Letter from Edward Renouf to Anny Schey von Koromla

Description

5 March

My Annie!

I must write now even though I’m going to telephone in an hour. The door to the balcony is open. I’m sitting here in the sun. The melting snow is dripping past the tip of my nose. There’s a blackbird on the balustrade – I wonder if it’s the one you saw? ¬– ‘If a little bird flies over, bringing tidings and a kiss.’ Must be!

The postman did well today. Your letter first and foremost! Rejected manuscripts will never force me to go to America or into business. As long as both of us are fine, as long as our hopes and plans slowly but surely grow and come to fruition, we’ll be so well that our lives as artists will hardly lag behind. I’ve already sent off the novella about the acorn tree. Plans for others are drafted and underway, and I’ll finish them as soon as I have time. Unfortunately the morning just disappeared again today – conferences with notaries and so on about my grandmother’s hopeless burden of a ruin – then I have to spend half the afternoon with Frau Leembruggen. But then –

Besides the motifs for novellas that I’ve already told you about, another one came to me yesterday. In Canada the richest farmer in the region was an old middle-aged bachelor. He was a strictly religious man (Scotch Presbyterian) and had no dealings with anyone other than the clergy. His elderly mother ran his household. As his groom and chambermaid he had a tender, beautiful child of fifteen, a girl from the orphanage in the nearby town. He kept her in line with harsh words and the whip. She feared and hated him bitterly. My brother and I once took her for a little ride in our canoe, and she told us about her woes. That she came out in the canoe with us at all was grounds for a lashing. A year later he married her. How’s that for a short, dramatic novella?

It’s important that I work, but it’s just as important that you should enjoy your rest. These days of rest will be the bridge that carries you safely into the spring. And don’t worry about putting on weight. Your body is so tender and yet so normal and healthy that a couple of kilos here and there will only make it lovelier. Even if you get as fat as a dumpling, you’ll never be able to conceal or withhold your charm from me. So tuck in!

The crocuses, tulips and anemones are blooming like it’s high spring. The doves on the roofs are all madly in love, tender and bellicose, proud and jealous. There’s still snow on the branches, but the little birds are tweeting as though the trees were laden with May blossom. They soon will be!

Just as you are my A–ll, so I am you E–!

Read more