June 30, 1994

Liebe Margrit,

In a recent telephone conversation, when you were at the Detroit airport, waiting for the weather to permit you to fly to Buffalo, you asked me not to open a certain letter because you wished to retract its contents.  At the time I acquiesced to that request, because I wished to shield you from regrets and to make you feel better.  But as your letters arrived, I could not tell which was the one to be consored.  Therefore I opened them all, and none of them seemed to me to require retraction or apology.  I am in fact very much interested in what you think and feel, about the world in general, and about me in particular.  Nothing that you have said or done requires an apology; Nothing requires to be retracted.

So far as my own letters are concerned, you should understand that they are all written with the awareness that they might some day come under official scrutiny regarding the propriety of our conduct.  Which is not to say that either you or I have done anything wrong which we must conceal.  I have a lawyer's view of official procedures; just as I have a physician's view of illness and injury.  I have reviewed uncounted cases of civil and criminal litigation, from 1956 to the present I have been involved in numerous legal proceedings, once as plaintiff, once as  defendant, several times as witness, and most frequently as a student trying to decipher the ancient riddle, "What is justice?" and trying to understand how our judicial system works.  Your statement "America is not Nazi-Germany" is, of course, true.  We are much more pious.  We do not gloat or philosophize about our brutality.  We have no concentration camps, and the Hatians and Chinese who drown because we deny them access to our shores do not count, nor do the tens of thousands of young black men in over-crowded jails who are systematically raped by their fellow inmates with the acquiescence of their jailers.  But certain of the characteristics of the judicial processes in the two societies are quite analogous.  What is most relevant to our case is the need of prosecutors to pressure family members to incriminate and to testify against each other.  In Germany, you remember, sisters were encouraged to report the seditious activity of their brothers.  Stephan Hermlin has written a beautiful account of their dilemma in his story "In einer dunklen Welt", and your conjecture that perhaps my anxiety over our legal problems, and your thoughtful offer to dismiss Mrs. Vansant if I thought her investigation would incriminate me is, at minimum, a glance in that direction.

From the moment of our inital telephone conversation on June 19, when you told me about your tax situation, I understood that you would be exonerated if you could show that I had neglected my duty as your trustee to provide you with the information you required to complete your returns, and that the gravity of your present embarrassment would be in some proportion to the diligence with which I had fulfilled that duty, and that if the United States Attorney decided to prosecute, he would almost surely try to persuade one of us to testify against the other; and offer immunity from prosecution to whoever of us could help him secure the longest prison term for the other.

We have often commented, in letters and especially in telephone conversations, how different we are from one another, and your correspondence with me is replete with references to your anger against me and Klemens.  Initially we assumed that this anger was a private matter between ourselves; but that this the rage, however violent, would never breach the ramparts of family loyalty.  I am prepared to preserve this assumption, although what you have recently said and done may have made it obsolete.

Your letters contain frequent references to the trust and condidence which your friends place in your judgment and in your sense of responsibility; and that your family are the only ones who do not trust you.  Klemens and Laura tell me that two or three years ago you staged a hearing in the Konnarock kitchen, with youself as prosecutor, Klemens defendant, and Rose Kirby the judge.  Your current project is to dramatize how we have expelled you from the home that you inherited, by renting a house in Troutdale, where, sandwiched between two arduous days of driving, you will spend four or five hot summer days with your two foster children.  The letter which I received last evening contains even more ambitious plans to embarrass us, in that, if I understand it correctly, your plan is to come to Southwest Virginia in August when we are in Konnarock, but not to stay in your parents' house, but rather in a B&B in Troutdale, as you refer to it, and to invite there not only your friends from Windsor but also your friends the Ludwigs joining you in a chorus to heap shame on your brother and his wife.  Like your mother, you are a talented stage manager, and the recommendation once given to her is apposite to you as well, "Fräulein, Sie sollten ans Theater gehn."

But while I am appreciative of your artistry, the lawyer in me discerns the legal implications of your activities; for it is just these friends whom you try so hard to convince of my meanness whom you invite to our house.  You are sure that none of them will have an accident there, although "Accidents do happen," as you told Margaret when she saw the blind headlight socket on your car.  And when the accident does happen, and one of your friends or one of your charges is injured, of course they won't sue you, because you are such a loving human being, and because you have no money, and because you have bought their affections by regaling them most generously with the wealth that your greedy brother accumulated for you.  But as for your brother and your nephew, the inhibitions that protect you from liability suits do not apply to them.  In the first place, they have money, and in the second place they are bad, and sueing bad people is a good thing, and secretly your friends will know that you will not hold their lawsuits against them, because although you would never admit it even to yourself, both you and your friends understand that your brother is getting what he deserves.  "Froehliche Weihnachten," as Papa would have said at this point.

As I read these lines I ask myself whether I should mail them.  On the one hand, I do not want to cause you gratuitous pain.  On the other hand, I believe that candor is the only hope for our relationship, and as I take no offense at your account of the noxious psychological environment which I create for you; what charming academic prose to describe the fart of a skunk!  so you should reciprocate my equanimity and contemplate me with bemusement, if not with boredom, as I explore and test the depths of your hostility.

Perhaps the most valid accusation that you can make against me, is that I have not taken you seriously.