Annelies полностью

Books are purchased. Mrs. Goldblatt makes change from the cashbox, squinting through her thick glasses and often mistaking quarters for nickels. But a line is formed, and Jewish orphans are properly supported. This is Ruth’s congregation. Her husband, Gus, was chair of the Building Fund. She maintains a certain pride in her contributions to the community’s success, if pride in one’s accomplishments can be accepted as a forgivable transgression against halakhah.

There’s a hardcover on a small wooden easel facing out. Neat stacks are arranged beside Mrs. Goldblatt. It’s been out in paperback for more than a decade now, Anne’s diary, and that’s where the royalties come from, but these are specifically from the small inventory of hardbacks kept in print to satisfy the demands of Hanukkah and the blossoming bat mitzvah craze across Morningside Heights and the Upper East Side. She has written four books in ten years. Answer the Night was even nominated for the National Book Award, but this is the book she knows she will be remembered for, no matter what else she might produce. This is the book that will eternally define her.

Her publisher had balked over her title. The House Behind? Behind what? The verdict was that it was just too confusing for the young American girls who were most certainly going to be the book’s market. So instead they devised something simple, a title to which they were sure any twelve- or thirteen-year-old could relate.

The Diary of a Young Girl.

And who could argue with that?

A photo that she had tucked away in her diary features Anne, the schoolgirl, on the dust jacket. A child’s eyes staring up at her. The thick wave of hair. The full, girlish lips. The gaze resting in shadow. So many years after publication, she should be accustomed to it by now, but the sight of herself in all her innocence can still poke her in the heart. That girl with hooded eyes, gazing out from the past. Sometimes Anne searches the mirror for her, but she has yet to find her there.

Ruth drops a few copies off at the table, one for a Mrs. Fishkin’s daughter, Elizabeth, who’s in California but a big, big fan; one for the rabbi’s daughter, Sarah with an h; and one for the rabbi’s niece, Zoë, living on a kibbutz in the west of Israel. Anne uncaps her fountain pen and puts it to work. A Conway Stewart Blue Herringbone, with a fourteen-karat, chisel-edge nib. A nice thick nib. She likes her nib thick. It centers her.

A grinning adolescent girl is first in line, with two copies for Anne to sign. Susan Mirish is her name, and she’s an incredible fan. She hopes Anne will sign one copy for her and one for her dearest, dearest cousin, Isabelle, who’s also, as it happens, an incredible fan. Anne obliges, looping the dedications across the frontispieces of the books and swooshing through her signature twice. Next in the line, Adele Spooner is more circumspect. She read Anne’s diary in seventh grade and wants to know just exactly what Anne was getting at when she wrote that she still believed that people were good at heart. But fortunately, Adele’s mother is impatient. “Adele, enough. You think you’re the only one on line? The lady’s signed your book—let’s go.”

“To Deborah,” says a tall, skinny woman with a floral hat who speaks with a nasal Flatbush accent. “My daughter,” she explains. “She was so depressed that she couldn’t come today, ’cause she’s so crazy for your book it’s ridiculous. But of course she breaks her leg, the nudnik. Honestly, what are girls doing these days, can you tell me? I never climbed a tree in my life.”

Anne offers her smile as a response. Under Deborah’s dedication she writes, “Get well! Climb more trees!” and makes sure she shuts the cover before Deborah’s mother can catch it. She feels a certain lift from these girls. Their freshness lightens her heart. Their clean, untroubled adoration provides a shot of joy. She is astonished sometimes at how much they do adore her diary. It makes her think that perhaps people are good at heart. Or might be. Or could be.

She signs another for Samantha, who goes by the name Sammi. With an i at the end, the girl instructs her. When Anne looks back up, she sees that Ruth is busy chatting with the wife of the congregation president, but she also sees a woman without a child to usher, standing in the line. A woman—maybe in her middle forties—wearing an inexpensive jacket and a blue floral scarf on her head.

Anne looks back at the girl in front of her. “What was your name again, liefje?”

“Natalie,” the girl replies.

“Natalie,” Anne repeats, and she concentrates on the pen moving in her hand. Next in line is Rebecca, who says that she gets in trouble with her mom for reading with a flashlight under the blankets past her bedtime. Anne smiles back at this, and then she feels her heart jump and quickly leaps to her feet.