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A letter from Helene in Vienna to her children Eva and Harry in San Francisco:
Clipper 55a Vienna 18 October 1940
My dear children! Haha, I have also gotten some new paper. In other words, Papa just bought 1000 sheets for me and I would actually be able to write letter #55 but I have neither the inclination nor the time. What I’m still missing is anything to write about, and everything is just going along as usual. I dreamed I lay down in a bed that Eva had made and slept wonderfully, although my daughter had somehow folded the sheets into something resembling a lampshade. I shyly made her aware of this but Everl said “Mom, you just don’t get it. The creases in this are a type of central heating or they can be an air conditioner.” I was perfectly happy then and fell asleep. When I woke up, I had the natural explanation for this strange dream. My feet were sticking like icicles out from under the cover which had fallen down. Clattering from the cold, I pulled the top part of it over my head and I felt like I was laying on the central heating but my poor feet were enjoying the air conditioning. There was this wonderful feeling I had only because I was dreaming about Eva. The second half of the night continued with the attempt to find some sort of equilibrium between the Equator and the North Pole. The result was quite pathetic. Cold feet are an indication of great loyalty. Their only competition is a stuffy nose, but it’s really not the season for that yet. We’ve had a beautiful fall here which seems to making up for what the summer did. Actually, the summer didn’t do anything wrong. It just passed us by and forgot about us. Strange that something can happen in nature like that. In the evenings and the mornings it is bitterly cold, but in the middle of the day and early in the afternoon the sun is so strong that some people can sit outside.
Last year we had already had to use the heat for three weeks at this time and I am so glad that we can save so much on fuel this year and not have to use so much of our material to burn for heat. The horrible cold last year was probably just a harbinger of the coming winter. I’m sure other people have such pipe dreams, just like I do.
I ask Harry because he has such a close relationship to the newspaper, to publish his Gazettes again; otherwise, I will lose my instinct for reading a newspaper. Your letters from the last few weeks were really the only thing I had time to read because I was so busy with the work going on on our house. Yesterday I unwrapped our entrance door which had been wrapped up in paper for weeks, but our painter was quite an artist. He managed to get the door under the paper splotched with paint. I washed it until my skin felt like sandpaper, peeling down on the door. Paul may want to write a few notes for your newspaper since I will probably not live to see the publication of his collected works.
I am reading Everl’s descriptions of her anatomy classes from the point of view of someone who has meat coupons. Fibula = 4 times as much; lung, heart and liver = you get the whole amount without any bones in it, etc., etc.
Fortunately, I can’t think of anything else and I am going to end this letter with a concert of kisses. Greetings to all the dear ones and I will write to them separately soon.
Helen
Despite having new paper for letter writing, Helene follows letter #54 from October 11 with #55a -- a shorter-than-usual letter, which she doesn’t deem worthy its own full number. Helene begs Harry to send one of his “gazettes” – the only example I have is one he sent from Istanbul that we saw in the June 6 post. In the March 8 post, Helene mentions receiving two illustrated letters from earlier in the year. His “relationship” with newspapers was as a delivery boy.
As is often the case, Helene fills her letter with humorous musings. Yet, beneath it all, we can feel the cold winter coming, the meager food available, and her yearning to be with her children again.