monday, november 9, 1942

dearest kitty,

yesterday was peter's birthday, his sixteenth. i was upstairs by eight, and peter and i looked at his presents. he received a game of monopoly, a razor and a cigarette lighter. not that he smokes so much, not at all; it just looks so distinguished.

the biggest surprise came from mr. van daan, who reported at one that the english had landed in tunis, algiers, casablanca and oran.

"this is the beginning of the end," everyone was saying, but churchill, the british prime minister, who must have heard the same thing being repeated in england, declared, "this is not the end. it is not even the beginning of the end. but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." do you see the difference? however, there's reason for optimism. stalingrad, the russian city that has been under attack for three months, still hasn't fallen into german hands.

in the true spirit of the annex, i should talk to you about food. (i should explain that they're real gluttons up on the top floor.)

bread is delivered daily by a very nice baker, a friend of mr. kleiman's. of course, we don't have as much as we did at home, but it's enough. we also purchase ration books on the black market. the price keeps going up; it's already risen from 27 to 33 guilders. and that for mere sheets of printed paper!

to provide ourselves with a source of nutrition that will keep, aside from the hundred cans of food we've stored here, we bought three hundred pounds of beans. not just for us, but for the office staff as well. we'd hung the sacks of beans on hooks in the hallway, just inside our secret entrance, but a few seams split under the weight. so we decided to move them to the attic, and peter was entrusted with the heavy lifting. he managed to get five of the six sacks upstairs intact and was busy with the last one when the sack broke and a flood, or rather a hailstorm, of brown beans went flying through the air and down the stairs. since there were about fifty pounds of beans in that sack, it made enough noise to raise the dead. downstairs they were sure the house was falling down around their heads. peter was stunned, but then burst into peals of laughter when he saw me standing at the bottom of the stairs, like an island in a sea of brown, with waves of beans lapping at my ankles. we promptly began picking them up, but beans are so small and slippery that they roll into every conceivable corner and hole. now each time we go upstairs, we bend over and hunt around so we can present mrs. van daan with a handful of beans.

i almost forgot to mention that father has recovered from his illness.

yours, anne

p.s. the radio has just announced that algiers has fallen. morocco, casablanca and oran have been in english hands for several days. we're now waiting for tunis.