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Authors: Anne Frank
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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 begangoing 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
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 begangoing 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
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