WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1943
Dearest Kitty,
To take our minds off matters as well as to develop them, Father ordered a
catalog from a correspondence school. Margot pored through the thick
brochure three times without finding anything to her liking and within her
budget. Father was easier to satisfy and decided to write and ask for a trial
lesson in “Elementary Latin.” No sooner said than done. The lesson arrived,
Margot set to work enthusiastically and decided to take the course, despite
the expense. It’s much too hard for me, though I’d really like to learn Latin.
To give me a new project as well, Father asked Mr. Kleiman for a children’s
Bible so I could finally learn something about the New Testament.
“Are you planning to give Anne a Bible for Hanukkah?”
Margot asked, somewhat perturbed.
“Yes. . . Well, maybe St. Nicholas Day would be a better occasion,” Father
replied.
Jesus and Hanukkah don’t exactly go together.
Since the vacuum cleaner’s broken, I have to take an old brush to the rug
every night. The window’s closed, the light’s on, the stove’s burning, and
there I am brushing away at the rug. “That’s sure to be a problem,” I thought
to myself the first time. “There’re bound to be complaints.” I was right:
Mother got a headache from the thick clouds of dust whirling around the
room, Margot’s new Latin dictionary was caked with dirt, and rim grumbled
that the floor didn’t look any different anyway. Small thanks for my pains.
We’ve decided that from now on the stove is going to be lit at seven-thirty on
Sunday mornings instead of five-thirty. I think it’s risky. What will the
neighbors think of our smoking chimney?
It’s the same with the curtains. Ever since we first went into hiding, they’ve
been tacked firmly to the windows.
Sometimes one of the ladies or gentlemen can’t resist the urge to peek
outside. The result: a storm of reproaches. The response: “Oh, nobody will
notice.” That’s how every act of carelessness begins and ends. No one will
notice, no one will hear, no one will pay the least bit of attention. Easy to say,
but is it true?
At the moment, the tempestuous quarrels have subsided; only Dussel and the
van Daans are still at loggerheads. When Dussel is talking about Mrs. van D.,
he invariably calls her’
‘that old bat” or “that stupid hag,” and conversely, Mrs. van D. refers to our
ever so learned gentleman as an “old maid”
or a “touchy neurotic spinster, etc.
The pot calling the kettle black!
Yours, Anne
MONDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 8,1943
Dearest Kitty,
If you were to read all my letters in one sitting, you’d be struck by the fact
that they were written in a variety of moods. It annoys me to be so dependent
on the moods here in the Annex, but I’m not the only one: we’re all subject to
them. If I’m engrossed in a book, I have to rearrange my thoughts before I can
mingle with other people, because otherwise they might think I was strange.
As you can see, I’m currently in the middle of a depression. I couldn’t really
tell you what set it off, but I think it stems from my cowardice, which
confronts me at every turn. This evening, when Bep was still here, the
doorbell rang long and loud. I instantly turned white, my stomach churned,
and my heart beat wildly — and all because I was afraid.
At night in bed I see myself alone in a dungeon, without Father and Mother.
Or I’m roaming the streets, or the Annex is on fire, or they come in the
middle of the night to take us away and I crawl under my bed in desperation.
I see everything as if it were actually taking place. And to think it might all
happen soon!
Miep often says she envies us because we have such peace and quiet here.
That may be true, but she’s obviously not thinking about our fear.
I simply can’t imagine the world will ever be normal again for us. I do talk
about “after the war,” but it’s as if I were talking about a castle in the air,
something that can Ii never come true.
I see the ei ght of us in the Annex as if we were a patch of blue sky
surrounded by menacing black clouds. The perfectly round spot on which
we’re standing is still safe, but the clouds are moving in on us, and the ring
between us and the approaching danger is being pulled tighter and tighter.
We’re surrounded by darkness and danger, and in our desperate search for a
way out we keep bumping into each other. We look at the fighting down
below and the peace and beauty up above. In the meantime, we’ve been cut
off by the dark mass of clouds, so that we can go neither up nor down.
It looms before us like an impenetrable wall, trying to crush us, but not yet
able to. I can only cry out and implore, “Oh, ring, ring, open wide and let us
out!”
Yours, Anne
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1943
Dearest Kitty,
I have a good title for this chapter:
Ode to My Fountain Pen
In Memoriam
My fountain pen was always one of my most prized possessions; I valued it
highly, especially because it had a thick nib, and I can only write neatly with
thick nibs. It has led a long and interesting fountain-pen life, which I will
summarize below.
When I was nine, my fountain pen (packed in cotton) arrived as a “sample of
no commercial value” all the way from Aachen, where my grandmother (the
kindly donor) used to live.
I lay in bed with the flu, while the February winds howled around the
apartment house. This splendid fountain pen came in a red leather case, and I
showed it to my girlfriends the first chance I got. Me, Anne Frank, the proud
owner of a fountain pen.
When I was ten, I was allowed to take the pen to school, and to my surprise,
the teacher even let me write with it.
When I was eleven, however, my treasure had to be tucked away again,
because my sixth-grade teacher allowed us to use only school pens and
inkpots. When I was twelve, I started at the Jewish Lyceum and my fountain
pen was given a new case in honor of the occasion. Not only did it have room
for a pencil, it also had a zipper, which was much more impressive.
When I was thirteen, the fountain pen went with me to the Annex, and
together we’ve raced through countless diaries and compositions. I’d turned
fourteen and my fountain pen was enjoying the last year of its life with me
when . . .
It was just after five on Friday afternoon. I came out of my room and was
about to sit down at the table to write when I was roughly pushed to one side
to make room for Margot and Father, who wanted to practice their Latin. The
fountain pen remained unused on the table, while its owner, sighing, was
forced to make do with a very tiny corner of the table, where she began
rubbing beans. That’s how we remove mold from the beans and restore them
to their original state. At a quarter to six I swept the floor, dumped the dirt
into a news paper, along with the rotten beans, and tossed it into the stove. A
giant flame shot up, and I thought it was wonderful that the stove, which had
been gasping its last breath, had made such a miraculous recovery.
All was quiet again. The Latin students had left, and I sat down at the table to
pick up where I’d left off. But no matter where I looked, my fountain pen was
nowhere in sight.
I took another look. Margot looked, Mother looked, Father looked, Dussel
looked. But it had vanished.
“Maybe it fell in the stove, along with the beans!” Margot suggested.
“No, it couldn’t have!” I replied.
But that evening, when my fountain pen still hadn’t turned up, we all assumed
it had been burned, especially because celluloid is highly inflammable. Our
darkest fears were confirmed the next day when Father went to empty the
stove and discovered the clip, used to fasten it to a pocket, among the ashes.
Not a trace of the gold nib was left. “It must have melted into stone,” Father
conjectured.
I’m left with one consolation, small though it may be: my fountain pen was
cremated, just as I would like to be someday!
Yours, Anne
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1943
Dearest Kitty,
Recent events have the house rocking on its foundations.
Owing to an outbreak of diphtheria at Bep’s, she won’t be allowed to come in
contact with us for six weeks. Without her, the cooking and shopping will be
very difficult, not to mention how much we’ll miss her company. Mr.
Kleiman is still in bed and has eaten nothing but gruel for three weeks. Mr.
Kugler is up to his neck in work.
Margot sends her Latin lessons to a teacher, who corrects and then returns
them. She’s registered under Bep’s name. The teacher’s very nice, and witty
too. I bet he’s glad to have such a smart student.
Dussel is in a turmoil and we don’t know why. It all began with Dussel’s
saying nothing when he was upstairs; he didn’t exchange so much as a word
with either Mr. or Mrs. van Daan.
We all noticed it. This went on for a few days, and then Mother took the
opportunity to warn him about Mrs. van D., who could make life miserable
for him. Dussel said Mr. van Daan had started the silent treatment and he had
no intention of breaking it. I should explain that yesterday was November 16,
the first anniversary of his living in the Annex. Mother received a plant in
honor of the occasion, but Mrs. van Daan, who had alluded to the date for
weeks and made no bones about the fact that she thought Dussel should treat
us to dinner, received nothing. Instead of making use of the opportunity to
thank us — for the first time — for unselfishly taking him in, he didn’t utter a
word. And on the morning of the sixteenth, when I asked him whether I
should offer him my congratulations or my condolences, he replied that either
one would do. Mother, having cast herself in the role of peacemaker, made
no headway whatsoever, and the situation finally ended in a draw.
I can say without exaggeration that Dussel has definitely got a screw loose.
We often laugh to ourselves because he has no memory, no fixed opinions
and no common sense. He’s amused us more than once by trying to pass on
the news he’s just heard, since the message invariably gets garbled in
transmission. Furthermore, he answers every reproach or accusation with a
load of fine 1 promises, which he never manages to keep.
“Der Mann hat einen grossen Geist
Una ist so klein van Taten!”*
[*A well-known expression:
“The spirit of the man is great,
How puny are his deeds.”
Yours, Anne
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1943
Dearest Kitty,
Last night, just as I was falling asleep, Hanneli suddenly appeared before me.
I saw her there, dressed in rags, her face thin and worn.
She looked at me with such sadness and reproach in her enormous eyes that I
could read the message in them: “Oh, Anne, why have you deserted me? Help
me, help me, rescue me from this hell!”
And I can’t help her. I can only stand by and watch while other people suffer
and die. All I can do is pray to God to bring her back to us. I saw Hanneli,
and no one else, and I understood why. I misjudged her, wasn’t mature
enough to understand how difficult it was for her. She was devoted to her
girlfriend, and it must have seemed as though I were trying to take her away.
The poor thing, she must have felt awful! I know, because I recognize the
feeling in myself! I had an occasional flash of understanding, but then got
selfishly wrapped up again in my own problems and pleasures.
It was mean of me to treat her that way, and now she was looking at me, oh
so helplessly, with her pale face and beseeching eyes. If only I could help
her! Dear God, I have everything I could wish for, while fate has her in its
deadly clutches. She was as devout as I am, maybe even more so, and she too
wanted to do what was right. But then why have I been chosen to live, while
she’s probably going to die? What’s the difference between us? Why are we
now so far apart?
To be honest, I hadn’t thought of her for months — no, for at least a year. I
hadn’t forgotten her entirely, and yet it wasn’t until I saw her before me that I
thought of all her suffering.
Oh, Hanneli, I hope that if you live to the end of the war and return to us, I’ll
be able to take you in and make up for the wrong I’ve done you.
But even if I were ever in a position to help, she wouldn’t need it more than
she does now. I wonder if she ever thinks of me, and what she’s feeling?
Merciful God, comfort her, so that at least she won’t be alone. Oh, if only
You could tell her I’m thinking of her with compassion and love, it might
help her go on.
I’ve got to stop dwelling on this. It won’t get me anywhere. I keep seeing her
enormous eyes, and they haunt me.
Does Hanneli really and truly believe in God, or has religion merely been
foisted upon her? I don’t even know that. I never took the trouble to ask.
Hanneli, Hanneli, if only I could take you away, if only I could share
everything I have with you. It’s too late. I can’t help, or undo the wrong I’ve
done. But I’ll never forget her again and I’ll always pray for her!
Yours, Anne