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Vienna, November 28, 1920
IX., Berggasse 19
Dear friend,
Lajos has informed me as much about the state of your health as has become clear to him, and in so doing has certainly reassured me. I see that it is the same as it was years ago, and I understand it just as little as I did then. No doubt you are working it out hypochondriacally, strong suspicion that you have some real nucleus or other.
Your work and the conditions in your city certainly play a part in the causation. It is in any event very sensible of you to limit yourself to seven hours. I wish I could do it, too.
My apparent lack of participation has to do with the fact that I now write no letters at all during the week. The six hours of English a day make me so tired that in the evening I am of no use for anything more. At the same time, nose and throat are still tormenting me, the “smoking cure,” which I apply in a thoroughgoing manner, is of no use this time. My bladder is also reacting terribly to the prevailing cold. But otherwise I am healthy and am resisting the annoyances.
If you want to send me more precise data about place and time, give us also the possibility of participating in your mother's 80th birthday by means of a telegraphic greeting. My mother is between 85 and 86, which not infrequently causes me concern. It is incautious to get so old. To go over to the other side: in March Martin is expecting a son, the way it should be after wartime.1
If it amuses me, I can count myself as rich. In consequence of the worth-lessness of the crown, I now possess 2.4 million. So, I am a millionaire, but I didn't come to the million, it came down to me. In reality, my worth amounts to about a quarter of what it was before the war. It happens that I work hard for a whole week in order at the end to be poorer than before, because in the meantime a decrease has taken place in the value of the foreign currencies. Others are doing much worse here.
Rank had the happy idea of suggesting to you that you should spend the