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Today’s letter from Helene bears the same Clipper and censorship numbers as the one we saw on July 29, confirming her complaint about her “untrue Vitali.”
Vienna, 2 August 1940
My dear children! The untrue Vitali did not mail my letter from the 30th, which annoys me because letters which one does not write or send cannot arrive. But there are so many of them on the way that a disruption in our news cannot be assumed. The situation that I have taken a half sheet you can figure out that I don’t have anything new to say or have very little to report to you. All of my thoughts are concentrated only on the one idea that there must be some letters because of the intensity that something must have gotten through. Eva’s last letter is still the one from July 3rd, from our nobleman from June 10. To be condemned to such passivity is a very unpleasant thing and harder to learn than any other subject you might study. So I’m doing some remedial work on what I didn’t have time to do over the past few years and I am reading a great deal. My intellectual pursuits are with Leonardo, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, and their contemporaries. As you see I am living in the deepest Middle Ages. Papa is doing the same thing, but the difference for him is that he has done this for years and I’m more like someone just starting school. I really had to figure out how to hold a book. It’s a lot harder to read when you hold the book upside down in your hand. The weather of the last week was so unfriendly that I preferred to stay home and can vegetables for the winter. Vitali was very industrious in helping me because you can’t just read all the time. So with these two completely different activities - one for the mind and one not - I am perhaps more inclined toward the last. At least you have a way to leave your thoughts free and the thoughts come right to you. The day before yesterday I promised my mother in a dream that I would not leave her behind and that I would stay here. In the morning I regretted my premature promise. Jo’s visits have become less regular. They are almost more like irregular rather than regular. She did come rather irregularly but several times a day. Now she shows up every 2-3 days. But we do see each other every day because she walks by to go shopping and I am on the balcony waiting for the mailman. (This is how I spend my time these days.) She has probably seen enough of my face from this distance. The paper is about to run out, so kisses
Mutti
Helene feels that her life is on hold. Her only desire is to join her children in San Francisco, but the way is not clear. In her dreams, she struggles with the idea of leaving her past behind. Daily life is difficult and becomes more isolated each day. Her only joy is receiving mail, but it rarely arrives. I imagine her standing on one of the balconies below, awaiting the postman — this is the building they lived in in Vienna. (photo courtesy of Corry Guttstadt).
The building on Seidlgasse where Helene, Vitali, Eva, and Harry lived.
Helene’s comments remind me of how I’ve felt during the last 18 months of near isolation due to the restrictions of the pandemic. Although I had the best of intentions to improve my mind and to be productive, in the first few months especially, I found it difficult to concentrate. I didn’t can vegetables, but I did discover the joys of sourdough!
