I remain the tenacious cousin,
Lake Worth, Florida
New Year’s Day 1999
Dear Freyda,
I don’t hear from you, I wonder if you have gone away? But maybe you will see this. “If Freyda sees this even to toss away…”
I am feeling happy & hopeful. You are a scientist & of course you are right to scorn such feelings as “magical” & “primitive” but I think there can be a newness in the New Year. I am hoping this is so.
My father Jacob Schwart believed that in animal life the weak are quickly disposed of, we must hide our weakness always. You & I knew that as children. But there is so much more to us than just the animal, we know that, too.
Your loving cousin,
Palo Alto CA
19 January 1999
Rebecca:
Yes I have been away. And I am going away again. What business is it of yours?
I was coming to think you must be an invention of mine. My worst weakness. But here on my windowsill propped up to stare at me is “Rebecca, 1952.” The horse-mane hair & hungry eyes.
Cousin, you are so faithful! It makes me tired. I know I should be flattered, few others would wish to pursue “difficult” Professor Morgen-stern now I’m an old woman. I toss your letters into a drawer, then in my weakness I open them. Once, rummaging through Dumpster trash I retrieved a letter of yours. Then in my weakness I opened it. You know how I hate weakness!
Cousin, no more.
Lake Worth, Florida
23 January 1999
Dear Freyda,
I know! I am sorry.
I shouldn’t be so greedy. I have no right. When I first discovered that you were living, last September, my thought was only “My cousin Frey-da Morgenstern, my lost sister, she is alive! She doesn’t need to love me or even know me or give a thought of me. It’s enough to know that she did not perish and has lived her life.”
Your loving cousin,
Palo Alto CA
30 January 1999
Dear Rebecca,
We make ourselves ridiculous with emotions at our age, like showing our breasts. Spare us, please!
No more would I wish to meet you than I would wish to meet myself. Why would you imagine I might want a “cousin”-“sister”-at my age? I like it that I have no living relatives any longer for there is no obligation to think Is he/she still living?
Anyway, I’m going away. I will be traveling all spring. I hate it here. California suburban boring & without a soul. My “colleagues/friends” are shallow opportunists to whom I appear to be an opportunity.
I hate such words as “perish.” Does a fly “perish,” do rotting things “perish,” does your “enemy” perish? Such exalted speech makes me tired.
Nobody “perished” in the camps. Many “died”-“were killed.” That’s all.
I wish I could forbid you to revere me. For your own good, dear cousin. I see that I am your weakness, too. Maybe I want to spare you.
If you were a graduate student of mine, though! I would set you right with a swift kick in the rear.
Suddenly there are awards & honors for Freyda Morgenstern. Not only the memoirist but the “distinguished anthropologist” too. So I will travel to receive them. All this comes too late of course. Yet like you I am a greedy person, Rebecca. Sometimes I think my soul is in my gut! I am one who stuffs herself without pleasure, to take food from others.
Spare yourself. No more emotion. No more letters!
Chicago IL
29 March 1999
Dear Rebecca Schwart,
Have been thinking of you lately. It has been a while since I’ve heard from you. Unpacking things here & came across your letters & photograph. How stark-eyed we all looked in black-and-white! Like X-rays of the soul. My hair was never so thick & splendid as yours, my American cousin.
I think I must have discouraged you. Now, to be frank, I miss you. It has been two months nearly since you wrote. These honors & awards are not so precious if no one cares. If no one hugs you in congratulations. Modesty is beside the point & I have too much pride to boast to strangers.
Of course, I should be pleased with myself: I sent you away. I know, I am a “difficult” woman. I would not like myself for a moment. I would not tolerate myself. I seem to have lost one or two of your letters, I’m not sure how many, vaguely I remember you saying you & your family lived in upstate New York, my parents had arranged to come stay with you? This was in 1941? You provided facts not in my memoir. But I do remember my mother speaking with such love of her younger sister Anna. Your father changed his name to “Schwart” from-what? He was a math teacher in Kaufbeuren? My father was an esteemed doctor. He had many non-Jewish patients who revered him. As a young man he had served in the German army in the first war, he’d been awarded a Gold Medal for Bravery & it was promised that such a distinction would protect him while other Jews were being transported. My father disappeared so abruptly from our lives, immediately we were transported to that place, for years I believed he must have escaped & was alive somewhere & would contact us. I thought my mother had information she kept from me. She was not quite the Amazon-mother of Back From the Dead…Well, enough of this! Though evolutionary anthropology must scour the past relentlessly, human beings are not obliged to do so.
It’s a blinding-bright day here in Chicago, from my aerie on the fifty-second floor of my grand new apartment building I look out upon the vast inland sea Lake Michigan. Royalties from the memoir have helped pay for this, a less “controversial” book would not have earned. Nothing more is needed, yes?
Your cousin,
Lake Worth, Florida
April 13, 1999
Dear Freyda,
Your letter meant much to me. I’m so sorry not to answer sooner. I make no excuses. Seeing this card I thought “For Freyda!”
Next time I will write more. Soon I promise.
Your cousin
Chicago IL
22 April 1999
Dear Rebecca,
Rec’d your card. Am not sure what I think of it. Americans are ga-ga for Joseph Cornell as they are for Edward Hopper. What is Lanner Waltzes? Two little-girl doll figures riding the crest of a wave & in the background an old-fashioned sailing ship with sails billowing? Collage? I hate riddle-art. Art is to see, not to think.
Is something wrong, Rebecca? The tone of your writing is altered, I think. I hope you are not playing coy, to take revenge for my chiding letter of January. I have a doctoral student, a bright young woman not quite so bright as she fancies herself, who plays such games with me at the present time, at her own risk! I hate games, too.
(Unless they are my own.)
Your cousin,
Chicago IL
6 May 1999
Dear Cousin: Yes I think you must be angry with me! Or you are not well.
I prefer to think that you are angry. That I did insult you even in your American soft heart. If so, I am sorry. I have no copies of my letters to you & don’t recall what I said. Maybe I was wrong. When I am coldly sober, I am likely to be wrong. When drunk I am likely to be less wrong.
Enclosed here is a stamped addressed card. You need only check one of the boxes: angry not well.
Your cousin,
P.S. This Joseph Cornell Pond reminded me of you, Rebecca. A doll-like girl playing her fiddle beside a murky inlet.
Lake Worth, Florida
September 19, 1999
Dear Freyda,
How strong & beautiful you were, at the awards ceremony in Washington! I was there, in the audience at the Folger Library. I made the trip just for you.
All of the writers honored spoke very well. But none so witty & unexpected as “Freyda Morgenstern” who caused quite a stir.