Anne can only stare, rooted in place. She grips the handles of her bicycle, her palms going sweaty, her heart drumming in her chest, and she tastes a sickly-sour kind of fear in her mouth. How could this be? How can she still be confronted by such filthy scrawls?
The sign above the shop reads NUSSBAUM TWEEDEHANDS-BOEKVERKOPER. Nussbaum Secondhand Book Handling. A dowdy little place, the windows papered over with newsprint or boarded up. The scrawny man quits his scraping to take a breather and must notice her, because he turns about, still swallowing to catch his next breath. “I’m, sorry.” He smiles. “May I be of assistance?”
No response.
“Are you a reader,” he wonders, “looking for a good book?”
Her eyes blink from the door to the man, back to the door.
“Ah. Yes,” he says. “Just removing an unfortunate eyesore. Someone’s idea of a joke, I suppose.” He says this with a slight frown but then returns to his smile, though his eyes are studying her now. “If you’re looking for a book, you should come inside. I’m happy to make recommendations.”
“Shouldn’t you
“Do something? Well, as you can see I’m scouring off the paint.”
“No, I mean,
A shrug. The police? “And what would they do, really?”
“You mean because you’re a
A smile remains, but a bit of the life in his eyes goes slack. “I think I’ve had enough of scraping for now. My arms are getting tired. Why don’t we step inside? We can share a pot of tea, and you can have a look at the shop. It’s really much nicer on the
• • •
A bell jangles above them as they enter. The shop has the comfortably musty smell that some bookshops develop after years of too many books packed into too small a space. The man is rubbing his arm as he goes to the hot plate sitting on a table behind the wooden sales desk. “I have no sugar or milk, I’m afraid. Not even surrogate.” He speaks in Dutch to Anne, but she can quite definitely recognize the clipped accent of a Berliner.
“Is it because you’re Jewish that you won’t call the police?”
“No, it’s because I see no point.”
“So you should let them get away with it? Defacing your property.”
“Someone slapped a door with a paintbrush.” He shrugs. “Not exactly a capital offense.”
“I’m sorry, it’s only that—”
His eyebrows lift. “Yes?”
“I’m Jewish, too,” she informs him.
The man shows her that smile again. “Yes, I rather surmised as much. But you needn’t be sorry about it. It’s not a crime any longer,” he assures her, and then he observes Anne with a kind of gentle appraisal. “I’m Werner Nussbaum,” he tells her, and leans across the sales desk to offer his hand. Anne stares at the hand for an instant, then steps forward and takes it.
“Mr. Nussbaum,” she repeats, and examines his face more closely. A long, aquiline nose, slightly bulbous. A powerful forehead, balding across the crown, close-cropped curls, and a scraggly gray-white mustache over a vandyke beard. One eye droops as if it is simply too exhausted to open at full mast, though the core of his gaze is still probing, still eager.
“And you are?” he inquires.
“My name,” she says, “is Anne Frank.”
Mr. Nussbaum cocks his head slightly to one side, as if a thought has knocked it a bit off balance. “Frank,” he repeats. “Well, that’s a coincidence. I knew a man named Frank. German originally.”
“We came from Germany,” Anne admits. “Frankfurt-am-Main.”
“Oh, no—this is too
Anne straightens. “Otto Frank is my father.”
“Otto Frank. Who ran—
“He still does,” Anne answers.
“So you’re saying . . . he
Now it’s Anne who’s feeling a bit off balance, thrown by this question that Jews must now ask one another. All she does is nod her head to answer, and she watches the man slump at the shoulders as if he had been working hard to keep his spine straight till this very moment.
“So miracles do persist. The mensch still lives,” he declares, then looks back at Anne. “You must be confused. But I came to know your father quite well,” Mr. Nussbaum explains gently, as he bares his forearm, revealing a tattooed number, “while we were guests at the same hotel.”