Annelies полностью

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.

Pim whispers, “You are a brave young woman, meisje, who’s been unjustly brutalized by forces far beyond your control. My only prayer is that if you can forgive me, perhaps you can begin to forgive the world as well. And, more important, forgive yourself.”

But even before she opens her eyes, Anne knows that she will see Margot there. Waiting. Waiting for her to atone.

34 THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL

Seriously, though, ten years after the war people would find it very amusing to read how we lived, what we ate and what we talked about as Jews in hiding.

—Anne Frank, from her diary, 29 March 1944

1961

Waverly Place and Mercer Street

Greenwich Village

NEW YORK CITY

Dear Miss Frank,

I think I must be one of your biggest fans. I’ve read “The Diary of a Young Girl” six times! The library at my school only has one copy of it, and I keep checking it out over and over again. Sometimes, though, Mrs. Mosley (our librarian) says I should give somebody else a chance to read it, and makes me check out a Nancy Drew instead, which is O.K. I like Nancy Drew books, but I like your book better. You are so smart, and Nancy Drew has never had to escape Nazis or hide in a secret annex with nothing very good to eat.

Maybe this isn’t nice to tell you, but once after somebody else had checked out your book, I found mean things written in the margins about Jewish people. If it had been in pencil, I would have just erased it, but it was in pen, so I had to scratch it out. This got me in trouble with my Granny Flynn, because she saw me scratching it out and said I should NEVER write with a pen in a library book for ANY reason. But I still think I did the right thing. I hope you will think so too.

Warm regards,

Edwina C. Buford (Winnie)

P.S.—Grampa Flynn says that he doubts your whole story is really true. He says writers like to make things up. But I told him that I think it is ALL true. It is, isn’t it?

Dear Winnie,