“I can live with that,” Dassah informs her. “But whether you can believe it or not, I am only trying to help you, Anne. I am trying to help you look in the mirror and see yourself as you are, because I have some very bad news for you. The world owes you nothing. You survived? So what? Millions didn’t. Your sister didn’t. Your mother didn’t. But all your tears are for yourself, Anne Frank, the poor victim. And nobody loves victims. Victims are resented. Victims are reviled, that’s the way things are. You must earn love, just as you earn respect.
“If I’m such an awful human being, such a black spot, then why don’t you help me get out of your hair? Convince Pim to let me go. He listens to you.”
“Oh, you think so? Well, in some matters, perhaps. But Otto is still bent on keeping you sheltered. He is disinclined to give up on his sentimental attachment to you as a child. Disinclined to give up the memory of love that once bound you two together.” Standing, Dassah retrieves her handkerchief from the floor and folds it into a square. “But what your father
Anne only stares.
“Do you know how often I awake to find him standing in the threshold of your room, watching over you as you sleep?
Miep has been the victim of a most common crime—a thief stole the tires from her bicycle—so she arrives on foot to pick Anne up for an afternoon movie matinee. A rain scarf covering her head, ginger bangs fringing her forehead. They board the Tramlijn 5 at the Koningsplein as it begins to drizzle. Anne watches people on the street convinced by the rain to pop open their umbrellas. Along the Leidsestraat many windows are still taped against air-raid bombs.
“Has he told you?” Anne asks.
Miep turns her head. “Has who told me what?”
“Pim. Has he told you what I did? That I went to the American consulate? Has he told you that I attempted an escape?”
A short intake of breath. “Well. That’s a very harsh way of putting it.”
“So he has told you. And what do
“Anne,
“Do you think I’m a coward, wanting to desert him?”
Miep shakes her head. “No, neither of you is being cowardly. You’re both being very brave, in my opinion. Trying to set things right. I’m only sorry that . . .”
Anne raises her eyebrows. “Sorry that
“I’m sorry, Anne,” she hears Miep say plainly, “that I kept your diary a secret from you. I haven’t said that aloud to you, and I think I must. I’m sorry,” she repeats. “It was against my better judgment, and I shouldn’t have done it.”
Anne swallows. Looks away. “You were only doing as my father asked.”
“Yes. But that doesn’t make it right.”
“Maybe not,” Anne agrees. “But, Miep, if it wasn’t for you, it would have all been lost.
Miep blinks away a gleam of tears and swallows. “Thank you,” she whispers.
Anne allows silence to separate them until, “You know, Miep, at first when I was writing in my diary—when I was thirteen—it was a kind of game to me. A fun way to pass the time. But then in hiding . . . in hiding, it became something very different,” she says. “Do you remember the cabinet minister’s broadcast over Radio Oranje? About all of us keeping wartime writings?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“I took it to heart. I started to rewrite what I had already put down. All of it. I changed people’s names. Gave them, you know—schuilnaamen,” she says. Hiding names. “I thought I would sew it all together into a story I could tell.”
“We all believed you had talent, Anne. I remember how you would read us bits and pieces. We all believed you had talent.”
“Really?” Hearing Miep say this makes it sound true.
“Oh, yes.”
“Even Mummy?” she asks.
“Of course. You think because she scolded you here and there that she wasn’t proud of you? She
Anne remembers her mother’s eyes. The dim lights they had become after they went into hiding. Then their sharp, darting hunger, suddenly brightly displayed at Birkenau.