'What doctor? I called him this morning and got his secretary on the line. I asked for a flu prescription and was told I could come pick it up tomor- row morning between eight and nine. If you've got a particularly bad case of flu, the doctor himself comes to the phone and says, 'Stick out your tongue and say 'Aah.' Oh, I can hear it, your throat's infected. I'll write out a prescription and you can bring it to the phar- macy. Good day.' And that's that. Easy job he's got, diagnosis by phone. But I shouldn't blame the doctors.' After all, a person has only two hands, and these days there're too many patients and too few doctors.'
Still, we all had a good laugh at Jan's phone call. I can just imagine what a doctor's waiting room looks like these days. Doctors no longer turn up their noses at the poorer patients, but at those with minor illnesses. 'Hey, what are you doing here?' they think. 'Go to the end of the line; real patients have priority!'
Yours, Anne
THURSDAY, MARCH 16, 1944
Dearest Kitty,
The weather is gorgeous, indescribably beautiful; I'll be going up to the attic in a moment.
I now know why I'm so much more restless than Peter. He has his own room, where he can work, dream, think and sleep. I'm constantly being chased from one corner to another. I'm never alone in the room I share with Dussel, though I long to be so much. That's another reason I take refuge in the attic. When I'm there, or with you, I can be myself, at least for a little while. Still, I don't want to moan and groan. On the contrary, I want to be brave! Thank goodness the others notice nothing of my innermost feelings, except that every day I'm growing cooler and more contemptuous of Mother, less affectionate to Father and less willing to share a single thought with Margot; I'm closed up tighter than a drum. Above all, I have to maintain my air of confidence. No one must know that my heart and mind are constantly at war with each other. Up to now reason has always won the battle, but will my emotions get the upper hand? Sometimes I fear they will, but more often I actually hope they do!
Oh, it's so terribly hard not to talk to Peter about these things, but I know I have to let him begin; it's so hard to act during the daytime as if everything I've said and done in my dreams had never taken place! Kitty, Anne is crazy, but then these are crazy times and even crazier circumstances.
The nicest part is being able to write down all my thoughts and feelings; otherwise, I'd absolutely suffocate. I wonder what Peter thinks about all these things? I keep thinking I'll be able to talk to him about them one day. He must have guessed something about the inner me, since he couldn't possibly love the outer Anne he's known so far! How could someone like Peter, who loves peace and quiet, possibly stand my bustle and noise? Will he be the first and only person to see what's beneath my granite mask? Will it take him long? Isn't there some old saying about love being akin to pity? Isn't that what's happening here as well? Because I often pity him as much as I do myself!
I honestly don't know how to begin, I really don't, so how can I expect Peter to when talking is so much harder for him? If only I could write to him, then at least he'd know what I was trying to say, since it's so hard to say it out loud!
Yours, Anne M. Frank
FRIDAY, MARCH 17, 1944
My dearest darling,
Everything turned out all right after all; Bep just had a sore throat, not the flu, and Mr. Kugler got a medical certificate to excuse him from the work detail. The entire Annex breathed a huge sigh of relief. Everything's fine here! Except that Margot and I are rather tired of our parents.
Don't get me wrong. I still love Father as much as ever and Margot loves both Father and Mother, but when you're as old as we are, you want to make a few decisions for yourself, get out from under their thumb. Whenever I go upstairs, they ask what I'm going to do, they won't let me salt my food, Mother asks me every evening at eight-fifteen if it isn't time for me to change into my nighty, I and they have to approve every book I read. I must admit, they're not at all strict about that and let me read nearly everything, but Margot and I are sick and tired of having to listen to their comments and questions all day long.
There's something else that displeases them: I no longer feel like giving them little kisses morning, noon and night. All those cute nicknames seem so affected, and Father's fondness for talking about farting and going to the bathroom is disgusting. In short, I'd like nothing better than to do without their company for a while, and they don't understand that. Not that Margot and I have ever said any of this to them. What would be the point? They wouldn't understand anyway.
Margot said last night, 'What really bothers me is that if you happen to put your head in your hands and sigh once or twice, they immediately ask whether you have a headache or don't feel well.'
For both of us, it's been quite a blow to suddenly realize that very little remains of the close and harmoni- ous family we used to have at home! This is mostly because everything's out of kilter here. By that I mean that we're treated like children when it comes to external matters, while, inwardly, we're much older than other girls our age. Even though I'm only fourteen, I know what I want, I know who's right and who's wrong, I have my own opinions, ideas and principles, and though it may sound odd coming from a teenager, I feel I'm more of a person than a child-I feel I'm completely independent of others. I know I'm better at debating or carrying on a discussion than Mother, I know I'm more objective, I don't exaggerate as much, I'm much tidier and better with my hands, and because of that I feel (this may make you laugh) that I'm superior to her in many ways. To love someone, I have to admire and respect the person, but I feel neither respect nor admiration for Mother!
Everything would be all right if only I had Peter, since I admire him in many ways. He's so decent and clever!
Yours, Anne M. Frank
SATURDAY, MARCH 18, 1944
Dearest Kitty,
I've told you more about myself and my feelings than I've ever told a living soul, so why shouldn't that include sex?
Parents, and people in general, are very peculiar when it comes to sex. Instead of telling their sons and daughters everything at the age of twelve, they send the children out of the room the moment the subject arises and leave them to find out everything on their own. Later on, when parents notice that their children have, somehow, come by their information, they assume they know more (or less) than they actually do. So why don't they try to make amends by asking them what's what?
A major stumbling block for the adults-though in my opinion it's no more than a pebble-is that they're afraid their children will no longer look upon marriage as sacred and pure once they realize that, in most cases, this purity is a lot of nonsense. As far as I'm concerned, it's not wrong for a man to bring a little experience to a marriage. After all, it has nothing to do with the marriage itself, does it?
Soon after I turned eleven, they told me about menstruation. But even then, I had no idea where the blood came from or what it was for. When I was twelve and a half, I learned some more from Jacque, who wasn't as ignorant as I was. My own intuition told me what a man and a woman do when they're together; it seemed like a crazy idea at first, but when Jacque confirmed it, I was proud of myself for having figured it out!
It was also Jacque who told me that children didn't come out of their mother's tummies. As she put it, 'Where the ingredients go in is where the finished product comes out!' Jacque and I found out about the hymen, and quite a few other details, from a book on sex education. I also knew that you could keep from having children, but how that worked inside your body remained a mystery. When I came here, Father told me about prostitutes, etc., but all in all there are still unanswered questions.
If mothers don't tell their children everything, they hear it in bits and pieces, and that can't be right.
Even though it's Saturday, I'm not bored! That's because I've been up in the attic with Peter. I sat there dreaming with my eyes closed, and it was wonderful.
Yours, Anne M. Frank
SUNDAY, MARCH 19, 1944
Dearest Kitty,
Yesterday was a very important day for me. After lunch everything was as usual. At five I put on the potatoes, and Mother gave me some blood sausage to take to Peter. I didn't want to at first, but I finally went. He wouldn't accept the sausage, and I had the dreadful feel- ing it was still because of that argument we'd had about distrust. Suddenly I couldn't bear it a moment longer and my eyes filled with tears. Without another word, I re- turned the platter to Mother and went to the bathroom to have a good cry. Afterward I decided to talk things out with Peter. Before dinner the four of us were helping him with a crossword puzzle, so I couldn't say anything. But as we were sitting down to eat, I whispered to him, 'Are you going to practice your shorthand tonight, Peter?'
'No,' was his reply.
'I'd like to talk to you later on.'
He agreed.
After the dishes were done, I went to his room and asked if he'd refused the sausage because of our last quar- rel. Luckily, that wasn't the reason; he just thought it was bad manners to seem so eager. It had been very hot downstairs and my face was as red as a lobster. So after taking down some water for Margot, I went back up to get a little fresh air. For the sake of appearances, I first went and stood beside the van Daans' window before going to Peter's room. He was standing
