“Kerli,” Mrs. van Pels reproves her husband lightly. “Let it go. They’re young. Let them have their folly.”
“Excuse me! But I really can’t take another breath in this company,” Anne announces sharply, pushing up from the table, feeling her eyes wet as she abandons the room.
Her mother calls after her, “Anne! Anne, come back here and clean your plate.” But Anne has no intention of following orders.
“Let Mr. Pfeffer clean my plate for me,” she calls back over her shoulder. “He can always find room for another helping!”
Mr. Pfeffer looks up innocently from his plate in mid-chew and swallows. “Now, what did I say to provoke that?”
• • •
Up in the attic, Anne has taken refuge, forcefully cradling Peter’s cat, Mouschi. Mouschi is not a perfect angel like Anne’s cat, Moortje, the poor abandoned thing, but he’s still a warm beating heart. Outside, the branches of a lofty horse chestnut tree with a majestic crown of leaves brush the window glass. She has learned to find comfort in this tree. A tree that has stood for decades or more, still patiently allowing the breeze to rustle its branches. It calms her.
She wipes her eyes quickly when she hears someone climb the ladder and recognizes the voice.
“Anne?” Peter approaches her with a careful demeanor, as if she might detonate unexpectedly. She turns to Peter’s cat for comfort, pressing her lips against Mouschi’s soft, furry head. “Adults are impossible,” she declares in a wounded tone. Wounded, but perhaps willing to be mended by a few kind words.
Peter stops and leans against one of the wooden posts. At first he sounds boyish and wounded, too. “My paapje is sure a pain in the rump. No doubt. He’s always there to criticize.”
“And what about your mother? She’s not exactly blameless either,” Anne feels compelled to point out. Maybe she should have been pleased that Peter had risen to her defense against his parents, but really she was slightly irked, because coming out of his mouth her dreams did ring a bit ridiculous. And now she’s irritated that he sounds more like he’s complaining rather than trying to actually comfort her. Can boys really be so dense?
“Mum’s not so bad,” he says with a shrug. “She’s doesn’t try to be mean. It just comes out that way sometimes.”
Anne is not at all sure she wants to agree with this. She finds his optimism painful but keeps her mouth buttoned. Finally Peter manages to find a spot on the floor beside her. The attic is lit by a heavy white moon that silvers the branches of the chestnut tree. She feels the presence of his body beside her like a magnet, but he’s gone silent, so maybe it’s up to her to break through. “You know, Peter,” she says, “I’m very happy that you’re here.”
He seems surprised to hear this, but happily so. “You are?”
“Yes, of course. I really have no one else to talk to.”
“What about your sister? You have her.”
“That’s different. Margot’s my sister, yes, and of course that means something. But we’re so often poles apart. I can’t truly confide in her. I can’t truly confide in anyone.”
“Well . . .” he says, but seems to fumble around in his head for a path to finish that sentence.
Anne looks up at him directly and takes in those big, deep eyes and that shock of curls. “Well what?”
He looks at her, too, and shrugs, rubbing the cat’s head with his knuckles. “You can always confide in me,” he tells her. “If you want to.”
• • •
Three weeks later, in the middle of April, Anne feels her heart purring as she scribbles desperately into her diary, her hand trying to keep up with her heartbeat.
I can’t tell you, Kitty, the feeling that ran through me. I was too happy for words, and I think he was, too. At nine-thirty we stood up. Peter put on his tennis shoes so he wouldn’t make much noise on his nightly round of the building, and I was standing next to him. How I suddenly made the right movement, I don’t know, but before we went downstairs, he gave me a kiss, through my hair, half on my left cheek and half on my ear. I tore downstairs without looking back, and I long so much for today.
5 RADIO ORANGE
Dearest Kitty,
Mr. Bolkestein, the Cabinet Minister, speaking on the Dutch broadcast from London, said that after the war a collection would be made of diaries and letters dealing with the war. Of course, everyone pounced on my diary.
—Anne Frank, from her diary, 29 March 1944
Jews are regularly killed by machine-gun fire, hand grenades—and even poison gas.
—BBC Home Service, 6:00 P.M. news, 9 July 1942
1944
The Achterhuis
Prinsengracht 263
Hidden Annex
OCCUPIED NETHERLANDS
The razzias continue. According to what Miep tells us, more Jews have been netted with every passing day, many of them family friends from the Merwedeplein. The Kaplans, the Levitskys, the Rosenblits. Eva Rosenblit was in the same class as Anne and always laughed at her jokes. Miep has even heard a rumor that Hanneli’s father was arrested, and maybe Hanneli with him. Anne tries to picture it. Lies being driven through the streets and packed into the rear of a German lorry, helpless. At the mercy of monsters. But it’s too terrible. She can’t allow such a thought to take root. She must believe that God is looking after Hanneli as closely as he is Anne Frank.
Peter has constructed a “moffen sleeve” for the radio. A loop aerial made of wooden slats and doorbell wire that can sift out the Hun’s jamming signals, so that the radio reception remains clear and unimpeded by mof interference. He gabs on and on about medium range and shortwave bands, which Anne finds both impressive and boring. Can that be? Anyway, according to the latest programs, there’s plenty of action on the Eastern Front. The Red Army has retaken Odessa and is ousting the mof from the Crimea, but on the Western Front there is still no invasion. Mr. van Pels is constantly griping about the English “slowpokes” with their tea and crumpets. Pim, on the other hand, points out that even with the Americans in the war, it cannot be an easy task to mass the kind of force necessary to penetrate Hitler’s so-called Atlantic Wall, much less prepare to transport it across the English Channel.
Anne tries not to listen too much. She does not feel brave enough to contemplate an unending occupation by the mof, but neither is she confident enough to live on hope for an Allied liberation anytime soon. Instead she wants to live in the moment, which is why it’s always so nice to have Bep for supper in their stuffy little hideout. She anchors them all, in a way. A real person from the real world outside this building. Mummy loves to cook for Bep, always praising her for her good appetite, no matter what’s dished onto her plate. The van Pelses quit their constant bickering around her and save their criticisms for another time. Bep takes it all in thoughtfully, as if Mr. van Pels may very well be right, even if it’s absolute rubbish he’s spouting. She offers Anne a secret wink as he announces how Bep is quite the intelligent young lady. Bravo, Bep! Even old Pfeffer has compliments for her, usually followed by a list of indispensables that Bep should do her very absolute best to obtain for him.