Dear Georgette,

Thank you very much for your letter.

Your dreams about Margrit corroborate the obvious:
that your encounter with her had deep and lasting
consequences for your life. From time to time I ask
myself whether on balance my sister's involvement
with you and your family was beneficial or deleterious.
What little I know is insufficient even to suggest
an answer and the question may be inherently
unanswerable. Perhaps it ought not to be asked.

One of my critical observations, which I ceased to
articulate about fifty years ago, is that Margrit
lived in a world of fantasy and that she systematically
deluded herself about the effect of what she did or did
not do.  Perhaps that was true also in her transactions
with you and with your father and your mother. I myself
was characteristically uncomfortable to be involved in
Margrit's friendships, which entailed an unacceptable
degree of misunderstanding. Yet from the condolences I
have received, I infer that Margrit's friends found the
casual relationships congenial, wanted nothing, and
perhaps could have tolerated nothing more intimate.
Perhaps the fault is not Margrit's, but my own, in that
I am unable to derive satisfaction from encounters which
strike me as trivial and superficial.

I have been thinking of you with some frequency, and
you were on my mind this morning when your e-mail arrived.
I feel guilty and inadequate for my inability to proceed
with the memorial concert that we were planning, especially
since you had expressed the intention of coming. However,
as days went by, I became more and more perplexed by the
tangle of misunderstandings that my plans were conjuring
into existence. Margrit insisted on leading a life from
which I was sytematically excluded. Far from bridging my
separation from her friends, a memorial concert might well
have had the consequence of demonstrating that the 
separation was unbridgeable.

Perhaps, once your semester's work is behind you,
we should arrange another telephone conversation.
It's my intuition that there is yet more to be said.
My very best wishes to you.

Jochen