Anne Frank on Tour and Other Stories

History

Sally and Thomas

Thomas Jefferson, years removed from a two-term presidency, is in his early eighties and hasn’t long to live. His slave, and some say concubine, Sally Hemings is thirty years younger. They sit in chairs several feet apart and face me in the library of Jefferson’s elegant estate, Monticello, in the rolling green hills of Virginia. I take out paper and quill to note that he, though feeble, still looks aristocratic and Hemings remains a lovely woman despite her once-admired long black hair being shorter and much of it gray.

Thank you for inviting me, I tell Jefferson. I’m honored to be your biographer.

Rumors have bedeviled me almost forty years, he says. I want to clarify important issues so my political enemies can’t forever attack my character.

Are you comfortable discussing personal matters, Sally?

No sir, she says, but I usually comply when President Jefferson orders me to do something.

Your life profoundly changed in your mid-teens when you accompanied the future president’s youngest daughter Polly to Paris where he was serving as envoy to France.

I glance at Jefferson who’s gazing at Sally as she tells me, It was thrilling. I hadn’t been off the plantation and suddenly I was on a ship in the Atlantic and headed for what many told me was the greatest city in the world.

Was it? I ask.

It certainly was. The buildings were beautiful, and I’d never been treated so well by white people.

Jefferson stiffens in his chair and says, I beg your pardon, Sally, but you’d always been well treated here.

Here I was and remain a piece of property. In France I was free the moment I arrived.

You would’ve had to petition for emancipation, he says.

And it would’ve been approved. I talked to many Negroes who applied for freedom. None were denied.

I smile at Thomas and Sally and look at the lady when I say, I’ve heard that you studied French and were also taking violin lessons.

Who said that? Jefferson asks.

The same people who’re bedeviling you, no doubt. I think Sally had some fine cultural opportunities.

I was learning French well by my second year in Paris, she says. Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d stayed.

Gently I ask, Why did you give up what would’ve been the life of a free woman in France?

My mother and my brothers and sisters were in Virginia. I missed them.

Jefferson nods. Sally would have been alone in Paris if she hadn’t returned with Polly and me.

Locking hands on her lap, Sally says, We have strong and complicated family ties. My father was also the father of President Jefferson’s late wife. That makes her my half-sister, and their children are my nieces and nephews.

There will be no more talk about my wife, says Jefferson, looking sharply at Sally.

In placation I raise an open hand and say, I certainly understand. We’re at any rate here to deal with more recent and controversial issues.

Until now, I haven’t counterattacked, he says.

You’ve unleashed friends and allies for that task, I say.

I’m above that level of discourse.

Your critics claim you weren’t above sleeping with a teenage slave, I surprise myself by saying.

Jefferson jabs a crooked finger at the door and says, It’s time for you to leave.

No, it isn’t, Thomas, Sally says, twisting toward the old man. "It’s time for you to admit you were a lonely widower who fell in love with a Negro, if that’s what I should be called despite being three-quarters white. The laws of Virginia still consider me a slave. You were infatuated and worried I might decide to stay in Paris.

"‘Please come home with me,’ you said. ‘I’ll protect you.’

‘Make me free in Virginia,’ I told you. ‘Make any children we have free.’

Jefferson sits tight-lipped in his chair, looking at neither of us, as Sally continues, You said, ‘I’ll make them free when they’re twenty-one. And as they grow up, I promise they’ll never have to work in the fields. They’ll learn trades so they can earn a decent living. You, naturally, would never have to work hard. Simply take care of any future children as well as my current grandchildren. You’ll have a staff to help, and it will be comprised of your relatives. No one can offer as much, but I can’t grant special privileges to your mother and siblings if you live in Paris.’

She pauses before addressing me. I agreed, and we returned to Virginia and soon began to have babies. Two died quite young. She then looks steadily at Jefferson and says, "And I told you, ‘I deserve to live in your house.’

"‘We can’t do that,’ you said, ‘but I’ll build you private quarters and a covered passage to my bedroom, a place we can be together without my enemies ever knowing.’

"‘Are you ashamed of me?’ I asked.

"‘Of course not,’ you said. ‘But I can’t become president if the public believes the rumors.’

"‘True rumors,’ I said. ‘You should be more concerned people will find out that you still order runaway slaves whipped. I’ll leave if you don’t stop.’

And you told me, ‘If you run away, your children will never be free.’

Jefferson struggles to stand. Your children have been freed, and when I’m soon gone, you can join them.

Sally rises to state, I’ll be thankful to leave this place, and walks from the room.

Gasthaus Stiefler

Entering a solid two-story building that houses Gasthaus Stiefler on the ground floor, I survey several drinkers before I walk to a stocky mid-sixties man behind a frowning gray mustache, wait for him to take another sip of wine and set the glass down, and say, Good morning, Herr Customs Official, I have most important business to discuss with you. May I?

Ja, please sit down, he says, motioning to a chair.

I set my briefcase on the floor.

It’s about your son.

Still getting bad grades and being smart aleck?

I’m afraid it’s more serious than that.

What is it?

Let me show you.

I open my briefcase and place a large pictorial book on the table.

Here, look at these, I say.

He studies some photos, tensing as he proceeds, and says, This is ridiculous. My son’s thirteen.

You sense it’s true.

I don’t like your tone.

You know the boy’s disturbed, I say.

I acknowledged his problems at school.

Perhaps you shouldn’t have beaten him.

I know how to discipline children.

I’m not implying you’re to blame.

Blame for what?

The catastrophes…

That my boy’s somehow going to cause forty years from now.

This is quite serious. I must ask you to take action.

He knows what’ll happen if he keeps causing trouble.

That’s not what I mean.

Silently, I stare at him.

Criminal, he shouts, and snatches his glass and throws wine in my face before lunging and grabbing my throat. He’s very strong, and I’m blacking out when the old man gasps, loses his grip, and collapses. Other patrons, long his friends and acquaintances, push me away and carry him to a leather couch.

Get the doctor, one shouts.

A man runs outside.

Another says, No one can help now.

You killed him, the bartender tells me.

Nonsense. He was the most essential man in the world. Please, all of you, look at the evidence.

Get the police, says the bartender.

Anne Frank on Tour

Before the movie a newsreel surprises me with several seconds of Anne at age twelve, leaning out an Amsterdam apartment window, her black hair thick and wild. I’m intrigued and order a copy of her book, Diary of a Young Girl, published last year in the United States, and read all night before showing it to my newspaper editor at the Santa Monica Star. He thinks she’s overrated but says go ahead and cover her speech at USC. I doubt he’s read the book, or he’d know her prose is clear and evocative and earning money in Europe and Japan even though she’s just my age, twenty-four, and looks cuter every photo I see and is often with friends, some of whom have an arm around her. One’s a famous New York author I can’t stand. Another’s the movie director who invited her here. I hope people already have their seats. The auditorium’s full tonight. I’m near the front with other reporters.

Everyone rises to applaud when a slender lady walks down the aisle toward the stage, smiling and waving both hands overhead to hundreds she seems to know. I’m surprised she’s lived in New York two years instead of magical Hollywood she long honored by posting photos of film stars on her bedroom wall in the secret annex. I don’t understand why she’s dating the arrogant author who, I’ve read, sometimes gets drunk and unpleasant. He won’t misbehave tonight. He’s not here. He knows Anne’s the star. She’s almost finished her second book, a novel based on experiences of Dutch resistance fighters she met following the war.

As she stands at the edge of the stage, the director introduces her and concludes, Ladies and gentlemen, I present one of the finest young authors in the world. And, I hope, the screenwriter of what will be a compelling motion picture about her life to date.

He bows and exits the stage. Anne uses a delicate hand to adjust the microphone, and in fluent English with a Dutch lilt she says, "Thank you. I’d be honored to write the screenplay. I’ve been writing since I was a child and started my diary when only thirteen. I worked on it most days for the two years our family and four friends hid in the annex. We often argued in our crowded quarters but after D-Day in June 1944 we felt better listening to radio reports and pushing pins into our wall map to update the imminent invasion of Germany. I thought we’d soon be free until sirens shredded a peaceful August day and several