“But you don’t have to answer that question. Just something to think about,” he says as he retrieves his smoldering cigar from the edge of the desk.
“Pim said that you owned a publishing house in Germany.” Maybe she brings this up merely to block further interrogation on the subject of her writing, but a cloud scuds across Mr. Nussbaum’s face.
“Yes, that’s right,” he answers. “My father’s firm. It had been a small, scholarly, rather esoteric affair under him, but after he passed, I took it over with the idea of building up the list of authors,” he says. “Hermann Kesten, Joseph Roth, André Breton. Really it was quite a remarkable time.”
“Until the Nazis,” says Anne.
He agrees, his voice dropping into a quiet hole. “Until then.” He shrugs almost imperceptibly. “I tried to start again elsewhere. I followed what had become the well-worn trail of literary exiles. First to Paris and then to Amsterdam. Amsterdam in particular hosted a constellation of German publishers at the time, so I dearly hoped I could make a go of it. But the money ran out, and, uh . . . life was not so easy. The magic in my world drained away.”
Anne understands this. Even though Mr. Nussbaum is so much older, she feels a touch of pure kinship. A literary heart brought so low.
• • •
The next afternoon, when Anne arrives at the office, she finds that Mrs. Zuckert is yet again sequestered in Pim’s private office with her steno pad.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” she must ask Miep.
“Doesn’t what bother me?”
“That she’s taking over.”
Miep shakes her head. “No one is ‘taking over,’ Anne.”
At four o’clock Mr. Kugler goes into the kitchen, as he does at this hour every day for his afternoon cup of tea. Anne slips from her desk. “I’m getting a drink of water,” she tells Miep, but doesn’t wait for a response. In the corridor she can hear the laughter from the private office and then the chatty tone of their talk. What’s worse, they’re speaking German. German! The language of the executioners.
She catches Kugler in the kitchen gazing forlornly at the kettle on the hot plate as it builds steam. The air of talented modesty he once cultivated has been wrecked. Instead his expressions are often haunted or blank. She’s noted that he’s given to long, pointless stares while seated at his desk. He may rally then, he may rouse himself and become good old Mr. Kugler again, the man with all the answers. But she can tell that in his heart he has no answers any longer.
Slipping into the kitchen, she retrieves a water glass from the dish drain. Kugler looks up, but it’s as if he doesn’t quite see her for a moment. Then he takes a breath. “So,” he says without much conviction, “how is Anne today?”
“How am I?” she asks with a tone that asks, Isn’t that obvious?
“School, I mean. How is school this year?”
But Anne does not answer his question. She walks to the sink and unscrews the tap, letting water rush into her glass. “She seems highly skilled,” Anne points out.
“I’m sorry?”
“Mrs. Zuckert.”
“Ah. Yes,” he agrees. “Highly.”
“I suppose she must have plenty of experience.”
“She does,” Mr. Kugler confirms, maintaining his mildly distracted tone. “Ten years as an assistant bookkeeper in an accounting firm. Before the war she helped out Mr. Kleiman from time to time.”
“And what,” Anne presses forward, “has become of her husband?”
Blankness. “Become of him?”
“Yes. What has become of Mr. Zuckert? Is he alive? Is he dead?”
Kugler looks suddenly alarmed. “That’s really none of our business, Anne,” he tries to convince her.
“No? You think not, Mr. Kugler? Well, I think it is.” She takes a swallow of water and sets the glass down on the counter.
“Anne,” Kugler breathes, “if you have questions, you must ask your father.”
“That’s what everyone keeps telling me, but my father says nothing. Listen to them in there laughing, the two of them. Laughing,” she repeats, as if naming a crime.
Kugler hesitates. His expression looks crushed. Finally he clears his throat and speaks grayly to the wall. “From what I understand,” he begins, “her husband had been working in Germany before the Nazis. He was a Jew, but a Dutch-born Jew. So when they came to Amsterdam after Hitler, she sat for the test and became a Dutch citizen. The marriage didn’t work out.” A shrug. “I don’t know why. But they were divorced, and he left for Canada. Or maybe it was Cuba, I don’t recall.”
Anne says nothing. But in her silence, Kugler’s expression darkens, even in the sunlight from the kitchen’s window. He stands when the teakettle’s whistle stings the air, and he shuts off the burner flame. “You know, Anne, there’s something I have noticed about you,” he informs her. “I’m sorry, I hope you’ll forgive me, but I have to say this. I’ve noticed that you often use your brutalization at the hands of the Nazis as if it’s a weapon to wield. As if the pain and the awful sorrow you have borne have imbued you with a kind of unassailable righteousness,” he says. “Of course, the stories your father told us upon his return . . . well, they were horrific. And I don’t pretend to understand your anguish. But I must say that it wasn’t easy for any of us. The SS sent Kleiman and me to one prison after another. First Amstelveenseweg. Then Weteringschans, where they held us for days in a cell with men condemned to death. Then finally to that godforsaken spot in the Leusderheide,” he says despondently, as if he has stepped back behind the barbed wire in his mind. “Hard labor. Barely any food. Roll calls in the freezing rain. Kleiman would have died there, I’m sure of it, if it hadn’t been for the Red Cross.” He frowns, suddenly self-conscious, and shoots Anne a sliver of a glance. “Now, I know what you must be thinking,” he says with a kind of miserable tension. “‘Poor Kugler. He believes he’s such a victim, yet he knows nothing about true suffering.’ And maybe you’re right. Maybe I cannot begin to conceive of the barbarities to which your people were subjected. Maybe Amersfoort and its ilk were not the same hell as those places to which Jews were deported. But I can testify, Anne, that neither were they holiday spas. I watched men die in Amersfoort. Good men, who should have been home with their wives and children, and I simply watched them drop over dead with shovels still stuck in their hands. Or worse. Clubbed to death in front of my eyes. Yet to hear you talk, it’s as if you have utterly cornered the market on pain. It’s the reason Bep left.”
Anne stares at him in wordless response. And then, “No. No, you’re wrong.”
“Oh, there’s her father’s illness, yes, if that’s what you mean. But she has four other sisters, Anne. So if you want the real reason for Bep’s departure, the truth,” he says, “I’ll tell you.” He takes a breath and looks at her with blunt, deeply agitated eyes. “She could not face you any longer.”
“That’s not true,” Anne insists.
“I’m afraid it is.”
“No. No. I know the real reason Bep left—it’s because the police suspected her of betraying us.”
Kugler looks confused. Repulsed. “Bep?” And then he nearly laughs. “Don’t be silly, Anne.”
“I’m not. I know why those men were in the private office that day. I know that my father wants to keep me in the dark. He continues to tell me that it’s nothing. A private business matter, but how can I believe that?”