To life.
A few minutes later, he is on his way to the toilet when he collapses. A dull thud in the corridor, and Miep is calling, “Anne! Anne, your father!”
The doctor who arrives an hour later is a Dutchman known to Miep for his reputation as one who had provided medicine for onderduikers who’d fallen ill during the occupation. He has the troubled face of a ragged old lion. Miep and Jan have managed to haul Pim up from the floor and have carried him to the long velveteen sofa. “Help me with his shirt, please,” the doctor instructs Miep. And Anne sees how thin, how transparently birdlike Pim’s chest has become. She thinks she might see his beating heart, a bluish tint beneath his ribs. Her father’s eyes are open, but he is staring blindly up at the ceiling as the doctor jumps the bell of his stethoscope about as if playing a game of checkers.
Suddenly Anne can’t breathe. A ferocious terror is burning the oxygen from the room, and she must get out. She must flee to the street, where a greasy white light glows from a lone streetlamp. Her hands are clenched, her body is clenched, she is breathing in and out, fighting the urge to run until she drops. So she squats against the wall of the building, closing herself up in a ball.
“You must understand that I can’t tell him,” she says.
Can’t you? Margot is beside her in her dirty Lager rags, wearing the pair of wooden clogs she was issued.
“Don’t you see? He’s so fragile. If I tell him,” Anne says, “if I tell him what I did, it could kill him. His heart might give out.”
But Margot vanishes when the door to the flat opens. The doctor trudges out onto the sidewalk, and Anne hurries to her feet.
“How is he?”
In reply the doctor proffers a thick frown. Is this the same face he wears whether the news is good or bad? “Your father should be fine,” he informs her grimly.
“But. What happened?”
“What happened?” A shrug as the man mounts his rickety Locomotief bicycle.
“Was it his heart?”
“His heart? No.” The doctor considers. “I wouldn’t say it was his heart. I would say it was nerves. An attack of angst, it might be called. I’ve given him a sedative so he’ll sleep. Is your name Margot or Anne?”
Anne tenses. “Why?”
Because those were the names he was calling for. I just assumed,” says the doctor.
She swallows. “My name is Anne.”
A nod. “You should go in and see him, then. The sedative will not take long to do its work.”
She finds that her father has been transferred to the tiny room off the parlor and is tucked under a blanket, his stocking feet sticking out at the end of the bed.
“Anne,” he says drowsily, his mouth forming a smile but his eyes drooping. He raises his hand to her.
“I’m sorry,” she says, kneeling beside him and taking his bony hand.
“Sorry? For what? It is I who should be sorry for spoiling your welcome.”
“You didn’t, Pim.”
“Tumbling over like an old tree . . .”
“The doctor said you’re going to be fine.”
But Pim doesn’t seem to be listening to this. Instead he is gazing at her face with a kind of broken gratitude. “What a miracle you are to me. The Red Cross . . .” he says, and he must pause and swallow painfully before he can finish his sentence, “the Red Cross listed you and Margot as among the dead. The both of you—” He stops, and his mouth flattens. “Carried off with thousands of others to mass graves.” His face crumples as if he can see it all happening. The bodies of his daughters hauled away from him forever. He hisses air from between his teeth. “I lived with that as a fact for months, and I was only half a human being.” But then, he tells her, came her postcard to Miep. To find that her Anneke was alive? He shakes his head. “I was so shocked and yet transported by joy. To have you back. Dare I believe in such a miracle after death had claimed you? I’ve never been a particularly religious person, Annelein, you know this. But to me it seemed that this was nothing short of the hand of God at work.”
Something angry nips at Anne’s heart. God’s hand? But before she speaks another word, she sees that the doctor’s sedative is at work here, and that Pim is softening into sleep. She watches as his breathing lengthens.
The electricity signals its return to the district as a floor lamp blinks to life. In the dining room, Miep has a plate with some rye bread and komijnekaas. Anne devours it all, stuffing it thoughtlessly into her mouth, until she spots the mix of sympathy and horror on Miep’s face.
“That’s the end of the cheese, I’m sorry to say,” Miep apologizes. “There are many things that are still scarce even after the Germans have gone. But I have some soup I could warm up. I could give you a bowl.”
Anne chews a mouthful of cheese and bread self-consciously, nodding, averting her eyes to the plate. When she’s sure Miep is busy in the kitchen, she crams a bite of bread into her mouth and then stuffs the final crust into the pocket of her sweater.
“No meat,” Miep informs her as she returns with a steaming soup bowl. “But. We maintain.” Her version of the Dutch national motto: Je maintiendrai.
Anne picks up the spoon and starts to eat, trying to slow herself, but it’s hard. She can hear how loudly she’s slurping, but she can’t help it. It’s a lesson of the camps. When you have food, wolf it down. When the bowl is empty, she gathers in a breath and stares blankly. By the window is her mother’s French secretaire that once stood in the corner of the bedroom Anne shared with Margot in the Merry. It presents itself just as it was. Its mahogany finish glows with urbane charm in a crease of lamplight, untouched by war and occupation, snatched out of time and placed here on Miep’s carpet. It breaks her heart.
“Do you have a cigarette, Miep?” she asks.
Miep obviously must absorb this for a moment. Anne Frank smoking? But then she says, “I think Jan keeps some in a drawer, hold on.” In a moment she returns with a box of sulfur-tipped matches, a black enamel ashtray, and a packet of Queen’s Day cigarettes.
“Do you remember these?” she asks.
“The English dropped them,” says Anne.
“So maybe they’re a little stale.”
No matter. Anne lights up, inhaling quickly. She feels a chomp of bitterness at the rear of her throat and sighs. “Thank you, Miep. I know cigarettes are valuable.”
Miep shrugs. Valuable compared to what?
“Everyone else is dead,” Anne says. “Everyone in hiding, except for Pim and myself. That’s the story, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Miep replies quietly, but without varnish. “That is the story.”
Anne nods. She asks about Bep. About Mr. Kugler and Mr. Kleiman.
Miep lifts her eyebrows. “We all made it through, one way or another,” she answers, as if advising Anne about the survivors of a shipwreck. “Bep and I did our best to maintain the office. There were still contracts to fulfill, and we felt we should do what we could to keep the wheels turning. But Mr. Kugler and Mr. Kleiman had the hardest time. After that awful day when the Grüne Polizei arrived, they were sent to the labor camps. Terrible places, yet they both managed to return in one piece. So now we’re all back at the office along with your father. Amazing, really,” Miep can only admit.
“He still goes to the office?” Anne’s brow knits. She hears a certain petulance enter her voice, unbidden.
Miep either doesn’t notice or pretends not to. “Every morning,” she answers. “Though it hasn’t been easy. Business is not so good, and there are certain problems that require sorting. It was quite difficult to keep fooling the Germans during the occupation, to convince them that the businesses were no longer Jewish owned. Things became knotty, and now they must be unknotted.”