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339F
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
29 May 1918
Dear Friend,
You are passing through troubled times, I can tell. How could I take amiss your not writing more often? I know that you like writing when you have anything cheerful to say, but obviously that cannot be all the time.
My mother will be 83 this year and is now rather shaky.1 Sometimes I think I shall feel a little freer when she dies, because the idea of her having to be told of my death is something from which one shrinks back.
So I have really reached 62, still unable to achieve that quiet, firm resignation that so distinguishes you as a German, though you use an Italian motto.2 My prevailing mood is powerless embitterment, or embitterment at my powerlessness. Perhaps you yourself will remember a recent instance of this.
A fortnight ago Reik read us an excellent paper on Kol Nidre3; he has hit on Bible exegesis and will remain with it for a long time. But on Thursday morning he left for Mount Asolone, where violent fighting is taking place now. He is one of our hopes. My three sons are at present out of the firing line.
Ferenczi is taking a great deal of trouble to fix us up again in the Tatras, where he can spend the holidays with us.4 He is likely to succeed for half the holiday period, we have no plans yet for the rest. I am very busy, but am already working grudgingly.
A remarkable feature of these times which I have not yet mentioned to you is the way in which we have been victualled for one year or so by patients and friendly followers. Actually we live on gifts, like a doctor's family in the old days. Our Hungarians, with Ferenczi and Eitingon at their head, as well as some Budapest families who stick to Ψα,5 keep us supplied with cigars, flour, lard, bacon, etc., either free of charge or at incredibly low prices, and I have also found other such quartermasters here in Vienna. Thus the world shows me I have not lived in vain. I am now having my portrait done by a patient who has been restored to art6; it is the last