11:00 P.M.
Ethel:
While writing this, fevi is just in front of me on top of the (dining) table. Here she is snatching my ball pen, moving or kicking the pad of paper I’m writing on, putting on and off the cover of the ball pen and thereby driving my ball pen to uncontrolled strokes (look for instance at the scratch below “table” and the crude “m” in the “I’m” and the poor “g” in “writing”), writing on this page with a pencil, uttering endless and kilometric syllables, such as: “bitenutepikaunpapanana__” etc. By gosh she is now crampling, rolling and unrolling my portfolio, hitting me with it. Shall I get mad? But I can’t. How can I? Now she’s trying to win me over by sweetly calling my “name”, then smiling and laughing at me. But now and then she makes fool of me. Right now I have to stop writing… she is lying on my paper, “scratching” me at the forehead etc. So much of her. But let me just give you this: She’s doing “tel-tel” on my palm with the point of the pencil (ups, aruy)!
About Carmelita. She told me that she and Fevi weren’t able to go because fevi overslept (up to 5:00 P.M.) She thought it was already too late to go at such a time and that busses would be overloaded. I believed her. (I stopped here for about 20 minutes. Why? fevi nearly fell from the table. Good I was able to grab her by the thighs just in time. Then she cried. I had to take her and sing a “Mona Lisa”. Now she’s on her bed.) Going back with Carmelita, I could say she’s doing very fine. She had perfectly cleaned the whole house including the bath room and kitchen, washed my dirty shirts I told you about, rearranged the rooms and many others. To repeat: she had done fine. (I hear fevi suddenly calling you again and again, then me again and again. I guess she thinks of you. So thoughtful. By the way, I must tell you this: before I started w/ this letter, fevi moved; while moving, her head was rested on the arm of the high chair, her eyes were closed like as if she’s intently thinking. I was emotionally moved, but I controlled my emotion. I thought I would otherwise be sentimental. So I just cast my eyes on her. She caught me. She only smiled, so “understandingly,” innocently etc. Now she’s silent and possibly asleep. Time: about midnight.) Back to Carmelita and the house. Looking around or about me once more, I can really say she had done her part independently and very well. This is without exaggeration. So that I advise us to be grateful and kind to her. At present she’s a “without-which-none.”
May I close. Regards to you and Inay. May I now do some other things!
fg-
P.S.
Special regards for the new creation, the new and potential successor of an ambitious me, the new comer on whom life in its full is waiting, the potential caretaker of a petty (I mean PRETTY) mother you, the EPHRAIM P. DAVID of a “to-be-recreated history.” To him, I, alone, give my sincerest unconditional love and thought. To him!
fg—