Letter from Casablanca

LETTER FROM CASABLANCA

Lena,

I don’t know why I begin this letter talking to you about a palm tree when you haven’t heard anything about me for eighteen years. Perhaps because there are many palm trees here. I see them from my hospital window waving their long arms in the torrid wind along the blazing avenues that disappear in whiteness. In front of our house, when we were children, there was a palm tree. Maybe you don’t remember it because it was pulled down, if my memory does not fail me, the year the event took place — in 1953, therefore, I think in summer. I was ten years old.

We had a happy childhood, Lena. You can’t remember it, and no one could talk to you about it. The aunt with whom you grew up can’t know about it. Yes, of course, she can tell you something about Papa and Mama, but she can’t describe for you a childhood that she didn’t know and which you don’t remember. She lived too far away, up there in the north. Her husband was a bank clerk. They considered themselves superior to the family of a signalman, a level-crossing keeper. They never came to our house.

The palm tree was pulled down following a decree by the Minister of Transport which maintained that it impeded the view of the trains and could provoke an acccident. Who knows what accident that palm tree, grown so high, could provoke, with a tuft of branches that brushed our second-floor window? From the signalman’s house, what might be slightly annoying was its trunk, a trunk thinner than a light pole, and it certainly could not impede the view of the trains. Anyway, we had to pull it down, nothing could be done about it, the land wasn’t ours. One night at supper Mama, who from time to time had grand ideas, proposed to write a letter personally to the Minister of Transport, signed by all the family, a kind of petition. It went like this:

Dear Mr. Minister: In reference to the circular number such-and-such, protocol such-and-such, concerning the palm tree situated on the small piece of land in from of the signal house number such-and-such for the Roma-Torino line, the family of the signalman informs Your Excellency that the above-mentioned palm tree does not constitute any obstacle to the view of the trains in passage. We beg you, therefore, to leave the above-mentioned palm tree standing, it being the only tree on the land apart from a roadside pergola of vines over the door and it being much loved by the children of the signalman, especially being company for the baby who, being by nature delicate, is often confined to bed, and at least can see a palm tree through the windowpane rather than only air, which makes it sad, and to bear witness to the love that the children of the signalman have for the above-mentioned tree, sufficeth it to say that they have christened it and do not call it palm tree, but call it Josephine, owing this name to the fact that we, having taken them once to the cinema in the city to see The Talking Dead with Totò, in the film they saw the famous French Negro singer of the above-mentioned name who danced with a most beautiful headgear made of palm leaves, and since, when there is wind, the palm tree moves as if it is dancing, our children call it their Josephine.

This letter is one of the few things that remain to me of Mama. It is the rough copy of the petition we sent. Mama wrote it in her handwriting in my composition notebook and so, by fortuitous chance, when I was sent to Argentina, I took it along without knowing it, without imagining the treasure that that page would become for me later.

Another thing that remains to me of Mama is an image, but you can hardly see her. It’s a photograph that Signor Quintilio took under the pergola of our house around the stone table. It must be summer. Seated at the table there are Papa and Signor Quintilio’s daughter, a thin girl with long braids and a flowered dress. I am playing with a wooden gun, and I am pretending to shoot at a target. On the table there are some glasses and a bottle of wine. Mama is coming out of the house with a soup tureen. She has just entered the photograph that Signor Quintilio has just clicked. She came in by chance and was moving. For this reason she is a little out of focus and in profile, and it is difficult even to recognize her, so much so that I prefer to think of her as I remember her. Because I remember it well, that year. I am speaking of the year in which the palm tree was pulled down. I was ten years old, it was surely summer, and the event happened in October. A person possesses perfectly the memory of when he was ten years old, and I will never be able to forget what happened that October. But Signor Quintilio — do you remember him? He was the bailiff at a farm about two kilometers from the signal house, where in May we used to go to pick cherries. He was a happy, nervous little man who always told jokes. Papa made fun of him, because under fascism he had been Vice-federal, or something of the kind, and he was ashamed. He would shake his head, say that it was water under the bridge, and then Papa would begin to laugh and give him a slap on the back. And his wife — do you remember her? Signora Elvira, that big, sad woman. She suffered terribly from the heat. When she came to dinner with us she brought a fan. She sweated and panted, then she sat outside under the pergola, asleep on the stone bench with her head leaning on the wall. Nothing woke her, not even the passing of the freight trains.

It was splendid when they came Saturday after supper. Sometimes Signorina Palestro came too, an old maid who lived alone in a kind of dependent villa on the farm, surrounded by a battalion of cats. She had a mania for teaching me French because as a girl she had been tutor to the children of a count. She always said, “Pardon,” and “C’est dommage,” and her favorite exclamation, used in all situations to underline an important fact or simply if her glasses fell, was “Eh, lá, lá!” Those evenings Mama sat down at the little piano. How she held herself at that piano was a testimony to her upbringing, to her well-to-do girlhood, to her chancellor father, to summers spent in the Tuscan Apennines. What stories she told us about her vacations! And then she had graduated in domestic science.

If you knew, during my first years in Argentina, how much I wished I had lived those vacations! I wanted them so much and I imagined them so vividly that sometimes a strange witchcraft came over me, and I remembered vacations spent at Gavinana and at San Marcello. We were there, Lena, you and I, as children. Only you, instead of being you, were Mama as a little girl, and I was your brother and I loved you very much. I remembered when we went to a stream below Gavinana to catch tadpoles. You — that is, Mama — had a net and a funny big hat with a brim like those of the Sisters of St. Vincent. You ran straight ahead, chattering, “Run! Run! The tadpoles are waiting! What fun!” and it seemed to me to be the funniest rhyme, and I laughed like crazy. Bursts of laughter prevented me from following you. Then you disappeared into the chestnut wood near the stream and shouted, “Catch me! Catch me!” At that point I did my very best and caught up with you. I took you by the shoulders, you gave a little cry, and we fell down. The ground was sloping and we began to roll over, and then I embraced you and whispered to you, “Mama, Mama, hug me tight, Mama,” and you hugged me tight. While we rolled over, you had become Mama as I knew her. I smelled your perfume, I kissed your hair, everything intermingled — grass, hair, sky — and at that moment of ecstasy the baritone voice of Uncle Alfredo said to me, “Now then, niño, are the platinados ready?” They were not ready, no. I found myself in the wide-open jaws of an old Mercedes with a box of tacks in one hand and a screwdriver in the other. The floor was studded with blue spots of oil mixed with water. “Whatever is this boy dreaming of!” Uncle Alfredo said good-naturedly, and gave me an affectionate slap.

It was 1958 and we were in Rosario. Uncle Alfredo, after many years in Argentina, spoke a strange mixture of Italian and Spanish. His garage was called “The Motorized Italian,” and he repaired everything, but mainly tractors, old Ford carcasses. As an emblem, next to Shell’s shell, he had a leaning tower of neon which, however, was only half-lit because the gas in the tubes was used up, and nobody had ever had the patience to replace it. Uncle Alfredo was a corpulent man, full-blooded, patient, a gourmet, with a nose furrowed by many tiny blue veins, and a constitutional tendency to hypertension — everything exactly opposite of Papa. You would never have said that they were brothers.

Ah, but I was telling you about those evenings after supper at our house, when visitors came and Mama sat down at the piano. Signorina Palestro went into ecstasies over waltzes by Strauss, but I liked it much belter when Mama sang. It was so difficult to make her sing. She acted coy, she blushed. “I don’t have a voice anymore,” she said smiling, but then she gave in at the insistence of Signora Elvira. She, too, preferred ballads and songs more than waltzes. And finally Mama surrendered. Then there was a great silence. Mama began with some amusing little songs in order to enliven the atmosphere — something like Rosamunda or Eulalia Torricelli. Signora Elvira laughed delightedly, somewhat breathlessly, emitting the cluckings of a brooding hen and lifting her enormous chest, while she cooled herself with her fan. Then Mama executed an interlude at the piano without singing. Signorina Palestro requested something more challenging. Mama raised her eyes to the ceiling as if searching for inspiration or ransacking her memory. Her hands caressed the keyboard. It was a dead hour for trains, there would not be disturbing noises. From the window wide open to the marsh came the sound of crickets. A moth battered its wings against the net, trying in vain to enter. Mama sang Luna rossa, All’alba se ne parte il marinaro, or a ballad by Beniamino Gigli, Oh begli occhi di fata. How lovely it was to hear her sing! Signorina Palestro’s eyes were shining, Signora Elvira even stopped fanning herself, everyone was watching Mama. She wore a rather filmy blue dress. You were sleeping in your room, unaware. You haven’t had these moments to remember in your life. I was happy. Everyone applauded. Papa overflowed with pride. He circled around with the bottle of vermouth and refilled the guests’ glasses, saying, “Please, please, we’re not in a Turk’s house.”

Uncle Alfredo always used this curious expression, too. It was funny to hear him say it in the middle of his Spanish sentences. I remember we were at the table. He liked tripe alia parmigiana very much and thought that the Argentinians were stupid because they appreciated only the steaks from their cattle. Helping himself abundantly from the big steaming soup tureen, he told me, “Go and eat, niño, we’re not in a Turk’s house.” It was a phrase from their childhood, Uncle Alfredo’s and Papa’s. It went back to who knows what ancient time. I understood the concept: it meant that this was a house in which there was abundance, and in which the owner was generous. Who knows why the contrary was attributed to the Turks? Perhaps it was an expression that dated from the Saracen invasions. And Uncle Alfredo really was generous with me. He brought me up as if I were his son. Moreover, he had no children of his own. He was generous and patient, just like a father, and probably with me plenty of patience was necessary. I was an absent-minded, sad boy. I caused a lot of trouble as a result of my temperament. The only time I saw him lose his patience it was terrible, but it was not my fault. We were having dinner. I had precipitated a disaster with a tractor. I had had to execute a difficult maneuver to get it into the garage. Maybe I was inattentive. And then at that moment Modugno was singing Volare on the radio, and Uncle Alfredo had put it on at full volume because he loved it. I had scraped against the side of a Chrysler going in and had done a lot of damage.

Aunt Olga was not bad. She was a talkative, grumbling Venetian who had remained stubbornly attached to her dialect. When she spoke, you understood almost nothing. She mixed Venetian with Spanish — a disaster. She and my uncle had met in Argentina. When they decided to marry, they were already elderly. In fact, you couldn’t say they had married for love. Let’s say it had been convenient for both of them — for her, because she gave up working in the meat-canning plant, and for Uncle Alfredo, because he needed a woman to keep his house in order. However, they were fond of each other, or at least there was liking, and Aunt Olga respected him and spoiled him. Who knows why she came out with that sentence that day? Maybe she was tired or out of sorts. She lost her patience. I am sure it was not really the case. Uncle Alfredo had already reprimanded me earlier, and I was mortified enough. I kept my eyes on my plate. Aunt Olga, point-blank, but not in order to hurt my feelings, poor thing, almost as if she were confirming something, said, “He’s the son of a madman — only a madman could do that to his wife.” And then I saw Uncle Alfredo get up, calmly, his face grown white, and give her a terrible backhanded slap. The blow was so violent that Aunt Olga fell from her chair, and in her fall she grabbed the tablecloth, pulling it with all the dishes after her. Uncle Alfredo left slowly and went down to the garage to work. Aunt Olga got up as if nothing had happened, began to pick up the dishes, swept the floor, put on a new tablecloth because the other one was a mess, set the table, and appeared at the stairwell. “Alfredo,” she shouted, “dinner’s ready!”

When I left for Mar del Plata I was sixteen years old. Sewed inside my vest I wore a roll of pesos, and in my pocket a business card from the Pensione Albano—“hot and cold running water”—and a letter to the proprietor, an Italian friend of Uncle Alfredo’s, a friend of his youth. They had arrived in Argentina on the same ship and had always kept in touch. I was going to attend a boarding school run by Salesian Italians who had a conservatory, or something of the kind. My aunt and uncle had encouraged me. By this time I had finished the lower schools. I was not cut out to be a garage mechanic, this was immediately evident, and then Aunt Olga hoped that the city would change me. One evening I had heard her say, “Sometimes his eyes scare me, they’re so frightened. Who knows what he saw, poor boy? Who knows what he remembers?” I’m sure I was a little worrying in my way of doing things, I admit. I never talked, I blushed, I stammered, I often cried. Aunt Olga complained that the popular songs, with all those stupid words, ruined me. Uncle. Alfredo tried to arouse my interest by explaining camshafts and clutches to me, and in the evening he tried to persuade me to go with him to the Caffè Florida, where there were many Italians who played cards. But I preferred to stay next to the radio to listen to the music program. I adored the old tangos of Carlos Gardel, the melancholy sambas of Wilson Baptista, the popular songs of Doris Day, but I liked all music. And perhaps it was better for me to study music, if that was my inclination, but far away from the prairie, in a civilized place.

Mar del Plata was a bizarre and fascinating city, deserted in the cold season and crowded in the vacation months, with huge white hotels, twentieth-century style, that in the off season emitted sadness. In that period it was a city of exotic seamen and of old people who had chosen to spend their last years of life there and who tried to keep each other company by taking turns at making appointments for tea on the terraces of the hotels or at the coffee-concerts, where shabby little orchestras caterwauled popular songs and tangos.

I stayed two years at the Salesian conservatory. With Father Matteo, an old man, half-blind, with deathly pale hands, I studied Bach, Monteverdi, and Palestrina at the organ. The classes of general culture were held by Father Simone for the scientific part and Father Anselmo for the classical part, in which I was particularly gifted. I studied Latin willingly, but I preferred history, the lives of the saints, and the lives of illustrious men. Among those particularly dear to me were Leonardo da Vinci and Ludovico Antonio Muratori, who had gotten his education by eavesdropping under the window of a school, until one day the teacher had discovered him and told him, “Come into the classroom, poor boy!”

In the evening I returned to the Pensione Albano. Work awaited me because the monthly allowance that Uncle Alfredo sent me was not enough. I slipped on a jacket that Señora Pepa made me wash twice a week and stationed myself in the dining room, a room painted pale blue with around thirty tables and pictures of Italy on the walls. Our clients were pensioners, business agents, an occasional Italian immigrant to Buenos Aires who could permit himself the luxury of spending fifteen days at Mar del Plata. Signor Albano ran the kitchen. He knew how to make pansoti with walnuts and trenette al pesto: he was Ligurian, from Camogli. He was a follower of Peron. He said that he had lifted up a nation of lice. And then Eva was enchanting.

When I found steady work at the “Bichinho” I wrote Uncle Alfredo not to send me my allowance anymore. It wasn’t that I was earning enough salary to fritter it away, but, well, it was enough for me, and it didn’t seem fair that Uncle Alfredo was fixing tractors in order to send me a few pesos every month. “O Bichinho” was a restaurant-nightclub run by a plump, cheerful Brazilian, Senhor Joño Paiva, where you could have supper at midnight and listen to native music. It was a place with pretensions of respectability and considered itself to be different from the other shady night clubs, even if whoever went there to look for company found it easily, but with discretion and with the complicity of the waiters, because the prostitution was not so exposed. Everything had a respectable appearance — forty tables with candles. At two tables in the rear of the room, near the coatroom, there were two young women sitting in front of a plate that was always empty, sipping an aperitif as if waiting for their order to arrive. And if a gentleman entered, the waiter guided him skillfully and asked him discreetly, “Do you prefer to dine alone or would you like the companionship of a lady?” I was an expert at these games because my job was at the rear of the room, while Ramón attended to the tables near the platform for the show. To make those propositions you needed tact, good manners. It was necessary to understand the client in order not to offend him. And who knows why by intuition I immediately understood the client? In short, I had a flair for it, and at the end of the month my tips were greater than my salary. Besides, Anita and Pilar were two generous girls.

The high point of the show was Carmen del Rio. Her voice was no longer what it had been, of course, yet she still constituted an attraction. With the passing of the years the hoarse timbre that gave charm to her more desperate tangos had weakened, had become more limpid, and she tried in vain to regain it by smoking two cigars before her performance. But what was spectacular about her and what she knew would send the public into a frenzy was not so much her voice as a combination of resources: her repertory, her movements, her make-up, her costumes. Behind the curtains of the platform she had a little room crammed with rubbish and a majestic wardrobe with all the clothes she had used in the Forties when she was the great Carmen del Rio. There were long chiffon dresses, marvelous white sandals with very high cork heels, feather boas, tango singers’ shawls, one blonde wig, one red one, and two raven black ones parted in the middle and with large chignons with white combs, as in Andalusia. The secret of Carmen del Rio was her make-up. She knew it. She spent hours making herself up. She did not neglect the smallest detail: the tinted base, the long false eyelashes, on her lips the glittering lipstick she had used in earlier days, the very long fatal fingernails painted vermillion.

She often called me because I helped her. She said that I had a very light touch and exquisite taste, I was the only person in the night club whom she trusted. She opened her wardrobe and wanted me to advise her. I went over the repertory for the evening. For the tangos she knew what to wear, but the makeup for the sentimental songs I chose. Usually I went for the light, filmy, pastel dresses — I don’t know, apricot, for example, which was enchanting on her, or a pale indigo that seemed to me unbeatable for Ramona. And then I did her nails and eyelashes. She closed her eyes and stretched out in the easy-chair, surrendered her head to the head-rest, and whispered to me as if in a dream, “Once I had a sensitive lover like you. … He spoiled me like a baby. … His name was Daniel…. He was from Quebec…. Who knows what became of him….” Close up and without cosmetics Carmen looked her age, but under the spotlight and after my make-up she was still a queen. I overdid the base and the grease-paint, naturally, and for face powder I insisted on a very pink Guerlain, instead of the too-white Argentine brands which gave prominence to her wrinkles. And the result was sensational. She was most grateful to me. She said that I pushed back the clock. And for her perfume I converted her to violet — much, very much, violet — and on principle she had protested, because violet is a vulgar perfume for schoolgirls. And she didn’t know that on the other hand it was this contrast that fascinated the public: an old defeated beauty who sang the tango made up like a pink doll. It was this that created the pathos and brought tears to the eyes.

Then I went to do my work at the rear of the room. I circulated among the tables with a light step. “More carabine-ros a la plancha, señor?” “Do you like the rose wine, señorita?” I knew that while she was singing, Carmen was searching for me with her eyes. When with the boss’s gold cigar lighter I lit the cigarette which some client had just finished inserting between his lips, I made the light shine a minute at heart level. It was an agreed-upon signal between Carmen and me. It meant that she was singing divinely, that she went right to the heart. And I observed that her voice vibrated even more and gained warmth. She needed to be encouraged, the splendid old Carmen. Without her, “O Bichinho” would have been nothing.

The night Carmen stopped singing there was panic. She did not give up of her own accord, obviously. We were in her dressing room, I was doing her make-up, she was stretched out in the armchair in front of the mirror. She was smoking her cigar, keeping her eyes closed, and all of a sudden the powder began to get sticky on her forehead. I realized that she was sweating. I touched her: it was a cold sweat. “I feel bad,” she murmured, and said nothing else. I put my hand on her chest, took her pulse, and couldn’t feel it any longer. I went to call the manager. Carmen was trembling as if she had a fever, but she did not have a fever. She was icy. We called a taxi to take her to the hospital. I helped her to the back entrance so the public wouldn’t see her. “Ciao, Carmen,” I said to her. “It’s nothing. I’ll come to see you tomorrow,” and she attempted a smile.

It was eleven o’clock. The clients were having supper. On the platform the spotlight made a circle of empty light. The pianist played softly in order to fill the void. Then from the room came a little impatient applause. They were demanding Carmen. Senhor Paiva, behind the curtain, was very nervous. He sucked his cigarette anxiously, called the manager and told him to serve some champagne gratis. Probably the idea was to keep the public in a good mood. But at that moment a little chorus chanted, “Car-men! Car-men!”

And then I don’t know what came over me. It wasn’t something I thought about. I felt a force that drove me into the dressing room. I turned on the make-up lights around the mirror. I chose a very tight-fitting sequined dress with a slit up the side, of the deliberately showy sort, some white shoes with very high heels, black elbow-length evening gloves, a red wig with long curls. I made up my eyes heavily, with silver, but for my lips I chose a light lipstick, an opaque apricot. When I went out on the platform the spotlight struck me in full force. The public stopped eating. I saw many faces staring at me, many forks remaining suspended in the air. I knew that public, but I had never seen it from up front, arranged in a semi-circle like this. It was like a siege.

I began with Caminito verde. The pianist was an intelligent type. He immediately understood the timbre of my voice, provided me with a very discreet accompaniment, all in low notes. And then I nodded to the electrician. He put on a blue disc. I grasped the microphone and began to whisper into it. I let the pianist do two intermezzzos to prolong the song because the public didn’t take its eyes off me. And while he played I moved slowly on the platform and the cone of blue light followed me. Now and then I moved my arms as if I were swimming in that light and stroked my shoulders, with my legs slowly spreading apart and my head swaying so that my curls caressed my shoulders, as I had seen Rita Hayworth do in Gilda. And then the public began to applaud excitedly. I understood that it had gone well and I took the counteroffensive. In order not to let the enthusiasm die down, I attacked another song before the applause ended. This time it was Lola Lolita la Piquetera, and then a Buenos Aires tango of the Thirties, Pregunto, that sent them into delirium. It was applause that Carmen had had only when she was at her best. And then an inspiration came to me, a whim. I went to the pianist and made him give me his jacket. I put it on over my dress and as a joke, but with much sadness, I began to sing the ballad of Beniamino Gigli, Oh begli occhi di fata, as if it were addressed to an imaginary woman for whom I was pining for love. And little by little, while I was singing, that woman whom I was evoking came to me, recalled by my song. At the same time I slowly took off the jacket. And while I was whispering into the microphone the last line, “della mia gioventú cogliete il fiore,” I was abandoned by my lover, but my lover was the public, who stared at me with rapture. And I was myself once more, and with my feet I pushed away the jacket that I had let fall to the platform. And then, before the enchantment ended, rubbing the microphone on my lips, I began to sing Acércate más. An indescribable thing happened. The men got up on their feet and applauded, an old man in a white jacket threw me a carnation, an English officer at a table in the first row came up on the platform and tried to kiss me. I escaped to the dressing room. I felt I was going crazy with excitement and joy. I fell a kind of shock all over my body. I shut myself inside, I panted, I looked at myself in the mirror. I was beautiful, I was young, I was happy. And then I was overtaken by a whim. I put on the blonde wig, I put around my neck the blue feather boa, letting it drag on the floor behind me, and I returned to the platform in little elflike skipping steps.

First I did Que será será in the Doris Day manner, and then I attacked Volare with a chá-chá rhythm. Wiggling, I invited the public to accompany me by beating time to the rhythm with their hands. And when I sang “Vo-la-re!” a chorus answered me “Oh-oh,” and I “Can-ta-re,” and they “Oh-oh-oh-oh.” It was like the end of the world. When I returned to the dressing room, I left behind me excitement and noise. I was there, in Carmen’s easy-chair, crying with happiness, and I heard the public chant, “Name! Name!” Senhor Paiva came in, speechless, beaming, his eyes shining. “You have to go out and tell them your name,” he said. “We can’t calm them down.” And I went out again. The electrician had put in a pink disc that flooded me with a warm light. I took the microphone. I had two songs that surged in my throat. I sang Luna rossa and All’alba se ne parte il marinaro. And when the long applause died away, I whispered into the microphone a name that came spontaneously to my lips. “Josephine,” I said. “Josephine.”

Lena, many years have passed since that night, and I have lived my life as I felt I had to live it. During my travels around the world I have often thought of writing to you and never had the courage to do it. I don’t know if you have ever known what happened when we were children. Perhaps our aunt and uncle weren’t able to tell you anything. There are things that cannot be told. Anyway, if you already know or if you come to know, remember that Papa was not bad. Forgive him as I have forgiven him.

From here, from this hospital in this far-away city, I ask you a favor. If what I am willingly about to face should turn out badly, I beg you to claim my body. I have left precise instructions with a notary and the Italian Embassy so that my body may be returned home. In such a case you’ll receive a sum of money sufficient to execute this and an extra sum as recompense, because in my life I’ve earned enough money. The world is stupid, Lena, nature is vile, and I don’t believe in the resurrection of the flesh. I believe in memories, however, and I ask you to let me satisfy them.

About two kilometers from the signal house where we spent our childhood, between the farm where Signor Quintilio worked and the town, if you take a little road between the fields that once had a sign saying “Turbines” because it led to the suction pump for the reclaimed land, after the locks, a few hundred meters from a group of red houses, you come to a little cemetery. Mama rests there. I want to be buried next to her and to have on the tombstone an enlarged photograph of me when I was six years old. It’s a photograph that remained with aunt and uncle. You must have seen it who knows how many times. It’s of you and me. You are very small, a baby lying on a blanket, I am sitting beside you and holding your hand. They dressed me in a pinafore and I have curls tied with a bow. I don’t want any dates. Don’t have an inscription put on the stone, I beg you, only the name. But not Hector. Put the name with which I sign this letter, with the brotherly affection which binds me to you, your

Josephine