چهارشنبه سوم نوامبر 1943

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