The compartment is crowded, unheated, and it smells of the lack of soap. Bundled against the draft, passengers share the same blank stare, blind to the rain-speckled world passing by the windows. Battered luggage is jammed where it doesn’t fit. Heads nod off, lulled by the tedious rhythm of the rolling stock. Everyone’s ailing, it seems. Everyone’s depleted. All of Europe is sick. She keeps her cardboard suitcase, closed with a belt, on the floor of the carriage, sandwiched between her knees. It’s all she owns, though none of what’s inside is really hers. A hairbrush, a toothbrush. A few clothes. The UNRRA issued her a rubber-stamped identity card with her thumbprints and a small photograph stapled to it that permitted her to cross the Dutch border. But to her it is a false passport. She knows that she has no identity beyond the number imprinted on her arm.
Gazing into her transparent reflection in the window glass, she can see how much her hair has grown in. Her face is fuller. Her eyes are alert and darkly tense. Sometime during her convalescence, she turned sixteen, though the date passed weeks before she realized it. Calendars have meant nothing for so long.
The train’s chugging momentum slows, and she feels a hard pulse of anticipation in her body. However, it is not the joy of finally returning home but an interior drumbeat of terror. She no longer knows what home is now. Her family is dead. Without them how can such a thing as home exist?
She feels an odd sort of estrangement as the recognizable sights of Amsterdam roll into view. The roofs are missing tiles. The upper stories of squat Dutch buildings line a section of elevated rail with taped-over windows. The twin spires and baroque dome of the Sint Nicolaaskerk stand under a muddy sky. She is returning to a world she believed she would never again see, and it feels both familiar and horrifyingly alien.
Dropping her eyes, she glares at the clean, empty page of the notebook open in her lap. A tear wets her cheek, but she does not bother to wipe it away as she simply forces the pen’s nib down onto the paper’s surface, against its will, until a heavy blue dot appears like a blemish. She glares at the dot. And then, quite obediently, the pen begins to move.
Anne Frank was nothing but a Kazetnik, she writes. A creature of the camps. And if she is now a displaced person, it is not because her life has been displaced, it’s because her heart has been displaced. Her soul and all that once constituted Anne Frank have been displaced.
The conductor pushes through the crowded corridor calling out the stop in a harried voice: “Centraal Station Amsterdam.” Swallowing heavily, Anne joins the dreary bustle of passengers about to depart. Her heart is thrumming heavily in her breast. There were postcards printed in Belsen for the DPs. She wrote a note to Miep on one of them before piling into the rear of a British army lorry, but who knows if it was ever received? Words on paper, like people, are so easily erased. People are so insubstantial, too. Who knows what has become of Miep? Of Bep or Kugler or Kleiman? Who knows what has become of anyone?
* * *
• • •
The train lumbers past the carriage sheds and warehouses of the freight yard. Toward the tall, single-span glass canopy of the station. Then slots in between the concrete platforms and slows to a halt. The stink of the track grease and the coal smoke follows her down the steps of the platform and into the half dark of the drafty concourse as she grips the handle of her suitcase. The noise ringing in the station rafters is both overwhelming and comforting. People muddling about, lugging their bags. Porters pushing carts loaded with steamer trunks. Women with trailing children struggling to keep up. Off-duty Canadian soldiers, the Liberators of Holland, smoking their cigarettes and whistling after Dutch girls in their patched-up dresses.
Rows of tables are assembled in the booking hall, and glum lines of ragged people are assembled in front of them. Typewriters are clacking. It’s the Dutch Social Service Bureau trying to bring order to the chaos of returnees. Trying to manage the confusion of desperate stories by filling out forms.
A squat little clerk, seated behind his typewriter, glowers at an old man’s papers and issues a burdened sigh. “Ah, another Jew. Wonderful. And how did they forget to gas you, Uncle?” he inquires, to be polite, in an amplified voice just in case the old man is hard of hearing. Anne feels her heart shiver and fights a fierce craving to shove forward and rap the clerk across the face with her knuckles. And she may have done so, but for the fact that she is hearing her name. Someone is calling her with frantic excitement. “Anne, Anne! Anne Frank!”
Turning about, she stares, blinking, at the woman hurrying toward her. The woman with ginger hair swept back from her brow, with thinned cheeks, a heart-shaped chin, a hooded gaze. Anne forces her mouth to form around a name. “Miep,” she whispers. And feels something crack open inside of her.
“Jan, it’s Anne!” Miep exclaims in disbelief. Hearing her name shouted in public panics Anne, and she must resist the urge to run. “Jan! Jan, it’s Anne!” Miep exclaims again, as if it’s just too impossible to believe. “It’s Anne Frank!” she calls, and seizes Anne in an embrace. “Oh, Anne. To have you return. To have you return. What a miracle,” she whispers, like saying a prayer. It’s a frightening thing, Miep’s embrace. Anne has not been touched with affection for a very long time, and this embrace is so murderously joyful. Many prisoners of Belsen were killed after liberation, not by bullets but by the richness of the food the Tommies handed out. They died with their faces smeared with chocolate, Spam, and condensed milk. This is how Anne feels about the wrap of Miep’s arms. It’s so rich that it might kill her on the spot, so she forces herself free.
“Oh, my heavens, I cannot believe this.” Miep is still grinning as if the expression has been stamped onto her face permanently. “We’ve come to the station every day since your postcard arrived. And now, here you are. Jan!” she sings out again.
In answer to his wife’s call, a tall, gangly fellow with a high coxcomb of hair and glasses as round as a pair of ten-guilder queens comes trotting from the tables wearing a stunned expression. His white armband reads SOCIALE DIENST. “Anne?” he questions the air.
“Jan, can you believe it? It’s a miracle,” Miep declares again, and then she whispers with naked relief, “We thought we’d lost you.” But then she is turning away, raising her hand and waving. “She’s over here! Anne is here!” she is shouting.
At once Anne feels as if she is trying to contain an explosion. As if she is a bomb that will rip shingles from rooftops and blast bricks to powder if she is allowed to detonate. Her heart thunders at the sight of the tall, threadbare figure stepping into a stripe of sunlight from the concourse windows. With a thump the suitcase falls from her hand, and she is rushing toward him, calling out, “Pim!”
He’s so wretchedly thin, as thin as a shadow, and he appears confused, softly dazed, but then something fierce seizes his expression, and he cries out with perfect anguish, “My daughter!”
Clamping her arms around his bony body, Anne listens to the deep elation of her father’s voice as he chants her name again and again, “Anne, my Anne, my daughter, my dear, dear Annelies.”
It should be a moment of pure bliss. But even now, even as she absorbs the flutter of his heartbeats and sobs deeply in Pim’s arms, she feels something terrifying that comes unbidden and unwanted.
A bite of fury shocks her.
13
GRIEF
For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.
—Ecclesiastes 1:18
1945
Jekerstraat 65
Amsterdam-Zuid
LIBERATED NETHERLANDS
“It is only the two of us, Anne,” her father says. His voice is cracked. Ragged. Smoke from the cigarette clenched between his fingers migrates upward. Of all of them from their hiding place, it is only Anne and Pim who have returned alive. “Only us.”
This confirms what she already knew without being told, but she does not tell hi
m this. He seems not to be speaking to Anne anyway, but to a void rooted within himself. His face is tightly shuttered, and he glares at the window as if he could see through all the way to the land of death, where his wife, his daughter, his friends now reside.
The sun is sinking away, too weak to hold itself in the sky any longer. Its fleeting light pinks the walls of Miep and Jan’s kitchen. Anne discreetly surveys her surroundings. It feels so strange—so wrong—to be sitting in someone’s home. There are well-swept rugs and well-kept furnishings. Lace doilies with tulip appliqués on the arms of the upholstered chairs and the cloying scent of floor wax in the hallway. A bottle of good Dutch apple brandy has appeared from the hidden recesses of Miep’s bureau, and Jan is pouring it into short white tumblers made from hobnail milk glass.
“Otto,” he says as he splashes the brandy into a tumbler, naming each one of them. Pim is sitting beside Anne, his arm hooked over the back of her chair. The closed mask he wore only a moment ago has been replaced by an expression of manic disbelief that hangs loosely from his face.
“Miep,” says Jan as he pours.
“Only a taste,” his wife instructs softly.
“And now Miss Frank,” Jan announces with a flourish that makes Anne uncomfortable. She is the guest of honor here simply for surviving the KZs. That has been her only accomplishment: to continue breathing despite what that cost her. She watches the honey-gold of the brandy pour from the bottle. To accommodate the electricity shortages in Amsterdam, Miep has lit a paraffin candle at the center of the table. Jan allows himself a moderate splash before sitting. And then a silence takes hold. The last of the sunlight has fled, and a purpled dark spreads. Pim lingers over the silence, then hoists his tumbler, managing to speak the only word left to him. “L’chaim,” he toasts.
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.”
“So Pim sits at his desk shuffling papers?” says Anne. “He sits there using the telephone and giving dictation, just as if nothing has happened?” Why does she sound so incensed by this?
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