My friend, why do you frighten me for no reason? Why predict a future for me in which you yourself don’t even believe? You know that I won’t accept a husband, and that I won’t submit to a mediocre marriage. Do you think that our friendship of two years has not taught me what I must do?
I wept once more reading your malicious words. As you wrote them, you forgot they were addressed to a friend who has not seen you since Christmas Eve, a friend who is in turmoil, in the depths of a crisis, disoriented, without succour. You can’t begin to understand how much harm you’ve inflicted. I was just starting to enjoy the spring, to hope that a meeting was near. I wanted to give you such a surprise. Just for you, I read a great deal from the books you gave me this winter. I marked a sheet of paper with a multitude of questions regarding some of the more interesting passages. I was feeling so happy and then, all at once, your harsh and untruthful letter.
What do you want me to say? Lately, you have not demonstrated the slightest bit of kindness, friendship, or concern. On a whim, you drove me away, after you urged me, for two years, to be close to you. Would you like me to say more? Would you like me to end this letter with a lover’s lament? It would be stupid and pointless. Rereading the last pages of our correspondence, I realise that nothing will convince you of your savagery, even if I told you that I love you. I admire and am jealous that you possess a soul that is so cruel and unfeeling. You lie when you tell me you suffer in solitude; if you were suffering too, you would not write me letters in which you admonish me to mediocrity, after two years of helping me escape from it.
I don’t understand you. It is so beautiful outside, so warm, there are so many flowers. And I’m crying like an adolescent and thinking desperate thoughts. How can you stay in your attic? I hate you; you’re as stubborn as a brute! Forgive me; I know that your will harrows you, bloodies you. But I also bleed, alone, without my friend, with so many unseen gifts, in the spring, with a sadness that overwhelms me. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I think about you all the time, I reread your letters, I remember our time together with Bibi at the seaside, and our summer vacation. I could weep in chagrin at my behaving in so sentimental and lovesick a way, I, your friend, Nişka.