Dear Kitty Kleiman is back again, thank goodness! He still looks rather pale but in spite of this sets out cheerfully to sell clothes for van Daan. It is an unpleasant fact that the van Daans have run right out of money. Mrs. van Daan won’t part with a thing from her pile of coats, dresses, and shoes. Mr.
Van Dann’s suit isn’t easily disposed of, because he wants too much for it.
The end of the story is not yet in sight. Mrs. van Daan will certainly have to part with her fur coat. They’ve had a terrific row upstairs about it, and now the reconciliation period of ‘Oh, darling Putti’ and ‘precious Kerli’ has set in.
I am dazed by all the abusive exchanges that have taken place in this virtuous house during the past month. Daddy goes about with his lips tightly pursed; when anyone speaks to him, he looks up startled, as if he is afraid he will have to patch up some tricky relationship again. Mummy has red patches on her cheeks from excitement. Margot complains of headaches. Mr. Dussel can’t sleep. Mrs. van Daan grouses the whole day and I’m going completely crazy! Quite honestly, I sometimes forget who we are quarrelling with and with whom we’ve made it up.
The only way to take one’s mind off it all is to study, and I do a lot of that.
Yours, Anne
Friday, 29 October, 1943
Dear Kitty, There have been resounding rows again between Mr. and Mrs. van Daan. It came about like this: as I have already told you, the van Daans are at the end of their money. One day, some time ago now, Kleiman spoke about a furrier with whom he was on good terms, this gave van Daan the
idea of selling his wife’s fur coat. It’s a fur coat made from rabbit skins, and she has worn it seventeen years. He got 325 guilders for it—an enormous sum. However, Mrs. van Daan wanted to keep the money to buy new clothes after the war, and it took some doing before Mr. Van Daan made it clear to her that the money was urgently needed for the household.
The yells and screams, stamping and abuse—you can’t possibly imagine it! It was frightening. My family stood at the bottom of the stairs, holding their breath, ready if necessary to drag them apart! All this shouting and weeping and nervous tension are so unsettling and such a strain, that in the evening I drop into my bed crying, thanking heaven that I sometimes have half an hour to myself.
Mr. Kleiman is away again; his stomach gives him no peace. He doesn’t even know whether it has stopped bleeding yet. For the first time, he was very down when he told us that he didn’t feel well and was going home.
All goes well with me on the whole, except that I have no appetite. I keep being told, “You don’t look at all well.” I must say that they are doing their very best to keep me up to the mark. Crape sugar, cod liver oil, yeast tablets, and calcium have all been lined up.
My nerves often get the better of me: it is especially on Sundays that I feel rotten. The atmosphere is so oppressive and sleepy and as heavy as lead. You don’t hear a single bird singing outside, and a morbid silence hangs everywhere, catching hold of me as if it will drag me down deep into an underworld.
At such times Daddy, Mummy, and Margot leave me cold. I wander from one room to another, downstairs and up again, feeling like a songbird whose wings have been clipped and who is hurling himself in utter darkness against the bars of his cage. “Go outside, laugh, and take a breath of fresh air,” a voice cries within me, but I don’t even wish to respond any more; I go and lie on the divan and sleep, to make the time pass more quickly, and the stillness and the terrible fear, because there is no way of killing them.
Yours, Anne
