On the morning of the twelfth of June, Anne’s thirteenth birthday dawns, and the bright business of daylight begins above the good Dutch pantile roofs. Anne is awake at six but must lie there for another three-quarters of an hour till she can reasonably wake her parents. So while Margot slumbers, Anne is already off to the races, living the day in her head. There’ll be presents in the living room. Then she’ll take the cookies she baked with Mummy to school and pass them out to her classmates at recess. She loves doing this. She loves to be generous. Being generous makes it so easy to bask at the center of everyone’s attention.
Her party is scheduled for Sunday, and there are simply gangs of people expected to attend. There will be games and songs directed by Pim. There will be pastries, cookies, and bonbons served on porcelain platters with doilies provided by Mummy. Lemonade in the punch bowl and coffee in a silver service for the grown-ups. Small gifts wrapped in colored tissue for all the children attending. And, of course, always a surprise. This year Pim has rented a film projector and a reel of the canine adventures of Rin Tin Tin. Her own birthday matinee! And if you think that happens at Ilana Riemann’s house or Giselle Zeigler’s house on
• • •
Morning rises. Even though she knows what it is, even though she has picked it out herself, it is the first gift she opens among all the presents filling the coffee table, the bouquets of roses and peonies, the lovely plant, the Variété board game, the bottle of sweet grape juice that she can pretend is wine when she drinks it, the strawberry tart, specially baked by her mother—such a wonderful array, but they all will wait.
She unties the ribbon of blue silk and carefully tugs open the wrapping until it emerges. The red tartan daybook. She smiles as she opens it and runs her fingers across the creamy vellum pages. A confidante. That is what she intends her diary to become. Her one true confidante, from whom she will hide nothing. Alone in her room, before leaving for school, she sits at Mummy’s French secretaire and uncaps her favorite fountain pen. Quietly she smooths her hand over the empty page and then watches the paper absorb the ink of the very first line she writes.
3 DIVING UNDER
Hiding . . . where would we hide? In the city? In the country? In a house? In a shack? When, where, how . . . ?
—Anne Frank, from her diary, 8 July 1942
1942
Merwedeplein 37
Residential Housing Estate
Amsterdam-Zuid
OCCUPIED NETHERLANDS
On a Thursday afternoon before supper, Margot is studying for an exam at a friend’s and Anne is alone in the flat with her mother, busily snapping snow peas into a bowl, when her father comes home early from the office. Instead of removing his hat, he invites Anne out for a walk.
“But.” A glance to her mother. “I’m helping Mummy.”
“So I see, but a short walk won’t hurt, will it, Edith?”
Her mother frowns nervously. “Go. Do as your father asks,” is all she says.
It has been raining for most of the week, but today is dry, the afternoon warm and balmy, and the caretakers have taken the opportunity to mow the grass. Anne breathes in deeply as they stroll the edges of the Merry’s central lawn. “I love the smell of freshly mown grass,” she says, expecting her father to agree. But Pim’s expression is grave.
“Anne,” he says, “you should know that soon we will be leaving here.”
Anne feels a jolt in her belly.
“For some weeks now,” Pim begins, but he must take a deeper breath to continue. “For some weeks now, we have been storing our more important possessions with friends. Your mother’s silver, for example, about which you were so curious. The point has been to prevent our belongings from falling into the clutches of our enemy. And now,” he says, “the time has come when we
Anne stops in place and looks directly into her father’s face.
“We won’t be waiting for the Nazi to haul us off at his convenience, Annelein,” he tells her. “We are going into hiding.”