“That’s unfair!” His face flushes pink. “That is completely, completely unfair. Someone had to assume a leadership role. You think it was going to be Hermann van Pels? You think it was going to be Fritz Pfeffer? Eight of us packed together, smothering each other day after day. I had no other choice, daughter. No other choice. And don’t imagine it was easy either! Do you believe I enjoyed being ‘in charge’ as you would have it? The constant bitterness and bickering. The unending squabbling over this stupidity and that one. But someone had to play the peacemaker, so it was me. Yes. I will admit to that crime, Annelies. I took on the burden of that responsibility, and believe me, burden it was. But I tried not to complain. I did my best to stay impartial, to make decisions that were in the best interest of us all. When the toilet clogged”—he frowns—“who fished out excrement with a pole? The only person who volunteered. When Miep or Bep or Mr. Kugler was fed up with our complaints, who soothed their feelings? When you and Mr. Pfeffer locked horns over the use of the desk, who was the broker of compromise? It was hard labor keeping the roof on. Not to mention the fact that I was still trying to run a business to keep us fed and to educate you children—not just my own daughters, mind you, but Peter, too. In that respect I was father to you all,” he declares. “So, my dear daughter, don’t believe that I am frightened now by what you’ve written, because I am not. When I tell you that there will be no publication of your diary writing, it is not for my sake but for the sake of those who have passed before us—and for yours.”
Anne glares at her father’s face, angry, his cheeks inflamed, then storms into her room. She hears him call her name but slams the door behind her.
There Margot is waiting in her typhus rags. So now you’re going to alienate Pim as well? Soon I’ll be the only one you have left, Anne.
“Shut up, will you?” Anne flings herself onto her bed and lights another cigarette, her hands still trembling with anger. “You’re the one who said I had to live. Remember that? All I’m doing is trying to keep our story alive, too.”
A cough rumbles through Margot’s chest. Is that really all?
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
No? You complain that Pim withheld the truth from you. But aren’t you still doing the same to him?
Anne turns, her face hot with tears. “I didn’t mean to do it, Margot,” she whispers desperately. “I didn’t mean to.”
But there is no one there to respond.
• • •
The next morning she ignores the knock on her door from Pim. She pretends she cannot hear him speak her name but waits instead until the flat is empty to go bathe in the tub. The water is tepid. She uses the soap Mr. Nussbaum brought her. But then she stops. The tub is so comfortable. So inviting. For a moment she slips beneath the surface, feeling the water envelop her. A few bubbles of oxygen. That’s all that stands between her and the angel of death. But then she rises up, splashing, seizing her next breath of air.
Nussbaum
Tweedehands-Boekverkoper
The Rozengracht
. . . if I’m quiet and serious, everyone thinks I’m putting on a new act and I have to save myself with a joke, and then I’m not even talking about my own family, who assume I must be sick, stuff me with aspirins and sedatives, feel my neck and forehead to see if I have a temperature, ask about my bowel movements and berate me for being in a bad mood, until I just can’t keep it up anymore, because when everybody starts hovering over me, I get cross, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside out, the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside, and keep trying to find a way to become what I’d like to be and what I could be if . . . if only there were no other people in the world.
