Annelies

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 apologize 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.