Letter to Nelson Algren, by Simone de Beauvoir
My beloved husband,
I was so glad today when coming downstairs I found your letter--such a nice letter. Reading it, it seemed to me I heard your dear teasing voice and I saw your warm smile; you were near me and we spoke gaily together. It becomes really pleasant to write letters when you get answers quickly enough and a true conversation becomes possible. You don't seem far at all just now. I feel you love me just as well as if you were looking at me, and I feel you feel I love you. Dearest, I am happy, feeling it. You don't know yet, I did not know myself how much happiness you can give to me. The whole day was sunny, bright, wonderful because I received this sweet letter in my heart. I am even jealous at our writing such nice letters, it is not fair. I cannot say what I wish, writing in a foreign language. You can be witty and describe things and tell stories in the best way. And I can just write a broken childish English, yet I am not so stupid, you know. I am afraid you are going to feel yourself so much smarter and more clever and interesting than I am and to have some haughty contempt for my clumsiness.
Wednesday night
Dearest, It is midnight--here in Paris it is midnight, but what time does it mean in Chicago? Dinner time, I guess. What are you doing just now? Eating a dish of bones? I am in my room; it is really a very lousy room; I should be ashamed to show it to you. The walls are pink--that is nice--as pink as a tooth-paste, but the ceiling is so dirty, the room so small, and nothing cosy or nice in it-it needs a good housekeeper-man to give it something womanly and appealing. Yet I like this lousy room where I lived during the whole war cooking noodles and potatoes, and I cannot go away, which would be the only sensible thing to do.
I do not feel sensible at all this night, I feel unhappy. Let me cry a little. It would be so fine to cry in your arms. I cry because I do not cry in your arms; this is not sensible at all, because if I were in your arms I should not cry. It is stupid to write love letters, love is not something you can put in letters, but what is to be done when there is this dreadful Atlantic Ocean between you and the man you love? I should like to send you something, but what? Even flowers fade away when you send them, you cannot send kisses, nor tears. Only words, and then I cannot write in English. What a smart man you must be to have your girl crying for you through the whole Atlantic Ocean! You may be very proud, indeed!
I am too tired and I miss you too much. You know, it is very hard to come back. It is very difficult for me to go through this coming back. There is something so sad in France, yet I love this sadness. And then America was holidays. I did not ask anything from myself; here I have something to do, I do not know exactly what, neither if I am able to do it. (...)
Your Simone
http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/d/debeauvoir-love.html
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