wednesday, november 17, 1943

dearest kitty,

recent events have the house rocking on its foundations. owing to an outbreak of diphtheria at bep's, she won't be allowed to come in contact with us for six weeks. without her, the cooking and shopping will be very difficult, not to mention how much we'll miss her company. mr. kleiman is still in bed and has eaten nothing but gruel for three weeks. mr. kugler is up to his neck in work.

margot sends her latin lessons to a teacher, who corrects and then returns them. she's registered under bep's name. the teacher's very nice, and witty too. i bet he's glad to have such a smart student.

dussel is in a turmoil and we don't know why. it all began with dussel's saying nothing when he was upstairs; he didn't exchange so much as a word with either mr. or mrs. van daan. we all noticed it. this went on for a few days, and then mother took the opportunity to warn him about mrs. van d., who could make life miserable for him. dussel said mr. van daan had started the silent treatment and he had no intention of breaking it. i should explain that yesterday was november 16, the first anniversary of his living in the annex. mother received a plant in honor of the occasion, but mrs. van daan, who had alluded to the date for weeks and made no bones about the fact that she thought dussel should treat us to dinner, received nothing. instead of making use of the opportunity to thank us -- for the first time -- for unselfishly taking him in, he didn't utter a word. and on the morning of the sixteenth, when i asked him whether i should offer him my congratulations or my condolences, he replied that either one would do. mother, having cast herself in the role of peacemaker, made no headway whatsoever, and the situation finally ended in a draw.

i can say without exaggeration that dussel has definitely got a screw loose. we often laugh to ourselves because he has no memory, no fixed opinions and no common sense. he's amused us more than once by trying to pass on the news he's just heard, since the message invariably gets garbled in transmission. furthermore, he answers every reproach or accusation with a load of fine 1 promises, which he never manages to keep.

"der mann hat einen grossen geist una ist so klein van taten!"*

[*a well-known expression: "the spirit of the man is great, how puny are his deeds."

yours, anne