“If she said something harsh,” Pim tells her, “I’m sure that she was simply speaking out of fear.”
“You’re defending her?”
“People often say regrettable things when they’re afraid. They hide their fear with anger. You should understand that by now.”
“Because I’m so well known for my cowardice?”
“Because you often let your fears get the better of you. Because you often speak without thinking things through. You can be quite hurtful at times.”
“I can be quite hurtful?” she says. “Again, am I understanding this correctly? That according to my father, I am the one at fault?”
“So tell me, then, what did she say that was so evil?”
Anne starts to speak but then stops. Perhaps she does not exactly wish to explain it to Pim. “It was insulting,” she repeats. “Terribly so. That’s all I’ll say.”
“I’m not trying to assign fault to anyone, Anne,” Pim insists.
Anne wipes at her eyes. “What else is new?”
“You think that’s so bad?”
“I hate having to call her ‘Dassah.’”
“What would you prefer to call her, then?”
“I would prefer not to speak to her at all.”
“All right. That may be your preference. But it’s going to make life quite difficult. Because the fact of the matter is this, Anne: Hadassah and I are married. Like it or not, she is your stepmother. I’m not saying she doesn’t have her faults. Of course she does. We all do. But we have an opportunity here. An opportunity to become a family. To repair some of the ruin inflicted upon us. I cannot bring anyone back. Death has taken them, and that is all there is to say. I will always feel a terrible hole in my heart after losing your mother. And Margot, God rest her. My poor, poor Mutz,” he says. “That hole will never be filled. My marriage to Hadas won’t fill it. I know that. Even the return of my beautiful daughter Anne could not fill it. But I must try to find happiness again, and so must you. Otherwise what is the point of having survived? What is the point of living if we are to be poisoned by our own sorrow?”
Anne glares blindly at the windmill pattern on her bedspread. For a moment she feels her old love for Pim take hold. “You make it sound so very simple, Pim,” she says.
“Oh, no. No, it is not simple, as tonight has proved. It will take work. Very dedicated work. But then what is our motto?” he asks.
“Oh, God, Pim.”
“Come now, Süsse, say it for me, please. What has always been our motto?”
Anne frowns, rolling her eyes at the wall with a kind of flattened anger. “‘Work, love, courage, and hope,’” she answers unwillingly.
“Exactly.” Her father nods, his voice settling into a kind of imposed certainty. “Exactly. Now let us all try to make a new start, shall we?”
Silence. And then a knock at the door, which Pim opens, allowing Dassah to step into the threshold.
“I apologize,” she says to Anne, “if I lost my temper tonight and spoke in anger.”
“You see,” Pim injects. Proof.
“I really should stay away from brandy when I’m tense.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t the brandy, Hadasma,” Pim informs her. “I have no doubt that my own anxiety contributed greatly to the situation. When you didn’t come home, Anne, I simply went off my head. Which reminds me, daughter,” he says pointedly, “you haven’t offered a single explanation. Exactly where were you?”
“Apparently,” Dassah answers for her, “she went cycling with a friend from school. What was her name again, Anne?” she asks.
Anne blinks. “Griet,” she answers blankly.
“Yes. Griet. That’s it. They went cycling to the Vondelpark and stopped to rest but must have dozed off until the rain woke them. You remember how it can be, Otto. To stretch out on the grass in the late afternoon? It’s better than a feather bed.”
Pim draws a breath and slowly expels it as he nods. “I do remember,” he claims. And it’s obvious from his expression that he thinks this is a fine explanation, which he’s quite willing to accept.
Dassah turns to Anne, cementing the falsehood between them. “So I hope you can forgive me,” she says, “for speaking so roughly to you.”
Anne stares.
Pim leans forward as a prompt. “Anneke?”
“Yes,” says Anne thickly. “I forgive you,” she lies.
“Wonderful,” Pim breathes. “Thank you, Anne. Now you should change out of those damp clothes. You don’t want to catch your death.”
When Hadassah leaves, Pim huffs a breath of relief. “You have no idea, Anne,” he says, “how much your approval means to her. Her only wish is for the two of you to become friends.”
Anne glances over to the corner of the room, where Pim’s poor Mutz is standing in her Kazet stripes, the filthy yellow star sagging on her pullover. She gazes back at Anne coolly.
At least, Anne, you will have some kind of mother again, she points out. Isn’t that better than none at all?
Prinsengracht 263
Offices of Opekta and Pectacon
Anne is due at Pim’s office after classes and dreading it. She spoke no more than two words to Pim this morning before stealing out the door for school and now feels the covert shame and anger from the night before pressing on her chest. When she arrives at the warehouse and stows her bike, she spots the foreman, Mr. Groot, stepping out to the edge of the street to roll a smoke. So instead of heading up the steps, she slips the strap of her book satchel over her shoulder and approaches him.
“Excuse me. Mr. Groot? Can I ask you something?” Groot looks a little undecided about that question, but Anne doesn’t wait for him to say no. “That boy. Raaf Hoekstra, who worked here. You said he didn’t have a good name.”
“Did I say that?” Groot wonders.
“Does that mean he was NSB?”
“The boy? No. Not so much as I know.”
“But the father, then. He was?”
Groot tends to his shag closely, glancing out at the canal.
“I know there were party men working here, Mr. Groot,” Anne assures him. “I know it was my father who said they must be hired. It’s not a secret, if you’re worried that you’ll be spilling the beans.”
The man shrugs. Then nods his head. “Sure, old Hoekstra had a party number, all right. But it wasn’t just that.”
Another blockage.
“No?”
The man smokes.
“Mr. Groot?”
A glance in her direction, as if he’s calculating odds. “Maybe you ought to ask your papa about this, miss.”
“He doesn’t like to talk about any of it. All that happened during the war,” Anne says. “He thinks it’s too painful. But I think it’s important to know the truth.”
“Maybe,” Groot is willing to allow. “I just don’t like spreading stories.”
“Please. I won’t say a word to anyone. I just want to know.”
Groot puffs out an elongated breath. “We had a problem with thievery,” he says heavily. “This was back when van Maaren was still running things. Somebody was stealing from the spice inventory. To tell the truth, I always wondered if it wasn’t van Maaren himself—but he said he had his eye on this other fellow we had. Dreeson was the name. Not the worst sort, Dreeson, when he was sober, but a boozer like Hoekstra. And Hoekstra and he had some kind of falling-out on the floor of the shop, over what I’ve got no idea. I think Dreeson had sneaked a few shots of kopstoot on his lunch break, and he said something that got Hoekstra angry. It came to blows, until I separated them and sent ’em both home. Then, the next day, Hoekstra showed, but Dreeson didn’t. Not that day or the day after. It took a while for us to get the news, but it turned out Dreeson and his wife’d been hiding their boy from the Huns to keep him out of the labor conscription. Until the Grüne Polizei paid them a late-night call, and that was that. The whole family got hauled away.”