Letter 10

Read by Delia Corrie

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4.4.32

I really am in a dither! But I have at last found a room so one cause of my brain fever is removed. The main causes are in Dresden and Stettin, and Lord only knows where they will lead me!

How calmly I wrote to you a few weeks ago between Berlin and Dresden! - - Raucheisen the famous accompanist was very amiable sleek and polite, and we both rolled our eyes at each other and smirked, before a tide of adorers swept over him in waves and carried him off. The next minute oh mercy! I was shaking hands with an oily youth, and before you could say knife I was gaping at a concert agent. And there’s the whole bally root of the business. It only needs to mention an energetic female, Gladys Loesch, who sowed the seed and the prelude to my story is completed. Act I introduces the oily youth again – reveals the fact that he is a well-known Dresden pianist and shows the victim of the story playing flute for his benefit. I left Dresden in a shower of telephone calls, cousinly kisses and general fireworks.

In Stettin I calmed down, little knowing what was in store for me. Coincidence! The most inexplicable of all evils!! The very last day of my stay a youth whom we had heard the day before playing first violin in a string quartet at a concert popped in for a few moments….At 11 o’clock, my repertoire exhausted, he left the piano, hastily arranged to meet me in Berlin, and dashed off, muttering something about a concert in Stettin. Are you as muddled as I am? If you knew how petrified I am in front of an audience. A black well, with millions of featureless pink faces floating horribly on the surface. And now I shall be very annoyed if nothing does come of all this fuss, because I’ve just had my photograph taken to send, together with my press critiques and repertoire to the concert agent in Dresden. I seem to have spent my whole life lately having my photo taken. Some of them are amazing, but the professional ones are less inane than usual, I think – very good of my flute and my great grandmother’s earrings.

I am, as a matter of fact, still lingering on in Potsdam till Monday amid a welter of half-washed clothes, half packed trunks and half read books. I think I must have swallowed some moth powder, and that is why I feel so deadly. Or perhaps it’s due to the tiny little scarlet yellow, green and black Easter eggs they gave me in Stettin. Such a time as I had there! On Good Friday we went for a walk in the Park and suddenly the Teutonic atmosphere of respectability overcame me. So I rushed up a tree in my fur coat and best hat. And oh joy! If a keeper didn’t come by and see me stuck like a giant puffball at the top. I came down feet foremost much to the joy and relief of Family Heese who were dithering below. The spring weather softened the heart of the keeper and that’s why I’m still here to tell the tale….I returned to my pied-a-terre on Monday evening. Tuesday – house hunting- Wednesday – house hunting – Thursday – house hunting, and by then my season ticket had given out, so I fixed on this room which is extremely nice. You’ll never guess what I pay! 35RM a month with piano! You can get a room for a song in Berlin now. Everyone is trying to let. The advantage of my place is that I can damn well over-work if I want to.