Mrs. van Pels is always saying the most ridiculous things, and her Putti is often exasperated. But that’s not surprising, because one day Kerli announces, “When this is all over, I’m going to have myself baptized” and the next, “As long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to go to Jerusalem. I only feel at home with other Jews!”
Time is measured in increments of fifteen minutes, punctuated by the Westerkerk’s bell tower. Fifteen minutes, followed by another fifteen minutes, followed by another, until hours pass into days and then weeks and months of dull routine, peeling bad potatoes, shelling peas, enduring the murky stink of confinement, the airless rooms, the plumbing problems, and, sometimes worst of all, enduring the burden of one another’s company. She’s often so very bored, even with herself. She apologizes to Kitty for all the “dreary chitchat” as her pen scratches across the page of her diary.
Mr. Pfeffer makes up everything as he goes along, and anyone wishing to contradict His Majesty had better think twice. In Fritz Pfeffer’s home his word is law, but that doesn’t suit Anne Frank in the least.
Meanwhile the war is heavily pitched around them. Allied bombers roar above their heads almost nightly, accompanied by the drumbeat of Boche flak guns. Last week the RAF dropped three hundred tons of bombs on Ijmuiden. Three hundred tons! British planes droned above them for an hour or more on their way to their target. But this Sunday there’s a break in the war’s thunder. It’s a quiet afternoon, and Anne and Margot have escaped the confines of their onderduikers’ hideaway and slipped down to their father’s private office to address the mounds of uncompleted office paperwork. There are no workmen in the building to hear them on a Sunday, so they can chat as they sort through the piles of business ephemera.
“It’s a way to keep busy,” Pim explains, “only a bit of clerical labor. I think it’s the very least we can do for our helpers, don’t you? Give Miep and Bep a head start on their work? Without them where would we be?”
Well, how can the girls possibly complain once Pim puts it like that? It is the women in her father’s office who’ve taken on the role of daily helpers. Miep and Bep. Of course, Pim’s good Dutch business partners, Mr. Kugler and Mr. Kleiman, manage the affairs of commerce to keep money in the coffers. But as far as managing the shopping, finessing the ration coupons, negotiating transactions with reliable grocers and butchers, and then lugging it all through the streets and up the steep, ankle-twisting Dutch steps, that is the women. It is the women who find a sweater or a skirt for Margot and Anne as they outgrow their clothes. It is the women who scrounge bits of soap or a container of tooth powder, who order correspondence courses to relieve boredom, who remember flowers on birthdays, who raise spirits and dispense hope.
So to help them out, these women who risk their lives daily caring for those in hiding? How could Anne argue? She can’t. And even though she’d suffered through another bad headache in the morning, she joins Margot filing sales receipts from Pectacon. Boring. She’d rather be studying her French or her English. She’d rather be reading that biography of Catherine the Great. She’d rather be playing cards or teasing Peter, who maybe isn’t quite the dunderhead she’d first thought him to be and who actually has a very sweet smile. But this morning none of that is available to her. Only clerical drudgery, though at least it’s a break from the bickering of the adults. Mummy and Mrs. van Pels are at war again, this time over whose dishes are being chipped by whose careless handling.
“Do you think Peter is handsome?” Anne asks. She has decided on a tone of idle curiosity for this question, as she has nothing at all invested in the answer. Do you think the moon might be made of green cheese, she might be asking, or do you think Peter van Pels might be handsome?
“Handsome?” Margot gives her head a slight toss. “I suppose he’s not so bad-looking. He’s certainly strong,” she says.
“But do you think he’s . . . I don’t know. Peculiar?”
“I think he’s shy,” says Margot, stapling a stack of papers together. The ka-thunk of the stapler punctuates her reply. “But why are you asking my opinion?”
A sideways glance. “Why? Why not?”
“I don’t know. You’re the one who likes him.”
Anne stiffens. “And what is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you like him.”
“I never said any such thing.”
“Oh, please. You don’t have to.”
Anne swallows a breath of panic. Is it that obvious? “All I wanted to know—all I asked—is do you think he’s peculiar?”
“Yes, a bit. But so are you.” Margot grins.
“Ha, ha,” says Anne. “My sister is so humorous.”
“And I do think he’s handsome. In a peculiar way.”
Silence for a moment. Anne turns several of the invoices over in her hand. “So you’re not interested, are you?”
“Interested in what?”
“You know what.” She grabs the stapler and ka-thunks it down onto the corner of a stack. “In Peter,” she says.
At this, Margot adjusts her glasses, pressing her fingers against the sides of the frames as she considers her options. “Well . . . now that you mention it. I suppose he is the only boy available. . . .”
Anne’s voice drops. “Are you teasing me?”
“Pfftt. Of course I’m teasing you. How could I possibly be interested in Peter van Pels? I’m a year older than him.”
“So?”
“So the girl can’t be older than the boy. It doesn’t work.”
“But the girl can be younger than the boy. That’s what you’re saying?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Anne. Yes, that’s what I’m saying. You have my permission.”
“I didn’t ask for your permission. Your permission to do what?”
“To pursue Peter if that’s what you want.”
Anne pretends some small interest in the carbon copies of customer orders. “Mummy says it’s unladylike for a girl to pursue a boy.”
Margot is frowning over her work. “And since when have you cared about what Mummy says? Since when have you cared about anybody and their opinions, other than yourself and your own?”
Anne frowns, too. She keeps her faux attention glued to the pile of papers, but her eyes have gone damp. “That hurt my feelings,” she says.
Margot looks up, distracted.
“I do have feelings, you know, Margot. I know that everyone likes to think the opposite, but I do have feelings.”
Margot’s face clears. “I’m sorry,” she tells Anne in a simple tone. “You’re right. That was a hurtful thing to say.”
Anne shrugs and wipes her eyes. “Anyway. May we change the subject?”
“Up to you,” Margot replies, getting up to address the filing cabinet.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s going to happen once the war’s over,” Anne announces. “And I’ve decided what I’m going to do.”
Margot does not look up from her work at the filing cabinet. “Have you, now?”
“Yes,” Anne confirms.
“And?” Margot pauses to examine the paper in her hand before slotting it into place. “What’s the big surprise going to be?”
“I’m going to be a famous writer.”
Now a glance. “A famous writer?” her sister repeats.