Letter 14

After the “Grosse Ferien” spent partly in Britain, I returned to Germany via Austria where I met my mother in Salzburg. We spent a pleasant 2 or 3 weeks there and she returned with me to Berlin.

Oct 1st 1932Berlin Charlottenburg

Thank heavens we are here, and, save for the trifling mistake that I left my six hats and my eight pairs of earrings (together of course with my toothbrush and washing things) in the train. I may say that I have already recovered the case and am now trying (with amazing success) to convince my self that this room will contain two untidy people without overflowing into the passage. Mummy has now gone to sleep so it’s a trifle easier than it might otherwise be. It was the first time Mrs. Hop. had travelled 3rd class by night – but I was adamant. I have reduced the art of sleeping on a wooden bench in a crowded carriage to perfection. The principle of the thing is to wrap one’s face in a coat till one falls asleep of pure suffocation. I don’t care how drunken I feel at my destination – oblivion during the journey is all I crave for. I was prevented from dying by the fact that sometimes the train went one way and sometimes the other, and Ma cannot travel with her back to the engine, so she woke me up each time to change places. In the morning the exercise had given her a healthy appetite, but I felt shop-soiled and damned if I haven’t caught a cold. This evening, no doubt, we shall go to a cinema and sample Berlin by the light of the electric sign and street lamp. Mummy is getting very excited because every other person we meet is a Nazi in full uniform. Whereupon she delivers a wrathful series of lectures and I purr, and say Heil Hitler! After all, they are mostly children. I can’t take children so deadly seriously – especially when they dress up. To be sure I have never been present at a Nazi Communist riot. I might think differently after that. Also you remember you told me I had no political sense, and Mummy seems to have enough for ten.