Dvr H Adler
No 30765
173 Hen.Tnpt Coy
R.A.S.C(P)
M.E.F.

Juilett 1942

My very dear Yvette,

I really don’t know where to start. I received your letter and I am happy. So happy that I am desperately anxious (j’en ai mal)… I waited  a long time for your letter. And then it came and  profoundly unsettled me. I read it and re-read it. I read it ten times, twenty times and have still not had enough of it. It is foolish, what I am going to say to you, but it is true: I caressed it and I put it to my lips. What a kid eh? But what do you want, Yvette, I love you, I love you so much.

I must say to you straight away, before you understand me better, that what you represent for me. My feelings for you  go back already several months.  It is true that we have only exchanged some intriguing words, some furtive looks….. and however, and however, they remained very much alive for me. My love for you took root more and more in me. But now, you possess me entirely. You are the day and you are th night. When I travel with my vehicle  across dozens and hundreds of sandy kilometres, it is you who accompany me.  You are the refreshing trees bordering the road; you are the engine that  thrusts me always forward towards the end, – what end? And at night, after my tiring work, it is still next to Yvette – mine- that I lay myself. You can see   how much I am yours. That is why your letter filled me with happiness and immense sadness. For I  experienced a violent desire to have you near me, to hold you head  with its aureole of golden hair between my hands and  look deep into your eyes.

Do you know, Yvette, that you have given my confidence in my body. I had been for a long time haunted by the idea that there is something amiss in my heart; that I am incapable of love. Many women inh my life have made me believe it. I treated them churlishly and this churlishness astonished me sadly. I sought the cause because I was ashamed of it. It seemed to me that this infirmity originated in the great deprivation of my life: tenderness (my mother was  a business woman [tradeswoman?]!) I am afraid of solitude. Is it not indeed  horrible to establish the impossibility of living in perfect harmony with  one’s partner?  This  emptiness which possessed me as soon as my body was satisfied—-  how much unhappiness this state of things provoked among the women who loved me ;  how  I the burning shame made me detest myself—

Was I condemned for life?  No. My heart is capable of greater and more noble love. You are  the joyous proof of it. Oh Yvette, I have only one great longing. It is that you believe in my sincerity. I have never, absolutely never, spoken like this to a woman. Don’t feel, besides, the “gaucherie” of my  confessions. When and to whom would I have had the courage to say these words that I say to you?

It is because I love you with all my soul. That is a hard fact against which nothing and no one can do anything. Not even you. My love will be, even despite of you. Do you understand me?

I have just made myself ridiculous. I was with some friends and I suddenly and  churlishly left them. It was  scandalous. “Degeulasse!”   I behaved like a hooligan, I know it. But I couldn’t do anything else. Because I wanted to write you this letter, hat is, to shut myself up with you.

You don’t know anything of my life. But I want with all my force that you know it. In that, also, you are the first. I would have wanted you to know my baseness and perhaps also my nobleness. I would have wanted that you accept me as I am. Oh,yes! But even if you refused me- nothing could prevent me from accepting you.

In the midst of all this  depravity (baseness) that surrounds me, I keep you- fresh- most preciously  and deeply in my heart.  Nothing will uproot it. I would have like to sing you the most beautiful of songs. Songs which would have expressed  all the fire that is in me. When I think of you I am grateful for everything and for everyone. I feel that I  could embrace the whole world and call everyone brother!

I have been transferred to another place. It is more cheerful. There are magnificent gardens. There it cold water. My eyes rest on this sacred monotonous sand. But I miss you, dear mascot, more than ever. What is a garden without you?

Dov is here. He begged me to write you a letter. I feel that he his unhappy because he cannot tell you in his language what he wants. For he loves you, without a doubt. I respect his feelings. But, cherie, forgive me, please, if I refused to write his letters to you. That was stronger than me. I could not do it. Understand me, it is not jealousy.  I know that you belong to him and that my person disappears from your eyes when it is a matter of Dov, who you love , ou bien?—

Whatever the case, it seemed to me indelicate to translate his tendre(?) thoughts said for you.

I am happy that he is with me. It is easier for the two of us. On the other hand, I fear that a certain bitterness will enter his heart. Bitterness, certainly, I am not safe from it. But for me,  don’t make anything of it. I have said to you: even in spite of you!

Henri.