“I’m not getting at anything. I’m simply wondering if you’re ever planning on leaving the house again.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Really.” He sounds skeptical. “Busy pecking at that typewriter Miep lent you?”
“She gave it to me. As a gift.”
“Very well. As a gift, if you say so. But my point is—” he starts to say until Anne cuts him off.
“Your point is what, Pim? What? Why are you still sitting here? What is it you want from me?”
“It’s nothing that I want, Anne,” he assures her. “Only I hear you up half the night banging away.”
“I’m working,” Anne says. “I’m sorry if I’m disturbing your sleep.”
“Not a question of that.” He frowns. “Nothing to do with me. But you need your rest. It’s not healthy. And now you come and declare that you’re done with school.”
“There are things more important than sleep, and there are things more important than school. I want to publish my diary, Pim,” she announces. “I’m typing up a draft, that’s what I’m doing. I want to turn my diary into a book.” Pim’s hands fall into his lap, and he drops a sigh like he’s dropping a stone. “Anne,” he says with a light shake of his head, then repeats her name as if it alone sums up the entirety of the problem. “Daughter, please,” he starts. “You must understand that what I’m about to say comes only from my desire for your welfare. You know,” he tells her, “that I deeply regret having kept your diary from you. It was unfair and thoughtless on my part, I don’t deny it. But,” he says. “But the very idea that you would think of publishing it? As a book?” He shrugs sharply at the incomprehensibility of such a notion. “It’s true, you have a gift for words. But really, Anne. I don’t want to insult you, but . . . a young girl’s diary? Who would publish such a thing? Who would want to?”
“There could be someone,” she answers defensively. “If I put it in order. Work it into a real story.”
“I’m just afraid that you’re going to be hurt. That you’re going to be dreadfully disappointed. Ask Werner Nussbaum, he was in publishing for decades. Ask him about how many would-be authors have their work rejected.”
“Many, I’m sure. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try. There could be someone interested in publishing it. Life in hiding from the mof.”
“You believe that’s what people want to read about now?”
“Everything I wrote happened.”
“Yes, it happened. But consider what you’re suggesting. I’m the first to admit it wasn’t always a rosy picture during those twenty-five months. I don’t imagine any of us would come off too well. You have a capacity for deep insight, Anneke, but also for harsh judgment. Even cruel judgment at times.”
“Oh, so that’s it. The truth comes out. It’s not that you’re afraid that nobody will publish it, you’re afraid that somebody will. You’re afraid I’ll make you look bad.”
“Not just me, Annelies. But may I ask? If you’re so very sure that Jews are still being persecuted, even here in the Netherlands, is it really your intention to expose the most intimate moments of our life in such a public fashion?”
Anne frowns.
“Think of your mother,” Pim tells her. “Consider the picture you drew of her in your pages.” He gazes at her, not unsympathetically. “It was often very unpleasant and unfair. Do you really want the world to remember her as the critical, unsympathetic, and unlovable person you often made her out to be?”
To this, Anne has no answer.
Pim places his napkin from his lap onto the table. “I’m sorry, meisje. I returned your diary for your own private satisfaction, because it was the correct thing to do. But you have no right to expose the pain and suffering of those in hiding, since they are no longer alive to grant you consent. As a result I must be adamant. No publication of your diary.”
Anne is suddenly on her feet, as if a fire has ignited in her belly. “How dare you, Pim?” she seethes. “How dare you act as if my diary was yours to return or not, to publish or not? I know that it frightens you. I know it! If my diary’s published, then you’ll no longer be in charge of what happened to us.”
“I was never in charge of what happened to us, Anne.”
“Really? You certainly pretended otherwise.”
