As long as the office staff hasn’t arrived, sounds travel more easily to the warehouse.
The door opens upstairs at eight-twenty, and this is followed by three gentle taps on the floor… Anne’s porridge. I clamber up the stairs to get my dog-bowl.
Back downstairs, everything has to be done quickly, quickly: I comb my hair, put away the potty, shove the bed back in place. Quiet! The clock is striking eight-thirty! Mrs van D. changes shoes and shuffles through the room in her slippers; Mr van D. too – a veritable Charlie Chaplin. All is quiet.
The ideal family scene has now reached its high point. I want to read or study and Margot does too. Father and Mother ditto. Father is sitting (with Dickens and the dictionary, of course) on the edge of the sagging, squeaky bed, which doesn’t even have a decent mattress. Two bolsters can be piled on top of each other. ‘I don’t need these,’ he thinks. ‘I can manage without them!’
Once he starts reading, he doesn’t look up. He laughs now and then and tries to get Mother to read a passage.
‘I don’t have the time right now!’
He looks disappointed, but then continues to read. A little while later, when he comes across another interesting bit, he tries again. ‘You have to read this, Mother!’
Mother sits on the folding bed, either reading, sewing, knitting or studying, whichever is next on her list. An idea suddenly occurs to her, and she quickly says, so as not to forget: ‘Anne, remember to… Margot, jot this down…’
After a while it’s quiet again. Margot slams her book shut; Father knits his forehead, his eyebrows forming a funny curve and his wrinkle of concentration reappearing at the back of his head, and he buries himself in his book again; Mother starts chatting with Margot; and I get curious and listen too. Pim is drawn into the conversation…
Nine o’clock. Breakfast!
Friday, 6 August 1943
* ‘When the Clock Strikes Half Past Eight’. Anne Frank wrote the title in German.
WHO ARE THE VILLAINS in this house? Real villains!
The van Daans!
What is it this time? Let me tell you.
The truth of the matter is that thanks to the indifference of the van Daans this house is crawling with fleas. For months we’ve been warning them, ‘Send your cat out to be sprayed!’ Their answer was always, ‘Our cat doesn’t have fleas!’
When the fleas had all too clearly been shown to exist and we all itched so much we couldn’t sleep, Peter – who simply felt sorry for the cat – went and had a look, and the fleas actually leapt up on to his face. He went to work, combing the cat with Mrs van D.’s fine-toothed comb, and brushing it with our one and only scrubbing brush. What was the result?
No fewer than a hundred fleas!
Mr Kleiman was consulted, and the next day the downstairs rooms of the Annexe were covered with a disgusting green powder. It didn’t do a whit of good. So then we tried a spray gun with a kind of flea Flit. Father, Dussel, Margot and I spent ages cleaning, mopping, scrubbing and spraying. The fleas had got into everything. We flitted everything in sight: clothes, blankets, floors, divans, every last nook and cranny.
Except upstairs and in Peter’s room. The van Daans didn’t think it was necessary. We insisted that they at least spray the clothing, bedding and chairs.
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