A Tale of Love and Darkness

TWENTY YEARS later, on July 28,1971, a few weeks after my book Unto Death was published, I received a letter from this friend of my mother's, who was then in her sixties:

I feel I haven't behaved properly to you since your late father's death. I have been very depressed and am unable to do anything. I have shut myself up at home (our apartment is frightening... but I have no energy to change anything) and I am afraid to go out-that's the simple truth. In the man in your story "Late Love" I recognized some common traits-he seemed so familiar and so close. "Crusade" I heard dramatized on the radio once, and you read some excerpts in a television interview. It was wonderful to see you so unexpectedly on the television in the corner of my room. I am curious to know what the sources of the story are-it is unique. It's hard for me to imagine what was going on inside you when you wrote those descriptions of horror and dread. It's chilling. The descriptions of the Jews-strong figures, definitely not victims... impressed me. And also the description of water eating away iron.