"Frank, Anne - Tales From the Secret Annex" - читать интересную книгу автора (Frank Anne)

ANNE FRANK'S TALES FROM THE SECRET ANNEX

Anne Frank

With translations by Ralkph Manheim and Michel Mok

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BOOK FLAP

"To be interrupted just ast as you are thinking of a glorious future!"; this line from ANNE FRANK'S TALES FROM THE SECRET ANNEX fully describes the young girl's fate -- as she hid in an attic from a world that wanted her to pay for its past mistakes.

Anne Frank: Diary of A Young Girl was published in 1952 and gave her posthumous international recognition. What are less well known are the short storeis, fables, essays, and reminiscences which she kept in a separate journal. Here, for the first time in hardcover, are all of these "tales", including previously unpublished material and some of Anne's most ambitious writing. These new pieces, translated by the award-winning Ralph Manheim, add to o9ur sense of Anne as the personification of the human spirit's ability to live through hell, never bowing to petty and degrading forces.

Anne Frank's stories display a real gift. With sensitivity and intelligence, she came to grips in her imagination with a world of which she had no experience. While the question of what she could have given the world had she lived lingers on every page, her courage in showing us her "secret self" is in its way a partial, heartbreaking answer. With wisdom beyond her years, she used her imagination to give her mind the freedom her body was denied. As her diary was a view of human nature in captivity, her stories are a view of the human soul flying free.

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Editor's Note

This edition of Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex contains material appearing for the first time in hardcover: "Paula's Plane Trip," "Jackie," "Cady's LIfe," "The Flea," "The Battle of the Potatoes," "Villians!" "Sunday," and "Who Is Interesting?" These tales, as well as "Roomers or Subtenants," "The Porter's Family," and "The Sink of Iniquity" have been newly translated by Ralph Manheim. The other pieces in this collection have been translated by Michel Mok.

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FABLES AND SHORT STORIES

Kitty

August 7, 1943

Kitty is the girl next door. In fair weather, I can watch her playing in the yard through our window. Kitty has a wine-red velvet frock for Sundays and a cotton one for every day; she has pale-blond hair with tiny braids, and clear blue eyes.

Kitty has a sweet mother, but her father is dead. The mother is a laundress; sometimes she is gone during the day, cleaning other people's houses, and at night she does the wash for her customers.

Often she shakes out carpets late at night and hangs wash on the line. Kitty has six brothers and sisters. The smallest screams a lot and hangs onto the skirts of his eleven-year-old sister when Mother says, "Children, it's bedtime!"

Kitty has a small cat which is so black that it looks like a Moor. She takes good care of the kitten, and every eve- ning, before bedtime, you can hear her call, "Kitty, kitty, kitty!" That's how she came to be called Kitty, which may not be her name at all. She also has two rab- bits, a white one and a brown one, that hop up and down in the grass.

Sometimes Kitty is naughty, just like other children. This happens mostly when she quarrels with her brothers. It's a sight to see her fight with them-she beats, kicks, and even bites them, and the little boys respect their sturdy sister.

"There are errands to be done!" Mother calls. Quickly Kitty sticks her fingers in her ears, so that she'll be able to say that she didn't hear her mother. Kitty hates running errands, but she wouldn't lie to escape it; Kitty doesn't lie; you need only to look into her blue eyes to know that.

One of Kitty's brothers is sixteen and works as an office boy. This brother sometimes bosses the other children as if he were their father. Kitty doesn't dare to contradict him, for she knows from experience that he is quick with his fists and also that he doesn't mind standing treat if one obeys him. Peter is generous and Kitty loves sweets.

Sundays, when the bell tolls, Kitty's mother and all the children go to church. Kitty prays for her dear father, who is in heaven, and also for her mother, that she may have a long, long life. After church they all go for a walk. Kitty enjoys this a lot; she is fond of wandering through the park, or, better still, through the zoo. But that hap- pens only in September, when it costs a quarter.* [The Amsterdam Zoological Society is a membership organization. In the month of September, the public is admitted to the park for twenty-five Dutch cents - Trans.] Kitty's birthday is in September, and sometimes she asks for a trip to the zoo as a birthday gift. Other gifts her mother cannot afford.

Often Kitty comforts her mother who, after a day's hard work, weeps in the night. Then Kitty promises her Kitty all the things she, herself, would like to have when she is grown up. Kitty wants so badly to be grown up, to earn money, buy pretty clothes, and treat her sisters to sweets, as Peter does. But before she can do all that, Kitty has to learn a lot and go to school for a long time.

Mother wants Kitty to go to Domestic Science School, but the girl doesn't care for that idea at all. She doesn't want a job in the house of some stuck-up lady. She wants to work in a factory, like those jolly chattering girls she sees passing by the window. In a factory you're never alone, you have company to gossip with. And Kitty loves gossiping. Once in a while she has to stand in the corner in school, because she talks too much.