Annelies полностью

The truth is, she can’t forgive him, because the truth is, she doesn’t want to forgive. She despises forgiveness.

18 BREAD

Everything revolves around bread and death.

—Yiddish proverb

1946

Amsterdam

LIBERATED NETHERLANDS

There are nights when she cannot sleep. So at supper, and not for the first time, she steals bread from the table. Slips a roll from the bakery into a pocket of her apron dress. In her bedroom she closes the door and hooks the lock. Dropping onto her bed, she removes the roll and stares at it. She touches the rough texture of its yeast-swollen crest, thinly chalky with a residue of flour. Once it would have been impossible to save a bite of this bread. When bread fell into her hands, she could do nothing but devour it. Yet now she secretes it under her mattress.

She finds that she can sleep through the night knowing it’s there.

Nussbaum

Tweedehands-Boekverkoper

The Rozengracht

Kneeling on the floor of Mr. Nussbaum’s bookshop, she has spent an hour or more unpacking boxes. Mr. Nussbaum himself has just returned from a meeting with a dealer and is hanging up his patched-over coat and old felt hat. “So,” he says with a lively curiosity, returning to the sales desk to sort through a bundle of new acquisitions. “How is your work progressing?”

“Well, I’ve finished reorganizing the biographies,” she tells him. “I think you’ll be pleased.”

A smile to himself as he tucks in his chin. “Yes, I’m sure I will be, but that’s not what I meant. I meant, Miss Frank, how is your writing progressing?”

“Oh.” Her eyes drop. “All right, I suppose,” she says, and removes a book from an open carton. Anne has continued to write since the day her pen discovered its words again. But though she once found meaning in her diary, in securing the events of the day on paper and molding them into an account of a life, her narrative is now fractured. She feels as adrift on the page as she does in this alien Amsterdam she’s come home to, without a mother, without a sister, and with a father who continues to infuriate her with his vacant crusade to live in the present.

“That’s all?” Mr. Nussbaum doubts. “Just all right? Not astonishingly well or appallingly badly?”

She grips the book in her hands. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Mr. Nussbaum.”

“I want you to say what you’re thinking, Anne. What’s your plan? Have you started that novel yet?”

“Novel?”

“Didn’t you say you had a novel in the works? A book of some sorts?”

“No.” Anne shakes her head. “It’s not a novel. It’s not anything.”

“Well, it must be something if you’re writing it,” Mr. Nussbaum points out.

Anne draws a small breath and releases it. “Have you ever written a book, Mr. Nussbaum?” she asks to change the subject.

“Me? Oh, no. God no. I don’t have the gift for that. When I was young, of course, I thought I was destined to pen a magnum opus. That it was only a matter of time before my name would be carved beside those of the greats. Tolstoy, Proust,” Mr. Nussbaum says with a wry laugh. “But no. As it turned out, I was nobody’s idea of Tolstoy.” An affable shrug. “I can say this, however: I did, over time, become a rather decent editor. I even made a living at it. So I suppose the point I’m getting at is, if ever you would like to show me something, Anne, I’d be happy to give it a look.”

Anne swallows. “Well. Thank you. I’ll think about it,” she answers, and tries to smile, but she feels suddenly vulnerable, maybe embarrassed by it all, so she begins sorting through a box of children’s books that Mr. Nussbaum bought in an auction. “If I ever actually produce anything worthwhile.” She says this, and then her face brightens, and she feels a lift in her chest. “Oh! Cissy van Marxveldt!” A swell of sweetness as she pulls out one book after the other. The New Beginning, Confetti, Caprices, The Storms, A Tender Summer. “I loved her books!” Anne exclaims. “I think I’ve read every one four or five times each.”

“Then you should take them home,” Mr. Nussbaum tells her.

“Oh, no. I couldn’t. You can make a good profit on these. They’re still in wonderful condition.”

“All the more reason you should have them. Profit?” He waves the word away. “Unimportant.”

“Are you sure?” She grips the top book in her arms.

“Positive.” He puffs on his cigar. “Consider them your pay for the day.”

“Thank you. But I’m sure they’re much more valuable than that.”

“Oh? Are you suggesting I don’t pay you enough?” he jokes.