friday, april 14, 1944

dear kitty,

everyone here is still very tense. pim has nearly reached the bothng point; mrs. van d. is lying in bed with a cold, grumbling; mr. van d. is growing pale without his cigarettes; dussel, who's having to give up many of his comforts, is carping at everyone; etc., etc. we seem to have run out of luck lately. the toilet's leaking, and the faucet's stuck. thanks to our many connections, we'll soon be able to get these repaired.

i'm occasionally sentimental, as you know, but from time to time i have reason to be: when peter and i are sitting close together on a hard wooden crate among the junk and dust, our arms around each other's shoulders, peter toying with a lock of my hair; when the birds outside are trilling their songs, when the trees are in bud, when the sun beckons and the sky is so blue--oh, that's when i wish for so much!

all i see around me are dissatisfied and grumpy faces, all i hear are sighs and stifled complaints. you'd think our lives had taken a sudden turn for the worse. honestly, things are only as bad as you make them. here in the annex no one even bothers to set a good example. we each have to figure out how to get the better of our own moods!

every day you hear, "if only it were all over!"

work, love, courage and hope, make me good and help me cope!

i really believe, kit, that i'm a little nutty today, and i don't know why. my writing's all mixed up, i'm jump- ing from one thing to another, and sometimes i seriously doubt whether anyone will ever be interested in this drivel. they'll probably call it "the musings of an ugly duckling." my diaries certainly won't be of much use to mr. bolkestein or mr. gerbrandy.* [* gerrit bolkestein was the minister of education and pieter gerbrandy was the prime minister of the dutch government in exile in london. see anne's letter of march 29, 1944.]

yours, anne m. fran

k