Letter from Edward Renouf to Anny Schey von Koromla

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Wednesday 8th

My Annerl!

Having had to wait impatiently for a couple of days, I was glad and relieved to receive your lovely little letter – I hope you’re feeling better! And you’ve already been in the sea and decorated your room with flowers! What the sleepless nights are saying to you are the words of evil demons which, like the nights themselves, consist of nothing but shadows and fail to mention the far greater truth of the sun and the flowers. As truly as the demons in the night want to rise up and torment you, they are just deceptive devils, for they show you a tiny part of your fate as though it were the whole. And that’s as much a lie as saying black is white. I know them, the rabble! They often try to visit me at night – and sometimes even by daylight! But we know how to send them packing. Sometimes they whisper to me about the transience of mankind – they say the time will come when there’s no-one left on this or any other planet, when the last vestiges of culture have disappeared, when the earth itself has dissolved into the universe. I can’t tell you how this makes me feel. But stronger still are the feelings I have when the demons tell me that you, my Annie, will never really, really throw your lot in with me because your life is already too deeply anchored with the fates of others. But the gloom passes when I read your letters and look at my pictures of you, which I do often. It’s only then I realise that the gloom has grown up from just a small fraction of the truth, whereas the picture of our truth, taken as a whole, is one of endless joy and happiness. And likewise, Annie, when the demons whisper that your bones ache because you’ve become tired and heavy, and that the two of us perhaps won’t be able to run up the alps like mountain goats – see that as a small shadow in the bigger picture, a shadow that brings out the clarity and beauty of a light in the whole that we haven’t seen clearly before.

I was out for lunch with Rupé today – nice, cheerful – and saw a book about hands. In my mind’s eye I had a clear picture of your hands and how closely related they are to mine, more closely than the hands of my blood relatives, and far more closely than the hands of anyone else I’ve ever met. This knowledge gave me such happy assurance that we’re bound together not only by the god of love but also by God the Creator, and that that bond is too close for us ever to part ways or be separated from one another by some twist of fate.

And I seal this belief with a faithful ‘Amen’!

We’re going skiing tomorrow, for eight days. I don’t know exactly where we’re going yet, but I’ll write to you from ‘there’ right away.

Entirely yours

PS Thursday morning. The postman brought nothing from you today. We (Hans, Eugenie, the two Americans) are going to Berwang in the Tyrol, actual address not yet known. Ed.

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