A Letter to Poline from Aron
Blue envelope
February 20, 1914
Kishinev to Paris
Rue Vieille du Temple 41

12:30 in the morning

Good evening, my dear countrywoman. My dear and my only friend, Polinka. Yesterday, I received your wonderful letter. I couldn’t answer the same day and let me tell you why. I had a very bad day yesterday. I was waiting for your letter for a long time, and I was very nervous before I got it. I couldn’t even approach any of the shoppers. I just wanted to read your letter. I had a severe headache just one after another. Ida Kogen was here, and I walked her home. While walking, she told me everything about her secret life. It’s a pity. She’s very miserable. She was crying in front of me and keeping me for a long time. She told me that she is supposed to marry someone whom she doesn’t love. Good night and I will read a newspaper now. So tomorrow is a Saturday and I have to stay at home. She made me very upset. And when I came back home I didn’t know what was going on with me. I grabbed your lovely letter and read it three times with tears in my eyes. Everything is nice in your letter. All your words reflect my feelings, and those letters really can either support your life or destroy your heart of severe feelings. Today is Friday. I just came back home. It’s 10:00. I can’t eat dinner without you. I am writing a letter to you, which means I am not writing a letter but I am talking to you. In my thoughts you are not far away from me. You are sitting right here with me. I am very tired of this day today. I feel pain in my legs and also have headaches, but I don’t feel any pain because I am writing a letter to you. I will always remember that Sadovaya Street and we still have a hope that we’ll be back together soon. My dear Polinka, my sacred love, my happiness, my soul, and my life. I want to be with you. My God, I am ready to give up my entire life just for one kiss. I didn’t know that I will be suffering that much after you left. I would decide to suffer all my life for having you beside me for the possibility to hug and to kiss you and to enjoy you. My destiny is speaking otherwise. We have to be apart in order to be together in a very happy hour, and that thought that we are going to be together soon supports me. I understand that the time is flying fast and, damn it, every evening I want to write more. I made all the pages dirty and I don’t know if you can read everything. Tell me. Every day when I come home I look at the calendar and think there is one day less. I am not counting months. I am counting days like a soldier while serving before he goes home he’s counting his days. It has been one month since you left, but it is not a month for me. It is an entire sea of days. Since I suffered so much within this short time it feels like a half of a century. And it’s really difficult for me to say what is lying ahead of me before I leave. Polya, why are you not walking, not having fun? It’s not nice when you are saying that you lost weight and you look pale. Why did it happen? Polinka, my dear girl, you are going to be my girl for my entire life. You are probably wearing a corset like all people in Paris. That’s why you are so pale. Why are you saying that I speak in patterns [templates]? It is true, however, and I realize it myself. I feel your soul. Yes, dear, you are asking that I leave with no delay. I could have come one month earlier. I could have left one month before, but Easter is coming, and he doesn’t want to stay without a person before Easter right here. After Easter, however, I will be able to quit and leave to my dear girl. I am going to leave Russia to somebody else. Please don’t tell anybody about my goal and about my coming. I want it to be all of a sudden. My darling, you want to see me beside you, and I have the same wish. You are feeling what I am feeling. You are living all within myself, in my thoughts and you and only you are the center of my life. I think that I will be a happy person for only one reason if I would be able to leave those people this nasty circle of vileness and meanness where I am at right now. Yes, Polya, America seems to be a yellow evil, but I think that we will be able to find peace for ourselves better there than here or in Paris. The life is much cheaper over there. We are going to be among our people. You are going to have scores of friends and relatives. See, my dear Polya, in order to unite with you, I am also leaving my home country and going with you, and there are plenty cases like this. Your father knows that you are going to leave for Switzerland, but does he know that I am coming to you? And what is going to happen when I’ll come and he will realize that we are going to leave for America? So you are going to answer this question. Polinka, I don’t want to write about it all the time, but that person who is not worthy, that person’s name, that scoundrel, that person from the vulgar, slandered us. That’s nonsense what he told about us. He made everything up, and my mind does not comprehend it. I think that he wanted to enter into my soul with both his legs and hands. He is not a man. He is as ugly as a sore. Every day when I leave the store I am asking God if he exists, that he takes me away from this piece of bread. I understand that I will have to continue serving here and acting as if I don’t know anything or don’t understand anything. Boris told me everything in detail. We will be together when God helps us, and I will tell you everything. My dear Polinka, I am ending this letter because I don’t have any more papers. I am afraid to write more and to transfer more postage and no matter how much I write to you, it appears that it is not enough, and I want to write more and more. That is why I am asking you to write more to me, too, because your letters are the best food for me. One more time I am asking you for your picture, and please respond to my previous letter. Your decision regarding the dental equipment is very important to me. Please write how you are doing, what you are doing, in one word everything and anything about yourself. Tell your [?] that he would buy a box of chocolate for you from me. I am going to give it back to you when I’ll come. Be healthy. I wish you much happiness. I kiss you many times. A big hug, and I kiss you. Please respond soon. Until I see you again. Your lifelong friend, Uncle Ooch. Take my sincere greetings. I love you and I cannot live without you, my dear. I am going to give my life for you. I love you.