Fräulein Felice!
I am now going to ask you a favor which sounds quite crazy, and which I should
regard as such, were I the one to receive the letter. It is also the very
greatest test that even the kindest person could be put to. Well, this is it:
Write to me only once a week, so that your letter arrives on Sunday -- for I
cannot endure your daily letters, I am incapable of enduring them. For
instance, I answer one of your letters, then lie in
bed in apparent calm, but my heart beats through my entire body and is
conscious only of you. I belong to you; there is really no other way of
expressing it, and that is not strong enough. But for this very reason I don't
want to know what you are wearing; it confuses me so much that I cannot deal
with life; and that's why I don't want to know that you are fond of me. If I
did, how could I, fool that I am, go on sitting in my office, or here at home,
instead of leaping onto a train with my eyes shut and opening them only when I
am with you? Oh, there is a sad, sad reason for not doing so. To make it short:
My health is only just good enough for myself alone, not good enough for
marriage, let alone fatherhood. Yet when I read your letter, I feel I could
overlook even what cannot possibly be overlooked.
If only I had your answer now! And how horribly I torment you, and how I compel
you, in the stillness of your room, to read this letter, as nasty a letter as
has ever lain on your desk! Honestly, it strikes me sometimes that I prey like
a spectre on your felicitous name! If only I had
mailed Saturday's letter, in which I implored you never to write to me again,
and in which I gave a similar promise. Oh God, what prevented me from sending
that letter? All would be well. But is a peaceful solution possible now? Would
it help if we wrote to each other only once a week? No, if my suffering could
be cured by such means it would not be serious. And already I foresee that I
shan't be able to endure even the Sunday letters. And so, to compensate for
Saturday's lost opportunity, I ask you with what energy remains to me at the
end of this letter: If we value our lives, let us abandon it all.
Did I think of signing myself Dein? No, nothing could
be more false. No, I am forever fettered to myself, that's what I am, and
that's what I must try to live with.
Franz