Ch. 3: July

Berlin, Sunday, July 5th, 1914.

My blessed little mother,

It has been so hot this week. We've been sweltering up here under the
roof. If you are having it anything like this at Chertsey the sooner
you persuade the Cunliffes to leave for Switzerland the better. Just
the sight of snow on the mountains out of your window would keep you
cool. You know I told you my bedroom looks onto the Lutzowstrasse and
the sun beats on it nearly all day, and flies in great numbers have
taken to coming up here and listening to me play, and it is difficult
to practise satisfactorily while they walk about enraptured on my neck.
I can't swish them away, because both my hands are busy. I wish I had
a tail.

Frau Berg says there never used to be flies in this room, and suggests
with some sternness that I brought them with me,--the eggs, I suppose,
in my luggage. She is inclined to deny that they're here at all, on
the ground chiefly that nothing so irregular as a fly out of its proper
place, which is, she says, a manure heap, is possible in Germany. It
is too well managed, is Germany, she says. I said I supposed she knew
that because she had seen it in the newspapers. I was snappy, you see.
The hot weather makes me disposed, I'm afraid, to impatience with Frau
Berg. She is so large, and she seems to soak up what air there is, and
whenever she has sat on a chair it keeps warm afterwards for hours. If
only some clever American with inventions rioting in his brain would
come here and adapt her to being an electric fan! I want one so badly,
and she would be beautiful whirling round, and would make an immense
volume of air, I'm sure.

Well, darling one, you see I'm peevish. It's because I'm so hot, and
it doesn't get cool at night. And the food is so hot too and so
greasy, and the pallid young man with the red mouth who sits opposite
me at dinner melts visibly and continuously all the time, and Wanda
coming round with the dishes is like the coming of a blast of hot air.
Kloster says I'm working too much, and wants me to practise less. I
said I didn't see that practising less would make Wanda and the young
man cooler. I did try it one day when my head ached, and you've no
idea what a long day it seemed. So empty. Nothing to do. Only
Berlin. And one feels more alone in Berlin than anywhere in the world,
I think. Kloster says it's because I'm working too much, but I don't
see how working less would make Berlin more companionable. Of course
I'm not a bit alone really, for there is Kloster, who takes a very real
and lively interest in me and is the most delightful of men, and there
is Herr von Inster, who has been twice to see me since that day I
lunched at his aunt's, and everybody in this house talks to me