And then Margot coughs sharply. A tickle in her throat, perhaps, but it brings conversation in the living room to a halt. Their door is open a crack. A moment later Pim pokes his head in just long enough to decide that his daughters may still be awake, and quietly closes their bedroom door completely. A gentle darkness wraps up the room. Margot clears her throat, and silence separates them as Anne stares up at the crack in the ceiling plaster. She can no longer see it in the dark, but she knows it’s there. She lets her thoughts flow freely. Away from the war and the horrific events in the streets. She tries to think about herself. That’s not usually something that’s so hard for Anne Frank to do, but she finds herself thinking instead of Mummy. Of Mummy and the fretful debate at the supper table over the treatment of the Jews. Of how terribly bitter and anxious the war has made her mother and how bleakly Mummy seems to view the future now. Not like Pim. Not like Pim, whose hope is unyielding. “Do you think Mummy and Pim love each other?” she hears herself ask. Maybe she didn’t really mean to speak the question aloud, but now she has.
Margot sounds indignant again. And maybe a tiny bit panicked. “What? That’s a ridiculous question.”
“I’m not so sure. I mean, if you were a man, would you love Mummy?”
“No wonder,” Margot huffs. “No wonder people can hardly stand to be around you sometimes, Anne. You can be such a terrible, terrible pain.”
But Anne only shrugs to herself. “I’m not sure I would want to love her if I were a man. Mummy’s always so disappointed with everyone.”
“I’m going to sleep, Anne. You should as well, before you say something too awful to forgive.”
This gets Anne’s attention. It’s been one of her fears, but also one of her curiosities—that it might be possible. That it might be possible to push beyond the boundaries of forgiveness. Mummy says God forgives everything, but Anne must wonder. Is God forgiving the Nazis? Even as she lies in her bedroom staring at the crack in the ceiling plaster, even as Margot is fuming under her covers, is God forgiving their enemy?
On the morning of the twelfth of June, Anne’s thirteenth birthday dawns, and the bright business of daylight begins above the good Dutch pantile roofs. Anne is awake at six but must lie there for another three-quarters of an hour till she can reasonably wake her parents. So while Margot slumbers, Anne is already off to the races, living the day in her head. There’ll be presents in the living room. Then she’ll take the cookies she baked with Mummy to school and pass them out to her classmates at recess. She loves doing this. She loves to be generous. Being generous makes it so easy to bask at the center of everyone’s attention.
Her party is scheduled for Sunday, and there are simply gangs of people expected to attend. There will be games and songs directed by Pim. There will be pastries, cookies, and bonbons served on porcelain platters with doilies provided by Mummy. Lemonade in the punch bowl and coffee in a silver service for the grown-ups. Small gifts wrapped in colored tissue for all the children attending. And, of course, always a surprise. This year Pim has rented a film projector and a reel of the canine adventures of Rin Tin Tin. Her own birthday matinee! And if you think that happens at Ilana Riemann’s house or Giselle Zeigler’s house on their birthdays, then think again. Anne Frank, as everybody knows, as everybody must realize, is special.
• • •
Morning rises. Even though she knows what it is, even though she has picked it out herself, it is the first gift she opens among all the presents filling the coffee table, the bouquets of roses and peonies, the lovely plant, the Variété board game, the bottle of sweet grape juice that she can pretend is wine when she drinks it, the strawberry tart, specially baked by her mother—such a wonderful array, but they all will wait.
She unties the ribbon of blue silk and carefully tugs open the wrapping until it emerges. The red tartan daybook. She smiles as she opens it and runs her fingers across the creamy vellum pages. A confidante. That is what she intends her diary to become. Her one true confidante, from whom she will hide nothing. Alone in her room, before leaving for school, she sits at Mummy’s French secretaire and uncaps her favorite fountain pen. Quietly she smooths her hand over the empty page and then watches the paper absorb the ink of the very first line she writes.
I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.
3 DIVING UNDER
Hiding . . . where would we hide? In the city? In the country? In a house? In a shack? When, where, how . . . ?
—Anne Frank, from her diary, 8 July 1942
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.