Henri to Yvette.

650 Gen Tpt Coy

21 April

Just when I had begun seriously to be worried, your letter came. It came after a silence of 12 days. Yvette, my love, it seems that you don’t always realise what your letters mean to me……. I have begun work again, driving again with my truck the dusty but so beautiful roads. Spring is properly here. Everything is flowering….. Sometimes you receive a letter from me that is sad, despairing and full of anxiety. Don’t make too much of it, Yvette. You must understand the nature, which is behind it. You must understand that this also is the consequence of all the richness which is in me” you and my socialist ideal. Don’t you understand that? ..I have a formidable need to be always near you, to love you while caressing you, speaking to you… That’s not possible because of the war and that makes me nervous, anxious, discontented, depressed – not a very sympathetic fellow, you see! – and then I pick up the pen and write a sad letter. ..The sadness passes, the joy remains.

…The same thing for my socialist ideal. You well know that since my early youth I have been tied to the working class in its struggle for liberation. I never hoarded my effort in this struggle; I have given everything I could, but my life. Many years have gone by since I first understood that my place is alongside the oppressed, the miserable but not the submissive. And I have not changed. Or rather, yes, I have changed for the better. From a fellow traveller, which I was during my university years, I became, through the war in Spain, a true revolutionary, conscious and ready for any sacrifice for the triumph of the cause. There you are..

But as for you, my heart is impatient to see this war finished at last and to pass to the order of the day: the word is to the people! And given that is dragging on, and that for me, here in the army I am sometimes assailed by nausea because of the “bullshit”(ENG) in the politics, then I become nervous, I take up my pen and write you a sad letter. But that passes. Because I understand full well that basically all the games, the zig zags, hesitations  – for you see I am in the habit of analysing everything now from the angle of the fear of the leaders of the democracies for the peace which is coming. Everything is easy to understand then. For them, this Europe on the day after the destruction of fascism is a point of tragic interrogation. They want to give a certain shape to the peace, a shape of their own making and they are afraid of the people, who themselves have other examples to follow. Truly, darling, analyse everything from this angle and you will see how easy it is to see clearly in this fog.

Their fear is well founded. It is why my nervousness is passing and my faith and joy are so great.

You often ask me to write about Italy. I will write next a letter exclusively full of this country. Tho exclusively is too much For I don’t believe I can keep silent about my love for you, my desire for you. But I will try. Poussinette!  I have to stop; the friend wants the pen (it is his and he also has his “Dulcinea”.”  Have you received the 3 pounds? Next week I will send you 5.