Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex Read Free Page B

that the children aren’t doing enough. But you know perfectly well that when Margot doesn’t help out, Anne does, and vice versa. Peter never helps out as it is. You don’t think it’s necessary. Well, then, I don’t think it’s necessary for the girls to help either!’
    Mr van D. yelped, Mrs van D. yipped, Dussel shushed and Mother shouted. It was a hellish scene, and there was poor little me watching as our supposedly wise ‘elders and betters’ literally fought it out.
    The words flew thick and fast. Mrs van D. accused Dussel of playing one off against the other (I quite agree), Mr van D. spouted off at Mother, about the communal chores, about how much work he did and how we should actually feel sorry for him. Then he suddenly yelled, ‘It’d be better for the children if they helped out here a little more, instead of sitting around all day with their noses in a book. Girls don’t need that much education anyway!’ (Enlightened, eh?) Mother, having calmed down a little, declared that she didn’t feel sorry for Mr van Daan in the slightest.
    Then he started in again. ‘Why don’t the girls ever carry potatoes upstairs, why don’t they ever haul hot water? They aren’t that weak, are they?’
    ‘You’re crazy!’ Mother suddenly exclaimed. I was actually pretty startled. I didn’t think she’d dare.
    The rest is relatively unimportant. It all boiled down to the same thing: Margot and I were supposed tobecome housemaids in Villa Annexe. In this case we might as well use the not-so-polite expression ‘stuff it’, since it’s never going to happen anyway.
    Mr van Daan also had the nerve to say that the washing up, which Margot’s done every morning and every evening for the last year, doesn’t count.
    When Father heard what had happened, he wanted to rush upstairs and give Mr van D. a piece of his mind, but Mother thought it better to inform Mr van D. that if everyone had to fend for themselves, they’d also have to live on their own money.
     
    My conclusion is this: The whole business is typical of the van Daans. Always rubbing salt into old wounds. If Father weren’t much too nice to people like them, he could remind them in no uncertain terms that without us and the others they’d literally be facing death. In a labour camp you have to do a whole lot more than peel potatoes…or look for cat fleas!
     
    Wednesday, 4 August 1943

Evenings and Nights in the Annexe
    J UST BEFORE NINE in the evening : Bedtime always begins in the Annexe with an enormous hustle and bustle. Chairs are shifted, beds pulled out, blankets unfolded – nothing stays where it is during the daytime. I sleep on a small divan, which is only five feet long, so we have to add a few chairs to make it longer. Eiderdown, sheets, pillow, blankets: everything has to be removed from Dussel’s bed, where it’s kept during the day.
    In the next room there’s a terrible creaking: that’s Margot’s folding bed being set up. More blankets and pillows, anything to make the wooden slats a bit more comfortable. Upstairs it sounds like bombs are falling, but it’s only Mrs van D.’s bed being shoved against the window so that Her Majesty, arrayed in her pink bed jacket, can sniff the night air through her delicate little nostrils.
    Nine o’clock : After Peter’s finished, it’s my turn for the bathroom. I wash myself from head to toe, and more often than not I find a tiny flea floating in the sink (only duringthe hot months, weeks or days). I brush my teeth, curl my hair, manicure my nails and dab peroxide on my upper lip – all this in less than half an hour.
    Nine-thirty : I throw on my dressing-gown. With soap in one hand, and potty, hairpins, knickers, curlers and cotton wool in the other, I hurry out of the bathroom. The next in line invariably calls me back to remove the gracefully curved but unsightly hairs that I’ve left in the sink.
    Ten o’clock : Time to put up the black-out screen and say good-night. For the next