• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Nice
11 November 1945

My sweet little darling,

… I am sitting in a cafe at Nice and think terribly about you. Think also of everything that has happened these last two days. For it is only two days since I left. However in these two days I lived a whole life of years. You see I came into this cafe to write concrete things to you and here I am wandering all over the place. And it is always like that when I write to you. No doubt it’s caused by impatience. My impatience to hold you in my arms and let my muscles speak for they always express my heart better. But there it is.

You remember that Friday morning when I left you. I went out of that pretty, gay and warm house when I left you, your warmth, your beauty, your love and I entered that observite cold and damp which was Friday morning. Oh God, straight away everything began to tear itself up in me. And it seems to me, I am certain, that you, high up there on the balcony you thought and felt the same thing. You saw this tragic contrast also, didn’t you darling?  I was afraid to go ahead into that terrible night.

I only wanted one thing, to quickly return to your house, to your warmth and clarity and seek security in your good love. I didn’t do it however. I don’t know why. But I regret it enormously. To this minute. And this cruel tearing up that I felt then as if all of me were decomposing, that uncertainty, that fear and the languor has accompanied me still. And completely engulfs me.

Darling I love you so much.[…] Without you my life is colourless, sad, brutish and useless, without your daily love, which gives me strength and confidence in the future and myself.

I know one thing more than anything else: I want to return to you. To return and stay forever with you. To never leave you ever. Do you want that too little one? Oh, say yes! I know that I have no trade. That it will be difficult, even painful. But you know that there are so many men without trades. Say yes, darling. Say that you te moques de toute autre consideration. Say that you only want to live with me. All your life. And oh darling, I will do everything to make you happy.

On Friday, the Raymonds welcomed me very well. Your father had to leave but he made me this great surprise of coming at the last minute to the station. He shook my hand and promised me to look after you. And gave me dreams on that terrible night. 

I regret that it was at his house that I found sympathy instead of Helene’s – her intellectuality  ??? is the reason. At Marseilles I presented myself at HQ and j’ai en le dessus sur les cervelles des anglo-saxons en leur arrachant un Movement Order by rail and road to Italy.  I spent a night in Marseilles and yesterday evening I arrived in Nice. Somewhere on the Marseilles-Paris line there was a railway accident which made every connection late. I tell you that to show you that it would take very little for me to be at your place this evening. Arrived at Nice, I presented my documents to the officer in charge at the American R.T.O . He told me he could send me to Menton and from there I could pick up road transport. I asked him to prolong my stay in Nice and he gave me three days. Straight away I rushed to the information counter and found that there’s a train to Grenoble this morning. (But then couldn’t connect with the bus for Villare transport details for getting back to Belmont. No seats on bus.) So there’s nothing to be done. I tell you all that to show you how much I don’t want to leave you.  The idea of returning in your direction again has not left me and since Friday morning I have thought of nothing but that. Because I want to have a child and because I want to have it with you and because I want to live with you, because to leave you is to die…. Now because I have no means of getting back I am forced to calm myself. To think calmly. That’s not easy, but this is what I think. I wont come to Grenoble any more this time (besides I have no longer the means, transport and money) At two o’clock I will go to Menton. Tomorrow without doubt I will be in Italy.

But I say to you:

I can no longer live without you. I want to return as soon as possible. Because next year I want to have a child. And I want to begin my life, that’s to say with you, to live with you. And you, since I am not there to influence you, can examine yourself in all tranquillity and decide whether you love me as I love you. If yes, help me to return legally. If that is impossible and if you really want it I will desert. Or perhaps you will find that it’s better to wait for demobilisation. But then too you will have to help me not to return to Palestine. Our marriage will have to be legalised. Perhaps that will help me to come again to France to fix up the formalities.  Think about all that darling. Take your time and write to me. I love you Yvette. You are my wife darling. It is such an enormous happiness to have you for a wife. You are mine, my wife and when I think of that, when I write that all my anxieties vanish and only happiness; calm and certainty remain in me… If one decides to wait until summer, one must never stop thinking of that. Never. And wait for the summer as the beginning of a new, happy life filled with joy, bonheur, I think of that because I cant not.  How could I live otherwise?

Your Henry

<<translation incomplete>>