Mr. Dussel: “I must get my task for today, everything must be finished on time. Political situation ‘out schtanding’ and it is ‘eempossible’ that we’ll be caught.”
Yours, Anne
Thursday, 16 March, 1944
Dear Kitty, Phew! Oh dear, oh dear—released from the sombre scenes for a moment! Today I hear nothing but ‘if this or that should happen, we are going to be in difficulty... if he or she should become ill, we’ll be completely isolated, and then if...’ I expect you know the rest, at least I presume you know the Secret Annexers well enough by this time to be able to guess the trend of their conversations.
The reason for all this ‘if, if’ is that Mr. Kugler has been called up to go digging. Bep has a streaming cold and will probably have to stay at home tomorrow. Miep hasn’t fully recovered from her flu yet, and Kleiman has had such bad hemorrhage of the stomach that he lost consciousness. What a tale of woe!
The warehouse people are getting a free day tomorrow, Bep may stay at home, then the door will remain locked and we shall have to be as quiet as mice, so that the neighbours don’t hear us. Jan is coming to visit the deserted ones at 1 o’clock; playing the role of zookeeper, as it were. For the first time in ages he told us something about the great wide world this afternoon. You should have seen the eight of us sitting around him, it looked exactly like a picture of Grandmother telling a story. He talked nineteen to the dozen to his grateful audience about food, of course, and then Miep’s doctor, and everything that we asked about. “Doctor,” he said, “don’t talk to me about the doctor! I rang him up this morning, had his
