“Sorry I’m late,” she announces, breezing into the front room, her voice a panic of nonchalance. Miep looks up at her with blank anxiety.
“Late? Oh,” says Miep, and then she shakes her head dismissively. “I hadn’t even noticed. I think Bep has a stack of correspondence that needs filing.”
Anne looks up, slips her book sack from her shoulder. Bep is watching her nervously from the opposite desk, then staples a selection of papers together with a quick bang.
“Where is everybody?” Anne wants to know. She noticed that her father’s office door was closed when she climbed the steps from the warehouse, but it meant nothing. Pim has people in the private office all the time. Salesmen, advertising-agency people, spice distributors, a steady flow of municipal functionaries, all with their own particular rubber stamps that require inking. But now Anne wonders, “Where is Mr. Kugler? Where is Mr. Kleiman?”
A half glance from Miep. “They’re in your papa’s office.”
Something about the sound of this is odd. The small intimacy softening Miep’s voice. In the flat they share, Miep calls Pim by his given name, “Otto,” but at the office it is always and only “Mr. Frank.” Now it’s suddenly “in your papa’s office.”
Bep is harried as she dashes off her explanation of Anne’s assignment, and then she picks up the teacup and saucer from her desk. “I’m going to wash the dishes,” she announces, standing. And before Anne can respond, Bep is bustling away, pausing only to collect an empty cup from Mr. Kleiman’s desk before rattling off to the kitchen beside Pim’s private office.
“Oh, Bep,” Miep calls, holding up her own cup and saucer, but Bep is already gone. “Anne, I’m sorry, but would you mind taking this in, too?” she asks. Her voice is dim and distracted, hiding unspoken nerves.
“What’s happening?” Anne asks.
“Nothing’s happening.”
“Yes. Something.”
“I don’t know what you’re asking.”
“There’s something you’re not telling me.”
“Anne, please. The cup.”
She takes it, pursing her lips. Passing her father’s office, Anne can hear the weave of voices but cannot make out a word spoken. She slips into the kitchen behind Bep and sets Miep’s cup and saucer on the sink. “Another cup, Bep,” she says.
“Oh.” A blank glance. “Thank you,” Bep tells her with a thin smile, and returns to the teacup she is scrubbing.
Anne lifts herself onto the counter for a seat, legs dangling. “So who’s in my father’s office with him?” she asks as casually as possible.
Bep’s glance is clouded. “Mr. Kleiman and Mr. Kugler are in there,” she says. “And some other gentlemen. I don’t know who they are. Honestly, no one is telling me anything.” Bep frowns fearfully. “Not Mr. Frank, not Mr. Kleiman. Not even Miep.” Her posture and expression are guarded, and the light of the flagging sun from the window turns her glasses opaque. Then, “Excuse me,” she says, leaving the towel hung over the sink’s faucet and returning the cups and saucers to the cupboard. “I should get back to my work. There’s still so much to do.”
Quickly, Anne drops her feet back to the floor, latching onto Bep’s arm. “Bep,” she whispers. “Wait.”
“I have to go.”
“In a moment. Please wait for just a moment,” Anne begs. Bep seems to freeze in place. “It’s been hard for you, I know, with me around,” Anne says. “And maybe one reason is that I should have said this to you sooner. So let me say it now: Thank you. Thank you, Bep, for all you did for us. Even if it all ended the way it did, you and Miep cared for us so well. You risked your own safety for ours.”
Bep is still fixed in place, still staring, her eyes locked open behind the lenses of her glasses. “I don’t need any thanks,” she says tightly. “I don’t want anyone to feel grateful to me.”
“But I am grateful. You must let me be grateful, Bep. It’s one of the few human things I can still feel. Grateful to you and Miep, Mr. Kleiman and Mr. Kugler. I can’t explain it, but I need to be grateful.”
Bep bites into her lower lip, shaking her head. “No. You don’t understand.”
“I don’t understand anything anymore,” Anne admits. “I’m lost. So utterly lost. I need some purpose, Bep. I must accomplish something to justify myself. Why am I alive? Mummy’s dead. Margot’s dead. Why am I the lucky one? How can I deserve that?”
For an instant Bep looks at Anne with stark, pale terror. “It’s the police,” she confesses suddenly, as if the words were too dire to remain unspoken a second longer.
“The police?” Anne repeats.
“The BNV. In your father’s office.”
Fear like a poke from a needle. Police? The BNV is the Bureau of National Security, and that only means one thing to Anne: arrest. She feels her throat thicken. “Why would you think that?”
“Because who else could it be? They’ve been here all afternoon. They called Miep in. For an hour she was in there. And when I asked her what was going on, all she did was tell me to stay calm and keep my head on. And then came my turn and all those dreadful questions. How well did I know the men working in the warehouse? How often did I talk to them? What was my contact with the man from the home office in Frankfurt?”
“The mof?”
“How many times did I speak to him over the telephone? How could I be expected to remember such a thing?” she exclaims. “I answered the telephone ten times a day.” She bites down to steady the quiver of her chin, and then she whispers a dark conclusion to herself. “I think they suspect me.”
Anne feels her neck heat with sweat. “Suspect you?”
A quick blink from Bep, as if for an instant she’d forgotten that Anne was there. Her eyes go wet. “Of betrayal.”
“Bep,” Anne breathes. “You’re frightening me.”
“I’m sorry, but what if it’s true? What if they’re planning on taking me into custody as a collaborator?”
And for the smallest fraction of an instant, Anne introduces that possibility into her brain: Bep as betrayer. A painful pinprick till she shakes it off. “No. That can’t be true.”
“Can’t it? All I know is that the whole town’s out for vengeance. Don’t you know? It’s ‘Hatchet Days,’ and I’ve seen what’s done in the name of justice. Up close!” Eyes darting. “I’m sorry, Anne, but I must go. I really must.”
“Bep.” Anne speaks her name as if trying to snag her with a hook, trying to latch onto Bep’s arm again, but this time Bep won’t permit it.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Bep keeps repeating. “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing you or I can do. Things will never be the way they were again, Anne. Not ever,” she declares, and beats a tearful retreat, leaving Anne alone. Her eyes burn hotly. Her breathing shortens, and she feels she must force herself into her next breath.
• • •
Out in the corridor, Anne finds Mr. Kleiman lighting a cigarette outside Pim’s private office, thin as a reed with short, silvered hair and round horn-rimmed spectacles. Because of his stomach troubles, Mr. Kleiman rarely smokes. Everyone knows that. But this afternoon he is inhaling the chalky gray smoke before he turns with a dismal gaze and observes Anne standing in the threshold of the kitchen.