thursday, march 16, 1944

dearest kitty,

whew! released from the gloom and doom for a few moments! all i've been hearing today is: "if this and that happens, we're in trouble, and if so-and-so gets sick, we'll be left to fend for ourselves, and if . . ."

well, you know the rest, or at any rate i assume you're famthar enough with the residents of the annex to guess what they'd be talking about.

the reason for all the "ifs" is that mr. kugler has been called up for a six-day work detail, bep is down with a bad cold and will probably have to stay home tomorrow, miep hasn't gotten over her flu, and mr. kleiman's stom- ach bled so much he lost consciousness. what a tale of woe!

we think mr. kugler should go directly to a reliable doctor for a medical certificate of ill health, which he can present to the city hall in hilversum. the warehouse -- employees have been given a day off tomorrow, so bep will be alone in the office. if (there's another "if') bep has to stay home, the door will remain locked and we'll have to be as quiet as mice so the keg company won't hear us. at one o'clock jan will come for half an hour to check on us poor forsaken souls, like a zookeeper.

this afternoon, for the first time in ages, jan gave us some news of the outside world. you should have seen us gathered around him; it looked exactly like a print:

"at grandmother's knee."

he regaled his grateful audience with talk of-what else?-food. mrs. p., a friend of miep's, has been cooking his meals. the day before yesterday jan ate carrots with green peas, yesterday he had the leftovers, today she's cooking marrowfat peas, and tomorrow she's plan- ning to mash the remaining carrots with potatoes.

we asked about miep's doctor.

"doctor?" said jan. "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