Wednesday
August 14th 1935
My very dearest dear - it's so difficult to start and put things down on paper to you when I've been used to having you with me and being able to say anything that came into my head. I think were were both a bit spoilt having such a wonderful 14 days together. But the good thing about it is that we both realize how lucky we are - I find the only part of it which leaves a lasting ache behind is that such perfect times should come and go and that we cannot live forever! (which is a very Mary-ish ache!) I am so afraid was shall look back when we're old and be sad because such times are gone for always. Do you think we shall? - or does something inside us help us to forget the magic longing and exultation of finding oneself nearly one with somebody else? Of course I know that deeper things take its place, but I do hope it won't hurt me to look back. It won't you, but I'm a bit silly that way - arn't I?
You know how badly I had wanted to cry last Saturday, because you were going? - Well, as I saw you sliding away from the platform all I wanted was to be sick! - I knew all the way home and in bed that if I could have cried, my tummy would have stopped aching - but I couldn't - I just ached and ached until I went to sleep - wondering if you were trying to go to sleep too - and if your tummy was aching - & rather cross because your photograph sat there looking at me and pretending to be like you - when it wasn't a bit! And in the morning I woke up and thought "That's a very good photograph of my dearest dear - I hope he's missing me - I'm glad the Aumunds are so nice - I must really try and get better at German because Ticky wants me to - I'll do two hours a day - it's a very nice morning - which frock shall I put on - and I'm going to have a very nice two weeks with the-person-I-love-best-in-the-world on the platform to meet me at the other end!"
So here I am really having a wonderful time. Schwaneberg is a hundred years away - and when I want anybody to discuss things with I discuss them with you - and you always give just the answers you would give - and I say "Don't be so silly - it wouldn't" - or "Perhaps you're right - I'll try it".
Sunday was a beautiful boiling hot day. We had breakfast in the garden, and Inge and I sat out there afterwards - Inge working - and me using my new vocabulary book - just cooking in the sun. In the afternoon Inge, Elaud and I took our bathing costumes and tea down to the Waannsee - got the canoe out of the boat-house - (in which Inge and I tried to change modestly into our bathing costumes in front of about 30 men helping out with the boats) and then set off with Elaud (in a beautiful white linen suit) paddling - and Inge and I lounging among cushions under a broiling sun surrounded by holiday craft of all kinds. We passed the special bathing beach which was unbelievably crammed with motley crowds - hundreds of women and children simply take their frocks off and sit in their petticoats and hats! Inge was slightly ashamed of them all (she things the English people are a much better shape!) and Elaud wanted to blow them sky-high with a bomb - a somewhat youthful idea for removing the eye-sores of this world! We paddled a long way - and Inge and I got out and bathed form a patch of sand where there was nobody else. It was lovely - then we ate our cakes and I . and I paddled slowly back again. The sailing yachts - hundreds of them - in the evening light were magnificent - and even the madding crowd took on a more peaceful hue. We took Elaud home - he's a very nice sincere poetry-reading lad - and saw his flat - and he said he'd like to come up in the aeroplane with me when I go, as he's never been either. After supper I sat with Inge in her room - she practised the piano and I did my knitting.
On Monday morning Inge was a school again - a very hot day - Professor Aumund took me shopping - to the photograph shop - the film will be ready tomorrow - and to the hair-dressers where they spoke English. They did my hair quite well for 3 marks. The professor also said he would show me the "Rathaus" - which I was sure was something to do with bicycle storage - & couldn't think why we had to see it. However it turned out to be quite a new noble building, and I think it's very muddling they way the pronounce their "ds" as "ts". I try saying something now and again - but I usually have to repeat it in English for them because my pronunciation is so bad. But my vocabulary is getting better - I find your influence works more strongly the further away you are - (influence for the good I should say). Frau Aumund asked me yesterday if I had had a letter - and when I said "no" surprised me by saying "I suppose Terrick has not had time to write yet" - heaven knows what Inge must have explained to them about us before we arrived! I told them about your journey etc when I got your letter this morning.
On Monday afternoon I went to watch Inge's class on the "Sports "Platy" - it was too hot for them to do much - but they looked very nice in their black knickers & running vests - spear-throwing and long-jumping. At 5 O'clock her friend Erika came for us and we all went off to bathe in the Krumme Lanke. Erika is 20 - good-looking - and very nice and quiet. We went to the special bathing place (quite a long walk through woods) and there were a lot of people there - but nice diving-boards and we sat a long time in the sun afterwards and talked half English - half German. I enjoyed it very much indeed - back to supper and knitting and bed. I believe we are going to tea with Erika this afternoon. When I'm old I shall never go out to tea with anyone if I can help it, I think it's a beastly habit. (I now leave out the word "grown-up" when I'm talking to you owing to your hollow mockery of same!).
Yesterday it rained gently all day. I had a letter from Grannie in the morning with particulars of her advertisement - and I wrote to her and Jack & Miss Olsson, and did my German. Do you know what "höschblats" (?) and "stopfen" are without thinking hard? I do. In the afternoon we read and at 5 o'clock Frau A. and I set off for Thiel Platz and Wittenburger Platz to buy two umbrellas and go to the pictures. I thought of you all the way - and us setting off together on Saturday. A "T" bus goes to Onkel Tom's Hutte - we took an "M" - and I regret to inform you that our little pink tickets would have taken us all the way to Berlin! Kadewe didn't look quite the same without you - nor did the trams and taxis look so friendly - and I couldn't even imagine the desperate man running round the corner with a gun to shoot you dead with screams from the count and the woman on the other side of the road!
We spent half an hour in an umbrella shop as Frau A. couldn't make up her mind. In the end I decided for her and we took a taxi to the Berlina Str: to a small cinema which was showing a film with Renate Müller & Luis Trenker called "The Secret of the Matterhorn" - It was quite an old one apparently, by the shortness of the frocks and "firemen's-ness" of the hats - The make-up was dreadfully bad and the indoor scenes pretty forced and Victorian-novelish (the band-conductor was used again as a detective plus a moustache!). - But the mountain pictures were simply perfect. - marvellous show and ski-ing and about 50 men on skis hunting for a body with flares in ice caverns and over miles of snow - the photography there was wonderful - its a pity they'd put in a story at all.
We saw a good news - with Goebbels talking to 1500 school-boys in a voice we should use to lead troops into battle! All German orators seem to get more worked up than ours - don't they? - and also an American version of "The Little Red Hen" - or was it the Walt Disney "The Wise Little Hen"? - However, it wasn't a patch on the Disney - like a paper book after a leather-bound! - a rather cheap copy, you know, with dreadful American voices. I wonder Disney allows them to do it - perhaps he doesn't know!
We came out at 8.45 and were home by 9.30. Gunther had arrived - and clicked his heels together at me and bowed low. He's very nice too. Much better looking than the photographs and seems quite keen on planning things for me to do.
But today it is pouring - and teeming - and pouring with rain and looks as if it will go on for ever. When your letter came by the 11.0 post I thought I should burst with excitement. It was so nice to see your dear old writing on the envelope - and when I opened it I had to sit for a moment with my eyes shut - so that I could see you lying under the tree at Schwaneberg telling me the stories of your past loves! You looked very nice like that, and I can remember just how I felt. It was a lovely letter and I laughed all to myself in the right places - oh! I wish I'd been with you - as Chesterton says in "The Man Who Was Thursday" It may be conceded to the mathematicians that 4 is twice 2 - but 2 is not twice one - two is two thousand times one - that is why the world will always return to monogamy". I can exactly picture you when you were accosted by "Poly" clients!! - I know your "aristocratic" look so well! it's a pity you got into Victoria so late - because I thought of you all at the wrong time!
You didn't tell me much home news about Renny and Joan and the office etc:
Have you sent off the film yet? - and by now - I hope you're not worn out. Next one won't be so long because there won't be so many days in between.
Inge sends her love - and Frau Aumund has told me to "schreiben" her "grüsse" to you
- and as for me - if I could send myself for two hours, I would, although that would be a rather selfish way of doing things - for now we have a chance of leaving the first hour out of it all together - and I send you every part of me that thinks, and hopes, and believes, and loves.
Yours,
in all sincerity
Mary Pleasant
I shall sleep on page 10 - it as so "tummy-ache-ish"
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