Letter from Edward Renouf to Anny Schey von Koromla

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Cagnes

29 August

Dear Annerl!

Condelet says the shop is reluctant to accept the return of Clemens’s bicycle because they claim they don’t know whether Condelet has stolen it to sell for his own profit. So you need to send him a signed note asking him to sell it on your behalf. The shop won’t pay more than fifty francs for it anyway. If he can, Condelet will sell it elsewhere for more money.

Life in Cagnes goes on as usual. Boeschke, who was actually starting to look quite healthy and well since George left, is now in floods of tears and having a hard time sleeping because of a suicidal letter from Georgi (you mustn’t tell anyone about this of course!), and so she’s started talking about suicide again herself. Ted the painter told Lorraine that if she keeps on that way she’ll soon become a depraved, ugly old woman whom no-one would want to come near anymore. She said it was all the same to her; her mother and grandmother both died of alcoholism, and she was looking forward to going the same way. Then she got really drunk and smashed up the furniture in her apartment. Some other blonde was screaming that she could no longer bear to be the whore of so-and-so the painter because she could only love women, so she too got drunk and started howling away for everyone to hear . . . . . . . and so on and so forth . . . . . . . The world seems to revel in misunderstandings, misfortune and tears. If only we could steel ourselves and one of our dearest friends against this madness! If only we could be reasonable and sympathetic human beings, if only we had the good will to understand and forgive others, perhaps then we could be happy! How I long for that impossible ‘golden age’! I hope you’re doing better than I am.

All my love . . . . . .

Etl

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