Dvr H.Adler
PAL/30765
650, G.T.Coy R.A.S.C
“B”Platoon
C.M.F
26 November.
My darling,
Today at last I have a day “off”. So here I am seated in a little café in a large Italian town trying to write to you. Feelings and thoughts invade me on all sides in powerful waves that are beyond my comprehension and crush me. And I feel clearly that this situation is far from favourable for an ordered, stitched up letter, a letter that will tell you anything.
Besides, for more than a year I have sought for a language which could convey my heart to you. A language which could more or less vividly pass on to you the things so violently alive which are to be found in the depths of my soul. So I can’t give the illusion of succeeding now when for so long I have failed. And that continues to torment me as in the past.
Yvette, my love our separation weighs cruelly on me and makes me suffer cruelly. One would say that years have rolled by since our last night, that silvery night….
[15 lines of love, languish, pining, body and soul. As before. I want your body, I want your soul.]
My God, my God is it possible only to subsist without you, Yvette! I realise that I repeat this too often. (Always the same things. Even the words—) That irritates you? Does it diminish me in you eyes?
My darling, I don’t know any other language except the language of my heart. I am totally captured by you, and me pen cannot write one thing while my heart feels something else. Can you see they go together with me.
I love you darling. You know I love you oh my little darling wife! It’s not a matter of “how”. If I said I love you like this or like that it would not be truthful. For there is no comparison. None.
[8 lines of desire for Yvette. At all time; when working, when at leisure. On the shining roads]
which lead towards the casse-gueule (rotgut, dance hall?) and in my strolls in the stupid Neapolitan streets and lanes. Oh yes, above all in the little old lanes thick with mystic architecture, with historic pomp, with clerical stench and the smell of peoples’ misery. In the ugliness and the horror. The houses without roofs; broken facades; pale faces, half-starved, consumptive and syphilitic; coquettish heads and bare feet; decapitated trees; flours crushed by heavy canon wheels; footpaths torn up; trembling old hands held out for a biscuit; boys and girls who t’arrachent the customer of macaroni, of cognac and of signorinas; the signorinas themselves; the brigandage, the rapaciousness of those who still and always want to deceive and betray the people-
In the beauty too. The great clouds that mask the summits of the green mountains; the moon reflected in the wet asphalt; the little white house drowned in the rustle of the green leaves that entirely cover it; the faithful earth which never forsake man; the sea which comes into the land of Naples; the land which penetrates and divides the sea; the island that I can see in the distance; man; man who with his wife makes orders the rhymes of his hearth; the peasant who gathers up on his land the debris of war and puts it to use; the young proletarians who stand up again, fiercely picking up their work of liberation-
Yes, darling. You are present in all that. Living. In all that, you are essential. You make me hear it. You make me understand it. Feel it. Understand it.
And in all of it, I pine for you. I want you. You, to talk to me. To listen to me. To help burst that grace or disgrace which weighs so heavily on my heart, which tightens my throat.
Darling Yvette, my little one, you see how I need you. To live. To be myself. Without you, I am a stranger to myself,
I stopped writing and I looked around me. Nothing.
However I know that they would be my brothers, all these men, if you were by my side. But you are far away, so – there is nothing. Only nothings. But no doubt, they too pine. And each is alone with his pain.
Listen darling. Here there is nothing new. I work and I think about you. After work I am usually so tired that I very quickly fall asleep. And then I again think of you. That’s not it.. “Again” is not right. Thinking of you is a unity, an element that knows no measure..[5 more lines of the same thing]
And today is my day off (mon jour d’off). So I began it by going for a walk. With you, of course [3 more lines of exactly the same thing; in heart, eyes etc etc]
And in a big unknown city I love to walk in the sordid little streets- where one smells the vermin-. These narrow, winding little streets with their facades almost touching, where you can see only a tiny morsel of blue sky, where the beauty of the kids is hidden by a great layer of filth, where you smell the misery (that smell is the same everywhere, in Paris, Tokyo or Cairo. The smell of elegant women differs. But the smell of St.Ouen you find everywhere.), where promiscuity is the order of the day, where one sees the connection between architecture and sensuality – where however, everywhere, is reflected human beauty. I feel so strongly your warmth at my side and I remember what you said to me, one day, in Tel Aviv, that our footsteps harmonise so well, that we walk so well together. That made me smile. Oh how happy I am with you darling!
Then something touched my belt. He was so small this kid that his arm could only reach my belt. “Foki – foki, ma bella signorina….”
The little one. A sweet little face, pallor pierced the squalor, a malicious smile in his black eyes.
I lifted my hand to hit him. But I didn’t hit him. I fled. Here to this café.
I know that the smell of urine in these little streets can not be washed with all the soap in the world. Only dynamite will make that smell disappear. Well placed dynamite.
Sitting at this table – the refuge- the first thing I saw was that little girl all blonde and rose, all beautiful, from the train at Maadi. There, I blushed. I remember it well. But it’s here that I should have blushed. But I didn’t. Why?
So it’s like that I began to write to you. And it’s so good to spend a day like that; smoking, drinking coffee with cognac, quite occupied with you, my darling.
Quite occupied with you.
Because I see again our days and our nights, I build pictures of the futures and I dream of you, you you. I am within you, I am no longer, and I am dissolved in your blood, in your flesh—
Nothing to do about it. How they leave me to love you! That appears complicated. But it’s so simple. That means to say that the kids must resemble that one in Maadi. And our kids, darling? Our kids with each other. We only have Ouri. We still must have Jean and Helene. You know, you promised it to me, little one.
Shit! How exhausted, stupid, insignificant I can be – It makes me cry
There it is. There is Vansittart. He is a very important person, Mr.Vansittart. One fine day, he was seated at his desk (all mahogany), he lit his pipe (an excellent old pipe filled with the best mixture) and with several stroked of the pen he proclaimed to the world the absolute necessity for the total destruction of the German people. Without that, there will never be peace in the world. Because war is a microbe. (Here he was not original: More than a century ago “serious” economists wrote volumes demonstrating that economic crises are a result of the angle made by the sun spots with the earth.) And that microbe is only found in German blood. (He is anti-racist, Mr Vansittart!). Therefore, if you want peace – wipe the German people from the face of the earth.
And his supporters are legion.
IN one of my letters, I believe I said that much work will necessary to de-toxify the hearts and spirits of men from the Nazi poison. On both sides of the barricade, darling. I notice it a little more each day. There are interminable discussions on this subject. But Vansittaritism has easy going. All this destruction, all this misery, all these tears, all these orphans that the Nazi hordes have left in their wake. All those people and things who have known Nazi bestiality, all those who have been driven to animal conditions by Nazi soldiery are eager to accept this dangerous theory and ready with an eager heart to follow it to the letter.
That too, is Nazi poison. I know, I understand their great and justified hatred. But it’s a blind hatred all the same. And for me it is Nazism in reverse.
For I cant forget that those who were the first sufferers of Nazism were the Germans, the pure Aryans. The first houses that the Nazis ravaged and burnt were the houses of working class organisations. The first people beheaded were the leaders of the German proletariat. They suffered well before all those peoples now terrorised by Nazi bestiality.
And the German people will be able to live in peace in a community of peoples.
It’s only necessary to give them freedom of action to punish the culpable Nazis. It is not they who will save the hitleriens and those who helped them. And it is they, they alone, who will know how to strike justly.
Here it is not the case. That is why everything does not go for the best. But for Germany, there are still other guarantors—
I notice that my day “off” has passed very agreeably. The whole day was a silent, profound, sincere and loving conversation with you, darling. A communion of souls. I am happy, Yvette. I am happy because you exist. Because you love me.
You love me. Your love equals mine. I am confident of the future. Because the future is with you. Yesterday I received two letters from you. One of the 8th, the other the 16th
Right now you are at Ouri’s place. You know I think very often of Ouri, yes. I love him the little one with his intelligent eyes, his two front teeth, and his comical nose—
I am happy that you are with him.
And surely my fantasy of tonight will take the form of our next reunion. You, Ouri and me. (I have still not been able to get the ball for him!). I am very happy that you have obtained your French passport. You have guessed very well how my health is, don’t make anything of it darling. I am truly O.K. (eng) and I kick myself for my stupidity in speaking to you once of a passing weakness. I am healthy.
And, above all, my heart is filled with happiness that restores my strength goodness and intelligence. A happiness which resists all physical and moral miseries. A happiness which resists all nostalgia. It is you.
It is you, my little one, my dear, my little Yvette, Yvette the beloved.
your
Henri
I have still not received the packet. It’s the mail. I wait impatiently for the sweater and Verlaine. This Verlaine will be new for me. It will be the Verlaine of my Yvette.
H
tom rigby - melbourne 