731 words
c/o Frau Asmus
65 Jensenstraße
D 8210 Prien
[11 August 1982]
Dear Beryl,
Yesterday, Tuesday the 10th — 62nd anniversary of the Treaty of Sèvres (10-8-1920) which gave Smyrna and its hinterland back to Greece after 500 years of Turkish occupation, only to be lost again two years later — 9-9-22 — the Allies having, after the Greek elections of 14-11-20 that turned out their man (Venizelos) and called back King Constantine, the German Kaiser’s brother in law, from his forced exile, torn the treaty to pieces and left the Greeks to their fate — yesterday, the 10th, I say, as Frau Asmus came back, I was packed off in great haste from Kaltenbach no. 12 (from Frau Ettmayr’s home) and taken, in Barbara’s car, to Prien. Barbara is Frau Ettmayr’s daughter, the 30-year-old girl who is getting married at the first of September.
Frau Ettmayr seemed only too happy to get rid of me. She is, I think, expecting other guests very soon. I shall miss the cat — lovely warm stripy fur — purring at my side.
Frau Asmus, amiable as she is, cannot keep me for very long; she has all sorts of problems with her family (her daughter, half German, half Italian, studying in Berlin, is driving herself crazy through an intense and extensive perusal of Sigmund Freud, that dirty Yid with an overdose of sex on the brain — and probably not enough of it elsewhere (which is, I was once told, the trouble with many of those oversexy writers — Freud, William Reich (another Jew) and the lot of them).
Frau Asmus has just come from Berlin disappointed and worried. Her (second) husband — an Italian — the first (the father of her son Günther) was an SS man.
I cannot stay here long. Frau Asmus’s husband wants to come up soon as she no longer needs all her time to finish up the translation work she has begun. I have written to Matt Koehl. I must know when I can usefully go to USA, i.e., when it will be possible to organize my visit to the different centers. I now have the money for my journey (at least a great part of it). I only need a definite invitation and a visa from a USA Consulate. One from a British Consulate if I am to get at least a transit visa (only for a few days) for England to see our friends there — the Joneses, C.J., and Muriel Gantry.
I’ll be so glad to meet Matt Koehl, and all the others! But I need my passport back. Could you — have you time? — to go and get it prolonged for me at the Greek Consul’s? If I am needed we can make an appointment with the Consul and go together and then you be my guest in some good Greek restaurant (as in old times in London, in the Indian one — not far from Salisbury Road — where you spoke to me about Peter L. [Ling] for the first time.
The question is where I can stay in or near Munich in the meantime? Once I have the prolongation of my passport, and when I know I can go to USA via England, I shall wait either in Zürich or in Paris — but naturally I must write to my Paris comrades first and have an answer from them; I don’t want the police to pick me up again and pack me off to some hospital or old women’s “Home” on the ground I have “no family” in Paris. Never that again, specially after the experience I already have!
Here I am all day alone. This is no inconvenience for me whatsoever. Peace, perfect peace, and a little nice talk when Frau Asmus comes back. She puts on her radio when there is a sending she wants to hear. I don’t mind. I put up with it gladly as it is only in the evening or morning, before or after her work, while all day I am free to read or write letters.
Herr Rau — 34 Lichtenfelsen Straße, Munich 60, said he could put up my French friend Myriam Hirn when she comes from N. Delhi. She is not coming. Could he, instead, put me up, when Frau Asmus can have me no more (when her husband comes) till I can leave for Paris or Nantes (France) on my way to England and USA. Do ask him.
Thanks and love,
Savitri
Do you know of any other alternative?