle of new acquisitions. “How is your work progressing?”

“Well, I’ve finished reorganizing the biographies,” she tells him. “I think you’ll be pleased.”

A smile to himself as he tucks in his chin. “Yes, I’m sure I will be, but that’s not what I meant. I meant, Miss Frank, how is your writing progressing?”

“Oh.” Her eyes drop. “All right, I suppose,” she says, and removes a book from an open carton. Anne has continued to write since the day her pen discovered its words again. But though she once found meaning in her diary, in securing the events of the day on paper and molding them into an account of a life, her narrative is now fractured. She feels as adrift on the page as she does in this alien Amsterdam she’s come home to, without a mother, without a sister, and with a father who continues to infuriate her with his vacant crusade to live in the present.

“That’s all?” Mr. Nussbaum doubts. “Just all right? Not astonishingly well or appallingly badly?”

She grips the book in her hands. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Mr. Nussbaum.”

“I want you to say what you’re thinking, Anne. What’s your plan? Have you started that novel yet?”

“Novel?”

“Didn’t you say you had a novel in the works? A book of some sorts?”

“No.” Anne shakes her head. “It’s not a novel. It’s not anything.”

“Well, it must be something if you’re writing it,” Mr. Nussbaum points out.

Anne draws a small breath and releases it. “Have you ever written a book, Mr. Nussbaum?” she asks to change the subject.

“Me? Oh, no. God no. I don’t have the gift for that. When I was young, of course, I thought I was destined to pen a magnum opus. That it was only a matter of time before my name would be carved beside those of the greats. Tolstoy, Proust,” Mr. Nussbaum says with a wry laugh. “But no. As it turned out, I was nobody’s idea of Tolstoy.” An affable shrug. “I can say this, however: I did, over time, become a rather decent editor. I even made a living at it. So I suppose the point I’m getting at is, if ever you would like to show me something, Anne, I’d be happy to give it a look.”

Anne swallows. “Well. Thank you. I’ll think about it,” she answers, and tries to smile, but she feels suddenly vulnerable, maybe embarrassed by it all, so she begins sorting through a box of children’s books that Mr. Nussbaum bought in an auction. “If I ever actually produce anything worthwhile.” She says this, and then her face brightens, and she feels a lift in her chest. “Oh! Cissy van Marxveldt!” A swell of sweetness as she pulls out one book after the other. The New Beginning, Confetti, Caprices, The Storms, A Tender Summer. “I loved her books!” Anne exclaims. “I think I’ve read every one four or five times each.”

“Then you should take them home,” Mr. Nussbaum tells her.

“Oh, no. I couldn’t. You can make a good profit on these. They’re still in wonderful condition.”

“All the more reason you should have them. Profit?” He waves the word away. “Unimportant.”

“Are you sure?” She grips the top book in her arms.

“Positive.” He puffs on his cigar. “Consider them your pay for the day.”

“Thank you. But I’m sure they’re much more valuable than that.”

“Oh? Are you suggesting I don’t pay you enough?” he jokes.

Anne feels herself smile again as she gazes back down at the book in her arms. Cracking it open, she skims through a paragraph. How joyful she was when she first read these treasures! At first, like all her friends, she wanted to be Joop ter Heul, that sprightly, fearless, madcap girl, always launching herself into the next adventure. It wasn’t till she started her diary that Anne had realized it wasn’t Joop the character but Joop’s author she longed to become: The Jewish Cissy van Marxveldt! “Marxveldt’s only her pen name. I don’t remember what her real name is.”

“It’s Beek-de Haan.”

Anne looks up.

“Did you know she was married to a Jew? A man named Leo Beek.”

“No,” says Anne, holding the book in her lap. She feels a pinch of inner dread. Married to a Jew? She knows what happened to Dutch Jews. Must even her girlhood adoration of Joop’s exploits be tagged with sorrow now?

“I was quite friendly with them both, actually,” Mr. Nussbaum tells her. “Many years before the war. The Netherlands was a large market for German publishers back then, have I said that? I used to visit Amsterdam regularly. But then all that ended.” His eyes flicker at the memory. “Leo was executed by the Gestapo, I’m sorry to report. He was active in the resistance. They took him to the Overveen Dunes, like so many others, and shot him.” He says this and then sees Anne’s face. “I’m sorry, Anne, I’ve upset you.”

“No, it’s nothing,” Anne says, and she sets the books down and shakes her head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Nussbaum, but I should go. I promised I’d help out at my father’s office today.”

“Of course,” Mr. Nussbaum grants. “Just don’t forget your pay,” he says, lifting a smile and nodding to the books. “I’m quite serious.”

“Thank you,” Anne says, but suddenly she feels the desire to evacuate. She’s not sure why, but she feels oddly trapped by Mr. Nussbaum’s generosity, and when the telephone rings loudly, she has her opportunity. Mr. Nussbaum picks it up, and in the matter of a moment his expression has blackened. “Yes, yes, I received your so-called correspondence on this so-called matter. And I can only say that I am both insulted and appalled.”

Anne gathers the books into her arms, but before she makes her exit, Mr. Nussbaum covers the receiver’s mouthpiece with his hand. “Anne,” he says. “You know, we’re still in touch, Cissy and I. I should try to arrange a meeting between you.”

“A meeting?” She feels a shock of surprise. “Really?”

“Two great literary minds.” Mr. Nussbaum grins but then must return to his scowling telephone exchange. Anne loads her “pay” into the basket of her bike and wheels it out the door with a wave that Mr. Nussbaum misses, his back to her now as he continues with his battle. Outside, she breathes the air in deeply. Stares at the stream of bicycle traffic passing her, then swallows lightly as she runs a finger over the cover of the top book.

These novels, Margot says. She has appeared, head shaven, wearing her KZ rags. They were your favorites, weren’t they? Anne only shakes her head. “Do you think it’s possible? Possible that I could actually meet Cissy van Marxveldt in person? That would be so wonderful.” But when she looks up, Margot is gone. Anne climbs onto the worn leather seat and pedals out into the street.

The sun is shining, opening up the sky above the city into a cloudless stretch of blue. Light polishes the surfaces of the canals into pristine mirrors and brightens the dingy paint jobs of the houseboats bumping against their moorings. She navigates the streets of the Grachtengordel, pedaling harder over the bridges, and then breezing along, looping around a corner, racing the gulls. Her legs have gained muscle; her calves have gained shape, no longer matchsticks. She thrills at the breeze that combs through her hair and her clothes, at the speed of her turns and the bumpy terrain of cobbles under her tires. But mostly she covets the thorough clean sweep of her mind that riding her bike provides. No memories, no fears, just bright adrenaline pumping into her brain.

She’s breathy and sweet with sweat when she arrives at the warehouse doors. One is cracked open, and a teasing whiff of spicy aroma wafts out into the street as she climbs from the bike’s seat and adjusts her skirt, but then she stops. She freezes like the mouse that’s just spied the cat—or exactly the opposite. It’s him. The boy with the straw-blond hair, standing across the street at the edge of the canal. He stands with a watchful posture, back straight, shoulders tilted slightly forward, hands stuffed in the pockets of his patched-up trousers in a manner that almost makes him appear armless. His appearance adds urgency to her heartbeat, and she must swallow the impulse to call out his name or dump her bike against the side of the building and run to him. She feels herself take a step, but then a lorry rumbles between them, and when it passes, the boy is gone. The Westertoren chimes the half hour.

Taking the steep stairs to the office, she feels a disorienting itch. She glances over her shoulder halfway up, feeling as if the boy might be there behind her, but there’s nothing, and she finds that her breezy physical elation has been depressed by something else. By the time she opens the door at the top of the stairs, she feels restless and unsatisfied. But when she stops again, it’s because there’s no one in the office. The place has a certain ransacked quality to it. The middle drawer of the filing cabinet stands empty, desktops are disheveled, and the drawers of Miep’s desk are ajar. She feels a sharp pinch of panic, but then, with a noise of her shoe heels, Mrs. Zuckert enters the room. She faces Anne, and as if she is a mind reader, she says, “Nothing to worry about. Just a misunderstanding. Everyone’s fine.”

“But”—Anne stares—“what’s happened?”

Mrs. Zuckert draws a breath and surveys the room. “Honestly, I’m not sure. Men from one of the state bureaus arrived. Your father said we were to be cooperative.”

“Where is he?”

“With them at their offices.”

“He’s under arrest?”

Mrs. Zuckert frowns. “Arrest? No, of course not. Don’t jump to conclusions, Anne. They came to collect records, that’s all. Your father accompanied them, along with Mr. Kugler. Quite voluntarily, I should add. I’m sure it’s nothing,” she says, though her tone seems slightly unsure if that’s so. “Simply part of the process. Come,” she instructs, “sit down. Let me fix you a cup of tea. You look stricken.”

And she is stricken. The thought of men from the state bureaus, rifling through the building, undoes her underpinnings. She feels suddenly fragile as she sits at her desk, glaring at the pale cup of tea that Mrs. Zuckert has delivered. “Do you know what they’re looking for?” she asks, still staring blindly at the teacup.

“Do I?” The woman has pulled up a chair to the side of the desk. “No.”

“You mean my father hasn’t let you in on all the doings behind closed doors? I thought he would have.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that, Anne. But I can assure you, your father has told me nothing about any ‘doings,’ as you put it. Why would he? I’m just a secretary.”

“Ha,” Anne replies quietly, then turns to the tea, blowing ripples on its steamy surface. “You know you’re more than that. We all know you’re more than that.”

And now Mrs. Zuckert expels a breath, her eyebrows arched. She stands and walks over to her handbag, usually stored in a drawer but now sitting out beside the Herr Typewriter. Anne watches her from behind, lighting up a cigarette. Highly unorthodox for the women to smoke in the office. “Would you care for one?” she asks, still with her back to Anne.

Anne pauses. “Yes,” she says, and Mrs. Zuckert nods. Repeats the process and ferries a lit cigarette back to Anne along with Mr. Kleiman’s red enamel ashtray. Anne takes the cigarette and draws in deeply. She watches Mrs. Zuckert return to the chair and adjust her skirt. Anne can see the machinery of the woman’s mind churning before she releases smoke and fixes Anne with her eyes.

“All right. You’re correct. I was being slightly disingenuous with you when I said I was just an office secretary to your father. You’ll have to forgive me for that,” she instructs Anne. “I wasn’t sure what he has said to you and what he hasn’t.”

“He doesn’t say much,” Anne answers. “He’s bent on treating me like a child. It’s maddening.”

Surprisingly, Mrs. Zuckert nods her agreement with this. “Yes, I can understand how it would be. Clearly you are no longer a child, Anne. Clearly,” she repeats. “You’ve become a young woman. That’s a very difficult time, I think, for any parent, and especially for a father. He’s feeling lost. So he prevaricates. He avoids the issues or becomes suddenly authoritarian. But the truth is, he is completely out of his depth with you. Add the fact that you yourself are so implacably furious with the world, and, well . . . There’s nowhere for him to turn.”

Anne’s gaze goes hot. “I was his child. He was supposed to protect me,” Anne says. “He was supposed to protect us all.”

“Yet he could not even protect himself,” Mrs. Zuckert points out. “If he had died in Auschwitz, would you still find him so culpable?”

“But he didn’t die.”

“No, he didn’t. And I’m thankful to God for that.”

Anne says nothing. Mrs. Zuckert trims the ash from her cigarette on the rim of Kleiman’s ashtray. She appears to be making some sort of internal choice. And then she says, “At Birkenau I was part of the Kanada Kommando. You know ‘Kanada,’ yes?”

Anne nods. Kanada was the name of the warehouse filled with the stolen luggage of prisoners. It was called such because Kanada was believed to be a land of great riches.

“I was assigned to the White Kerchief work group. Most of the women were Hungarian, and since my father was born in Budapest, I had a bit of the language. And there were advantages to be had as a Kanada Jewess. We all kept our hair. The work was not physically debilitating. The SS mostly turned a blind eye to our eating the food we found, so that was good, but still a horrific job in its own way. We had a direct view of the Krematorien as people were marched into the gas chambers, which pushed us all to the edge of insanity. We heard what went on inside,” she says, “the screaming, the cries. And then nothing.”

Silence. A tear dampens Anne’s cheek, but she does not wipe it away.

“So I do understand your rage,” Mrs. Zuckert tells her. “I do understand your grief.”

“Why do you think you survived?” Anne asks bluntly.

The woman lifts her eyebrows. “Why?”

“I ask this question of Pim, and he tells me that it was because of hope. But how can I believe that? Because when I ask myself the same question, I have no answer. So now I’m asking you. Was it luck that sent you to the Kanada Kommando? Was it God?”

“God? I should be so presumptuous. Actually, it might have been nothing more than my ability as a typist. The SS were lazy, I found. They hated typing up paperwork, so I did it for them.” She shrugs. “In the final months, I was transferred from Birkenau to the Siemens camp in Bobrek to work as a stenographer. The food was not as plentiful, but no Jews were gassed there, and I could keep my sanity.”

“So. You are an excellent typist,” Anne says. “That’s your answer?”

Mrs. Zuckert gazes at her. “It’s the only one I can offer.” And then she says, “You know, Anne, we have all suffered. You, me, your father. But for me, losing everything has made it easier to embrace the idea of starting over. When you have lost everything, then you have nothing else that can be lost. Only gained.”

The smoke from Anne’s cigarette drifts upward.

Mrs. Zuckert draws in a breath before slowly releasing it as if she is drawing in strength. “Your father has insisted that I keep silent about this till he can determine that the correct time has come. And I’m sure that he’ll be piqued with me when he finds out that I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer, but honestly, when does the ‘correct time’ ever come? And I have never seen the point in surreptitious behavior. To me, if a thing needs to be said, it should be said. So I think you should know. I think everyone should know.”

Anne still stares, though she is feeling a queasiness in her belly.

“Anne,” the woman says, pronouncing her name as if it’s a solid piece of iron. “Your father has asked me to marry him. And I have accepted his proposal.”

Anne blinks. The room seems to have gone crooked. Then there’s noise on the stairs, rising with a thumping urgency. The door shudders open, and it’s Pim. He’s winded. Shaken. Hunted. The sight of Anne and Mrs. Zuckert together at the desk shoves him backward a step.

“Otto,” Mrs. Zuckert says, “Anne and I were just having a conversation.”

“Yes?” he asks with a blighted anxiety. “Were you?” It’s obvious he’s guessed. It was obvious he’d guessed the second he heard her call him by his given name. He glances at Anne, who meets his eyes with steel.

“How did things develop with the bureau?” Mrs. Zuckert wants to know.

Pim breathes roughly. Shakes his head at his answer to her question. “It’s still very complicated. There are still obstacles to be overcome, and the questions are endless. I’m quite confident that the matter will be properly resolved, but it will take more time than originally anticipated. I’m sorry,” he says quickly, “but I stopped by only to pick up my spectacles.”

“Your spectacles, Pim?” says Anne. “Since when do you ever wear your spectacles?”

“Anne, you shouldn’t question your father,” says her father’s fiancée. “There must be something he needs to see clearly.”

Pim blinks at them both. “Excuse me,” he says, and exits down the hall toward his private office. A moment later he is out again and hurrying past the door, heading down the steps. For a man who’s in his mid-fifties and who has endured ten months at Auschwitz, he can certainly move with clean agility when he decides it’s warranted.

Mrs. Zuckert crushes out her cigarette in the red ashtray. “There are some customers who placed orders, Anne,” she says. “They should be contacted about the delays this matter will cause. Perhaps you can help me make the telephone calls? We’ll say that we’re experiencing a temporary disruption of supply from our wholesalers. They probably won’t believe us—news travels fast, especially when it involves the bureaus. At best they’ll think we can’t pay our bills, but then who among us can? In any case I’ve found that the Dutch are far too polite to ask embarrassing questions. So leave your father in peace and concentrate on work. It’ll be better for you in the long run,” she says. “Besides, you can always excoriate him at a later date.”

“You don’t feel guilty?” Anne demands.

“Guilty?” Mrs. Zuckert lifts her eyebrows again.

“Guilty at forcing my father to be disloyal to his wife’s memory?”

“Oh, so now it’s me who forces him, is it? Fine. The answer, I can assure you, is no. I feel no guilt over my feelings for your father. I feel no guilt, period. The dead are gone and lost to us now. And guilt is the worst kind of poison. That much, Anne, you should learn.”

Suddenly Anne pushes herself up from the chair and bolts away from the desk. Away from Mrs. Zuckert, away from the office, down the stairs, and into the warehouse, where she mounts her bicycle and shoves off into the street. A squat little automobile scolds her with a toot, but she ignores it and pedals away, up the street and across the shaded Leidsegracht. Her heart is thrumming in her chest. Her muscles clammy. She is following the strongest of her urges, the urge to flee. To escape. Why she loses control is hard to say. Maybe it’s because of a bump in the sidewalk, or maybe because her bike tires have lost too much tread, or because she has pedaled too close to the curb. Or maybe it’s simply her own panicked anguish that derails her. The screech of a lorry’s rubber tire is deafening, and then she is falling, nothing but a vivid helplessness between her and the pavement, until the impact of the fall slams the breath from her body. She sees a wheel wobbling above her and hears a voice swimming dizzily in her head. She can tell it’s the driver of the lorry, who’s out from behind the wheel, demanding to know if she’s hurt as he’s lifting her bicycle. She feels an uncomfortable throb in her leg, when suddenly Margot is there, trying to help her up, dressed in her school clothes, reporting on the accident. Your knee. You’ve scraped up your knee.

“I can see that,” Anne answers flatly. But suddenly something’s off. Through the dizziness she sees that it’s not Margot helping her stand, it’s the boy with the straw-blond hair. “Can you walk?” he asks her.

“I don’t know. Yes, I think. Is my bicycle damaged?”

The lorry driver is a middle-aged Dutchman in a frayed cap, with callused hands and thick jowls. He lifts her bicycle to perform an examination. “Looks like the tire burst. And—I don’t know—fender’s a little bent. But it’s not hard to fix. If you’re not too bad off, I can put the bike in the rear of the lorry and take you to your house,” he volunteers. “Where do you live?”

“In the Jekerstraat,” says Anne. “But my father’s office is just around the corner in the Prinsengracht.”

“That’ll do. Hold on.” And as the driver makes room in the back of his lorry for the bicycle, Anne cannot help but be aware of the strength of the blond boy’s arms and the salty aroma of his sweat.

“I saw you standing by the canal,” she tells him.

“Did you? I saw you fall off your bicycle.”

“I’m sure I can walk,” she declares, though she’s not sure that she wants to. Not just yet. Her leg does hurt, that’s true. And maybe she’s not quite ready to give up the weightless feeling of her body hung in the boy’s half embrace.

“You smell nice,” the boy offers, and Anne looks up at him, surprised. There’s a kind of pale statement of fact in his eyes. The driver returns, yanking open the passenger door with a creak of hinges, and he and the boy load her into the passenger seat. The boy shuts the door behind her and steps away, hands stuffed back into his pockets.

The window is rolled down. Anne hooks her elbow over the door and leans her head out. “Your name is Raaf,” she tells him.

“And yours is Anne,” the boy answers.

“Why did you vanish?”

“I didn’t vanish. I’m standing right here.”

“But at the warehouse. You stopped showing up. Was it because of what I did?”

The boy almost grins. “Well. Usually when I wanna get bit, I steal a bone from a dog.”

“I’m sorry.”

The driver hops into the seat beside her and slams his door shut before revving the engine.

“Will you come back to work?” she asks the boy.

He shakes his head. “Nah. I got another job at a brewery house in the Lindengracht.”

“But don’t you miss the smell of the spices?”

“Never thought about it,” the boy replies.

“Still, you’re hanging about,” she says, surprised by her own desire to flirt. “There must be something you miss about the place,” Anne calls to him as the driver throttles the lorry into gear and shifts it forward. “I wonder what it could be?” she shouts out over the noise.

• • •

It’s one of the warehousemen who helps her up the leg-breaking stairs. He’s a short, stocky old snuiter whose name is Dekker, but the rest of the men call him “Duimen”—Thumbs—because he’s so well known for dropping everything he picks up. “Don’t you worry, though, little miss, I won’t drop you,” he tells Anne. He’s also known as a bit of a schapenkop, a sad sack. A Simple Simon with room in his noggin for only one thought at a time. His smile is full of gaps, and his breath stinks badly of shag tobacco, but Anne can tell that he is trying to be kind to her, and so she does her best to arrange her face in an appreciative expression. At the top of the stairs, he knocks respectfully at the office door before pushing it open and calling out, “Halloo!”

Miep is back, and she stands up suddenly from her desk. “Oh, my heavens, what’s happened?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing. Really, I’m fine,” Anne responds to the note of emergency.

“The little miss took a spill on her bicycle,” Duimen reports diligently.

Miep is already across the floor assisting him in the minor burden of Anne’s weight. “Let’s get her in the chair, please, Mr. Dekker.”

“Really, it’s just a scrape. Oww!” Anne yelps when she must bend her knee to sit.

At this point Mrs. Zuckert returns to the room. “And what’s happened here?” she demands blankly, a thick binder in her arms.

Miep pretends for a moment that she is deaf, inspecting the damage, leaving poor Duimen to respond, cap in his hands. “The little miss took a spill,” he repeats with a trickle of anxiety this time. “From her bicycle,” he adds, so as not to omit any significant detail.

Only now does Miep look up. “Mrs. Zuckert, there’s a first-aid kit in the kitchen. The top drawer just under the sink. Would you mind? I think a bandage and some iodine are in order.”

Mrs. Zuckert listens to this but remains where she is. “What about the bicycle?” she asks Duimen.

“Missus?”

“Is it badly damaged?”

“Oh, uh. No. I think it’s not. The fender maybe, but I’m sure I can hammer it back into shape without much of a fuss.”

“Good,” Mrs. Zuckert approves. “Bicycles are impossible to replace.” Only now does she turn back to Miep, who is sharing a glare of amazement with Anne. “Bandage and iodine. Top drawer under the sink,” Mrs. Zuckert repeats, and then exits the room.

“Incredible,” Anne whispers. “As long as the bicycle is fine, only then is it permitted to tend to my wound.”

“I’m not quite sure that this qualifies as a wound, Anne.” Miep is arranging a chair to act as a footstool. “More like a knee scrape. But you should keep it straight,” she instructs before turning to dismiss Duimen. “Thank you, Mr. Dekker,” she informs the man. “You’ve been very helpful.”

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Dekker,” Anne says, joining in, and Duimen is relieved to return to his toothless smile, giving a nod and flapping his cap back onto his bald head. “No trouble, miss,” he tells Anne. “You just be careful now,” he says, and out he goes, tromping noisily down the stairs.

“What exactly happened?” Miep wants to know.

“I’m not sure. My tire burst, and I slipped off the curb. Or maybe it was the other way around.”

“No, I don’t mean that,” Miep says, her voice dropping ever so slightly. “I mean here. With Mrs. Zuckert.”

Anne feels her jaw go rigid. “Why do you ask?”

“Because she says you threw a fit and stormed out when she tried to give you work.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Well, then, what did happen?”

But the words are suddenly stuck in Anne’s throat, and before she can possibly unstick them, Mrs. Zuckert has returned with the first-aid kit and a glass of something. “First-aid kit requisitioned,” she reports to Miep, and then extends the glass to Anne. “Here. Drink this.”

Anne stares at the glass and then at Mrs. Zuckert. She takes the glass but doesn’t drink. It smells strong. “What is it?”

“Brandy,” Mrs. Zuckert answers.

“Brandy?” Miep frowns with surprise.

“Drink it,” she tells Anne again. “It’ll calm your nerves.”

“Where did you get brandy?” Miep wonders aloud.

“Oh, I thought you knew,” Mrs. Zuckert replies. “Mr. Frank keeps a bottle of Koetsiertje in his office cabinet. To offer clients.”

“But Mr. Frank . . .” Miep must take a breath before finishing. “He always locks the office.”

“So he does, yes,” Mrs. Zuckert agrees, “but he gave me a key. Now drink it,” she orders Anne. And then to Miep she says, “You should take her back to your flat and put a cold press on her knee so it doesn’t swell.” She follows this order with a shrug. “Of course, that’s just a suggestion.”

Miep nods, standing. It’s clear she’s had enough. “Yes,” she agrees archly. “What a good idea. Anne, drink the brandy,” she commands. “I’ll call for a taxi.”

• • •

It does hurt. Her knee, that is. There’s a slow ache in the joint. The iodine stings under the bandage, and the brandy burns, pooling in her belly. She is planted beside Miep in the back of a bicycle taxi, bumping along the street, following the noise of the gulls. The taxi man is a large fellow, with dusty gray hair bristling from under his cap and a metal livery badge hung from his coat. The air smells of motor traffic, and the morning sun has been clouded as it drags toward midday. “How worried should I be?” Anne asks.

“About your knee?” Miep says.

“About the bureau men collecting the office files.”

Miep expels a weary breath. “I don’t know, exactly.”

“You don’t like her, do you?” Anne asks.

“Who?”

“You know who. Mrs. Zuckert.”

Miep looks directly at Anne and almost smiles. “No, I do not.”

“Neither do I,” says Anne. “So what does Pim see in her?” she complains to the air. “I shouldn’t tell you this probably, but he’s asked her to marry him.”

Miep stiffens visibly. “Yes,” is all she says.

“You know, too?”

“Yes.”

“So Pim told everyone but me?”

“No. Your father said nothing about it.”

“Ah. Then she told you. She must have taken great satisfaction in that moment. Don’t you find it all too disgusting?”

Miep lifts her sharply tweezed eyebrows. Her eyes are blue oceans. “Your father is a very good man, Anne. One of the best men I’ve ever known. He’s not perfect, as I’m sure he would be the first to admit. But he has sacrificed a great deal for the good of others. More than you know. We should not begrudge him a little happiness for a change. And if it’s Mrs. Zuckert who makes him happy, then it’s not for me or for you to criticize him. So I would advise you to bridle your anger. He deserves respect.”

“As does my mother’s memory,” Anne points out.

“Then why don’t you grant your mother’s memory respect and stop insulting her husband? Do you honestly believe that she would have wanted your father to live in misery and loneliness for her sake?”

Anne, however, is not willing to answer this question. The taxi man shouts impatiently at a cyclist, and an auto horn sounds. A swift patter of rain peppers the taxi’s canopy. Anne turns away to hide her face, pretending that it is the pain in her knee causing her eyes to well. Why should he be miserable or lonely? He has, after all, a living daughter.

• • •

It’s late when her father returns to the flat. Miep and Jan have long since retired, leaving Anne sitting on the sofa, one stocking foot extended onto one of Miep’s batik pillows, the open notebook on her lap. When the key grates in the lock and the front door opens, she can see, even in the room’s waxy lamplight, that her father is slumped with exhaustion.

“Anne,” he says with a kind of apologetic dread. A tone that matches the expression installed in his eyes. “You were injured.”

“Injured.” Anne repeats the word as if it has many sides to examine. “Yes,” she answers, then shuts her composition book and stands with an overtly discreet grimace of pain. “My bicycle went off the curb. But that’s unimportant.” Tucking the notebook under her arm, she informs him with lifeless formality, “What’s important is that Mrs. Zuckert has informed me of your plans. So let me be the first,” she says, adding the absurdity of a half curtsy on her stiff knee, “to wish you every happiness in your new life.”

“Anne,” Pim repeats, more urgently, “Anne, please. Permit me a moment to speak with you.” But Anne is making her exit with a small hobble, and shuts the door of her room behind her. Inside, she sits on the edge of her bed gripping the notebook, listening to her father’s earnestly distressed knocking and the sound of her name on his lips. But she does not move.

So you’re just going to shut him out like this? Margot asks. She is wearing the dirty pullover displaying the Lager star fashioned from yellow triangles. Her face is shrunken against her cheekbones, her glasses long gone, and her eyes popping like a starved animal’s.

“He’s shutting me out. He’s shutting us both out.”

“Please, Anne,” her father keeps saying, “please open the door.”

“I’m sorry, Pim,” Anne calls back. “I’m undressed.”

She hears him huff dryly. Disappointed in her resistance, disappointed in his inability to overcome it. “I see,” he finally breathes. “Very well. Tomorrow, then, we can talk tomorrow. Good night, my darling.”

“Good night,” Anne calls back. And then to Margot she says, “She’s got him now.”

Got him?

“Do you really imagine that a woman like Hadassah Zuckert is going to permit his memory of either you or of Mummy to intrude upon her agenda?”

So you think she has an agenda, do you?

“Are you stupid as well as dead?” Anne demands to know. “She intends to claim him as her own, Margot. She wants to wash away any trace of his former life.”

Oh, please. Margot frowns with a short roll of her eyes. How could you possibly know such a thing?

“How can you possibly doubt it? Every day it becomes harder for Pim to recall the details of Mummy’s face. By now he must see her in the same way he looks at a musty old photograph.”

And how can you possibly know such a thing?

“Because every day it’s harder for me to remember Mummy’s face. I mean, really remember it. To see it like I could touch her cheek as if she’s still alive.”

But Margot has no response to questions dividing life from death, and when Anne turns to her, the space on the bed where she sat is empty. She has not even left behind a wrinkle in the fabric of the blanket.

Late that night Anne tiptoes into the kitchen and opens the bread box. All she needs is a crust. Something to stash under her mattress. A barricade against the angel of death. She imagines Mummy for an instant, wasted to nothing in the Lager infirmary, squirreling away a stale sliver of camp bread under the fetid straw of her billet. Never forgetting her girls.