Ernest
Hemingway
ONE READER
WRITES (1933)
She sat at
the table in her bedroom with a newspaper folded open before her and only
stopping to look out of the window at the snow which was falling and melting on
the roofs as it fell. She wrote this letter, writing it steadily with no
necessity to cross out or rewrite anything.
Roanoke,
Virginia February 6th, 1933
Dear
Doctor,
May I write
you for some very important advice — I have a decision to make and don’t know
just whom to trust most, I dare not ask my parents — and so I come to you — and
only because I need not see you, can I confide in you even. Now here is the
situation — I married a man in U.S. service in 1929 and that same year he was
sent to China, Shanghai — he stayed three years — and came home — he was discharged
from the service some few months ago — and went to his mother’s home in Helena,
Arkansas. He wrote for me to come home — I went, and found he is taking a course
of injections and I naturally ask, and found he is being treated for I don’t
know how to spell the word but it sounds like this ‘sifilus* — Do you know what
I mean — now tell me will it ever be safe for me to live with him again — I did
not come in close contact with him at any time since his return from China. He
assures me he will be OK after this doctor finishes with him — Do you think it
right — I often heard my Father say one could well wish themselves dead if once
they became a victim of that malady — I believe my Father but want to believe
my Husband most — Please, please tell me what to do—I have a daughter born while
her Father was in China— Thanking you and trusting wholly in your advice I am
and signed
her name.
Maybe he
can tell me what’s right to do, she said to herself. Maybe he can tell me. In
the picture in the paper he looks like he’d know. He looks smart, all right.
Every day he tells somebody what to do. He ought to know. I want to do whatever
is right. It’s such a long time though. It’s a long time. And it’s been a long
time. My Christ, it’s been a long time. He had to go wherever they sent him, I
know, but I don’t know what he had to get it for. Oh, I wish to Christ he
wouldn’t have got it. I don’t care what he did to get it. But I wish to Christ
he hadn’t ever got it. It does seem like he didn’t have to have got it. I don’t
know what to do. I wish to Christ he hadn’t got any kind of malady. I don’t
know why he had to get a malady.
