Anne feels her eyes dampen. “And did he?”
“Did he?”
“Call you Papa?”
“He did. He called me Papa Frank till the day we parted after the liberation.”
Anne looks at Pim, says nothing.
“I suppose,” Pim tells her, “that Werner hoped this story would help you understand how difficult it is for me, a man of my age, to alter the image of himself inside his own head. Even when that image has been obviously proved false.” He swallows, his eyes wetting brightly. “I failed you, Anne. I could not protect you. I could not be your papa, the papa you needed when you were suffering at Birkenau. Or the papa who could rescue you and your sister from Bergen-Belsen. It’s a terrible thing,” he says, and shakes his head. “A terrible thing when a man who has defined himself for so long in a certain way finds that he is powerless to protect the very ones who have loved and trusted him the most. The ones who depended on him the most. His own family,” he says, swallowing back his sorrow. “I know that you have been enraged by the fact that I engaged in commerce with the enemy. And perhaps with good reason. But please, daughter, try to understand that regardless of my choices, good or bad, I did what I did,” he says, “sacrificing my own principles to keep us all alive and fed.” Removing his handkerchief from the pocket of his robe, he dabs at his eyes. “All I’ve ever hoped for, Anne. Since you and I were reunited. Since you and I survived. All I’ve ever hoped is that you would understand that and forgive me my weaknesses.”
A silence. Anne lightly hugs her diary to her chest, and she feels a tear on her cheek. “So now, Pim,” she decides, “now it is my turn to tell you a story.” She breathes in. “It’s the story of a girl who once believed that God only wished for people to be happy, a girl who believed that if a person had courage and faith, then any hardship could be overcome. A girl who believed that despite all the evidence to the contrary, people were good at heart.”
“Yes.” Pim nods. “I think I know that girl.”
But Anne only shakes her head. “She’s dead, Pim. That girl? She didn’t survive.”
“But how can that be true, meisje? How can that be true? I look at you and see such spirit. Such resolve. You have been so badly hurt. So unfairly scarred, yes. I know that you think I’ve been blind to what has happened to you. Willfully so, and maybe I’ve pretended to be,” he admits. “But really, I’m not so foolish as to imagine that you could possibly be the same girl I recall as a child. The same girl who called me in to hear her prayers, even if sometimes I might have convinced myself otherwise. Or wished to do so. And if you believe that I have tried to trap you in your former childhood in order to avoid having to face my own failings, then I won’t lie and say that there is no truth in that. But it is only a partial truth,” he says, wadding his handkerchief into a ball. “I am a man who must feel useful. I am a man who thinks he can understand the workings of the world. But I am baffled by my own daughter. I want so desperately to help her. To be useful to her. But I don’t know how.”
“If you don’t know how, Pim,” Anne says, her eyes heavy, “then perhaps you should ask her. Perhaps you should simply ask her.”
Pim’s gaze goes level as he inhales a long breath. “So perhaps I will.” His eyes sharpen. With pain? With fear over the answer to the question he has not yet asked. “How, Anne? How can I be useful to my daughter?”
“You can let her go, Pim,” his daughter replies. “Just that. You can let her go.”
The day is bright. Outside, the smell of wood smoke hangs heavily in the air. Up in the Achterhuis, Anne stares out the window of the attic, stroking Mouschi, who is a ball in her lap. The leaves of the chestnut tree are turning.
Tomorrow is Yom Kippur, says Margot, kneeling beside Anne in her lice-infested rags.
“Yes,” Anne says, listening to the cat’s purr.
“Are you going to temple?”
“You think I should?”
You have to answer that question for yourself, Anne.
“Do you think I should fast?”
It’s not for me to decide.
“Hunger pangs are something I’m familiar with,” Anne points out. “You don’t think I’ve fasted enough for one lifetime?”
I think you should do what you believe is best.
“Since when?”
Since always.
“You think I must make atonement?”
Silence. Anne looks over at her sister, but her sister is gone. There’s a squeak of wood from below as Pim climbs the ladder from the landing and steps into the attic behind her. Anne looks at him, hugging the cat. He is dressed in his overcoat, his fedora raked to one side of his head. He glances about the shabby room. “It’s so drafty up here, daughter,” he points out. “Don’t you feel it?”
Anne does not answer this question, however. “Dassah wouldn’t say where you’d gone.”
Pim draws a breath and expels it. “I was attending to some business,” he tells her. “You may wish to know that our business practices have been cleared by the government. I’ve received a letter from the Institute for Enemy Property Management that serves as a clean bill of health.”
Anne looks up but says nothing. Pim is obviously surprised by her silence.
“Nothing to say? I imagined you would have a stronger reaction to this news,” her father points out. “All restrictions on the business—on us—have been lifted. All fears of deportation over. I thought you would be relieved.”
“Tomorrow is Yom Kippur,” she tells him.
“It is,” Pim agrees.
“Are you going to temple with Dassah?”
“I am.”
“Are you going to fast?”
“We are. She and I.”
“Are you going to make atonement?” Anne asks her father.
“As a Jew, what else can I do?” he asks, and draws an elongated kraft envelope from inside his coat pocket.
“What’s that?” she asks him.
He frowns thoughtfully as he considers the envelope, tapping it against his fingers. “It’s the result of much work by many people in a short period of time.”
Anne grips the cat hard enough to elicit a mewing complaint.
“It’s what is known as an affidavit in lieu of a passport,” he says of the envelope, his eyes going bright with tears. “And it will permit entry into the United States by one Miss Annelies Marie Frank.”
Anne is stunned. The tears come, freely drenching her cheeks as she still grips the cat.
“I understand dreams, Anneke,” her father tells her. “Youth does not have the monopoly on hope.” And then he asks thickly, “So you can forgive an old man?”
“Pim,” she breathes, but the tears get the better of her. A sob chokes her, and, dropping the cat, she runs to him, just as she did before the war, when she was still a girl favored by God.