Henri to Yvette.

7 July, Warsaw.

My darling, Yesterday I received your two first letters from Vienna. I am mad with happiness. I am happy not to be able to think, to talk, and to write. I tremble all over. Body, heart and hands.  My darling little Yvette, what a great moment! I never lost you and you never had to find me again. Was I not day and night, constantly with you? Didn’t you feel it, my dear little one? Yvette, Yvette- oh God! – How can I tell you all that marvellous love I kept jealously within me during the long night of my torments, of our torments?

Listen little one: I promised myself to write you a calm letter filled with down to earth thing, of practical matters concerning our reunion. But here I am speaking with you, Yvette, who loves me, who wants me, who wants to live with me and with our children- can I be calm? Tell me, can I? Where can I get all that strength?

Oh darling, I feel you here in my heart, in my throat and my thumb, you know that thumb that first had the audacity to acknowledge my heart’s desire, this thumb trembles, laughs, cries and I feel with all my soul that it wants to touch you and to show you that nothing, nothing, nothing has changed in me: my youth for you is pure and intact, like yesterday, like today and like it will always.

Darling,  mon petit, ma petite- look don’t you feel it, tell me? Oh adored and loved little kid do you feel my heart beating now? Look, big beats and then light beats, it’s a mixture of everything and all that is only one thing, the most beautiful thing in the world which has sustained me all the time and which gave me courage: that you love me, that you want me, that we will be able to live our life together one beside the other, one in the other. Mouth against mouth, heart against heart, one, only one great love always young, strong and joyous as the mountains, the fields, the flowers, the trees, like the world that we love and which is ours. Do you remember it, darling? Understand me, darling. Understand me, not only the words that are incapable of expressing the tiniest part of the immensity that inhabits my soul- don’t listen to the words. Listen to my heart.

But of course, you know it. For a long time I have wanted to invent a language for you. A language incomprehensible to others and which cant be translated. When you tell me that you love me, darling, darling only the sky can feel all the effect on me.  Little Yvette. I am not mad. I am only happy, so happy that it is no longer a feeling – it is the feeling that I am.

Several days ago I received five of your letters sent on from Palestine. I felt in them your love, tender, true and profound.  And I felt not that you had found me again but that you, little one, had found yourself again. You never lost me. I tell you that there was not one day when, on going to sleep, I was not with you. I went to sleep and, eyes open, dreamt of you, thought of you and prayed to find you again. I saw always on thing only; my return to my Yvette, my wife who I love. It is with that image that I fell asleep. Always. But yes, darling, it is true, my God, how true it is! Reading your letters sent on from Palestine, I knew that you are mine for you had become yourself again.  And then I wrote you a letter. I don’t know if you received it because it was address to No.1 Drothegamme (address of your telegram. In any case to this address I sent my first telegram and 2 letters- did you receive them?)

In that letter I asked you modestly whether you love me? And I was afraid of annoying you with that question, idiot that I am, isn’t it mad? You see, darling, we love at the same time. We will be happy together. We will make up for all the lost time- and our happiness will be complete. Oh darling, I embrace you. Your golden hair (“little, plump, redhead, covered with freckles”, my wife) your face, your lips, your little lip – mine, your teeth, your body, your belly. Yvette, I embrace your soul. Darling, I love you. Yvette mine.

The other winter, darling I was at the house of the Senders (the husband of Sarah). There were Julek, his fiancee Sara Sender, and we had drunk a lot. There were cognac, cigarettes, smoke, it was New Year. Then we began to sing and I sang “Aupres de ma Blonde. And then Sender, brave innocent boy,{obliterated by censor’s stamp}. He said that he would wait for you to sing that song. And then I cried. With all my heart. And they were embarrassed. And they embarrassed me. And I cried. And I loved you so much. As I do now. And I fled the house, to my own. And in my room, full of my dreams and thoughts, you waited for me. And you said to me: “You must live, Henri because I feel that I will have need of you to find me again.”  And you embraced me. Tenderly, lovingly. And I knew that you are mine. And you are, darling.

Forever. I knew it at Belmont and I knew it at Villard.

Tiens, now I would have embraced Helene. And that kiss would have told her that she had a son.

Listen Yvette.

You must come to Warsaw.  Listen hard.

I do a pretty important job, the logical consequence of all my political past. The long-term perspective of this job is doubtless a foreign mission. But at present I have to stay here.  Would you live in Poland? I earn enough to support three and then four.

Listen. It is something we must discuss face to face.   I propose the following: you will finish your work in Vienna in a month. And then you come to Warsaw. Here we will see how to build our life so that it will be happy for Ouri, for you, for everyone. And until October (concerning the job in Paris) you will have the time to decide to stay or to leave again. Perhaps by October there will be changes in my work also. The nature of it does not permit me to me more precise.

Tell me that you agree. And tell me when. I will then most quickly and easily arrange the Polish visa. Tell me only for when. And I will then begin all the preparations.  I am ready; I await you with the most beautiful love, I await you to make you feel that you are the best-loved wife in the world.

We can’t arrange all our happy life by letter. I must tell you of my plans when you will be in front of me and you will see in my glance all that this poor letter ahs not been able to tell you: that I am so much yours.

Darling, say what you like. It’s necessary to hurry; I hasten to have you near to me and to caress you with all that tenderness that I have kept for you. My darling Yvette mine,

Your Henri.