Le 2 Février 1917
My heart is so heavy my soul cannot bear. That sounds too maudlin for Punscht. But I am no writer. And yet write I must, as I wrestle within for the true answer. He has burned the journals. Fool! The sole remaining evidence of his brilliance in the foundation of his opus. And I the only one privy, never having taken a note, my memory a sieve. I pore through my files. I have saved every one of his letters, all of the ‘please my dear bunscht my munscht my hibuls, my buls my minusmochant. Wrirnuls bonanimbuls, bumchtbuls. All these should be burned, dust to dust, as one day we two shall be.
Punscht-–I have filled three of the notebooks you bought, am so tired – forgive me if my humor is fichu, my michou.
–I think about you in my small bed and I feel sorrow rubbing up against me.
–I would want to dance outside in the moonlight with you, hunting horns and stags. Not this melancholic landscape no signposts no sightings over the hill. No bow and arrow at the ready. I dream of the shepherds on stilts crossing the melancholic landscape apace, no mud or bog to slow them down. I would love to trespass through the night, the trees my shield. And yet I feel exposed, the mud climbing up my pant legs and taking hold of my soul.
“And why pray tell, dear Reynaldo,” he will say, when I refuse to burn them. “Why should I reveal my secrets? Anymore than a woman would reveal her lace camisole.”
“Or you the lace edging of your long-johns.”
“Yes, just so. As you know, all would be believed, whether fiction or fact. I would be known primarily for my propensity to don lingerie, not to unclothe the very truth of art, of life itself.