I fear the life now facing me. It is a cold life and will grow colder. Perhaps the cold comes from Switzerland with its mountains covering the sky, its endless winter rains, its dull, sober people who know nothing of warmth, desire, and love. Every other week we are visited by an immigration office official who gives us forms to complete, the same forms each time. Where and when were you born? Why have you entered the country? How do you make your living? Do you plan to stay? If not, when do you plan to leave? Do I plan? What do I plan? The only thing they don’t ask is whether I plan to kill myself and if so when and in what manner?
Forgive me for writing you my dark and jumbled thoughts, darling. It’s not so bad. We’re fine. Papa has a job in a local sewing machine factory. He is well paid and well respected, and we have everything we need. We’ve taken a beautiful apartment, and soon we’re going to buy a car (a used car for now), which means we’ll be able to wander to our hearts’ content.
Spring is in the air, I can feel it in my bones, and maybe the reason I’m so out of sorts is that it refuses to come. I do so need sun and motion! And I need you, my darling! You have no idea how much I think of you, how often I dream of you, dream of you coming to me — sometimes with a slightly ironic smile because I’m so impatient — and embracing me as you once did. But then I wake up and I’m alone, you are not next to me, and I realize I don’t even know where you are and am haunted by thoughts of the most terrifying possibilities. Forgive me, but what can I do? The letters I sent you from Italy (you still don’t know where we were when the war ended) were returned to me, and all my inquiries through the Red Cross and the embassy have been in vain. Still, I will never, can never believe that the end has come. No, you are too much a part of me, we are two halves of a single body, and one part cannot be separated from the other without the other’s knowing it, feeling it. You’re alive, aren’t you? You’ll let me hear from you at once. You will, won’t you?
I haven’t the courage to finish and send off this letter. It’s been sitting on my desk for three days now. Do you see what I’m afraid of?
The weather is nice. There is dew shining on the grass when I walk Papa to the factory in the morning. Each time I come home, I think I’m going to find you in my room, just sitting there and smiling. I’m writing these last lines in a café, and I’ll rush home as soon as I send off the letter. But even if I don’t find you there and even if this letter too comes back, I’ll write you another and another and I won’t stop until I’ve found you. I want you to know that, if you receive these lines. Ever, anywhere. I shall always wait for you. Write me at once.
Yours,
Lili
Hamburg, 7 June 1949
Dearest Mirko,
I’ve decided to write to you immediately because I’m happy, and superstitious enough to hope that one happy event will lead to another. I arrived here yesterday from Biel, and right after breakfast — because I had a nine-o’clock appointment — I went off to the Grammophongesellschaft, where I had a personal interview with the head of production. Papa has invented a kind of filing cabinet for records. I don’t know how it is in Yugoslavia, but here record collecting is all the rage and people are making record libraries the way they used to make book libraries. Anyway, Papa has come up with a system of shelves that allows you to choose the record you want to play by pushing a button. It took a lot of work (and money) to perfect it and put together a prototype in a factory in Bern. But now we’re out of the woods! The man I spoke to has expressed interest in manufacturing and marketing the “Ehrlich cabinet” and is drawing up a contract that will give us 1.5 % of the profits. (Papa isn’t feeling well, which is why I’m here on my own, but I’m sure that as usual it comes from his working too hard and that the good news will put him back on his feet.)
I was so excited and happy when I left the Grammophongesellschaft office that I had the sudden feeling I was going to find you, so I made for the nearest café to write to you again. I simply can’t imagine that this letter will fail to reach you now that after all these years of deprivation we have finally latched on to something solid. Actually we made a big mistake by not coming straight to Germany after the war. We both knew it, we even talked it over, but whenever it came time to take the final step, one of us would find some “but,” which as you can guess always boiled down to the fact that we had suffered so from Germany and the Germans. Now that I’m here, though, I see it’s the only place for us. There’s nothing to remind us of the old hatreds. The people I meet on the train, in the street, the Grammophongesellschaft — they’re all so open and optimistic and full of energy, and even though there’s rubble everywhere, there’s also building everywhere, the streets are full of life, the shopwindows full of goods, the service in taxis, on the phone, and in cafés is excellent. And the language! After all that murky Swiss dialect I am finally hearing the pure, flowing German my dear departed mother taught me. I feel revitalized, reborn.
You must be laughing at me, darling, because you know I’m over the hill, getting on to thirty like you. Our age is one of the many things we have in common. But the love that binds me to you is as strong as it ever was, perhaps because it has gone unused, unconsumed for so many years and therefore remains as tender and young as we were then. Now I’ll be able to love you full strength, so to speak. Now that we’re mature and have been through so much.
But here I am sad again, ready to burst into tears. I think of you as my child, to clutch to my breast, to warm and nourish, but I have no child, my child was lost to the world, torn out of me, torn out of me by these very people, maybe by the waiter over there with the scar on his forehead, the one watching me out of the corner of his eye. Where are you, darling? Am I ever going to find you? If Papa and I move here — and we’ve got to, it’s the chance of a lifetime — years and years will go by before we get German citizenship and I have the right to travel freely and look for you. Or will God have mercy and will you answer this letter? My heart is pounding like a hammer at the thought. I can just picture you receiving it, coming home and picking it up, opening it, smiling, nodding, and ten days later I have your answer. Don’t worry, even if we leave Biel for good, I’ll leave a forwarding address with the landlord. He’s very trustworthy. Your letter will find me. I’ll tell everybody and leave the address at the post office too. All you have to do is write! Then we can talk it all through. There must be a way to bring you here. Don’t worry. I’ll see to everything myself, because my only desire is to have you here by my side, for good, till the end, till death, my only love, my husband, brother, and son. You are everything to your loving
Lili
P.S. Write at once. Even if your life has changed and my outpourings sound odd to you. Just let me know you’re alive. I leave for Biel in an hour and a half to give Papa the good news and wind things up there.
West Berlin, 25 June 1951