Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.
Today we have a copy of a letter written by Eva (on her 18th birthday) to her parents in Vienna. On April 27 and 28, we saw letters from Eva and Harry to their parents, describing their first few days in Vienna. I don’t know how we have a copy of this letter – perhaps Eva and Harry kept a copy and brought it in their luggage when they came to the U.S. a few months later.
Yesterday we got the letter about which we had been notified. I did not want to give the enclosed letter to Onkel Isak. Because, as I already mentioned, he is very formal and prim, and that might have been viewed as presumptuous.
So please, mom, when you write to Onkel Isak, it is better not to mention the letter. An example of Isak’s formality:
#1. You must announce your visit, let him know you are coming. I think that’s all right. A visit may not last more than 1/4 hour.
#2. Yesterday afternoon, I took a walk with Harry and we met our uncle. He invited us for tea. It was all very stiff. Afterwards he asked us if we were going home. We said yes and we said goodbye, but we went a long way in the same direction but on the other side.Fortune told us that when we visit Onkel Isak, we must kiss his hand since he is very old (58). We did that but he took his hand away almost in a fearful way as if it were unpleasant to him. (Please write about this.) When we visited his brother who is much older than Isak, we were the only ones who did that. I think it is just some sort of preventative feature having to do with money.
Harry had to go pick up your letter from the uncle yesterday when he went with Albert to do that. Harry said that he had been very arrogant and hadn’t spoken with Albert at all, as if he were a subordinate. Harry said that our furniture was nicer than the ones the uncle had. I actually didn’t see them myself. If it’s possible, please when you, bring bed linens for Harry and me and also we both need a bathrobe, the other things we wished for, and the radio. The radio will bring you a sort of glory.
I don’t feel all that great here, although Fortune and Beppo are trying to make it as nice for us as they can for us. They show us off to all the family members and we don’t understand very much of the whole conversation, not more than maybe “tout à fait la mère ou le père.” As soon as they speak French I do amazingly well. But except for Fortune, most of the people in the family speak Spanish.
For what we’re used to, we don’t really live that well, although Fortune thinks they lives like a prince. The only prince-like thing I can see is that 99% of the vegetables are thrown away as garbage. For example, they have big thick meaty green beans, but all they do is eat what’s inside of the pods. They are being economical in sense. But what bothers me a lot more is that whether you’re respected or not here really only has to do with money.
Mom, you don’t need to think that you had the “fame” of being the worst dressed woman (of course I don’t mean right now, I mean 5 or 6 years ago). Fortune has a lot less than you had back then and it’s much the same for her children. Lisette doesn’t wear a hat so because of that I have to act the same and act like a country cousin.
When I go out and take a walk with Harry though, I really have to dress tip top. I have realized what the culture consists of. Women walk around like Parisian models and they are all fixed up (at the moment, lips the color of cyclamen are very modern).
I eat just as much as I used to eat in Vienna, but Beppo is angry that I eat so little. Here they eat 3 times as much as we do at home but nobody believes me that that’s not good for you. I’m about to explode.
As in the letters from a few days ago, for Eva life in Istanbul compares unfavorably with Vienna in almost every respect. As I mentioned earlier, I wonder how much of that is her true feelings and how much is her trying to make her parents understand how much better she felt life in Vienna had been. Although they never had much money, we have seen that their lives were rich in love, laughter, music, and literature.