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Anne Frank: The Biography: Updated and Expanded with New Material
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About Anne Frank: The Biography: Updated And Expanded
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1 THE ARREST Hush. Be quiet. Whisper. Walk softly … take off your shoes. Who’s still in the bathroom? The water’s running. For God’s sake, don’t flush the toilet! After two years you should know better than to be so careless. Empty the chamber pots. Shove the beds back out of the way. The church bells are already ringing the half hour. When the workers arrive at 8:30, there has to be dead silence. The usual morning ritual in the secret annex. At 6:45 the alarm clock goes off in Hermann and Auguste van Pels’s room, so loud and shrill that it wakes the Franks and Fritz Pfeffer, who sleep one floor below. A well-aimed blow from Mrs. van Pels silences the alarm. The floor creaks, softly at first, then louder. Mr. van Pels gets up, creeps down the steep stairs, and, the first in the bathroom, hurries to finish. Anne waits in bed until she hears the bathroom door creak again. Her roommate, Fritz Pfeffer, is next. Anne sighs, relieved, enjoying these few precious moments of solitude. With eyes closed, she listens to the birdsong in the backyard and stretches in her bed. Bed is hardly the word for the narrow sofa she has lengthened by putting a chair at one end. But Anne thinks it’s luxurious. Miep Gies, who brings the Franks their groceries, has told her that others in hiding are sleeping on the floor in tiny windowless sheds or in damp cellars. Dutifully, Anne gets up and opens the blackout curtains. Discipline rules their lives here. She glances at the world outside. The foggy Friday morning promises to turn into a gloriously warm summer day. If she could just, only for a few minutes … But she must be patient. It won’t be much longer now. The attempt to assassinate Hitler two weeks ago has revived everyone’s hopes … Perhaps she can go back to school in the fall. Her father and Mr. van Pels are sure that everything will be over in October, that they will be free … It is already August. August 4, 1944. An hour and forty-five minutes is all they have to prepare for another day. An hour and forty-five minutes passes quickly when eight people have to wash up, store their bedding, push the beds aside, and put tables and chairs back where they belong. After work begins at 8:30 in the warehouse below, they can’t make a sound. It would be easy to give themselves away. The warehouse foreman, Willem van Maaren, is suspicious enough as it is. Before a light breakfast at nine, they occupy themselves as quietly as possible, reading or studying, sewing or knitting. And they wait. They must be especially careful during this next half hour. Anyone who absolutely has to get up tiptoes across the room like a thief, in stocking feet or soft slippers, and they have to whisper. If someone laughs or pricks a finger and says “ouch!” everyone glares. But once the office staff has arrived and the rattling typewriters, the ringing telephone, and the voices of Miep Gies, Bep Voskuijl, and Johannes Kleiman—all friends and helpers of the residents in the secret annex—form a backdrop of sound, the danger is diminished somewhat. Eventually Miep will come to pick up the “shopping list.” In fact, Miep will have to settle for whatever she can get them, and every day she gets a little less. But she knows how eagerly the inhabitants of the secret annex await her. Anne barrages Miep with questions, as she does every morning. And Miep, as she does every morning, puts Anne off until later. Only after Miep has sworn to return for a longer visit in the afternoon will Anne let her go back to her office. Otto Frank retires with Peter van Pels to Peter’s tiny room on the top floor. A dictation in English is the lesson plan for today. Peter is having trouble with this irritating language, so Otto spends his mornings helping him. It’s a way to pass time. On the floor below, Anne and her sister, Margot, lose themselves in their books. Patience. Patience is a virtue the mercurial Anne has had to learn these last two year
