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My dear Robert!
Love makes us inventive and since you have not come up with this great idea, I must assume that these feelings are only on one side. Please don’t make any belated declarations of love! But you can make up for this. How? Well, I’ll let you figure that out. We are fine. We live like fishes in the wind and birds in the water and we have no other troubles except for those about you. Our only pleasure is getting mail. But really you have not contributed much to this joy, so you have to make up for that! Now you don’t need to strain your mind, I already told you how you can make this up to me. Although the children write regularly and conscientiously, which lets me know what Paul is up to with his attempt to become independent, there are occasional breaks with no letters, which require of me much patience and cause me a lot of nerves. But those days pass by as well. They go by more slowly than others however. There’s only a saying from Goethe which I don’t think is right: “Nothing is harder to take than a whole bunch of good days in a row.” I don’t think that’s true - I could put up with that very nicely. What do you think, little Robert? If maybe you sit down for a quarter hour and have a little chat with me, an answer is guaranteed right away, because I don’t do much else these days. Housework just happens. I think of this as my part-time job, most of my time is devoted to correspondence. How is Hedl Waldek? Say hi to her from me. In the next letter I will write a few lines to her. It’s late today. Vitali, who greets you warmly, is hurrying because he wants to go to the post office. Mila wrote to me that your health is satisfactory but I would like to hear that from you.
Dearest kisses
Helen
Today’s letter from Helene is to her nephew Robert in London. He has lived there for about a year. Her playful tone is like that in her letters to her children rather than the more business-like or scolding tone she sometimes takes in her letters to his older brother Paul. She is counting on Paul to figure out the logistics of getting her and Vitali out of Vienna. She depends on Robert for his love and emotional support. Perhaps it is the age difference. Although Helene babysat both nephews when they were children, Paul was only 9 years younger. Robert was a student during World War I, Paul was a soldier. After losing their mother at a young age, Paul as the oldest child seems to have taken responsibility for the well-being of his siblings, and ultimately also of his aunt.
Helene had just one word wrong in the Goethe quote: she used the word “beautiful” instead of “good”.
I realize that I need to educate myself on the works of Goethe. Helene quotes him in almost every letter; her world view, and therefore my mother’s (and unbeknownst to me, my own!), was influenced by his words and philosophy. I could easily imagine my mother saying the above quote. It seems familiar in spirit to me too: whenever things are going particularly well, my husband or I will say to the other: “Nothing could go wrong now!”