AMSTERDAM -- The hiding place was located in father's office building. That's a little hard for outsiders to understand, so I'll explain.-- "Diary of Anne Frank," July 9, 1942
I suppose one ought not to expect ghosts in the Anne Frank house. The dead seem to have little need for time and space. It is their withdrawal from the here-and-there, the then-and-now that make them such unreliable companions for those left behind.
For the most part, the dead are strangers to the living. They are forever engaged in the nearly full-time pursuit of being dead, and thus any apparitions to be found at No. 263 Prisengracht St. might seem best understood as a product of the imagination.
It has been 56 years since the arrest of Anne Frank and her family. She and her sister, Margot, died a few months later at Bergen-Belsen. Their unforgivable sin was being Jewish in the wrong place at the right time.
Eleven years before their arrest, Otto Frank, the girls' father, in a futile attempt worthy of Sophocles, moved his family from Germany to Holland. In July 1944, on a tip from an anonymous informant, the fates, dressed in jack-boots and brown shirts, caught up with Otto Frank and his progeny.
It is the sense of sight that first promises to unite us with Anne and her family -- the worn wooden book case that concealed their living quarters in the annex; the original diary, now displayed in a glass case in what used to be Otto Frank's place of business. But it is the ear, and not the eye, that triggers a flutter in the chest. It is a sound that brings us closest to the girl who, in another universe, would just have celebrated her 71st birthday. As I enter the building, a narrow four-story canal house, the clock above the Christian church 100 yards away marks noon:
Father, mother and Margot still can't get used to the chimes of the Westerkirk clock. I liked it from the start. It sounds so reassuring, especially at night.
We enter the hidden annex through a narrow, steep stairway. It is slightly lopsided and smells of faded mildew and wood oil. At the top of the stairs, is a small hallway, and against one wall the wooden bookcase that concealed the entrance to the hiding place.
On this second floor are two back rooms, both very small and now devoid of furniture. The first room, slightly larger than the other, was occupied by Anne's parents and Margot; the other by Anne and Otto Pfeffer, Otto Frank's best friend. It is here, in this tiny room with thick lace curtains to discourage prying neighbors, that Anne Frank carried on for 26 months what was to become a correspondence with the world.
The red and white checked diary is small, the metal and leather clasp broken. Her handwriting is fine and delicate, but strong, like the impish and head-strong girl her mother once described:
If God knows everything, then our Anne knows everything better.
Another steep stairway is to the left. It is even more askew, like a scene from a Borges story or Kafka's "The Trial." At the top is the kitchen that doubled as a bedroom for the Franks' friends, the Van Daans. The room still contains a small stove and the remains of a utility sink, but it too is picked clean of furniture and belongings.
The Van Daan's 18-year-old son, Peter, slept in the other room on the third floor. It is only slightly bigger than a walk-in closet, musty and still. In February of 1944 -- just a few months before they were discovered, Anne described the boy:
Don't think I am in love. I'm not. But I do have the feeling that something beautiful is going to develop between Peter and me, a kind of friendship and a feeling of trust.
In another universe, a better one, this is not simply a schoolgirl crush. In this other world, Peter and Anne attend university and then are married. They live in Amsterdam and make love to the sounds of boats making their way up the canal. In another universe, they raise three children, one of whom, a red-headed boy, eventually inherits the family business.
The clock above the Westerkirk strikes a single hour. The reverberation shakes the house ever so slightly.
In another world, a better world, the fates treat these people more kindly. In another world, perhaps the best of all possible worlds, these people now hold hands in a communion of saints. They are too busy to visit those of us left to worry and mourn in space and time:
I know it is terrible having faith when people are doing such horrible things. But you know what I sometimes think. I think the world may be going through a phase. It will pass, maybe not for hundreds of years, but some day. I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are really good at heart.
In another world, this narrow canal house at No. 263 Prisengracht St. never becomes a museum.
Stephen Vicchio teaches philosophy at the College of Notre Dame. His latest collection of essays and stories, "Pieces of an Examined Life," was published by Woodholme House.
