Dear Georgette,

Thank you for your letter. Having devoted much of the past
two days to preparing, copying and mailing amended Virginia
income tax returns for the years 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005,
2004, 2003, 2002 and 2000, I try to reorient my mind to
more edifying pursuits. I hope soon to have attained a state
of mind in which I can resume work on my novel Die Freunde.

Talking with Margrit's acquaintances and friends, telling them
about her death and listening to their expressions of sorrow,
I've learned much about the way we human beings think and feel
about one another. I chide myself for excessive seriousness,
for spurning encounters which I consider casual or superficial,
but which were very meaningful to Margrit's friends, some of
whom might have been capable of nothing more. I ask myself
whether the intellectually more demanding and emotionally more
passionate relationships that are congenial to me might not be
unduly intrusive, violative of the autonomy and integrity of
the participants.

Ich besinne mich des Rats der Marschallin im Rosenkavalier:

Leicht muss man sein,
mit leichtem Herz und leichten Händen halten und nehmen,
halten und lassen ...
Die nicht so sind, die straft das Leben,
und Gott erbarmt sich ihrer nicht.
_                            Rosenkavalier I,1

denke aber, dass ich zu alt bin umzulernen.

The dream you related to me about driving with Margrit in her car,
frightened by her sideswiping mailboxes on the side where you were
sitting, she being apparently indifferent to your safety, seems to
me to require no explanation at all, but to admit of interpretation
on diverse levels. Margrit's lack of caution was frightening to 
many, I believe reasonably so. She demanded to be trusted and was
deeply offended when trust was not forthcoming. Your description
of an urn with Margrit's ashes covered with rose petals likeswise
tells its own story. It reminds me of the enigmatic epitaph, now
engraved on his tombstone in Raron, that Rilke composed for himself:

"Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch,
Lust, Niemandes Schlaf zu sein,
unter so viel Lidern."

(Rose, O contradiction pure,
desire, to be the sleep of none,
under so numerous lids.)

I lived my childhood, and especially my adolescence, as I reflect
on them now, under the imperative so far as my family, my parents
and my sister, were concerned, of Wiedergutmachung, restoration or
reparation or restitution for the injuries that circumstances
(or fate) had inflicted on them. Now that my sister and my parents
are all dead, I find myself in search for others to whom to
discharge this obligation.

Jochen