Dear Marion,

Thank you very much for your letter. I'm concerned that
our correspondence not take up too much of your time
and energy, especially during the next few days and
weeks when you will be rearranging your apartment and
making preparations for your trip to Europe. I wouldn't
construe hypothetically short or infrequent letters as
emblems of indifference or rejection. It's very important
that in our correspondence you should be free to write
what is on your mind without censoring yourself. You need
have no concern about offending me. I very much value
your criticism. Candor is more important than anything else.
I can discover no need to reach agreement or consensus on
any issue.  Thinking and contemplating in an atmosphere of
disagreement is congenial to me and makes me not at all
uncomfortable.

You wrote:

_     However if I have annoyed you to the point
_     where you would be happier spending
_     the late summer in Konnarock,
_     I release you from your offer
_     to collect me from Logan.

My answer:

You haven't annoyed me at all. I plan to meet you
at Logan arriving on Icelandair flight #631, July 26, at 6:35 p.m.
unless a) Margaret or I become very ill, or b) unanticipated
circumstances such as for example a burglary or vandalism to
the house, mandate my presence in Konnarock. We agreed that
you would telephone from France (or Iceland) prior to your
departure to confirm the arrangement.

At the same time, I'm not sure that either Margaret or I
have anything to offer you that would make a visit worth
your while. We are, after all, two old cripples who belong
in an old people's home, if not indeed in a cemetery.
The only entertainment we have for you is talk. Old people
are by nature garrulous, and their words correspondingly
worthless.

So far as our correspondence is concerned, in the past few
days, since I sent you copies of the three 1991 letters to
Margrit, our ideas seem to have darted off in opposite
directions, so that, at this juncture, we seem to have
lost our way. It's my mistake. With respect to these
letters you wrote:

_     What I find disturbing about your reaction
_     is that you don't leave room for the possibility
_     that Margrit may have been right about SOME of
_     these matters and you might have been wrong. 

I should have stopped at that point and asked you:
a) to quote from the letters in context the "reaction"
to which you refer,
b) to cite evidence in the letters that I don't leave
room for the possibility that Margrit may have been
right ...
c) to specify the matters mentioned in the letters
about which Margrit might have been right and I might
have been wrong.

These are to me very important points. I understand
myself as having expressed just the opposite reaction
then I wrote to Margrit on September 7, 1991:

    "You have sometimes criticized me for my attitude, for
what I have done in the past, or what amounts to the same
thing, for the sort of person I have been.  While such crit-
icism doesn't offend me, and while I try to learn from it,
these are matters that I cannot change.  I cannot change the
person that I am.  I cannot change the past.  If you are
dissatisfied, tell me what you would like me to do now, this
week, this month, this year. Of course I cannot promise you
that I will comply with every request. What I can promise
is: 1) that I will try to understand what you ask, 2) that I
will try to do what you request of me, and 3) if what I am
able or willing to do is unsatisfactory to you, I will try
to explain myself in however great detail you wish.  The
best hope of improving the relationship is my trying to
understand your requests, and your trying to understand my
answers when they do not fully satisfy you."

Doesn't my promise:
"1) that I will try to understand what you ask, 2) that I
will try to do what you request of me, and 3) if what I am
able or willing to do is unsatisfactory to you, I will try
to explain myself in however great detail you wish.  The
best hope of improving the relationship is my trying to
understand your requests, and your trying to understand my
answers when they do not fully satisfy you."

doesn't that promise belie your accusation:

_        that you don't leave room for the possibility
_     that Margrit may have been right about SOME of
_     these matters and you might have been wrong. 

Please explain.

Alternatively we can change the subject, and discuss
issues other than Margrit's family's relationship to her.

Jochen