When he’s sitting to the left of the ladder, there’s only about three feet between it and the wall. This is where he has his table, which is usually strewn with books like ours is (the steps also get the overflow), and a chair. On the other side of the ladder is his bicycle, suspended from the ceiling. This now useless form of transportation has been wrapped in brown paper, and a long extension cord dangles merrily from one of the pedals. To add the finishing touch to the interviewee’s work space, the light bulb above his head has been covered with the latest trend in lamp shades: cardboard decorated with strips of paper.
From where I’m standing in the doorway, I look to the opposite side of the room. Against the wall, i.e. across from Peter, behind the table, there’s a divan with a flowery blue counterpane; the bedding has been tucked behind the back-rest. There’s a lamp hanging above it, much like the one two feet away, as well as a hand mirror, and a bit further away, a bookcase filled from top to bottom with books that have been covered – with a boy’s typical disregard of elegance – with brown paper. To spruce things up even more (or because the owner has no other place to put it), there’s also a tool-box, where you’re sure to find whatever you’re looking for. Though it admittedly happened quite a while ago, I once found my favourite knife, which had long been missing, in the bottom of this very tool-box, and it wasn’t the first thing to find its way there.
Next to the bookcase is a wooden shelf, covered with paper that used to be white. Actually, this shelf was supposed to be for milk bottles and other kitchen items. But the youthful occupant’s treasury of books has expanded so rapidly that the shelf has been taken over by these learned tomes, and the various milk bottles have been relegated to the floor.
The third wall also has a small cabinet (a former cherry crate), where you can find a delightful collection of such things as a shaving brush, a razor, tape, laxatives, etc., etc. Beside it is the crowning glory of the van Daan family’s ingenuity: a cupboard made almost entirely out of cardboard, held together by only two or three support posts made of stronger material. This cupboard, which is filled with suits, coats, shoes, socks and so forth, has a really lovely curtain hanging in front of it, which Peter finally managed to get hold of after weeks of begging his mother. So much stuff is piled on top of the cupboard that I’ve never worked out exactly what’s there.
The rugs of Mr van Daan Junior are also worthy of note. Not only because his room has two large genuine Persian carpets and one small one, but because the colours are so striking that everyone who enters the room notices them right away. So the floorboards, which have to be negotiated with care since they’re rather loose and uneven, are adorned with these precious rugs.
Two of the walls have been covered in green burlap, while the other two have been lavishly plastered with film stars – some beautiful, others less so – and advertisements. You need to overlook the grease and burn marks, since, after one and a half years of living with so much junk, things are bound to get dirty.
The attic, hardly the height of comfort either, is like all the others round here, with old-fashioned beams, and since the roof leaks down via the attic into Peter’s room, several sheets of cardboard have been put up to keep out the rain. The many water stains show that it’s not the least bit effective.
I think I’ve been round the entire room now and have only forgotten the two chairs: number one is a brown chair with a perforated seat, and number two is an old white kitchen chair. Peter wanted to repaint it last year, but noticed when he was scraping off the old layer that it wasn’t such a good idea. So now the chair, with its partially stripped paint, its one and only rung (the other was used as a poker) and its more-black-than-white colour scheme, is not exactly presentable. But as I’ve already said, the room is dark, so the chair hardly sticks out. The door to the kitchen is festooned with aprons, and there are also a few hooks for the dusters and cleaning brush.
Now that Peter’s room has been dealt with, you should have no trouble picking out every item in it, except for the chief occupant himself, Peter. So I’d like to complete my assignment by turning to the owner of the glorious items catalogued above.
In Peter’s case, there’s a big difference between his weekday clothes and his Sunday best. On weekdays he wears overalls. In fact, you can say without hesitation that he and his overalls are inseparable, since he won’t allow them to be washed very often. The only reason I can think of is that he’s afraid his beloved garment will fall to pieces in the wash and have to be thrown out. At any rate, it was washed recently, which is how you can tell it’s blue. He also has a blue kerchief (another inseparable item) knotted round his neck, a thick brown leather belt round his waist, and white woollen socks, so that whether it’s a Monday, a Tuesday or any other day of the week, you can recognize Peter right away. On Sundays, however, his outfit undergoes a radical change. A nice suit, a nice pair of shoes, a shirt, a tie – well, there’s no need for me to list the rest, since we all know what decent clothes look like.
So much for his appearance. My opinion of Peter himself has changed drastically of late. I used to think he was stupid and boring. Now I think he’s neither of these, and everyone will agree when I say that he’s turned out to be quite nice.
I’m absolutely convinced that he’s honest and generous. He’s always been modest and helpful, but I have the feeling that he’s much more sensitive than people realize or would ever suspect.
One thing he’s fond of and which I absolutely mustn’t forget is the cats. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for Mouschi or Boche, and I think they compensate quite a lot for the love he needs but doesn’t get.
He isn’t afraid either – quite the opposite, in fact, without showing off like other boys of his age. Nor is he the least bit stupid. In particular, I think he has an excellent memory.
I hardly need to tell you that he’s handsome, since that’s obvious to everyone who knows him. He has terrific hair – thick, brown and curly – and bluish-grey eyes. As for his other features…well, describing faces has always been my weak point, so when the war’s over I’ll paste a picture of him in this book, along with pictures of the rest of us in hiding here, so that I won’t have to describe him further with my pen.
Tuesday, 22 February 1944
The Den of Iniquity
DON’T BE SHOCKED – I’m not planning to give examples to illustrate the above title. I only chose it because I ran across the phrase yesterday in a magazine that I was reading.
No doubt you’re wondering what it referred to, so I’ll explain. The ‘den of iniquity’ was used in the magazine (Cinema & Theater, no. 8) to refer to the use of nude models, which the reviewer apparently thought was indecent. Now, it’s certainly not my intention to argue that he’s wrong, but in my opinion Dutch people tend to frown on scanty dress.
This is known as prudishness. On the one hand, it can be good. On the other hand, if children are raised to think that even the slightest bit of bare skin is indecent, after a certain amount of time adolescents are bound to wonder, ‘Are they all stark raving mad?’
And I couldn’t agree more. Modesty and prudishness can be taken too far, which is certainly the case in the Netherlands. Actually, it’s quite paradoxical – just mention the word ‘naked’, and everyone will stare at you as if you’re the most depraved person in the world.
Don’t think I’m like those people who long for a return to the days of primitive societies, when everyone was walking around in animal skins. Not at all. Still, it would be more natural if we were a bit freer, a bit more casual.
And now I have a question for you. ‘Do you also put clothes on the flowers you’ve picked and refuse to talk about their delicate parts?’
I don’t think there’s a very big difference between people and nature, and since we’re also part of nature, why should we be ashamed of the way nature made us?
Tuesday, 22 February 1944
Happiness
BEFORE I BEGIN with the actual story, I need to give you
a brief rundown of my life so far.
I no longer have a mother (in fact I never knew her), and my father has little time for me. My mother died when I was two. My father farmed me out to a kindly couple who kept me for five years. When I was seven, I was sent to a kind of boarding school, where I stayed until I was fourteen. Luckily, I was allowed to leave then, and Father took me in. The two of us are lodgers now and I’m attending the Lyceum. Everything in my life was going normally until…well, until Jacques came along.
I met Jacques when he and his parents moved into the same lodgings. We ran into each other a few times on the stairs, then in the park, and after that we went for several walks in the woods together.
I thought he was a nice, easygoing type from the start. A bit shy and on the quiet side, but that’s exactly what attracted me to him in the first place. We gradually began going to places together, and now he often comes to my room, or I go to his.
Before I met Jacques, I’d never got to know a boy really well. So I was also surprised to find that he wasn’t a braggart or a show-off like the boys in my class all seemed to be.
I started to think about Jacques after first giving quite a bit of thought to myself. I knew that his parents argued all the time, and I assumed that it bothered him, because one of the first things you notice about him is his love of peace and quiet.
I’m by myself a lot, and I often feel sad and lonely. It probably comes from missing my mother so much and from never having had a real friend I could tell everything to. Jacques is just the same – he’s had only casual friends – and I had the feeling that he also needed to confide in someone. But I couldn’t find an appropriate moment, so we continued to talk about trivial things.
One day, however, he came to my room, supposedly to deliver a message. I was sitting on the floor on a cushion, and looking up at the sky.
‘Am I disturbing you?’ he asked softly.
‘Not at all,’ I replied, turning towards him. ‘Come and sit down. Do you also like to daydream sometimes?’
He went over to the window and leaned his forehead against the windowpane. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I do a lot of daydreaming. Do you know what I call it? Gazing into world history.’
Surprised, I looked at him. ‘That’s a perfect description of it. I’ll remember that.’
‘Yes,’ he said with that unusual smile of his, which always threw me, since I was never sure what he meant by it. We went back to talking about trivial matters, and after half an hour he left.
The next time he came to my room, I was sitting in the same spot and he went over to the window again. The weather was exceptionally beautiful that day – the sky was deep blue (we were up so high that we couldn’t see any houses, or at any rate I couldn’t from the floor), the bare branches of the chestnut tree in front of our house were covered with drops of dew that glinted in the sunlight as the branches swayed back and forth in the wind, seagulls and other birds flew past the window and chirping sounds were coming from every direction.
I don’t know why, but neither of us could say another word. There we were together in one room, fairly close, yet we hardly noticed each other’s presence. We just kept on gazing at the sky and talking to ourselves. I say ‘we’, because I’m convinced that he was feeling the same and was just as reluctant as I was to break the silence.
After about fifteen minutes of this, he was the first to speak. ‘When you see that,’ he said, ‘it seems crazy for people to argue all the time. Everything else becomes unimportant. And yet I don’t always feel this way!’
He looked at me, a little shyly, probably afraid I wouldn’t understand what he meant, but I was overjoyed that he expected an answer from me and that I could finally reveal my thoughts to someone who understood. So I replied: ‘Do you know what I always think? That it’s silly to argue with people you don’t care about. It’s different with people you do care about. You love them, so when they start an argument or do something to provoke a quarrel, it makes you feel more hurt than angry!’
‘Do you think so too? But you don’t get into very many arguments, do you?’
‘No, but enough to know what they’re like! Still, the worst thing of all is that most people are alone in the world!’
‘What do you mean by that?’ Jacques’s eyes were now fixed on mine, but I decided to continue; perhaps I might be able to help him.
‘I mean that most people, whether or not they’re married, are lonely inside. They have no one to talk to about their thoughts and emotions. That’s what I miss the most!’
All Jacques said was, ‘Me too.’ Then we went back to gazing at the sky for a while before he remarked, ‘Like you said, people who don’t have anyone to talk to are missing out on a lot – a whole lot. It’s knowing what I’m missing that often makes me feel so depressed.’
‘Well, you shouldn’t. Not that you shouldn’t feel depressed – after all, you can’t help that, but you shouldn’t feel miserable about something before it happens. Actually, what you’re hoping to find when you’re depressed is happiness. Even if you miss a lot because you have no one to talk to, once you’ve found your own inner happiness, you’ll never lose it. I don’t mean this in terms of material things, but in a spiritual sense. I believe that once your own inner happiness has been found, it might go underground for a while, but it will never be lost!’
‘So how did you find your happiness?’
I got to my feet. ‘Come with me,’ I said. And I led him up to the attic, where there was a little storage room with a window. Our house was taller than most, so that, once we’d reached the attic and were looking out of the window, we could see a large patch of sky.
‘Take a look,’ I said. ‘If you want to find inner happiness, go outside on a nice day with lots of sun and blue sky. Even if you stand at a window and look out over the city at the cloudless sky, like we’re doing now, you’ll eventually find happiness.
‘I’ll tell you how it happened to me. I was at boarding school. It had always been awful, but the older I got, the more awful it got. On one of my free afternoons, I went for a walk on the heath by myself. I sat down and daydreamed for a while, and when I looked up, I noticed that it was an exceptionally beautiful day. I hadn’t paid any attention to the weather up till then, because I’d been too wrapped up in my own troubles. But once I looked up and saw the beauty of my surroundings, that little voice inside me suddenly stopped itemizing the bad things. All I could do or think or feel was that it was beautiful, that it was the only real truth.
‘I must have sat there for half an hour. When I finally got up to go back to that hateful school, I was no longer depressed. On the contrary, I felt that everything was good and beautiful just the way it was.
‘Later on I understood that I had found my own inner happiness for the first time that afternoon. No matter what the circumstances are, that happiness will be with you always.’
‘Did it change you?’ he quietly asked.
‘Yes, in the sense that I felt a certain contentment. Not always, mind you. I moaned and groaned from time to time. But I was never downright depressed again, probably because I realized that sadness comes from feeling sorry for yourself and happiness from joy.’
I stopped talking and he kept looking out of the window, apparently lost in thought, because he didn’t say a word. Then he suddenly turned and looked at me. ‘I haven’t found happiness yet, but I have found something else – a person who understands me!’
I knew what he meant, and from that moment on I was no longer alone.
Sunday, 12 March 1944
Give!*
DO ANY OF those people in their warm and cosy living rooms have any idea what kind of life a beggar leads? Do any of those ‘good’ and ‘kind’ people ever wonder about the lives of so many of the children and adults around them? Granted, everyone has given a coin to a beggar at some time or another, though they usually just shove it into his hand and slam the door. And in most cases the generous donors think it’s disgusting t
o touch that hand! Am I right or not? Then, afterwards, people are amazed that beggars are so shameless! Wouldn’t you be shameless too if you were treated more like a dog than a human being?
It’s terrible, really terrible, that people treat each other this way in a country like Holland, which claims to have such a good social system and so many decent, upstanding citizens. In the eyes of most of the well-to-do, a beggar is an inferior being, somebody who’s scruffy and unwashed, pushy and rude. But have they ever asked themselves how beggars got to be that way?
You should try comparing one of those beggar children with your own children! What’s the difference? Yours are pretty and neat, the others are ugly and ragged! Is that all? Yes, that’s all, that’s the only difference. If you dressed one of those urchins in nice clothes and taught him good manners, there wouldn’t be a whit of difference!
Everyone is born equal; we all come into the world helpless and innocent. We all breathe the same air, and many of us believe in the same God. And yet…and yet, to many people this one small difference is a huge one! It’s huge because many people have never realized what the difference is, for if they had they would have discovered long ago that there’s actually no difference at all!
Everyone is born equal; we will all die and shed our earthly glory. Riches, power and fame last for only a few short years. Why do we cling so desperately to these fleeting things? Why can’t people who have more than enough for their own needs give the rest to their fellow human beings? Why should anyone have to have such a hard life for those few short years on earth?
But above all, a gift should never be flung in anyone’s face – every person has a right to kindness. Why should you be nicer to a rich lady than to a poor one? Has anyone ever studied the difference in their characters?