The Diary of a Young Girl (18 page)

Of course, Mother took Margot’s side; they always take each other’s sides. I’m so used to it that I’ve become completely indifferent to Mother’s rebukes and Margot’s moodiness. I love them, but only because they’re Mother and Margot. I don’t give a darn about them as people. As far as I’m concerned, they can go jump in a lake. It’s different with Father. When I see him being partial to Margot, approving Margot’s every action, praising her, hugging her, I feel a gnawing ache inside, because I’m crazy about him. I model myself after Father, and there’s no one in the world I love more. He doesn’t realize that he treats Margot differently than he does me: Margot just happens to be the smartest, the kindest, the prettiest and the best. But I have a right to be taken seriously too. I’ve always been the clown and mischief maker of the family; I’ve always had to pay double for my sins: once with scoldings and then again with my own sense of despair.
I’m no longer satisfied with the meaningless affection or the supposedly serious talks. I long for something from Father that he’s incapable of giving. I’m not jealous of Margot; I never have been. I’m not envious of her brains or her beauty. It’s just that I’d like to feel that Father really loves me, not because I’m his child, but because I’m me, Anne.

I cling to Father because my contempt of Mother is growing daily and it’s only through him that I’m able to retain the last ounce of family feeling I have left. He doesn’t understand that I sometimes need to vent my feelings for Mother. He doesn’t want to talk about it, and he avoids any discussion involving Mother’s failings.

And yet Mother, with all her shortcomings, is tougher for me to deal with. I don’t know how I should act. I can’t very well confront her with her carelessness, her sarcasm and her hard-heartedness, yet I can’t continue to take the blame for everything.

I’m the opposite of Mother, so of course we clash. I don’t mean to judge her; I don’t have that right. I’m simply looking at her as a mother. She’s not a mother to me—I have to mother myself. I’ve cut myself adrift from them. I’m charting my own course, and we’ll see where it leads me. I have no choice, because I can picture what a mother and a wife should be and can’t seem to find anything of the sort in the woman I’m supposed to call “Mother.”

I tell myself time and again to overlook Mother’s bad example. I only want to see her good points, and to look inside myself for what’s lacking in her. But it doesn’t work, and the worst part is that Father and Mother don’t realize their own inadequacies and how much I blame them for letting me down. Are there any parents who can make their children completely happy?

Sometimes I think God is trying to test me, both now and in the future. I’ll have to become a good person on my own, without anyone to serve as a model or advise me, but it’ll make me stronger in the end.

Who else but me is ever going to read these letters? Who else but me can I turn to for comfort? I’m frequently in need of consolation, I often feel weak, and more often than not, I fail to meet expectations. I know this, and every day I resolve to do better.

They aren’t consistent in their treatment of me. One day they say that Anne’s a sensible girl and entitled to know everything, and the next that Anne’s a silly goose who doesn’t know a thing and yet imagines she’s learned all she needs to know from books! I’m no longer the baby and spoiled little darling whose every deed can be laughed at. I have my own ideas, plans and ideals, but am unable to articulate them yet.

Oh well. So much comes into my head at night when I’m alone, or during the day when I’m obliged to put up with people I can’t abide or who invariably misinterpret my intentions. That’s why I always wind up coming back to my diary—I start there and end there because Kitty’s always patient. I promise her that, despite everything, I’ll keep going, that I’ll find my own way and choke back my tears. I only wish I could see some results or, just once, receive encouragement from someone who loves me.

Don’t condemn me, but think of me as a person who sometimes reaches the bursting point!

Yours, Anne

W
EDNESDAY
, N
OVEMBER
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 Pim 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

M
ONDAY EVENING
, N
OVEMBER
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 never come true.

I see the eight 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

T
HURSDAY
, N
OVEMBER
11, 1943

Dearest Kitty
,

I have a good title for this chapter:

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 newspaper, 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

W
EDNESDAY
, N
OVEMBER
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 promises, which he never manages to keep.