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Nr 79 Vienna, 6 March 1941My dear, dear children! It’s a rainy day without mail. I’m done with my work for the day and I don’t know any better way to end the day than to have a conversation with you. It’s not easy because between yesterday and today nothing important has happened here and I’m not really in the mood for a chat.
Oh well, the sheet of paper must be filled no matter how much certain ill-treated types resist this. I also have to do a lot of things which I don’t like, or rather I can’t even do what I would like to do. I have often cursed the fact that I never really found time to read a book and if one was recommended to me, I was too tired to enjoy reading. Today everything is the reverse. If I take a book in my hand which was written before the war, I mean the war that we have now, I think “why how unworldly this is”. It is such a restructuring of values that has happened that you almost have to step out in order to keep pace with it. Young people of course don’t get as tired as older people, and training is paramount.
My favorite things to read are your letters. I never really read the kind of novel that appears in installments in a newspaper. I imagined my workload in advance. Now I am punished by this arrogance, because now I am waiting week by week for a continuation like the ladies who were subscribing to the Biela-Zeitung back in those days just couldn’t wait for Saturday in order to read the conclusion in the “sheet” (affectionate word for newspaper) [really, an insult]. They wanted to see if Knight Iwan and Ida sat holding hands. What are lion ballads [play on the name Löwy?] compared to this 75-stanza long murder tale which our girl would always start when there was at least six weeks worth of ironing to do? I could sit for hours in the warm kitchen with my doll in my arm and listen to them. To the credit of the Biela-Zeitung, I must say that those kinds of novels never appeared in it and just like yesterday old Ida the gossip [Helene’s older sister] who would walk with me ran after to ask to be told if the two in the story would get along or not. Did people have problems then? Was there really a time when a fruit seller really had nothing better to do than to imagine if she was going to get into a fight with her boyfriend or not? Actually, not much has changed, just that nowadays you have to sit instead of making war [making a put with different meanings of krieg/kriegen] . When will the war end and when will the produce sales lady take an interest again in whether they are going to fight or not? Let’s hope for the best.
To thank Eva for her Boccaccio-esque hospital tales, I will tell some of my own. This is from my collection: “se non e vero, e trovato ben.” [if it’s not true, at least it’s a good story]. These are quotes from people looking for apartments:
· “I have been married for five months and my wife is in a blessed condition. I ask the housing office: does that have to be?”
· “I and my wife are 12 people….”
· “I can’t get rid of either the shed or my wife.”
· “A man himself lives in 2 rooms along with his wife and can let her or them go.”We will not be able to get news from Lizette about how things are until after the war ends. Do you have any mail from her? And when will Robert be with you?
These letters won’t go out until tomorrow. Maybe I can think of something else to tell you, so I’m saving a little room.
Many, many kisses
Helen[Handwritten]
My dear cutie pies. So I didn’t save room for nothing. I can tell you that letter #5 has arrived (5 February 1941). I am glad that Everl is not in a relationship of affection with herself and she doesn’t regret when she has to work until 10:30. That’s a brave fellow, Everl! I’m glad you have the new racket. Harry-boy, is there no Dischendorfer in Frisko? If not, then I’m not coming. A pedicure is the last rudiment of a plutocratic way of life. Is that a bandage or a small ... the cause of the decoration on your toe? It may be something to take away your corns. The most unfortunate thing is your poor old Pegasus. He seems to be like an old horse-shoer (farrier). Out of love for him, you must keep a lookout for someone to replace Dischendorfer.Kiss, that’s all
Helen
I love how Helene can make even the lack of mail interesting. In this letter, she takes us back to her childhood in Bilin in Bohemia. She acknowledges her snobbish attitude toward popular serialized literature, telling her children that she’s now having her comeuppance as she waits with bated breath for each new missive from them. She assures us however that her father’s newspaper, the Biela-Zeitung, didn’t publish that kind of lowbrow literature.
I don’t know whether Helene refers to a specific story when she mentions Knight Iwan. If so, my guess would be that she chose that tale because his beloved had the same name as Helene’s sister – Ida. In many of her stories, Helene describes Ida as a bit of a tyrant, taking life very seriously and never letting her baby sister do what she wanted. Helene describes her revenge in a companion letter she wrote to her nephew Paul which was sent in the same envelope as today’s post. That letter is excerpted in an earlier blog post where she relates the story of how she tricked her sister into believing that she’d taught young Paul how to read.
I was unable to determine who or what Dischendorfer was. Perhaps a pharmacist or chemist? Also, I wonder whether the quotes from apartment hunters were true or quoted from a humorous article.
Despite the light tone, we learn one very disturbing piece of news — that Helene and Vitali are no longer able to communicate with Lizette and his other relatives in Istanbul.