Henri to Yvette.

Warsaw 22 July

My darling,

I regularly receive your letters and only make larger my most particular misery, my impatience to hug you to me and murmur in your ear all those things, which inhabit me, none other than my love for you. Yvette, my sweet, I await that happy (I wanted to say “glorious”) day when I would be able to look deeply into your eyes and draw without end the simple joy of living. My everyday life at the moment is only a continuation: I wait and I have waited for you such a long time already, darling.

But I feel so well that now it is already tomorrow. Tomorrow I will have you with me.  Tomorrow I will touch you, tomorrow I can offer you silence, that silence which for you means the adoration of the primitive, the beauty of nature and of music- that involuntary mysticism felt by the free man wiped out by the enigma of Notre Dame. Tomorrow darling I will be able to show you my love intact, absolute, pure – the quintessence of my life- my love for you.  I have already told you many times that it’s not possible to love more than I love you, because if one loved more, one would die. I will tell you again and again until the end. Because it is true. I have reached the extreme limit of the capacity of a heart to feel. And with me, you also have reached it. Darling, I embrace you. Darling, I caress you. […]

I have not yet had your reply to my long letter where I tell you to leave your job and come to Warsaw. Now I can’t wait any longer and today, without your reply I have begun the request for your visa. You will have it very quickly. You will doubtless have it by telegraph. I am well placed to get it. And you will come.

Listen, in a month or six weeks I will already have the apartment. You understand that here everything is in ruins. We have in Warsaw already 700,000 inhabitants. But the houses destroyed by the occupation amount to 80% of the total. So you can imagine… But they are building. And are about to finish a block especially for the employees of my Minister. Part of it is already finished. And in a few days, a group of my colleagues will be living there. They are women. Because I said I was alone (bachelor) they put me lower on the list. Today, while carrying out the tasks to get your visa I also reverted to the matter of the domicile. With success! In six week darling!  Now I live in very poor circumstances, in a place without furniture.

And I dream of the apartment I will furnish for you. For us. I make many plans darling! Look here, little one, you now what a romantic imagination I possess!

I fly up to the sky and I see in my mind’s eye pictures of our future life.

In the morning, I go to my office. Before leaving, I don’t forget to bring you a cup of hot tea to bed. I embrace you and I smile and I say “good luck darling, until soon.”

I say “good luck” because the program is that while I am at the office, you will write. (One writes better in the morning, one creates). At 15 hours I return. We eat. Then we rest stretched out one beside the other. And it is a mixing of love, of tenderness, of exchange of impressions of the day ad of work. I tell you my stories and you read me passages of your work.

Then we go out. Or perhaps, friends come to see us. Or perhaps we go to see friends. We have until 6 o’clock in the morning! And everything is so sweet. And the air in our room sings the song of out untied heart. Right through a white winter the Polish snow is blue with out love. For Xmas. Helene will come to visit us. We will welcome her kindly, lovingly. Infected by our happiness and our tenderness she will be enveloped in a fine warm cloak of forgetfulness.

In the spring we will go to France. For the child must be born in France, you know. And perhaps we will stay there.  I also see that Ouri, does not appear darling. I know that is the problem that we will overcome. We must think hard about it. My imagination takes the liberty of fixing you writer’s life for that winter. But I keep myself from galloping right into the skies when it’s matter of Ouri. I love him. As a child and as your child. I know that right until now I could already have been his great friend. Life delayed it back a little. But only delayed it. I know that I will be his great friend and I know that I can make myself loved by him, until we will be equals. But only take care, darling, not to become jealous if he shows that he loves me a lot, as he loves you.  The question is should he spend this winter with us, or not? Should he come with Helene, or straight away? What would be better? And how to fix things so that you would be most happy, completely happy? I want you both together. You know that well. I see myself again walking with Ouri on the riverbank at Belmont. And I hear the “thank you” that one night you whispered to me because I managed to persuade the little fellow to ask your father’s pardon and continue to eat. Do you remember it?  You now the kids, that one still loves me. My heart, it seems, remains the same. The one you love and the one that loves you. And then, to return to Ouri, I must tell you that I share entirely his advice (without sharing his arguments): a girl!

I embrace you

Henri