Out in the corridor, Anne hears the low mumble of her father’s voice on the telephone. Mr. Kugler opens the office door and then blinks dully at the sight of her. “Anne?” is all he says, but she is on the move and does not respond.
And then the bookcase confronts her.
Just a battered old thing, hammered together from scrap by Bep’s papa. A three-shelf construction jammed into the corner near the window, loaded down with sun-bleached ledgers, their labels peeling, leaving crusty glue stains. Above it an old map hangs, tacked to the floral-print wallpaper.
But what remain hidden are the latch and the iron hinge. What’s hidden is the wooden door behind it. All one need do is tug the concealed cord that lifts the latch and the bookcase will swing open, because it’s not a bookcase. It’s a gateway.
Mouschi curls around her ankle with a quiet purr as her hand reaches out. Her fingertips brush the rough wood. She stares at the shelf as if she can see through it, but then a voice startles her and her hand snaps back.
It isn’t Margot, it’s Pim. Her father is frozen halfway up the steps, gazing at her with quiet concern. Kugler must have alerted him that his daughter had strayed from the office area. She glares wildly as he approaches her on the landing. “Anne,” he says again, but then stops. Something in him takes a step back, she can see it. “You know,” he tells her with a gentle distance in his voice, “there’s nothing up there any longer. The Germans stole everything. Miep says they pulled a moving van up to the door and cleaned everything out.
Anne stares at the bookshelf, then back at her father. “Have you gone up there?” she asks.
His eyes empty. “Yes.”
Mouschi meows drowsily in front of the bookshelf. “I want to go up, too,” she says.
“No, Anne. Are you sure?”
Her jaw clenches as she steps forward. The hinge behind the bookcase still works. She hears the drab clank of the latch as she tugs the cord. Then the case swings forward as if it’s floating, and she stares at the door hidden behind it. Slate-green paint. Her hand is on the doorknob, and as the door opens, Mouschi peeks in but then shoots away, retreating down the stairs, leaving Anne alone to peer into the short hallway. She bends quickly to snatch a small bean from a crack in the floorboards, clutching it in her fist. It was always Peter’s job to haul the heavy sacks of dried beans they stored here up to the kitchen, and she’d been pestering him about something, just for fun, as he huffed away, when the seam split on a forty-five-kilo sack. It sounded like thunder as a tidal storm of brown beans came roaring down the steps, scattering into every crevice. Anne was standing at the bottom of the stairs, up to her ankle socks in dry beans, blinking back at the shock stamped on Peter’s long, boyish face. Then suddenly he erupted into a gale of pure, unsullied laughter. It became a house sport afterward to find one or two slippery beans left behind after the cleanup.