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

Just the same, Kitty is fond of her teacher, who is sweet and terribly clever. How difficult it must be to study and get to know so much! But one can get along with less. Kitty's mother always says that a girl doesn't get a husband if she is too clever, and that, Kitty thinks, would be just awful. Later she should like to have dear little children, but not such children as her brothers and sisters. Kitty's children are going to be much prettier and sweeter. They will have curly brown hair instead of that straight flaxen stuff, and they will have no freckles, which Kitty has by the hundreds. Kitty doesn't want as many children as her mother has. Two or three would be enough, but, oh, it is so far, far off. . .

"Kitty!" her mother calls. "Come here. Where have you been, naughty girl? Just sitting there dreaming, I guess. Quick, to bed with you! "

Kitty sighs. To be interrupted just as you are thinking of a glorious future!

- : -

The Porter's Family

Saturday, August 7, 1943

Neither in winter nor in summer do the porter's family observe the blackout regulations. It's like peacetime, the days when the light burned so sociably in everyone's apartment and you could see the people all sitting around the dining room table or tea table.

In this respect the porter's family don't seem to care whether it's war or peace; anyway, you can look through the brightly lighted window and see Papa, Mamma, the son, and the daughter sitting around the table.

Mamma simply won't have anything to do with the war; she refuses to make ersatz sauce, she'd rather have none at all, she won't drink ersatz tea, she takes peppermint tea instead, and when there's shooting and she doesn't want to hear it, she has an effective remedy for that too, namely, she goes and sits in the shower stall and plays the loudest jazz music on the gramophone. When the neighbors complain, that doesn't bother her, she just brings them some goodies next day to mollify them. The lady on the third floor, whose daughter is engaged to the son of the house, gets a fat pancake and she actually gives Mrs. Steen, her right-hand neighbor, fifty grams of sugar.

The lady dentist on the second floor rear, who employs her youngest daughter as an assistant, isn't neglected either, but Papa is good and mad at her, because every night of shooting costs him three cigarettes.

Papa and Mamma are alone all day. They take loving care of their five rabbits, who get fatter by the day. They have a cradle to sleep in, a shed to keep off the rain, and a tub for a dinner table. In winter they have a little house with windows and nice big rooms. Their daily menu consists of carrot tops and other delicacies. Papa works a lot in the garden; Mamma in the house. Everything is spic and span. Every week she does the windows front and back, every week the floors, every week the kitchenware, always helped by the fat cleaning woman who has had the same position for years.

Papa hasn't got much work now. At present he's porter for the big business office upstairs, and all he has to do is sleep lightly, so as to listen for possible burglars. Mamma used to clean the whole building with the help of the cleaning woman. But since her only daughter has got married and the other has had her tenth child, she has given it up.

It's Mamma's and Papa's greatest joy when the grandchildren come to see them. The whole time you hear them shouting across the garden: "Grampa, Grandma, look at the rabbits, they're doing such funny things." Then Grampa and Grandma go running over, because grand- children need to be spoiled, that's their opinion. Grandchildren aren't like one's own children, who should be made to toe the line.

Grampa is working hard for his oldest granddaughter; he's making her a canoe for her birthday. I wish I had that kind of grampa.

- : -

Eve's Dream

October 6, 1943

"Good night, Eve, sleep well."

"Same to you, Mum."

Click went the light and Eve lay in the dark, but only for a few moments, because when she got used to the darkness, she saw that her mother had closed the curtains in such a way that an opening was left through which she could look straight into the face of the moon. The moon stood so quietly in the sky; he didn't move, smiled, and was friendly to everyone.

"If I could only be like that," Eve said softly to herself, "always quiet and kind so that everybody would like me. That would be wonderful."

Eve thought and thought about the difference between the moon and herself, who was still so very small. She finally dozed off, and her thoughts seemed to be trans- formed into a dream, which Eve remembered so keenly next day that she afterward sometimes wondered whether it had not actually happened.

She stood at the entrance of a big park, looking through the fence and not quite daring to go in. Just as she was about to turn back, a little girl with wings came up to her and said, "Go right ahead, Eve, or don't you know the way?"

"No, I don't," said Eve shyly.

"Well, then I will guide you." And with those words, the smart little elf took Eve's hand.